dy^ridvria'
,
'
THE
; "
CATHOLIC WORLD,
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
VOL. XXIX.
, TO SEPTEMBER, 1879.
NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO.,
9 Barclay Street.
1879,
Copyrighted by
I. T. HECKER,
1879.
THE NATION PRESS, 27 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK.
CONTENTS.
Annie Keary, .... 5 J 8
A Discontented Journey, .... 59 2
A Knight's Wooing, 382
An Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth
Century 797
A New Glance at an Old Acquaintance, . . 671
A Peep into Two Buried Cities, . . . 654
Bayard Taylor, *
Black Age, The 358
Boreen, 498,629
Bridal Ring of Our Lady at Perugia, and the
Pardon of St. Francis at Assisi, . . 774
Catholicity and Pantheism, .... 54
Catholic Church and Modern Liberties, . 832
Catholic Church in the United States, . . 433
Catholic Colonization, 120
Centenary of Thomas Moore, . . . 225
Certitude, Reality and Criterion of, . .n
Christian Art, 820
Church and Medicine, The,
Church of the Cup of Cold Water,
Civil Marriage Bill in Italy,
Congal,
Correspondence,
Current Events,
Educators, Some Specimen,
English Men of Letters, .
English Press, The,
Expulsion of Teaching Orders,
192
697
530
4*3
417, 559, 7ii 849
292
337
544
104
Fighting Fitzgerald,
From an Irish Country House,
Has History Become a Novel ?
701
202
650
Is Life worth Living ? 7 21
. 679
. 555
25
. 537
. 755
. . 784
Italy, The Crisis in,
Italy, The Drift in, .
Jews of Rome in Christian Times,
Legend of the Weilden, . .
Magdalene, The Tomb of,
Major's Manoeuvre, The, .
Man, What was the Primitive State of ? . . 602
Martyr of Martyrs, A, 811
Moore, Centenary of, 225
Medicine, The Church and, . . . .192
Novel-Mongers,
661
Osimo ......... 64
Old Irish Churches, ..... 4 12
On Evil, . . . . . . . . 5 10
One of Rome's Recruits, . . . . . 153
Origin and History of the Christian Liturgy, 524
Our Diplomatists, ...... 74
39>
3 I 4
Pearl
Plain Chant,
Private Charities and Public Lands,
Private Charities and Public Money,
Protesting Christians,
Protestant War against Christianity,
577i 737
363
.127
. 253
169
. 325
Quiberon, Victims of, ..... 685
Reality and Criterion of Certitude, . .11
Reality of the Soul, ..... 344
Reality of the Sufficient Reason, etc. , . . 212
Reality of the Supernatural Order, . . 481
Reply to C. C. Tiffany, ..... 249
Rome's Recruits, One of, . . . . 153
Science and Sentiment, ..... 403
Some Specimen Educators, .... 292
Some Specimens of Swedish Poetry, . . 305
Souvenirs of Madame Le Brun, . . . 767
Story of Agnes, ...... 89
Swedish Poetry, . ..... 305
Teaching Orders, Expulsion of, ... 104
The Church and Medicine, . . . .192
The Crisis in Italy, ...... 679
The Holy Maries, ...... 468
The Sainte Baume, ...... 611
Victims of Quiberon, ..... 685
What was the Primitive State of Man? . . 602
IV
Contents.
A Borrowed Thought,
A Mission Mass,
A Prayer for Lady Poverty,
A Summer Idyl,
Cardinal Newman,
Chicago, ....
POETRY.
June, .
529
752
496
707
CruxAve,
Dante's Purgatorio, 289
Evening Service in Lent, .... 201
Holy Week in Rome, 284
In the Valley of the Pemigewasset, . . 736
380
King Ethelbert of Kent, i
King Sigebert of Essex, 145
126 Legend of St. Paschal of Baylon,
847
The Christ of Vienna, 335
The Burial of P&re Marquette, . .626
The End of Man, 809
Thomas Moore, 247
To St. Matthew, 63
To Whom Comfort, 552
Transformation, iSo
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
A Benedictine of the Sixteenth Century, . 574
Cantica Sion 720
Catholicity in the Carolinas, . . . .57
Christian Life and Virtues, . . . .287
Conference Papers, 572
Constitution "Apostolicae Sedis Moderationi,"
The, . 859
Counter Points in Canon Law, . . .426
De Re Sacramentaria,
Emerald Gems,
. 856
859
Faith and Rationalism, 430
Familiar Instructions, 575
Four Gospels United into One, The, . . 860
Grants of Land, etc ,
God the Teacher of Mankind,
432
859
Health,
History of the Mass,
. 141
. 140
Inner Life of Lacordaire, 719
Horse Sacrae, 576
La Nouvelle Atala, 720
Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, 286
Legends of the Saxon Saints, . . . 860
Les Derniers Jours de Mgr. Dupanloup, . 860
Lessons in Practical Science, . . . .720
Life and Acts of Pope Leo XIII 859
Life and Epoch of Alexander Hamilton, . 858
Life of Sister Gojos, 575
Life of the Ven. Elizabeth Canori Mora, . 144
Louisa Kirkbride, . . . . ' . . 719
Manna of the Soul, 575
Mass, A History of the, 140
Month of May, 287
Moondyne, 718
Mystery of the Wizard Clip, . . . .838
Principles of Political Economy,
Prisoners of the King,
142
Religion and Science, 857
Roman Violets, . 575
Sadlier's Speller, 719
Solemn Blessing of St. Patrick's Cathedral, . 574
Song of Liberty, 141
Songs and Sonnets, 428
St. Paul at Athens, 288
The Curb's Niece, 57 6
The Church and Sovereign Pontiff, . , .143
Three Catholic Reformers, . . . . 43 1
Theologise Dogmaticse Compendium, . . 42$
The Two Brides, 7'9
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. xxix., NO. 169. APRIL, 1879.
KING ETHELBERT OF KENT.
A LEGEND FROM BEDE.
BY AUBREY DE VERB.
FAR through the forest depths of Thanet Isle,
That never yet had heard the woodsman's axe,
Rang the glad clarion on the May day morn,
Blent with the cry of hounds. The rising sun
Flamed on the forests' dewy jewelry,
While, under lifted mists, a host with plumes
Rode down a broad oak alley t'wards the sea.
King Ethelbert rode first: he reigned in Kent,
Least kingdom of the Seven, yet head of all
Through his desert. That morn the royal train,
While sang the invisible lark her song in heaven,
Pursued the flying stag. At times the creature,
As though he too had pleasure in the sport,
Vaulted at ease through sunshine and through shade,
Then changed his mood, and left the best behind him.
Five hours they chased him : last, upon a rock
High up he held awhile his antlered front,
Then took the wave and vanished.
Many a frown
Darkened that hour on many a heated brow;
And many a spur afflicted that poor flank
Which panted hard and smoked. The king alone
Laughed at mischance. " The stag, with God to aid,
Has left our labor fruitless ! Give him joy !
He lives to yield us sport some later morn :
So be it. Waits our feast, and not far off:
On to the left, 'twixt yonder ash and birch !"
COPYRIGHT : REV. I. T. HECKER. 1879.
King Ethdbert of Kent.
He spake, and anger passed : they praised their sport ;
And many an out-blown nostril seemed to snuff
That promised feast. They rode through golden furze
So high the horsemen only were descried,
And glades whose centuried oaks spread far their boughs
O'er violet banks, and fruit-trees, some snow-veiled
Like bridesmaids, others like the bride herself
Behind her white veil blushing. Near, the thrush
Carolled ; far off the wood-dove mourned ; close by
A warbling runnel led them to the bay :
Two chestnuts stood beside it : 'neath their roof
The banquet gave them welcome.
Feasting o'er,
The song succeeded. Boastful was the strain,
Each thane his deeds extolling, or his sire's;
But one, an aged man among them, scoffed :
" When I was young when Sigbert on my right
To battle rode, and Sefred on my left
That time men stood not worsted by a stag !
Not then our horses turned them from a strait,
Scared by the ridged sea-wave !" Next spake a chief,
Pirate from Denmark late returned : " Our skies,
Good friends, are all too soft to build the man !
We fight for fame : the Northman fights for sport ;
Their annals boast they fled but once ; 'twas thus :
In days of old, when Rome was in her pride,
Huge hosts of hers had fallen on theirs, surprised
And way-worn : long they fought : a remnant, spent,
Fled to their camp. Upon its walls their wives
Stood up, black-garbed, with axes Jieaved aloft,
And fell upon the fugitives, and slew them ;
Slew next their little ones ; slew last themselves,
Cheating the Roman Triumph. Never since then
Hath Northman fled the foeman."
Egfrid rose :
"Who saith our kinsfolk of the frozen North,
One stock with us, one faith, one ancient tongue,
Pass us in valor? Three days since I saw
Upon the East-Saxon's border and our own
Two boys that strove. . The Kentish wounded fell :
The East-Saxon on him knelt ; then made demand :
* My victim art thou by the laws of war !
Yonder my dagger lies ! Till I return
AVilt thoirabide?' The vanquished answered, 'Yea!'
A minute more, and o'er that dagger's edge
His life-blood rushed !" The pirate chief demurred :
" A gallant boy ! Not less I wager this,
King Ethelbcrt of Kent.
The glitter of that dagger ere it smote
Made his eye blink ! Now hear ! Three years gone by,
Sailing with Hakon on Norwegian fiords,
We fought the Jomsburg Rovers, at their head
Sidroc, oath-pledged to marry Hakon's child
Despite her father's best. In mist we met :
Instant each navy at the other dashed
Like wild beast, instinct-taught, that knows its foe ;
Chained ship to ship, and clashed our clubs all day
Till sank the sun : then laughed the' white peaks forth,
And reeled, methought, above the reeling waves.
The victory was with us. Hakon, next morn,
Bade slay his prisoners. Thirty on one bench
Waited their doom : their leader died the first ;
He winked not as the sword upon him closed !
No, nor the second! Hakon asked the third,
' What think'st thou, friend, of death?' He tossed his head
' My father perished : I fulfil my turn.'
The fourth, ' Strike quickly, chief! An hour this morn
We held contention if, when heads are off,
The hand can hold its dagger: I would learn !'
The dagger and the head together fell.
The fifth, ' One fear is mine lest yonder slave
Should touch a prince's hair ! Command some chief,
Thy best beloved, to lift it in his hands ;
Then strike and spare not.' Hakon struck. That youth,
Sigurd by name, his forehead forward twitched,
Laughing, so deftly that the downward sword
Smote off those luckless hands that raised his hair:
All laughed; and Hakon's son besought his sire
To loosen Sigurd's bonds : but Sigurd cried,
* Unless the rest be loosed I will not live ' :
Thus all escaped save four."
In graver mood
That chief resumed : " A Norland king dies well !
His bier is raised upon his stateliest ship,
Piled with his arms: the men who love him best
Rush to their monarch's pyre, resolved with him
To share in death, and with becoming pomp
Attend his footsteps to Valhalla's hall.
The torch is lit : forth sails the ship, black-winged,
Facing the midnight seas. From beach and cliff
Men watch all night that slowly lessening flame ;
Yet no man sheds a tear."
Earconwald,
An aged chief, made answer : " Tears there be
Of divers sorts : a wise and valiant king
King Etheibert of Kent.
Deserves that tear which praises, not bewails,
Greatness gone by." The pirate shouted loud,
" A land it is of laughter, not of tears !
Know ye the tale of Harald ? He had sailed
Round Southern coasts and Eastern sacked or burned
A hundred Christian cities. One he found
So girt with giant walls and brazen gates
His sea-kings vainly dashed themselves thereon,
And died beneath them, frustrate. Harald sent
A herald to that city, speaking thus:
4 Harald is dead : Christian was he in youth :
He sends you spoils from many a city burnt,
And craves interment in your chiefest fane.'
Next day the masked procession wound in black
Through streets defenceless. When the church was" reached
They laid their chief before the altar-lights :
Anon to heaven rang out the priestly dirge
And incense-smoke up-curled. Forth from its cloud
Sudden up leaped the dead man, club in hand,
Spurning his coffin's gilded walls, and smote
The hoary pontiff down, and brake his neck ;
And all the sea-kings doffed their weeds of woe
And showed the mail beneath, and raised their swords,
And drowned that pavement in a sea of blood,
While through the open portals rushed their mates ;
And, since that city seemed but scant of spoil,
Fired it and sailed. Ofttimes old Harald laughed
That tale recounting."
Many a Kentish chief
Re-echoed Harald's laugh ; not Etheibert :
The war-scar reddening on his brow, he rose
And spake : " My thanes, ye laugh at deeds accurst !
An old king I, and make my prophecy
One day that northern race which smites and laughs,
Though near to us akin, shall smite our coasts :
That day ye will not laugh !" Earconwald,
Not rising, likewise answer made, heart-grieved :
** Six sons had I : all these are slain in war :
Yet I, an unrejoicing man forlorn,
Find solace ofttimes thinking of their deeds :
They laughed not when they slew. No God, be sure,
Approves the jest red-handed." Egfrid rose
And three times cried, with lifted sword unsheathed,
" Behold my God ! No God I serve save him !"
While thus they held discourse, where blue waves danced
Not far from land, behold, there hove in sight,
Seen 'twixt a great beach silky still with spring,
King Ethelbtrt of Kent.
And pine broad-crested round whose head old storms
Had woven a garland of his own green boughs,
A bark both fair and large, and hymn was heard :
Then laughed the king: "The stag-hunt and our songs
So drugged my memory I had nigh forgotten
Why for our feast I chose this heaven-roofed hall.
Missives I late received from friends in France;
They make report of strangers from the south
That, tarrying in their coasts, have learned our tongue
And northward move with tidings strange and new
Of some celestial kingdom by their God
Vouchsafed to men of Faith. Nor churl am I
To frown on kind intent, nor child to trust
This sceptre of Seven Realms to magic snare
That puissance hath who knows not ? greater thrice
In house than open field. I therefore chose .
For audience-hall this precinct."
Muttered low
Murdark, the scoffer with the cave-like mouth
And sidelong eyes : " Queen Bertha's voice was that !
A woman's man ! Since first from Gallic shores
That dainty daughter of King Charibert
Pressed her small foot on England's honest shore,
The whole land dwindles !"
In seraphic hymns
Ere long that serpent hiss was lost: for soon,
Circling a rocky point with thorny beak,
O'er sands still glistening with a tide far-ebbed,
On drew, preceded by a^silver cross,
A white procession. Music, as it moved,
Floated on sea-winds inland, deadened now
By thickets, echoed now from cliff or cave :
Ere long before them that procession stood ;
The king addressed them thus: " Hail, heralds sage!
And if from God I welcome you the more !
Since great is God, and therefore great his gifts :
Speak without fear, for him alone I hate
Who brings ill news, or makes unfit demand,
Unmeet for kings. I know that Cross ye bear,
Since in my palace sits a Christian wife,
Bertha, the sweetest lady in this land,
Most gracious in her ways, in heart most leal.
I knew her yet a child : she knelt whene'er
The queen, her mother, entered: then I said,
A maid so reverent will be reverent wife,
And wedded her more late. Both morn and eve
She in her wood-girt Chapel sings her prayer,
King Ethclbcrt of Ktni.
Which wins us kindlier harvest, and, some think,
Success in war. She strives not with our gods :
Confusion never wrought she in my house,
Nor minished Hengist's glory : had her voice
Clangorous or strident drawn upon my throne
Deserved opprobrium" here the monarch's brows
Flushed at the thought, and fire was in his eyes
"The hand that clasps this sceptre had not spared
To hunt her forth, an outcast in the woods,
Thenceforth with beasts to herd ! More lief were I
To take the lioness to my bed and board
Than house a rebel wife." Remembering then
The mildness of his queen, King Ethelbert
Resumed, appeased, for placable his heart :
" But she no rebel is, and this I deem
Fair auspice for her Faith."
A little breeze
Warm from the sea that moment softly waved
The standard from its staff, and showed thereon
The Child Divine. Upon his Mother's knee
Sublime he stood. His left hand clasped a globe
Crowned with a golden Cross; and with his right,
Two fingers heavenward raised, o'er all the earth
He sent his blessing.
Of that stranger band
One taller by the head than all the rest
Obeisance made ; then, pointing to the Cross,
And forward moving tVard the monarch's seat,
Opened the great commission of the Faith :
" Behold the Eternal Maker of the worlds !
That hand which shaped the earth and blesses earth
Must rule the race of man !"
Majestic then
As when, far winding from its mountain springs,
City and palm-grove far behind it left,
Some Indian river rolls, while mists dissolved
Leave it in native brightness unobscured,
So forward flowed in apostolic might
Augustine's strong discourse. With God beginning,
He showed the Almighty all-compassionate,
Down drawn from distance infinite to man
By the infinite of love ! Lo, Bethlehem's crib !
There lay the Illimitable in narrow bound!
Thence rose that triumph of a world redeemed!
Last, to the standard pointing, thus he spake:
" Yon Standard tells the tale! Six hundred years
Westward it sped from subject realm to realm :
King Ethelbert of Kent.
First from the bosom of God's race elect,
His people, till they slew him, mild it soared.
Rejected, it returned. Above their walls
While ruin rocked them, and the Roman fire,
Dreadful it hung ! When Rome had shared their guilt,
Mocking that Saviour's brethren, and His Bride,
Above the conquered conqueror of all lands
In turn that Standard flew. Who raised it high?
A son of this your island, Constantine !
In these, thine English oakwoods, Helena,
'Twas thine to nurse thy warrior ! He had seen
In heaven this Standard, and thereon these words :
' Through me is victory.' Victory won, he raised
High as his empire's queenly head, and higher,
That Standard of the Eternal Dove, thenceforth
To fly where eagle standard ne'er had flown;
God's glory in its track, good-will to men.
Advance for aye, great emblem ! Light as now
Famed Asian headlands and Hellenic isles!
O'er snow-crowned Alp and citied Apennine
Send forth a breeze of healing ! Keep thy throne
For ever on those western peaks that watch
The setting sun descend the Hesperean sea,
Atlas and Calpe ! These the old Roman bound
Bujld but the gateway of the Rome to be:
Till Christ returns, thoit Standard, hold them fast :
But never till the North that, age by age,
Dashed back the pngan Rome, with Christian Rome
Partakes the spiritual crown of man restored,
From thy strong flight above the world surcease,
And fold thy wings in rest !"
Upon the sod
He knelt, and on that Standard gazed, and spake,
Calm-voiced, with hand to heaven : " I promise thee,
Thou Sign, another victory, and thy best :
This island shall be thine!"
Augustine rose
And took the right hand of King Ethelbert,
And placed therein the Standard's staff, and laid
His own above the monarch's, spraking thus;
" King of this land, I bid thee know from God
That kings have higher privilege than they know,
The standard-bearers of the King of kings."
Long time he clasped that royal hand : long time
The king, that strenuous hand at last withdrawn,
His own withdrew not from that Standard's staff
Committed to his charge. His hand he deemed
King Ethelbert of Kent.
Thenceforth its servant vowed. With large, meek eyes
Fixed on that Maid and Babe, he stood as child
That, gazing on some reverent stranger's face,
Nor loosening from that stranger's hold his palm,
Listens his words, attent.
The man of God
Meantime as silent gazed on Thanet's shore
Gold-tinged, with sunset spray to crimsom turned
In league-long crescent. Love was in his face,
That love which rests on Faith. He spake : " Fair land,
I know thee what thou art, and what thou lackest \
The Master saith, ' I give to him that hath ' :
Thy harvest shall be great." Again he mused ;
And shadow o'er him crept. Again he spake :
"That harvest won, when centuries have gone by,
What countenance wilt thou wear ? How oft on brows
Once bright with baptism's splendor sin more late
Drags down its cloud ! The time may come when thou,
This day, though darkling, yet so Innocent,
Barbaric not depraved, on greater heights
May'st sin in malice sin the great offence,
Changing thy light to darkness, knowing God,
Yet honoring God no more : that time may come
When, rich as Carthage, great in arms as Rome,
Keen-eyed as Greece, this isle, to sensuous gaze
A sun all gold, to angels may present
Aspect no nobler than a desert waste,
Some blind and blinding waste of sun-scorched sands,
Trod by a race of pigmies not of men,
Pigmies by passions ruled !"
Once more he mused;
Then o'er his countenance passed a second change ;
And from it flashed the light of one who sees
(Some hill-top gained) beyond the incumbent night
The instant foot of morn. With regal step,
Martial yet measured, to the king he strode,
And laid a strong hand on him, speaking thus :
" Rejoice, my son, for God hath sent thy land
This day good tidings of exceeding joy,
And planted in her breast a tree divine
Whose leaves shall heal far nations. Know besides,
Should sickness blight that tree, or tempest mar,
The strong root shall survive them : winter past,
Heavenward once more shall rush both branch and bough
And over-vault the stars."
He spake, and took
The sacred Standard from that monarch's hand
And held it in his own, and fixed its point
King Ethelbert of Kent.
Deep in the earth, and by it stood. Then lo !
Like one disburdened of some ponderous charge,
King Ethelbert became himself again,
And round him gazed well-pleased. Throughout his train
There passed a movement; and, remembrance had
Of those around, his warriors and his thanes,
That ever on his wisdom waiting lay,
Thus he replied, discreet : "Stranger and friend,
Thou bearest good tidings ! That thou comest thus far
To fool us, knave and witling may believe :
I walk not with their sort ; yet, guest revered,
Kings are not as the common race of men ;
Counsel they take, lest honor heaped on one
Should strip some other. Odin holds on us
Prescriptive right, and special claims on me,
The son of Hengist's grandson. Preach your Faith !
The man who wills I suffer to believe :
The man who wills not, let him moor his skiff
Where anchorage likes him best. The day declines :
This night with us you harbor, and our queen
Shall lovingly receive you."
Staid and slow
The king rode homewards, while behind him paced
Augustine and his monks. The ebb had left
'Twixt Thanet and the mainland narrow space,
Marsh-land more late : beyond the ford they found
A path through meads fair-flowered ; and, as they passed,
Not herdsmen only, but the broad-browed kine,
Fixed on them long their meditative gaze,
And oft some blue-eyed boy with flaxen locks
Ran, fearless, forth, and plucked them by the sleeve,
Some boy clear-browed as those St. Gregory marked
Poor slaves, new-landed on the shores of Rome,
That drew from him that saying, " * Angli ' nay,
Call them henceforward * Angels ' !"
From a wood
Issuing before them sudden they beheld
King Ethelbert's chief city, Canterbury,
Strong-walled, with winding street, and airy roofs,
And high o'er all the monarch's palace pile
Thick-set with towers. Then fire from God there fell
Upon Augustine's heart; and thus he sang
Advancing; and the brethren sang, " Amen " :
" Hail, city loved of God, for on thy brow
Great fates are writ ! Thou cumberest not His earth
For petty traffic reared, or petty sway :
King Ethelbert of Kent.
I see a heavenly choir descend, thy crown
Henceforth to bind thy brow. For ever hail !
44 I see the basis of a kingly throne
In thee ascending ! High it soars and higher,
Like some great pyramid o'er Nilus kenned
When vapors melt the Apostolic Chair!
Doctrine and discipline thence shall hold their course
Like Tigris and Euphrates through all lands
That face the Northern star. For ever hail !
44 Where stands yon royal keep, a church shall rise,
Like incorruption clothing the corrupt
On the Resurrection morn ! Strong house of God,
To him exalt thy walls, and nothing doubt,
For lo! from thee, like lions from their lair,
Abroad shall pace the Primates of this land !
They shall not lick the hand that gives and smites,
Dog-like, nor snake-like on their bellies creep
In indirectness base. They shall not fear
The people's madness, nor the rage of kings
Reddening the temple's pavement. They shall lift
The strong brow mitred, and the crosiered hand,
Before their presence sending love and fear
To pave their steps with greatness. From their fronts,
Stubborned with marble from Saint Peter's rock,
The sunrise of far centuries forth shall flame :
He that hath eyes shall see it, and shall sny,
4 Blessed who cometh in the name of God !' "
Thus sang the saint advancing; and behold,
At every pause the Brethren sang 44 Amen " ;
While down from window and from roof the throng
Watched them in silence. As their anthem ceased
Before them stood the palace clustered round
By many a stalwart form. Midway the gate,
On its first step, like angel newly lit,
Queen Bertha stood. Back from her forehead meek,
The meeker for her crown, a veil there fell,
While streamed the red robe to the foot snow-white
Sandalled in gold. The morn was on her face ;
The star of morn within those eyes upraised
That flashed all dewy with the grateful light
Of many a granted prayer. O'er that sweet shape
Augustine traced the venerable sign ;
The lovely vision sinking, hand to breast,
Received it ; while, by sympathy surprised,
Or instinct-taught, the monarch and his thanes
Knelt as she knelt, and bent like her their heads,
The Reality and the Criterion oj Certitude. 1 1
Sharing her blessing. Like a palm the Faith
Thenceforth o'er England rose, those men of God
Preaching by saintly life, not words alone,
The doctrine of the Cross. Some power divine,
Stronger than patriot love, more sweet than spring,
Made way from heart to heart, and daily God
Joined to his church the souls that should be saved,
Thousands, where Medway mingles with the Thames,
Rushing to baptism. In his palace cell
High-nested on that Vaticanian Hill
Which o'er the martyr-gardens kens the world,
Gregory, that news receiving, or from men
Or haply from that God with whom he walked
The Spirit's whisper ever in his ear,
Rejoiced that hour, and cried aloud, " Rejoice,
Thou earth ! that North which from its cloud but flung
The wild beast's cry of anger or of pain,
Redeemed from wrath, its halleluias sings :
Those waves our Roman galleys feared, this day
Kiss the bare feet of Christ's evangelists :
That race whose oak-clubs brake our Roman swords,
Glories now first in bonds the bond of Truth ;
At last it fears ; but fears alone to sin,
Striving through faith for virtue's heavenly crown !"
THE REALITY AND THE CRITERION OF CERTITUDE.
IN the Academical Questions of ed would not care to read." * We
Cicero the learned Roman Varro are not without fear of meeting
is represented as excusing himself with a similar mishap in our pre-
to Cicero and Atticus for not hav- sent undertaking. We have been
ing made an exposition of the thus far trying to make an exposi-
Greek philosophy in the Latin Ian- tion, which we now resume, of some
guage. He says that he had fear- of the principal parts of the Logic
ed lest all those who were suffi- and Metaphysics of Aristotle, as
ciently learned to understand such perfected by St. Thomas, in such
matters would prefer to read Plato a way that any person at all given
and Aristotle and the other great to serious thought may find it both
Grecian authors for themselves, readable and intelligible. It can-
and that all others would be unable not be expected, indeed, that this
to understand any exposition which way of reasoning should be made
he might make in their own mother- so plain that even the wayfaring
tongue. " Wherefore," he says, " I or seafaring man, though a fool,
was unwilling to write those things
Which the Unlearned WOuld not be *"Itaque eanoluiscribere^u^necindoctiintel-
ligere possent, nee docti legere curarent." Quant.
able to understand, and the learn- Acad.^.i. 2.
12
The Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
shall not err therein. For such
there is, happily, an easier way to
the truth which is necessary to sal-
vation. But the travellers over the
rugged road, the voyagers over the
tempestuous ocean of life, who
know or think they know enough
to need, and to be entitled to, some
answer beyond the catechism
when they raise questions about
their destination and the way to it,
ought to be willing to take the
pains to understand the only ra-
tional answers which can be given
to them. Physics, as a pure' sci-
ence, is abstruse and difficult ; and
yet the most substantial and inter-
esting truths of physics are brought
within the reach and made the in-
tellectual property even of school-
children. Why not these higher
truths, also, which give the intel-
lect a greater perfection, which are
more interesting, and far more im-
portant ?
There are many who put the
same question which Pontius Pi-
late, the educated Roman nobleman
and statesman, put to our Lord :
"What is Truth?" Is there truth
which is certain in itself, and know-
able by men, concerning those
things which surpass the bodily
senses, and a criterion or unerring
rule by which truth can be discern-
ed from falsehood, and error avoid-
ed or corrected ? We maintain
that plain common sense suffices
to shut out all doubt about these
things, so far as is really necessary
for the mass of mankind, and that
the church gives them an unerring
criterion and rule of faith which is
assured to those to whom it is suffi-
ciently proposed by an easy pro-
cess ; a way so plain that even the
wayfaring man, though a fool, need
not err therein. But we are deal-
ing with those who professedly
doubt the truths of revealed or
even of natural religion from mo-
tives derived from some sort of
philosophy called rational. We
have to take them on their own
ground ; and we may therefore
justly ask of them that patience
and diligence and close attention
to solid arguments which are abso-
lutely necessary to those who seek
after wisdom by rational research.
Those also who have faith, but
who demand a better understand-
ing of the reason of the tilings
which they believe, must be will-
ing to undergo the trouble and
labor required by the very nature
of the case. It is a serious inqui-
ry after Truth in which we are en-
gaged. The nature, the reality, the
criterion of truth and certitude, are
the objects of our attention. This
is the very object of the science of
Logic, aGreek term which in English
has for its equivalent Rational Dis-
cipline, and, in the words of a text-
book * which is one of two pre-
scribed by Leo XIII. for use in the
Roman colleges, " considers the
order which is in the acts of rea-
son, for attaining truth and avoid-
ing falsehood." We cannot prose-
cute the inquiry after Truth with-
out investigating the supreme
causes of things, and this is the
object of Philosophy in general.
We are asked for Logic and Meta-
physics by all those who demand
something which shall satisfy their
reason, and we must give them
what they ask for, trying to do so
with the clearest reasoning and in
the plainest English that we are
able to use. We must, however,
make a path through the densest
thicket of the metaphysics of Aris-
totle and St. Thomas Aquinas, in
order to get a view of the region
beyond ; and our readers must come
* Liberatore, Introduction to Logic \ vol. i., of the
Philosophy, p. 19.
The Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
after or give up following in our
track. It is no garden-walk, and
we cannot make it such. Never-
theless Lord Macaulay, who had
studied Aristotle, and yet delighted
quite as much in the conversation
of children as in the Greek classics,
has said : " In theology the inter-
val is small indeed between Aris-
totle and a child." * We have al-
ready affirmed that the child is a
philosopher and knows the trans-
cendentals and universals. He
has the truth and the criterion of
certitude. It is not, then, for a
new rule and medium above our
common nature, by which to find
out truth, to prove and verify it,
and give security to our tenure of
its domain, we are searching, when
we inquire for the criterion of cer-
titude. Such an inquiry is vain
and futile, and would set the mind
turning in a perpetual vicious cir-
cle of scepticism. We do not ask
what is the receptacle in which
space is contained, or in what time
time itself exists. There is no
other light in which we see light.
So there is no faculty by which to
measure intellect except intellect
itself, there are no other principles
or demonstrations extrinsic to first
truths and the deductions of reason
from them by which to verify and
prove the same. " That we are
made for attaining truth, and that
in effect we do attain it by the le-
gitimate exercise of our cognosci-
tive faculties, is a postulate of natu-
ral certitude, which no one doubts
or can doubt without spontaneous-
ly renouncing his rational nature.
The only thing we can do in addi-
tion to making this postulate is to
gain a reflexive recognition of it,
not in order to acquire certainty in
the first instance, which, as we have
said, is not possible, but only to
discover its intrinsic reason and to
convert into philosophical certi-
tude that common certitude which
every man naturally possesses."*
The criterion we want is a rule
which the intellect derives from
within itself as a test of the truth
or falsehood of its own judgments,
which it uses by taking a review of
these judgments in the act of re-
flection upon itself and its own
operations. This criterion is found
in the objective truth of the things
themselves as it makes itself mani-
fest in the mind by their evidence,
or the showing of their reality
which is effected in our immediate
cognitions. There is no falsehood
or error possible in these imme-
diate cognitions. It is only in
mediate cognitions and judgments
that a discernment of truth and
error can be made. The rectitude
of judgment consists in its con-
formity to the real nature of things,
and its error in a non-conformity
to the same. We can only get at
this true essence of being which is
distinct from ourselves as the same
subsists in the mind ideally by our
simple apprehensions. With this
we must compare our judgments in
order to discern their conformity
or non-conformity to reality. This
is, therefore, the criterion of truth
and certitude for all judgments
which the mind pronounces upon
those things of which it can take
cognizance by itself. For other
things, which are made known only
by testimony, there is an extrinsic
criterion of their credibility, an ex-
ternal rule of the judgments made
upon them, and of their respective
truth or falsity, and this is the au-
thority of the witnesses who deliver
the testimony. Thus, the crite-
*H>st. of England, chap.
George Fox, 1691.
xvii. Account pf
p. 446.
>ib., Conos. Inf. /?//. Del Criteria di Verita,
The Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
rion of certainty for the intellectual
judgment that the planet Neptune
exists and revolves around the sun
in a period nearly equal to one
hundred and sixty-five terrestrial
years, for Leverrier, Adams, and
other astronomers was scientific evi-
dence ; for the ordinary student it
is the authority of these astrono-
mers.
This brief statement has been
premised, in order that the reader
may distinctly understand what it
is which we are about to explain
and prove more fully in regard to
certitude and its criterion. We
will first make a more explicit defi-
nition of the terms Truth and Cer-
titude. Objective truth, or the
truth which is predicated of a be-
ing, is nothing but its real confor-
mity to its own essence. Truth as
subjective, and as predicated of an
operation of the mind, is an ade-
quation of the intellect and the
thing which is objectively true.
Certitude is a quality of the assent
which the mind gives to objective
truth which makes the assent firm
and exclusive of doubt or fear of
the contrary. The criterion is a
rule employed by reason in reflect-
ing upon its own judgments, a sort
of intellectual spirit-level, by which
it measures their rectitude. Rea-
son is a light and a law to itself.
As in arithmetical computation
the correctness or incorrectness of
the process and result can only be
reviewed and tested by computa-
tion, so in all intellectual and ra-
tional operations it is the intellect
reflecting on itself according to its
own intrinsic law and rule of
operation, that is its own regulator.
It cannot go out of itself to mea-
sure its cognitions and judgments
by anything wholly and absolutely
extraneous to itself, for its acts are
all immanent. The objective ver-
ity with which it compares its
judgments is within itself. This
has been already shown in treating
of the reality of knowledge. And
we must now return upon the ex-
position then given of the nature
of cognition, in order to develop
more fully the sufficient reason and
nature of certitude, to analyze the
ratios of truth and error in ration-
al judgments, and to explain how a
being who is fallible and frequent-
ly does err in his opinions and be-
liefs, and who is, moreover, ex-
tremely ignorant even when he is
most wise, can nevertheless pos-
sess and apply an unerring crite-
rion of certitude with due limita-
tions and under the requisite con-
ditions.
In the exposition of the nature
of cognition just referred to, it was
shown that the mind in actual cog-
nition becomes in a certain sense
that which is actually cognized.*
My visible moon, and the visible
moon of millions of other individu-
als, is the same moon which existed
before our creation, which exists
when we neither see it nor actually
attend to our imaginary representa-
tion of its visible appearance. The
object reproduced and represented
in our cognoscitive faculty is the
same being which exists in itself,
only that it is in the ideal state, and
is received into the being of the
cognoscitive subject, according to
the mode of the recipient. In the
intelligent subject, it is this intelli-
gible similitude of every real ob-
ject of cognition, this intelligible
species, or ideal conformity to all
being which is present to it, which
is the form of its actual intelligence.
As the likeness to the human
species is the form of a statue,
making it a statue, as the likeness
* Cognasctns in actu fit cognitum in actu is an
axiom in scholastic philosophy.
The Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
to Shakspere is the form of a statue
of Shakspere, so is the ideal simi-
litude in the intellect its intelligi-
ble form. In nature and in art,
that which makes a thing to be
what it actually is, the form of its
essential actuality, cannot be taken
from it without destroying it.
What accedes to the nature of the
thing, or follows from it, may be
absent and make it deficient or
excessive in certain respects. An
animal of a certain species must
have what essentially makes it an
individual of that species, as for in-
stance a dog must have what is
necessary to constitute him a ca-
nine animal. Yet he may be, as
a witty Franciscan friar once re-
marked of a dog belonging to a late
illustrious bishop, which had no
tail and barked frequently, "evil
both by excess and defect." A
man must have that which makes
him a human being, but he may
have legs of unequal length, a
loathsome countenance, disgusting
manners, and a vicious moral char-
acter. Cognition, in like manner,
whether sensible or rational, must
have that which is its constitutive
natural form. The similitude of
the cognoscitive subject to the real
object is this form, and in this na-
ture cannot fail. Nature is no de-
ceiver, and the laws of nature are
constant. In so far as the cognos-
citive faculties are passive and sub-
ject to 'the laws of nature there is
no chance for falsity in cognitions,
where the faculties are in a normal
state and there is no impediment
to their receiving due impressions
and duly putting forth spontaneous
actions. There is a natural rela-
tion and correspondence between
sense and whatever is sensible, in-
tellect and whatever is intelligible,
reason and whatever is demonstra-
ble. The whole universe of being
is objective truth ; is, in its nature,
apprehensible and knowable as
true and real. Being, as such, has
in itself the aptitude to make itself
known when brought into contact
with a cognoscitive faculty. The
faculty itself, in proportion to its
nature, is in potency to be deter-
mined to any cognition, indifferent-
ly, by any connatural object duly
present to it. When it is determin-
ed in this way, its operation is nat-
ural, necessary, according to fixed
and constant laws of nature, which
are as invariable as the laws of
motion. The question of truth or
falsehood cannot be proposed in
respect to these states of the sub-
ject of cognition which are deter-
mined by the objective verity, be-
cause the two terms of compari-
son are wanting. You cannot ask
whether the simple apprehension
of the object corresponds or does
not correspond to the object, for
the simple reason that the object as
it is in itself is identical with the
object as it is in the apprehension.
How can you compare the observ-
ed course and time of revolution of
a planet with the orbit and period
itself as not observed ? The theory
of a circular orbit can be compared
with the observed course and time.
Any other theory can be compared,
and, among these hypotheses, the
one which ascribes to the planet
an elliptical orbit around the
sun placed in one of the foci,
can be proved to conform to the
observed facts, and thus verified
by the criterion which we have
already defined. The observed
facts are the objective verity, and
their evidence, which is a deter-
mination of nature controlling the
faculty of observation, is the crite-
rion of the truth and certainty of
the judgment, this planet moves in
an elliptical orbit, in a certain pe-
i6
The Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
riod, around the sun. The mind
has done something, here, of itself :
it 'has pronounced a judgment.
There were previous judgments by
astronomers before Kepler, and
conjectural hypotheses subjected
by himself to the test of calcula-
tion. They are now condemned
by science as false. The one just
mentioned is approved as certainly
true. And this one illustration
suffices to make the whole matter
we are considering plain. Truth
makes an equation between the
mind and the reality, and as this
ratio of equality can only exist -be-
tween two distinct terms, the mind
must create the second term, to
be compared with the first which it
already possesses in its apprehend-
ed objective verity, by making a
judgment. If the judgment agrees
with the objective verity whose
evidence shines forth in the prima-
ry idea manifesting the object, it
is true; if it disagrees with it, it is
false- Our judgments are true,
says St. Augustine, when we judge
that to be which really is, and that
not to be which is not. They are
false, when we judge that what is
not is, and what is is not. The
mind can review and reaffirm or
reverse its secondary and mediate
judgments by applying to them the
criterion of truth, by virtue of its
power of return upon itself in re-
membering and reflecting. It can
re-cogitate and re-cognize its prior
cogitations and cognitions, and re-
new the reasoning process by
which it arrived at its conclusions.
Moreover, it can, by the same
power of perfect return or bending
back upon itself, inspect its own
states and operations as modifica-
tions of itself, and inspect itself as
the principle and subject of these
states and operations, investigate
its own proper essence and laws,
and institute a comparison between
subjective truth in itself as psy-
chological, and objective truth as
ontological. It can review its pri-
mary sensations and intellections
and discursive acts. In this way,
it can by reflection verify and jus-
tify even those first and necessary
judgments in which the objective
truth is infallibly attained in the
first instance, and the original first
apprehensions in which these judg-
ments have their inchoate exist-
ence. When this work is correct-
ly and completely done, and its
results are expressed in accurate
terminology, we have a theory of
ideology and cognition which gives
us a philosophical certainty or
science, by which our natural cer-
tainty and implicit logic are per-
fected. A part of this work we
are nowqattempting in the analysis
of natural certitude, and we are
now prepared to go on still further
in the exposition of the three dis-
tinct species of certitude which are
named, respectively, metaphysical,
physical, and moral.
Certitude is a state of the mind in
respect to truth which has been al-
ready defined. It is produced by
a necessary law whenever the truth
is made evidently apparent. The
difference between its three distinct
species just now named is deter-
mined by the difference which dis-
tinguishes the .motive of assent in
its several objects. In respect to
the exclusion of doubt, the several
sorts of certitude are equal. But
in the positive intensity of the light
of evidence and the proportionate
clearness of the mental insight into
the objective truth present to the
mind, there is a variation and a
relative precedence of the different
species of certitude, according to
the order in which they have been
named. When the motive of as-
The Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
sent is founded in the very nature
of the thing and the connection of
ideas, certitude is metaphysical;
when the motive is founded in ex-
perience and the constancy of the
laws of nature, certitude is physi-
cal ; when, in fine, it is in the tes-
timony of man and the laws by
which their voluntary acts are gov-
erned, we have moral certitude,
produced in each case by metaphy-
sical, physical, and moral evidence
respectively. That a point has
position but not divisibility is an
example of the first species; that
the moon shines by the reflected
light of the sun. of the second ; that
Livy was a Latin historian, of the
third ; and another example of the
third is, that mothers are fond of
their offspring.
Rational philosophy takes its be-
ginning from first principles which
are self-evident and known by
themselves, immediately, as soon as
they are presented to the view of
the intellect. We have already
explained how the intellect, by its
innate, intrinsic active power, im-
mediately abstracts the most uni-
versal of all ideas, the idea of being,
or essence in general. The very
name of this faculty, intellect, is
derived from intus legere, to read
within. The human intellect reads
within the sensible object its intel-
ligible ratio. The ratio of being is
that which is nearest the surface,
and first presents itself, as the most
universal and most simple, the first
in the order of time and in the
logical order. "That which the
mind conceives as the most known,
and into which it resolves all its
concepts, is being."* The notions
of something or essence, of the one,
the true, the good, are aspects of
! " Illud, quod mens concipit, quasi notissimum
et in quod omnes conceptiones resolvit, est ens." St.
Thomas, Qq. Disp., q. \.De Veritate, a. i.
VOL. XXIX. 2
the same universal notion of being,
which transcend all generic classi-
fication of things, i.e., thirtkables,
and are necessarily attached to all
supreme genera or categories of
being, and all their subordinate
species and individuals. The ab-
straction of the universal concepts
proceeding from the most universal
and simple to those which have a*
less extensive but more intensive'
nature, distinguishes determinate
kinds and sorts of being with their
intrinsic, distinctive characters,
notes, or marks. Each one of these 1 '
is called an essence or nature, and
is 'that which determines the com-
mon alikeness of things to their
diverse and distinct unlikenesses.'
The essence thus apprehended by
the intellectual faculty is appre-
hended as an abstract ratio or uni-
versal, by which you answer the
inquiry about anything: What i3
it? Wherefore it is called in scho-
lastic Latin the quidditas, or w hat-
ness of any specific object. As',
for instance, you ask the question,
What is that figure ? It is a circle.
Circularity is the abstract ratio,
the essence, prescinding from any
one circle or number of circles, by
which the nature of the giveii
figure is defined. What sort of
being is a man ? He is a rational
animal. The specific essence of
humanity, as an abstract ratio, a
universal concept of the intellect,
is expressed in these words. Now,
when the agreement or disagree-
ment of two ideas is self-evident in
the immediate intuition of some
such essence or nature, we have
immediate, ct, priori, metaphysical
evidence, producing a judgment of
immediate metaphysical certitude 1 ,
which is a first principle, an un-
demonstrable postulate of rational
philosophy, containing virtually in
itself all the truth which can be
13
The Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
deduced from it with the help of
some other certain principle, by
demonstration. This is the way of
procedure in geometry, and in all
purely rational science, and what-
ever is self-evident, or demonstrat-
ed by pure logic from self-evident
principles, is within the scope of
metaphysical certitude. The move-
ment of the reason toward this
kind of certitude starts from the
intuition of ideas, in which first
principles are discovered by analy-
sis and affirmed by analytic judg-
ments. These first principles are
in themselves irreducible into any
concepts more simple, because they
originate immediately from intui-
tion. There is, nevertheless, one
principle latent in all, which serves
as a kind of general equivalent, can
be verified in every one, and is a
sign that the principle is self-evi-
dent. This is the principle of con-
tradiction that the same thing,
namely, cannot be and not be, or
be truly affirmed and denied in the
same sense. This principle is im-
mediately perceived in the idea of
being and is equally universal. It
excludes from the idea of being in
the most absolute manner its abso-
lute negation, which is not-being or
nothing. It is an absolute formula of
the reductio ad absurdum, by which
every negation of a self-evident
truth is shown to be a contradic-
tion to reason itself and the essen-
tial nature of things, and reducible
to a contradiction in terms. What-
ever proposition cannot be denied
without implying that the same
thing is both affirmed and denied in
the same sense, is self-evident. It is
only necessary to make this implicit
contradiction manifest in explicit
terms, if it is not already manifest.
The well-known nonsense verses :
Bear me straight meandering ocean
Where thy stagnant currents roll :
and these :
Some boys a-skating went.
All en a summers day,
The ice broke in,
They ail fell in,
. The rest, they ran away ;
furnish an illustration of the con-
tradiction in ideas made most ob-
viously absurd in terms. It is a
rule of logic that two contradictory
propositions cannot both be true,
or both false. Whoever violates
the principle of contradiction in
affirming or denying something vio-
lates this rule. Whenever, there-
fore, you are obliged either to af-
firm some postulate of reason or to
violate this rule, you have a sure
and infallible character of self-evi-
dent truth which marks the pre-
sence of a first principle of meta-
physical certitude. And in like
manner, the necessary and demon-
strated consequences and conclu-
sions deduced from first principles,
since they are virtually contained
in these, cannot be denied without
violating the same principle of con-
tradiction and implying an absurd
affirmation and denial of the same
thing in the same sense. There-
fore, in analytic mathematics, where
the demonstrations are the most
rigorous possible, the reductio ad
absurdum is continually employed.*
In all judgments of metaphysical
certitude, the agreement or the dis-
agreement of two ideas is either
self-evident or evident by demon-
stration. This may be illustrated by
an example from grammar. There
is a line in Horace which is famous
among school-boys : Triste lupus in
* " Principium contradictions est veluti lydius
lapis ad analytica judicia internoscenda. Ea enim
in hoc numero haberi debent, quae nisi vera essent,
idem simul oporteretaffirmarietnegari " The prin-
ciple of contradiction is a kind of lydian stone by
which analytical judgments can be discerned. All,
namely, are to be considered as having this quality,
which must either be true, or else the same thing
must be at once both affirmed or denied. Lib.,
/>/. Phil., vol. i. p. 224.
The Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
stabulo A sad thing is a wolf in the
sheepfold. In the delightful story,
Tom Brown s School- Days at Rugby,
a very amusing incident is told,
which seems likely to have actual-
ly happened to some real boy, it is
so very natural. Dr. Arnold hav-
ing come unexpectedly to hear the
recitation of a class, an unlucky
idler was called up on the passage
in Horace where the triste lupus is
found. He began, in consterna-
tion, " Triste lupus, the sorrowful
wolf " but proceeded no further
on that day, for a sudden box on
the ears laid him level with the
floor, and the doctor, ashamed of
his sudden passion, dismissed the
class to the playground, where the
hero of the morning was ever after
known as ** the sorrowful wolf." It
is a rule of Latin grammar that an
adjective must agree with its sub-
stantive in gender. Therefore triste^
a neuter adjective, cannot agree
with lupus, a masculine noun. Any
boy who knew the meaning of the
separate words in the sentence and
their declinations, and the rules of
grammar, would perceive imme-
diately the incongruity of triste to
lupus as the predicate of a subject,
and the necessity of supplying a
neuter noun understood, to agree
with the neuter adjective. All ana-
lytic judgments have an analogical
resemblance to this one, and surely
it must be plain to every one who
can . reason at all, that whoever
questions the principle of contradic-
tion and the metaphysical certainty
of which it is a touchstone, de-
serves to be laid on a level with
" the sorrowful wolf " of Rugby.
In respect to those general laws
which are matters of physical cer-
titude, the principle of the suffi-
cient reason is in the same attitude
as the principle of contradiction is
towards the truths of purely ra-
tional science. This is the realm
of natural and experimental philo-
sophy. This kind of science be-
gins from the intuition of sensible
facts, which must be investigated
by the aid of experience and a suf-
ficient enumeration to justify an
induction, in order that reason may
be enabled to determine their suf-
ficient reason by a general, synthe-
tic judgment. The principle of the
sufficient reason follows immediate-
ly from the principle of contradic-
tion. It means simply that what-
ever has being is what it is, either
by virtue of its own essence or na-
ture, or by some determination pro-
ceeding from another being distinct
from itself. Ex nihilo nihil fit. You
cannot get something out of noth-
ing. Deny the principle of the suf-
ficient reason, and you make no-
being equal to being, contrary to
the very intrinsic character of be-
ing which absolutely excludes all
that is negative of itself, and is
manifested in the statement of the
principle of contradiction that you
cannot deny what you affirm, or af-
firm what you deny.
In the early age of Italian art
Giotto's O was famous, and it be-
came a proverbial saying, " As
round as Giotto's O." Suppose,,
now, that Giotto undertook the il-
lumination of a Missal. Any one
initial O would be perfectly round,
and have its diameters equal. The
sufficient reason is, that this equa-
lity belongs to the essence of a
circle. One who would deny this
must assert that a perfectly round
O is both a circle and not a circle-
But this O has other determinations
which do not come from the nature
of rotundity as such, and are not
essential to a circle. It is on a
particular page, it has definite di-
mensions, color, and ornamenta-
tion. The sufficient reason for the
20
The Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
existence of this particular letter
are the parchment, the coloring
matter, the form of decoration in-
vented by the artist, the purpose
for which he exercised his art^; and
the efficient cause, the artist's ac-
curate and masterly hand, the in-
strument of his mind and will. If
any one denies that these are the
sufficient reason of the particular
determinations added to the es-
sence of the circle, the cause why
the letter appears as it does to the
eye, he affirms that nothing has
been done or exists,- which is a
contradiction in terms. The prin-
ciple of causality is nothing more
than the principle of the sufficient
reason, with a restriction to those
cases where something is actually
effected by the operation of an ac-
tive agent, producing a term dis-
tinct from itself. The idea of cause
is contained in the idea of effect.
Volition implies a wilier, thought a
thinker, attraction or repulsion an
active force in matter, movement a
mover. A song sung requires a
singer of the song. No singer, no
song ; no speaker, no speech ; no
painter, no picture. In respect to
nature in general, it is an axiom
that all observed facts have a suffi-
cient reason, that the sufficient rea-
son is to be sought for by investi-
gating the laws of nature, and that
these laws are constant. The exis-
tence of a particular law is ascer-
tained by a sufficient induction.
As an illustration, we may take
Kepler's laws, quoting for the
purpose from the excellent little
manual entitled Fourteen Weeks in
Descriptive Astronomy :
" Tycho Brahe erected a magni-
ficent observatory, and made many
rare and beautiful instruments.
Clad in his robes of state, he
watched the heavens with the in-
telligence of a philosopher and the
splendor of a king. His indefati-
gable industry and zeal resulted in
the accumulation of a vast fund
of astronomical knowledge, which,
however, he lacked the wit to ap-
ply to any further advance in
science. His pupil, Kepler, saw
these facts, and in his fruitful
mind they germinated into three
great truths, called Kepler's laws.
These constitute almost the sum of
astronomical knowledge, and form
one of the most precious conquests
of the human mind. They are the
three arches of the bridge over
which astronomy crossed the gulf
between the Ptolemaic arid Coper-
nican systems."
These laws are: i. Planets re-
volve in elliptical orbits around the
sun, which is placed at one of the
foci. 2. A line connecting the
centre of the earth with the centre
of the sun, passes over equal spaces
in equal times. 3. The squares of
the times of revolution of the
planets about the sun are propor-
tional to the cubes of their mean
distances from the sun. When his
work, which had consumed the
labor of seventeen years, was ac-
complished, Kepler exclaimed :
" Nothing holds me ! The die is
cast. The book is written, to be
read now or by posterity, I care
not which. It may well wait a
century for a reader, since God has
waited six thousand years for an
observer."
The nature of moral evidence
and moral certitude is sufficiently
illustrated in this very same in-
stance of Kepler's laws. Their
truth is assented to with a firm
and certain adhesion of the mind,
by all those who have not actually
mastered their physical and mathe-
matical demonstration, on account
of the testimony of astronomers.
We receive readily and habitually,
The Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
21
on a similar authority, a great num-
ber of facts and truths which are
really astounding to our reason and
imagination. The greatest part of
our knowledge of our own world,
and of the universe, all our know-
ledge of history, and, in general,
our knowledge of everything which
we do not know by the direct con-
tact of our own faculties with the
objects known, comes to us in the
same way, by testimony and human
authority, manifested to our minds
by moral evidence, and capable of
measurement in respect to its cer-
titude, only by the external crite-
rion.
Everything, therefore, which we
have been endeavoring to explain
concerning the reality and certi-
tude of our human and rational
cognition, is completely exemplified
in this one instance of Kepler's
astronomical discoveries and their
incorporation into common and
popular science. The single and
particular facts were observed by
him as objects of sensible and in-
tellectual intuition. His own iden-
tity as the basis of the continuity of
his thoughts, the operations of his
own rnind in observing, reasoning,
remembering, and reflecting during
the long period of seventeen years,
were known to him by conscious-
ness, and his philosophical certi-
tude was ascertained and verified
to himself by the application of the
internal criterion. The purely ra-
tional truths which were the ra-
tional basis of his geometrical
and arithmetical calculations were
known to him by ideal intuition
and demonstration. The analyti-
cal process of induction disclosed
to him the three general laws
mentioned above, in which is de-
clared, by a synthetical judgment
applied to all the planets, the suffi-
cient reason of all the observed
facts concerning their orbital revo-
lution around the sun. Finally,
his authority, corroborated by that
of other astronomers, and accepted
by the common sense of men as
sufficient, furnishes an external
criterion of certitude to those who
are unable or unwilling to make a
personal investigation of the physi-
cal evidence, justifying their belief
in these laws without danger or
fear of error, and reasonably ex-
cluding doubt.
We may also conveniently in
this place explain what is meant
by the terms analysis and synthe-
sis, which are so frequently used,
and often, we fear, without any dis-
tinct notion of their true significa-
tion. Analysis is a Greek term, of
which the English word unloosing
is an almost literal counterpart, as
it is an exact translation. It de-
notes a disentangling, distinguish-
ing process, by which a universal
and elementary principle is liberat-
ed from its surroundings and ad-
juncts, in a manner analogical to
the liberation, for instance, of oxy-
gen from its combination with hy-
drogen in water. In analyzing, we
prescind from particulars, and are
intent upon a geperal idea. Kep-
ler was following the analytical
method, while he was disengaging
the thread of his theory from the
complex multitude of observed
facts and computations, and pur-
suing his induction up to a simple
and general law, the ellipticity of
planetary orbits.
Synthesis is a binding together.
A general principle is taken at the
outset of the process of investiga-
tion or exposition as the rule of the
co-ordination of particulars, and ap-
plied to one thing after another; as
when you select and bind together
out of a heap of bank-notes all
those of a particular denomination.
22
Ike Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
Thus, the laws of Kepler which
were obtained by analysis were
converted into synthetical judg-
ments. The orbits of planets are
elliptical, is a general law. It is
applied to all the planets, defining
that the orbit of Mercury, the orbit
of Venus, the orbits of all the other
planets are elliptical, and that they
are thus bound together in unity
and order to their common centre,
the sun. The analytical and syn-
thetical methods are both vaiid and
both necessary. So also are the
deductive and inductive methods
of reasoning, rational philosophy,
and that which is based on ex-
perimental knowledge. It is a
futile and narrow assertion that
there is any opposition between
these different parts and various
methods of science, and the notion
that one should be esteemed and
cultivated to the disparagement and
neglect of the other is on a par
with local and partisan prejudices
and the whims of children. Macau-
lay, in that part of his history of
the reign of Charles II. in which
he describes the state of science in
England and enumerates the dis-
tinguished scientists who flourished
therein, during the latter part of
the seventeenth century, makes the'
following just remarks, in his own
felicitous style, about Sir Isaac
Newton : " The glory of these men,
eminent as they were, is cast into
the shade by the transcendent
lustre of one immortal name. In
Isaac Newton two kinds of intel-
lectual power, which have little in
common, and which are not often
found together in a very high de-
gree of vigor, but which neverthe-
less are equally necessary in the
mo>t sublime departments of phy-
sics, were united as they have
never been united before OF since.
Thjre may have been minds as
happily constituted as his for the
cultivation of pure mathematical
science ; there may have been
minds as happily constituted for
the cultivation of science purely
experimental; but in no other mind
have the demonstrative faculty and
the inductive faculty co-existed in
such supreme excellence and per-
fect harmony."
There is some exaggeration in
this language, and there are other
statements in connection with it
in which we cannot concur. The
eminent literary man who employ-
ed it was a man of modern opinions,
and shared with his contemporaries
in the superficial estimate of pure-
ly rational philosophy which is
common. It is precisely for this
reason that this quotation from him
is especially apposite to our pur-
pose. It is a glowing eulogium on
man's rational nature, a tribute to
the supereminent glory in which
great thinkers who have been
genuine lovers and seekers after
truth, who have enlarged the
bounds of real knowledge and real
science, are invested by the verdict
of mankind. Its philosophical just-
ness is equal to its rhetorical ele-
gance, and the leading idea con-
tained in it is capable of a wide
extension, and an application to
philosophy in general as well as to
the department of physics.
The human faculties are all con-
nected together in harmony, and
so are their specific objects, and
all the five primary sciences into
which universal natural science is
divided. They are provinces of
one realm, distinct but co-ordinate
parts of one great structure, and all
stand upon the same basis. You
cannot establish or undermine the
foundation of one of them, without
strengthening or weakening that of
all the others. The universe is
The Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
real, knowledge is real, and ex-
tends potentially to all being.
Science is universal, for the imme-
diate object of the intellect is the
universal, and it naturally seeks to
know all tilings in their deepest
causes. It is universal ratios and
essences which are individuated
in material and immaterial things,
in bodies and spirits, in the ob-
jects of sense, and in each in-
divisible I of separate persons.
Thus, sense, consciousness, intel-
ligence, reflection, rational dis-
cursion, immediate intuition and
mediate demonstration, induction,
and belief on credible testimony,
all concur in laying the founda-
tions, building the walls, and erect-
ing the towers of the grand edifice
of universal science. The grand
idea which pervades this solid, vast,
and lofty structure is one, and it is
the great glory of the human race,
a monument of man's rational na-
ture, of that intelligence which is
the distinguishing, characteristic
mark of his species among all the
living beings of the earth, which
makes him its lord and sovereign,
and worthy of alliance with angels.
The honor cheerfully paid to men
of high intelligence is honor to
man's rational nature as exhibited
in these perfect specimens. Let
us be permitted to quote again
from Macaulay, who in another
portion of his history has added
one more rich gem to the coronal
of praise with which he has crown-
ed the brow of Newton. He is
describing the convention which
transferred the crown of England
to William and Mary, and enume-
rating the leading members of the
House of Commons. After com-
pleting the list of names now al-
most forgotten among men, he goes
on to another which will not be
forgotten, even when the famous
traveller from New Zealand shall
have published his sketches of the
ruins of London :
" One other name must be men-
tioned ; a name then known only
to a small circle of philosophers,
but now pronounced beyond the
Ganges and the Mississippi with
reverence exceeding that which is
paid to the memory of the greatest
warriors and rulers. Among the
crowd of silent members appeared
the majestic forehead and pensive
face of Isaac Newton. The renown-
ed university on which his genius
had already begun to impress a pe-
culiar character, still plainly dis-
cernible after a lapse of a hundred
and sixty years, had sent him to
the convention ; and he sat there ;
in his modest greatness, the unob-
trusive but unflinching friend of
civil and religious freedom."
How shall we explain this ex-
ceeding reverence won simply by
thinking and writing? And, we
may also ask, how shall we explain
the exceeding reverence with which
the man who wrote these words
was laid in Westminster Abbey by
the most illustrious of his com-
'peers, and mourned by multitudes
in both hemispheres ? Why do we
trace his history from infancy, and
read the story of his mental develop-
ment from its earliest stages to its
final result with so deep an interest ?
It is the spontaneous homage of
our rational nature to itself. The
very name of man, in its Sanscrit
original, means " the thinker." Our
highest natural glory and our chief
natural delight is in intelligence,
and that in proportion to the pure
intellectuality of its operations.
The man who helps us to think
and to know, is the one for whom
we have the most gratitude, be-
cause he has given us pleasure of
the most elevated kind, and whom
The Reality and the Criterion of Certitude.
we most delight to honor, because
lie exalts our own rational nature
in our own estimation. It is a
well-known truism that the curious
mind of man seeks to penetrate the
deepest causes of things. The
more deeply our intellect can read
within the numerous, complex, and
brilliant phenomena of the universe
and the dark shadows which ac-
company them, the greater is our
pleasure. The more deeply a
great thinker penetrates into the
sufficient reasons, the causes, the
hidden essence of things, the fur-
ther lie can extend the adequation
between mind and reality, the
more extensive and perfect the
similitude of real being which he
can reflect from the mirror of ideal-
ity, or project upon the canvas of
imagination, the more does he ap-
proach to our type of the perfec-
tion of humanity, and command
our willing homage as a great po-
tentate and ruler in the intellec-
tual realm. That which man de-
sires most of all, when he is not
stupefied in the slumber of his
senses, is to know. He has questions
to ask which leave him restless
while they are unanswered. He
desires to know what is in this
wonderful and illimitable sensible
world which surrounds him, the
inorganic, organized, and animated
entities of creation ; what has been
done by his fellow-men since the
human race began on the earth;
what may be anticipated to take
place in future times, and what is
the origin and consummation of all.
Unsatisfied with all he can dis-
cover in this real world, he desires
another imaginary world to be
created for him, filled with simili-
tudes of real beings. More than
all, he desires to penetrate the
depths of his own nature, to inves-
tigate the world of mind, deeper
and vaster than all the spaces of
the stellar universe. Even in in-
fancy, man, as says that chief of
American humorists and true poet,
Mr. Holmes,
" Fucks his little thumb,
With ' Whence am I here ?' and ' Wherefore did I
come ?' "
More than, all, the human mind
seeks to know its primal light, the
source of eternal truth, the cause
of the universe, the future which is
to follaw the short present life. It
is not 'possible that it should be
satisfied with the answer of those
who, like an owl blinking with a
ridiculous look of wisdom, gaze in-
to the face of the questioner with
portentous solemnity and mutter
"unknowable." Much less can it
degrade itself so far as to bury all
its high thoughts and aspirations in
the mud of materialism. Surely,
the pride of reason, glorying in the
rights and liberties of human intel-
ligence, in the conquests of science,
claiming equality with the gods,
and all the prerogatives of self-sov-
ereignty, cannot stoop so low as
this, and sell out all its dignity for
the mean privilege of existing as the
brutes, after the manner of the
vanquished Romans, bartering with
Brennusand his barbarians. The in-
fallible criterion of truth in the au-
thority of the church, and the certi-
tude of Catholic faith, were rejected
as injurious to the internal crite-
rion and the certitude of private judg-
ment. The criterion of divine re-
velation and the certitude of divine
faith have been rejected for the
same reason. Rational philosophy
was proposed as a substitute for
religion. The surrender of this
last citadel of truth and human
dignity is a total abnegation of the
rational nature of man and of all
his rights and prerogatives which
are founded upon it. V<z victis !
The Jews of Rome in Christian Times.
Woe to the vanquished defenders
of the capitol of man's intellectual
kingdom ! may be said with more
disgraceful and mournful meaning
than was resonant in the scornful
words of Brennus to the subdued
remnant of the Roman senate and
army. Those who thus abjure their
intelligent nature by the philosophy
of nescience and the " gospel of
dirt," are only fit to be slaves.
They avow that they belong to that
class of human beings whom Aris-
totle regarded, as intended by na-
ture for slavery, because they did
not possess enough of reason and
knowledge to make them fit for any
higher destination.
Those nobler and still undaunt-
ed spirits who scorn such a base
surrender, who retain their recti-
tude of mind and will, especially
such as still possess that precious
privilege of youth, to be unharden-
ed by prejudice and untainted with
selfish interests, may perhaps find
that there is succor for the men-
aced citadel of rational philosophy
from an unexpected quarter. That
genuine Catholic philosophy which
contains all the best wisdom of the
ancients, purified and completed,
together with that of the great
sages of Christendom, and which
formerly conquered all sophistry
and error ; cast out, exiled, and vi-
tuperated in modern times; may
be the Camillas who will rescue
and restore the citadel and city of
truth.
We have endeavored to defend
and vindicate the rational nature
of man, and the fundamental prin-
ciples of rational philosophy which
are the foundations of all science
in general, and of philosophical cer-
titude. This is to prepare the way
for the vindication of natural theo-
logy ; and of the basis of the reveal-
ed theology, which rests its claim
in the evidences furnished by ra-
tional philosophy and rational re-
ligion, in connection with testimony
and historical facts.
THE JEWS OF ROME IN CHRISTIAN TIMES.
11 According to the Gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake : but according to election, they are
most dear for the sake of the fathers." Romans xi. 28.
A REMARKABLE work recently
published in England by the Rev.
H e n r y F o r rn b y , o n The Primitive Re-
ligion of the City of Rome, attempts
to prove that the early monotheism,
of which there are indications in
many ancient writers, was origi-
nally derived from the Hebrews
through the connection of Numa
Pompilius with the school of the
witnesses of the Lord God of hea-
ven in Jerusalem. It is not impro-
bable that at some earlier age than
that of the Machabees Rome and
Jerusalem were brought into a phi-
losophical and religious intercourse,
which was to end in the transfer of
the seat of divine authority on
earth from one city to the other,
where it shall remain until the end
of the world. The Jews, who were
scattered throughout every nation
and inhabited every large city in
such numbers as to excite the as-
tonishment of Strabo, had a supe-
rior mission to perform in impart-
ing the knowledge they possessed
to all mankind (Isa. xliii. 10), " for
26
The Jews of Rome in Christian Times.
salvation is of the Jews." They
were particularly numerous in
Rome, where, as we have said in a
former article, they were favored
by Augustus, who settled a large
colony of them in the Transtiber-
ine quarter of the city about the
Vatican and Janiculum hills, and
allowed them the free exercise of
their religion, distinct cemeteries
for their dead, and the practice of
the Mosaic law. This emperor
used even to send considerable
sums through them to Jerusalem
to have sacrifices offered in his be-
half; and the number of these Jews
must have been large when Jose-
phus tells us that as many as eight
thousand attached themselves to
an embassy which appealed to the
emperor against the administration
of King Herod (Ant., xvii. n).
They had established the Syna-
gogue of the Libertines at Jerusa-
lem ; and since there was not at
this period a single religion, except
the Jewish, which was felt by the
more enlightened part of its pro-
fessors to be real, we can under-
stand the measure of success which
attended the efforts of the better
class of Hebrews to spread the
knowledge of the true God among
the Gentiles and inspire respect for
their own belief. In this way many
pagans professed the monotheism
of the Jews, adopted their moral
code, abstained from flesh-meat of-
fered to idols, and abandoned other
heathen practices. These were
styled Proselytes of the Gate, and
were quite numerous at Rome; but
those who submitted to circumci-
sion, fully observed the law of Mo-
ses, and were known as Proselytes
of Justice were comparatively rare
(Alzog, vol. i. p. 120). The num-
ber of Jews residing in Rome about
the thirteenth year of the reign of
Augustus, which corresponds with
the beginning of the Christian era,
has been estimated by statistical an-
tiquarians at considerably upwards
of twelve thousand. They bore,
however, but a small proportion to
the entire population of the city,
which was probably about two mil-
lions, nearly a half of whom were
slaves. Between this time and the
arrival of St. Paul the calamities
and dissensions of Judea caused
the emigration of large bodies of
its inhabitants, many of whom took
up their abode in the capital of the
empire, so that in the reign of Cali-
gula, A.D. 37-41, the greater por-
tion of the city beyond the Tiber
a healthy and delightful locality
was occupied by Jews. A close
and constant communication was
kept up between these Jewish resi-
dents and their fellow-countrymen
in Palestine by the exigencies of
commerce, in which the sons of Ja-
cob became more and more engross-
ed as their national hopes declined,
and by the custom of repairing regu-
larly to the sacred festivals at Jerusa-
lem. It may be that some of those
"strangers of Rome, Jews, and pro-
selytes" who are mentioned in the
Acts (ii. 10, n) as present at Je-
rusalem on the day of Pentecost
carried back the earliest tidings of
the new doctrine, or the Gospel
may have first reached the impe-
rial city through those who were
scattered abroad to escape the per-
secution that followed on the
death of Stephen (Acts viii. 4; xi.
19). As time advanced better-in-
structed teachers arrived, the chief
of whom was St. Peter, who reach-
ed Rome in the spring of the year
42, in the reign of Claudius. Faith-
ful to the understanding with the
other apostles that the principal
charge of laboring (but not exclu-
sively) among the Jews was assum-
ed by him, he went immediately to
The Jews of Rome in Christian Times.
27
reside where a large body of his
countrymen was collected, and
dwelt in the house of the two Jew-
ish converts, Aquila and Priscilla,
on the Janiculum, near the present
church of San Pietro in Montorio
(Gueranger, Ste. Ce'cile). The in-
structions of this apostle must have
created considerable excitement in
the Jewish colony, as we may
judge by analogy from the relations
given in the Acts. In A.D. 49
Claudius " commanded all Jews to
depart from Rome " on account of
tumults connected with the preach-
ing of Christianity, because, in the
words of the Roman historian,
" they excited an incessant dis-
turbance, instigated by one Chres-
tus." That quarrels about the
Messiaship of Christ and the com-
motion caused by the rising Chris-
tian community are meant by Sue-
tonius is so obvious an explana-
tion that no one disputes it. In
this famous passage, JudaoS) im-
pulsore Chresto, assidue tumultuantes,
Roma expulit (In Claud, xxv.), the
historian ascribes the dissensions
between Jews and Christians (who
were all considered Jews, the most
part being originally such) to Christ,
whose doctrines and character
they regarded. We here see the
carelessness and contempt with
which a Gentile writer usually treat-
ed what was called the superstition
of the Jews. It was on this occa-
sion that, as St. Peter was leaving
Rome, he was detained by a re-
proachful vision of our Lord on the
spot where afterwards arose the
oratory of D online Quo Vadis.
Returning into the city, he betook
himself to the house of the senator
Pudens, of the gens Cornelia, to
whom he was attached by the sa-
cred ties of hospitality through
his kinsman Cornelius, the Gentile
convert and centurion in the Italic
band at Csesarea. His former hosts,
Aquila and Priscilla, went to Corinth,
where they became acquainted with
St. Paul and abode together; but
their banishment cannot have been
of long duration, for many Jews re-
turned to Rome in the early part of
the reign of Nero, which was mark-
ed by clemency and peace. Among
them were these two celebrated
converts, and in the year 58, when
St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the
Romans, their house was a place of
assembly for the Christians (Rom.
xvi. 3). Aquila was a native of
Pontus and a tent-maker by trade,
a man of wealth and consideration.
Priscilla, his wife, was probably
the freed- woman of some great
Roman lady, who, it is almost cer-
tain, was no other than the wife of
the senator Pudens, for that lady
bore this name, as we learn from the
acts of St. Praxedes. In the Acts of
the Apostles and the Epistles hus-
band and wife are always mentioned
together, but the latter generally
first, whence we might conclude that
she was the more energetic, and
perhaps, from her connection with
a patrician family, the more influ-
ential, of the two. The form Prisca
is sometimes used, but such a vari-
ation in a Roman name is not un-
usual. A very ancient church on
the Aventine, which is now known
as Santa Prisca , and was long a
cardinalitial title called Titulus
Aquila et PriscillcE, marks the habi-
tation of these two Jewish converts
when they returned to Rome from
the Claudian banishment, the Jews,
at least those of the better class,
not yet being constrained to reside
in a particular part of the city.
There are numerous passages in St.
Paul's Epistle to the Romans which
imply the presence at Rome of a
large number of Jewish converts to
Christianity. Of the names of
28
T/ie Jeivs of Rome in Christian Times.
Christians given in the salutations
at the end of tin's Epistle, although
that of Mary is the only one 1 dis-
tinctively Hebrew, Andronicus, Ju-
nias, and Herodion are called St.
Paul's "kinsmen," and must conse-
quently have been of Jewish origin.
Aquila and Priscilla were certainly
Jews. The name Apelles was most
commonly borne by Jews, as ap-
pears from Horace; and if Aristo-
bulus was one of the princes of the
house of Herod, as seems likely,
we have also in his household sev-
eral Jewish converts. Rufus, of
verse 13, if the same as the son of
Simon the Cyrenean mentioned in
Mark xv. 21, was also a Jew. But
if some, and even a considerable
number of Jews received the Gos-
pel, the greater part obstinately re-
mained outside of the church. When
St. Paul reached Rome, about the
year 62, the Christians were mainly
converts from Gentilism, though
many of them may previously have
been Jewish proselytes. He invited
the chief men among the Jews to
come to him, and explained to them
that though he was brought to
Rome to answer charges made
against him by the Jews in Pa-
lestine, he had really done noth-
ing disloyal to his ftrllow-country-
men. The Roman Jews expressed
themselves with evident reserve
about the Christian community :
" For as concerning this sect, we
know that it is everywhere oppos-
ed " (Acts xxviii. 22). The clos-
ing chapter of the Acts vividly
brings before us the final reproba-
tion of the Jews in the person of
their representatives at the seat of
empire,* now become the seat of re-
ligion also and the heiress of Jeru-
salem. A day being appointed, a
large number came expressly to
hear St. Paul expound his belief;
and from morning till evening he
bore witness to the kingdom of
God, persuading them concerning
Jesus; "and some believed the
things that were said, and some
did not believe," and these were
the more numerous. Then said
the apostle : " This salvation of God
is sent to the Gentiles, and they
will hear it. And when he had
said these things, the Jews went
out from him, and had much dis-
cussion among themselves." When
St. Paul was brought to Rome he
was allowed to dwell by himself in
private lodgings with a soldier who
kept him, and the house in which
the impressive scene took place be-
tween the prisoner in chains for
Christ and his obdurate fellow-
countrymen is now the subterra-
nean church of Santa Maria in Via
Lata, in the modern Corso, which
derives its name from having been
erected on the broad highway
that in the apostle's time ran
through the southern extremity of
the Campus Martius and beside
the magnificent new Septa of Julius
Caesar.
The Christians passed at first in
the eyes of heathens, and especially
of the Roman authorities, for a
Jewish sect formed through some
internal schism in the bosom of
Judaism. As such they would
only appear insignificant to the
Romans, and in Rome, as elsewhere,
the Jews were the first and bitter-
est accusers of the Christians.
"Since the days of the apostles,"
said Tertullian, "the synagogue
has always been a torrent of perse-
cution." When Nero, terrified at
the popular hatred excited by his
conflagration of the city, cast about
him for victims to bear the odium,
it was probably Jewish influence
which suggested the Christians,
for Nero's wife, Poppaea Sabina,
who then ruled him, was a proselyte,
The Jeivs of Rome in Christian Times.
and he was himself surrounded by
Jewish soothsayers and magicians.
Thus began the first general per-
secution, and on June 29, A.D.
67, SS. Peter and Paul were put to
death.
We do not hear much of the
Jews in Christian writers, except in
a controversial way, during the era
of persecutions, although Judaiz-
ing Christians, and heretics infect-
ed with Jewish errors, sometimes
troubled the church in Rome; such
were the Ccelicolse, the Cerinthiani,
Ebionaei, Nazaraei, Elcesaei, and
Samssei. By the 63d of the Ca-
nons of the Apostles clerks who
went into the synagogues to pray
were deposed and laymen were
excommunicated. By other canons
in the same collection ecclesiastical
censures were imposed on those
who fasted on the Lord's day, ob-
served Jewish feasts, or gave oil
for consumption in synagogues;
and since "evil communications
corrupt good morals," the clergy
and laity were forbidden to eat un-
leavened bread with Jews, or to
have any very intimate relations with
them, or to consult with them in
sickness; and the danger which
lurked in association with the Jews
is exemplified at great length by
St. John Ciirysostom in his six
homilies In Judceos. But while
warning the faithful against the
danger of too close an intimacy
with this misguided people, the
Roman pontiffs were always ready
to enlighten them and to amelior-
ate their temporal condition, which
became more and more distressing
as time wore on and the successive
invasions of cruel and rapacious
barbarians broke down the fabric
of Roman civilization. We find
a few scattered notices of Jews in
Rome under Theodoric, King of
Italy, in the beginning of the sixth
century, when two disputes at
Rome between Jews and Christians
were settled by this Arian prince
(Cassiodorus, Var.^ iii. cap. xlv.and
iv. cap. xliii.) One of the matters re-
garded with peculiar jealousy by
the popes was the right of Jews to
hold Christians in slavery, and at
their instigation the earlier Chris-
tian emperors made various enact-
ments restraining or entirely abol-
ishing this shameful servitude, lest,
as says St. Gregory the First (540-
590), the true religion should be
degraded by the subjection of its
followers to the reprobate Jews.
But if this great pope showed him-
self a strenuous advocate of the
legal right of a Christian to his
freedom against the Jew who would
irregularly hold him in bondage,
he was also a powerful patron of
the Jews against every species of
injustice and oppression, as we see
by his letters, and particularly by
one to Fantinus, the proctor at
Palermo, and to Victor, bishop of
the same city, concerning the Jew-
ish synagogues and dwellings at-
tached which had all been wrong-
fully seized, since by a law- of the
Theodosian Code (De Jiidceis, 1. xxv.
and xxvii.) the Jews were allowed
to retain their synagogues, >ut only
forbidden to erect new ones.*
Another letter to the same proctor
shows us that the pope's tribunal
was open equally to Jew and
Christian, for one Jamniis, having
personally appealed to it at Rome
to obtain the return of his written
bond, fraudulently detained by his
creditors after his debt had been
satisfied by the sale of his ship and
chattels, had justice promptly done
him. St. Gregory decided that the
* St. Gregory's authority over Sicily was not
merely spiritual, but the Roman Church having
immense possessions there, the popes exercised a
temporal supervision, if not full sovereignty, over
a greater part of the island.
The Jeivs of Rome in Christian Times.
slaves of Jews, on becoming Chris-
tians, should be entitled to their
liberty. He commended the bishop
of Cagliari, in Sardinia, for protect-
ing the Jews .against the machi-
nations of a certain fanatic, and
blamed the bishop of Terracina for
oppressing them. The influence
of this celebrated pope was very
far-reaching in the whole of the
middle ages in regard to the treat-
ment of the Jews who lived in the
States of the Church, and the almost
exceptional condition of the Jews
in Rome,' and the amount of liberty
they enjoyed there during so many
centuries, were due in a great mea-
sure to his mild and liberal disposi-
tion, perfected by a legal training
and the piety of a saint. He would
not, however, relax the rigid rule,
made by one of his predecessors, not
to hold any personal communica-
tion with Jews, because they often
sought to corrupt by costly presents
the members of the papal house-
hold, that the laws against them
might not be executed. Hinc est,
says John the Deacon, and this
pope's biographer, quod sicut a
majoribus traditur, et usque ad tem-
pora nostra, dum adhuc pubescere-
mus oculis nostris conspeximus. con-
snetudo vctus obtinuit ut omncs HHus
super stitionis homines quantum cun-
que pulcherrima merdmonia deiulis-
sentj nunquam pontificalibus alloquiis
fruercntur, nunquam obiiitibus aposto-
lic is potirentur, sed extra velum Ion-
gissimccporticus, non quidem in scam-
nis, sed in mannoreo pammento se-
dentcs, susccpta pretia numerabant,
ne videlicet viderentur aliqtdd de
manu pontijicis accepisse (Vit. S.
Greg,, Jib. iv, cap. 1.)
Soon after the pontificate of St.
Gregory the Great the Jews disap-
pear almost from the annals of
Rome, and their number was re-
duced in a few centuries to that
mere handful found there by
Benjamin of Tudela. Once only
during this long period do we hear
of an uprising of the Roman popu-
lace against them, which was in the
year 1020 on the occasion of a
frightful earthquake. On the ac-
cession of every new pope the
Jews did homage and sang hymns
in their own language, and as a re-
turn their Schola was one of the
seventeen guilds or companies
which received a gratuity of bread
and wine and other delicacies from
the palace on certain festivals.
Judceis viginti solidos provesinorum,
says Cenci in the Or do Romanus.
The earliest account that we have
of the ceremony performed by the
Jews when the new pope went in
solemn cavalcade to take possession
of the Lateran dates from the
pontificate of Calixtus II., in 1119.
In 1165 the Jews are described as
going out to meet Alexander III.
on his return to Rome cum signi-
.feris, stratoribus, scrinariis, jiidicibus,
clero, etc., de more legem suam de-
ferentes in brachiis (Muratori, Ant.
Ital., torn. i. p. 896). This pre-
sentation of a copy of the law,
which was elegantly written and
richly bound, is a happy thought,
suggested, perhaps, by the expres-
sion of St. Augustine that the Jews
are Christianorum bibliopolce et
librarii. Besides a copy of the
law, which was a tribute to the
spiritual character of the pope, the
Jews, to acknowledge his temporal
dominion, presented annually in
feudal style to the Camera Apostolica
one pound of pepper and t\vo pounds
of cannel wood rare articles in the
middle ages, and which indicate
the traffic of the Roman Jews with
the East. For some centuries the
Jews stood bareheaded on Monte
Giordano, near where the modern
Gabrielli palace is built, to offer
The Jcivs of Rome in Cliristian Times.
their congratulations to the new
pope going to take possession of
his SCL -juxta palatium chromacii
Judtzi faciunt laudem ; but in the
year 1484 a less exposed and more
convenient site was assigned to
them by Pope Innocent VIII.
within the enclosure of Castel San
Angelo. Cumpapa^ says Burkhard,
the pontifical master of ceremonies
to this pope, pervenisset prope cas-
trum St. Angeli se firmavit, et
Judcei, qui ad inferior es merulas in
angulo dicti castri versus plateam se
cum ornatu, et lege sud receperant,
ebtulerunt P.P. legem adorandam,
ct honorandam verbis hebraicis in
hanc ferine sententiam. Papam accla-
mantes : Beatissime Pater : Nos
viri hebraici nomine synagogue, nos-
trcz supplicamus S. V. ut legem Mo-
saicam, ab omnipotent Deo Moy-
si pastor i nostro in mo tit e Sinai
traditam, nobis confirmarc, et ap-
probare dignemini, quemadmodiim
alii Summi Pontifices S. V. prade-
cessores illam confirmarunt, et appro-
bar tint. Quibus respondit pontifex :
Commendanius legem ; vestram autem
observationem, et intellectum condem-
namus, quia, quern venturum dicitis,
ecclesia docet, et prcedicat venisse,
Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum.
A remarkable occurrence connect-
ed with the Jews of Rome is the
rise of a Jewish family to enor-
mous wealth and power, its con-
version to Christianity and bold
attempt to seat one of its* mem-
bers on the chair of St. Peter, which
led to a lamentable schism. The
name of the family that suddenly
emerged from the synagogue in
Trastevere to make a figure in the
Church was Pierleoni. The great-
grandfather (or, as some maintain,
the grandfather) of the anti-Pope
Anaclet II. was by birth a Jew
the Rothschild of the middle ages
whose financial ability made him
useful to the Holy See, but whose
great riches were accumulated, ac-
cording to popular belief, by long-
continued and oppressive usury.*
In course of time he was baptiz-
ed as Benedictus Christian its i.e.,
Benedict the convert and after his
conversion married a lady of noble
blood. Their descendants were
admitted into the Roman patri-
ciate and allied themselves by mar-
riage to the best families of the
city. His son Leo, who signs him-
self Leo de Benedicto Christiano in a
document of the year 1060, must
have been a man of no ordinary
character, if we judge by a metrical
inscription composed for his tomb
by the Archbishop Alfanus, in
which his prudence, wisdom,
wealth, and devotion to the Holy
See are recorded. He was buried
in San Alessio, on the Aventine.
His son, Petrus Leonis, or Pier di
Leone, gave to the family its dis-
tinctive patronymic Pierleoni. The
possessions of the Pierleoni within
the city covered a great part of the
modern Ghetto, and their fortified
palace (now the dwelling of the
Orsinis) was constructed on the
site and out of the ruins of the
theatre of Marcellus, large portions
of which are still standing. By
means of walls and towers along the
river they commanded an extend-
ed water-front, and controlled the
bridge, even then called Pons Ju-
dceorum, between the city and the
island of the Tiber. Their special
rivals were the Frangipanis, who
held the Arch of Titus, the Coli-
seum, and parts of the Palatine and
Coelian hills. Petrus Leo died on
* Cum inastiinabilem pecuniam multiplici
corrogasset usitra C'-rcuincisiont'in baptismatis
undo, dampnavit. Factus dignitate Rmnanus,
dum genus et for mam regina prcunia donnt, al-
ter nio tnatrimoniis omwes sibi nnbiles civitatis
ascivit. says Arnulf in his indignant letter to the
anti-pope's legate in France {Monument. Germ.,
xii. p. 711).
The Jews of Rome in Christian Times.
June 2, 1128, leaving several chil-
dren ; and a marble sarcophagus
with barbarous bas-reliefs and sculp-
tures, which once contained his
corpse, is now preserved, with
other remains of the ancient basili-
ca, in St. Paul's on the Ostian Way.
One of his sons, who bore his own
name, was sent to study at the
University of Paris and after-
wards became a monk of Cluny.
While still young he was creat-
ed a cardinal by Pope Paschal II.
On the death of Honorius II., in
1130, those members of the Sa-
cred College who were solicitous
for the church's good and sensi-
tive to her honor, knowing the
loose morals and ambitious design
of Pier Leone, hastened to elect
Cardinal Gregory Papareschi, who
took the name of Innocent II.;
but his opponent, relying upon the
influence of his family and the
number and daring of his adher-
ents, who had been gained over by
a lavish distribution of money, had
himself elected by the remaining
cardinals and assumed the name of
Anaclet II. As the parly of the
anti-pope was too powerful at the
time for Innocent, he retired into
France, and the schism was closed
only by the death of Anaclet, who
to the last kept possession of St.
Peter's and Castel San Angelo, on
January 25, 1138. St. Bernard
of Clairvaux, who had come to
Rome in the interests of the legi-
timate pontiff, was the principal
agent in persuading the followers
of the late anti-pope to return to
their allegiance, and even brought
in person the chief men of the
Pierleoni family to the feet cf In-
nocent, who received them kindly
and promoted them to high offices
and honors.
Shortly after the healing of this
schism appeared at Rome one of
the most remarkable Jews of the
middle ages, Benjamin of Tudela,
whose curious book of travels, be-
ginning in Spain and continuing
through many different countries,
contains the fullest account extant
of the number and state of the Jews
in the twelfth century. He visited
Rome some time between the years
1159 and 1167, during the pontifi-
cate of that good and wise pope,
Alexander III. "A journey," he
writes, " of six days from Lucca
brings you to the large city of
Rome, the metropolis of all Chris-
tendom. The two hundred Jews
who live there are very much re-
spected and pay tribute to no one.
Some of them are officers in the
service of Pope Alexander, who is
the principal ecclesiastic and head
of the Christian Church. The
principal of the many eminent
Jews residing there are R. Daniel
and R. Jechiel. The latter is one
of the pope's officers, a handsome,
prudent, and wise man, who fre-
quents the pope's palace, being the
steward of his household and min-
ister of his private property. R.
Jechiel is a descendant of R. Na-
than, the author of the book Aruch
and its comments. There are fur-
ther at Rome R. Joab B. Rabbi
R. Sh'lomo; R. Menachem, the
president of the university; R.
Jechiel, who resides in Trastevere ;
and R. Benjamin B. R. Shabtai,
o. b- ///."*
In this short but important pas-
sage, which gives more details
about the Jews in Rome than can
be found anywhere else from the
eighth to the fourteenth century,
the initials o. b. m. at the end
stand for the words " of blessed
memory," and denote that the per-
son after whose name they are put
* Asher, The Itinerary of Rabbi Benjamin of
Tudela, p. 38.
The Jews of Rome in Christian Times.
33
is dead ; B stands for Bar, or Ben,
the rabbinical Hebrew for son ; R.
is for rabbi, an epithet synony-
mous with, and used exactly like,
the English master, whereas the
reduplicate form Rabbi R., Rabbi
Rabbi, distinguishes a person who
is in possession of the clerical
or ministerial dignity in the con-
gregation of the synagogue, or of
such eminent talents as univer-
sally to command the title of
" master and teacher." While
we appreciate the reasons why no
mention is made of the renegade
Pierleoni, whose Jewish origin was
so opprobriously thrown up to
them by some of the most celebrat-
ed writers in Europe during the
recent schismatical pontificate of
Anaclet II.,* we are disappoint-
ed in not finding here the name
of Abraham B. Meir A ben 'Esra,
a genius who commanded all the
knowledge of his age, and had
travelled in Africa and to India,
and had composed works on astro-
nomy and theology. He visited
Rome as early as 1140, and died
there in 1168. Being a native of
Spain and such a distinguished
Jew, he must have been absent
from Rome when Tudela passed
through that city, or he would cer-
tainly have been noticed. R. Na-
than, the author of the celebrat-
ed dictionary Aruch (which Bux-
torf, many centuries later, made
such ungracious use of for his Lexi-
con}, completed this work at Rome
in the year 1101, and died there in
1106. He came of a literary fami-
ly, his father, R. Jechiel B. Abra-
ham, being known for his liturgical
* St. Bernard says, Judaicam sobolem sedem
Petri occupasse (Ep. 139), and Walter, Archbishop
of Ravenna, stigmatizes the attempt of those who,
so soon after embracing the faith, presumed to as-
pire to the highest dignity in the church, as Judai-
CCK perfidies hceresis (apud Mansi, xxi. p. 434).
Ordericus Vitalis, Arnulfus, and others deride the
Hebrew cast of countenance of the Pierleoni.
VOL. XXIX. 3
poems and other compositions, to
be found in the Roman Machasor,
where he is styled R. Jechiel B.
Abraham B.Joab. Aben 'Esra wrote
a commentary on Job for R. Benja-
min B. Joab of Rome, which is
now in the Vatican Library (Cod.
Vat. 84). The R. Joab B. Rabbi
R. Sh'lomo of Tudela was grand-
nephew to the famous Rabbi Na-
than through his brother Abraham.
This Rabbi Nathan's family has
been traced at Rome down to the
beginning of the fourteenth cen-
tury. R. Menachem, the president
of the university i.e., head of the-
Schola Judceorum at Rome, is the
same whose virtues and learning
are commemorated in the verses of
Aben 'Esra, and perhaps also the
same who is mentioned in manu-
script collections of rabbinical de-
cisions as one of the Roman
rabbis. The name of Shabtai,
which Tudela notices, is confined
prior to the sixteenth century al-
most exclusively to Italy, where it
was most common in Rome and
Naples. It was a very distinguish-
ed race, and the chief Roman Shab-
tais of the middle ages are Shab-
tai B. Moshe, author of liturgical
poetry; Calonymos B. Shabtai, who
figured at Worms in 1090 ; Benja-
min B. Shabtai, a teacher the one
mentioned by Tudela; Mathathia
B. Shabtai, teacher of Talmudic
law about 1250; Sh'lomo B. Shab-
tai, a commentator of Sheeltoth of
R. Acha ; Mordecai B. Shabtai,
author of penitential prayers in the
liturgy of the Roman synagogue ;
Moshe B. Shabtai B. Menachem,
noted for his great riches circa
1340 ; Shabthai B. Levi B. Shabtai
B. Elia B. Moshe Shabtai, copyist
of the Vatican MS. No. 219 circa
1394; finally, Elia Beer B. Shabtai,
a physician of repute and large
practice about the year 1420. In
The Jews of Rome in Christian Times.
the erudite work of Gaetano Ma-
rim on the court physicians of
Rome Z?^// Archiatri Pontificii
many famous and really learned
Jews are noticed, whose services
as physicians and surgeons were
employed by several popes, particu-
larly Boniface IX., Martin V., and
Paul III. At the period of the
revival of letters the Jews were the
best Oriental scholars in Europe,
and many of them made a living
at Rome under the protection of
wealthy cardinals and prelates as
copyists of Arabic and Hebrew
manuscripts. The study of He-
brew was always kept up at Rome
by learned men in the church from
the days of St. Jerome. Clement
V., in the General Council of Vi-
enne in 1311, ordered special at-
tention to be given to Hebrew in
the universities and colleges; and
at the coronation of Alexander V.
in 1409 the Epistle and Gospel
were read aloud in Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew. Elias, a famous Jew-
ish critic (1472-1549), lived and
studied some time at Rome ; in
1481 the apostolic preacher on
Good Friday was complimented by
Pope Sixtus IV. for his knowledge
of Hebrew, as shown by texts of
Scripture and citations from rab-
binical writers with which he had
heavily loaded a sermon of two
hours preached before the court.
Under Alexander VI. Jochanan
Aleman flourished at Rome. He
was born in Constantinople, but
was called to Italy by Pico de la
Mirandola, for whom he wrote two
works, Evl Haeda and Chescek
Schelomoh. In 1483 we find the
cabalist Abdias Sphornus at Rome
and teaching Hebrew to Reuchlin ;
and so great was the renown of
the Roman court for the patronage
of every kind of learning, without
prejudice of race or religion, that
when the French rabbi, physician,
and astronomer, Bonet de Lates,
was looking about for a patron, he
could find no one more munificent
or acceptable than Alexander VI.
to whom to dedicate his elegant
Latin treatise describing an in-
strument of his own invention for
measuring the altitude of the sun
and the distance of the stars,*
which the pope received so well
that the author went to reside in
Rome, where he enjoyed a great re-
putation for mathematics and as-
tronomy. Jacob Mantino of Tor-
tosa, who flourished in the six-
teenth century, was physician to
Paul III., and translated several
works of Averroes and Avicenna
into Latin. Julius III. also had a
Jewish physician, Vitalis Alatini ;
and it was this same zealous pon-
tiff who instructed and baptized
a learned rabbi who afterwards
preached controversial sermons to
the Jews in the oratory of San
Benedetto alia Regola, which had
such good effect that Gregory XIII.
established a perpetual course of
sermons to the Jews in 1584, to be
given by a Dominican father who
must be a doctor in theology and
a perfect master of Hebrew.
Of the many laws made at Rome
concerning the Jews living there,
some have reference to faith and
morals, and others relate to matters
of habit and local customs ; which
last, depending for their raison d'etre
on the manners, amusements, fears,
or prejudices of certain ages, are,
of course, extremely variable, as
may be seen by consulting that
most interesting collection of me-
diaeval municipal regulations, the
Statuta Urbis Roma, and were
often abolished, modified, or re-en-
* Boneti de Latis, ntedici Provenzalis, Annnli
per eum compositi super astrologiam utilitate:.
Rome, 1493, in^4to, 12 pages.
The Jews of Rome in Christian Times.
35
acted, according to the individual
inclination of successive pontiffs or
the temper of the Roman populace,
which it was never easy to control.
In a Roman council, convened in
the year 743, Pope Zachary forbade
intermarriages between Jews and
Christians and the selling of Chris-
tian slaves to Jews. Innocent III.
found much to complain of in the
villany of the Jews, who were al-
ways Ghibellines, as in Spain they
favored the Moors. In the fourth
Council of the Lateran, held by him
in the year 1215, it was enjoined
upon all Jews to wear a distinctive
badge on their habit, so that they
might be immediately known.*
Usury, that " breed for barren
metal," as Antonio calls it, being
strictly forbidden to Christians, fell
naturally into the hands of the
Jews, who made no scruple to in-
terpret the prohibition in Exodus
xxii. 25 according to the letter, thus
excluding from its benefits the
Gentile, who might be fleeced at
discretion.f Their exactions be-
came at last so severe that some
relief was attempted in the fourth
Council of Lateran, where the 6yth
canon says : Quanto amplius Chris-
tiana religio ab exactione compescitur
usurarum, tanto gravius super his
Jud&orum perfidia inolescit, ita
quod brevi tempore Christianorum
exhauriunt facilitates. Their cu-
pidity was the cause of founding in
the fifteenth century, when Jews
* How Jews are recognized on early Christian
monuments is one of the points of sacred archaeolo-
gy. The Jews of our Lord's time appear in various
sculptures of scenes from his life on ancient sarco-
phagi engraved by Bottari, Tav. , Ixxxv. et passim.
They are usually distinguished by a flat cap or
berretta, without a rim, and chipped to represent the
curly material lamb's wool of which it was made.
This was probably a common feature of Jewish
dress among the Romans.
t We remember that a few years ago the only Jew
in Tivoli, near Rome, was a money-changer named
Giacobbe, who was allowed to occupy, scandalously
as we thought, the very room once inhabited by
St. Ignatius Loyola.
often claimed the exorbitant in-
terest of twenty and even twenty-
five per cent., those benevolent in-
stitutions called Monti di Pieta, the
first of which was opened at Padua
in 1491. The one in Rome was
established by Father Calvo, a
Franciscan, in 1539. The original
principle of the Lombard houses,
as they used to be called in English,
was to lend money on pledges for
a fixed term at a low rate of inter-
est, which at Rome was only five
per cent., to defray the unavoid-
able expenses of such establish-
ments. They differed essentially
from pawnbrokers' shops in being
under government control, and for
the benefit of the borrowers and
not for the profit of the lenders.
The thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries were memorable for mas-
sacres of Jews in almost every large
city of Europe except Rome, where
the wild cry of " Hep ! Hep !" was
never raised, and whose streets
were never stained with the blood
of this ill-used race of men. This
singular shout is supposed to have
been formed from the initial letters
of the three Latin words, Hierosoly-
ma est perdita Jerusalem is lost !
It was the signal for sudden and
sanguinary outbursts of popular
fanaticism, in Germany particularly,
where the Jews made themselves
unusually odious to the sons of the
Crusaders. A noble tribute to the
humanity of the popes was paid by
the Jews of that country, who sent a
deputation of their number to In-
nocent IV. (1243-1254) to ask the
protection of the Holy See : Exter-
minium metuentes duxerunt ad Apos-
tolic cz Sedis prudentiam recur rendum
(Raynald., Annales, cap. Ixxxiv.)
Rome was, in fact, the headquar-
ters and very paradise of the west-
ern Jews, and even Dean Milman,
who seems in his History to be al-
The Jews of Rome in Christian Times.
most more friendly to them than to
the Christians, is fain to acknow-
ledge that "in Rome the Jews
have been more rarely molested
than in any other country. They
have long inhabited a separate
quarter of the city, but this might
have been originally a measure at
least as much of kindness as con-
tempt a remedy against insult
rather than an exclusion from so-
ciety." Another writer, who has
made a special study of the Jews
of the middle ages, and whose bias,
being unfriendly to the church,
makes his testimony stronger, leads
us to infer that the spirit of justice
and humanity shown towards the
Jews in Rome was not an effect of
the milder or more refined nature
of the Italians, who were civilized
in ages when English, Germans,
French, and Spaniards were still
almost barbarians, but was inherent
in the beneficent nature of the Pa-
pacy ; for while French kings were
grinding down the Jews in every
worst manner, French popes pro-
tected them, and it was a German
pope, St. Leo IX., who converted
by his kindness the first of the
Pierleoni family, and allowed him
to give his own name to his son
and heir : " Des que 1'etablisse-
ment des pontifs a Avignon fut de-
cide on y vit affluer de TEspagne,
de la France, et de 1'Allernagne
une nuee de Juifs que le commerce
autant que Vespoir du repos y atti-
rait. Clement V. les reut a bras
ouverts. II fut leur protecteur
centre les Pastoureaux " (Beu-
gnot, Les Juifs d 1 Occident . . .
pendant la dure'e du Moyen Age,
part i. p. 158). Clement VI.
(Pierre Roger de Beaufort, 1342-
1352) was another powerful friend,
and by letters of October 5, 1348,
given at a time when there was the
most intense excitement against
the Jews, who were accused of kid-
napping and murdering Christian
children particularly during Holy
Week * of poisoning wells, and
otherwise spreading the terrible
pestilence that then desolated many
parts of Europe, he sought to allay
the fears of the people, and forbade
under very severe penalties to kill
or to calumniate the Jews (Baluze,
Vita Paparum Avenion., xi. p. 254).
The celebrated Rabbi Joshua, or
Joseph, whose ancestors fled from
Navarre to Avignon when his
brethren were expelled from Spain,
and who afterwards lived at Rome,
wrote a history of the Jews, in
which he says that at the capture
of the city by the Constable of
Bourbon, under Clement VII. , in
1527, which was followed by long-
continued bloodshed and pillage,
many of his race were slaughtered
and all suffered in the general dis-
order ; but the continuator of the
chronicle of the Abbas Uspergensis
declares that the Jews not only
bought their own security, but
made vast sums by purchasing the
plunder sacred vessels, church
ornaments, etc. at the cheapest
rates : Ex prcedd omnis generis vili
emptd, ingens lucrum facientes.
The same rabbi tells us that at
the triumphal entry into Rome of
the Emperor Charles V., in 1536,
they were threatened with spolia-
tion by his followers. " And had
it not been for the mercies of the
Lord, which never fail, the Jews
would have been given up to pil-
lage on that day. For the men
of the emperor gaped with their
mouths, hissed, and gnashed their
teeth at them, but the Lord de-
* See Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, " The Prio-
resses Tale," for the spirit of the age ready to be-
lieve any thing against the Jews.
" For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe ;
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine."
Merck, of Venice.
The Jews of Rome in Christian Times.
37
livered them." Under Julius III.,
a quarter of a century later, Corne-
lius of Montalcino, a Franciscan
friar, embraced Judaism, circum-
cised himself, and "set his face as
a flint " to preach against Chris-
tianity in the streets of Rome. The
Talmud, to which his apostasy was
attributed, was publicly burned ;
but although the populace was ter-
ribly excited, no violence was at-
tempted against the Jews, on ac-
count of the measures which the
pope had taken to defend them.
" And he was long-suffering with
them," says Rabbi Joseph (ii. p.
523), " because he delighteth in
mercy." A few years later Gre-
gory XIII., under whose pontifi-
cate the Jewish population of Rome
amounted to about thirteen thou-
sand, issued an edict, which was
suspended at the gate of the Jewry,
forbidding the reading of the Tal-
mud, blasphemies against Christ
and his blessed Mother, and ridi-
cule of the ceremonies of religion.
In 1562 St. Pius V. established a
House of Catechumens, where Jews
wishing to become Christians could
be received for a time and proper-
ly instructed; and in many other
ways has Roman charity displayed
itself for the benefit of the Jews, to
whom it is a greater kindness to
instruct unto justice than to open
wide the gates of wealth and honor,
for " not by bread alone doth man
live, but by every word that pro-
ceedeth from the mouth of God "
(Matt. iv. 4). In the year- 1555
Pope Paul IV. issued a bull, Cum
nimis, assigning to the Jews for
ever a certain sufficiently ample
and healthy locality in Rome, where
no one can say that
" They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,
Ghetto and Judenstrass, in murk and mire ;
Taught in the school of patience to endure
The life of anguish and the death of fire."
LONGFELLOW.
Our space does not allow us to
pursue our subject into the recesses
of the modern Ghetto, but we wish
to give in this connection just one
instance of the ignorance of the
latest English guide to the Eternal
City, whose Walks in Rome has
succeeded to Story's once popular
Roba di Roma stuff from the sew-
ers of Rome. Mr. Hare, after tell-
ing his readers how " the fanatical
Dominican (!) Pope, Paul IV.," im-
prisoned the Jews, goes on to say
that " the Ghetto, or Vicus Jud^eo-
rum, as it was at first called, was
shut in by walls which reached from
the Ponte Quattro Capi to the Piaz-
za del Pianto, or * Place of Weep-
ing,' whose name bears witness to the
grief of the people on the 26th July,
1556, when they were first forced
into their prison-house " (vol. i. p.
252). This is mere bosh, but, since
it is only a little matter about a
pope, and a very saintly one, the
Italian proverb must hold good,
Se non e vero, e ben trovato ; but any
one acquainted with the origin of
the streets and squares of Rome
knows that the Piazza del Pianto
has no connection whatever with
the Jews and their Ghetto, but ex-
isted long before the Jews were re-
stricted to this part of the city,
and derives its name from a de-
vout picture of Our Lady of Soi-
rows, called- Madonna del Pianto,
exposed at the corner of a private
dwelling-house in the form of a
shrine (Panciroli, Tesori nascosti di
Roma, p. 476 ; Vasi, Tesoro Sagro,
torn. ii. p. 89 ; Vasari, Vite de piu
excellenti Pittori, vol. vi. p. 742).
During the reign of Clement VII.
one of those singular Oriental He-
brews upon whose pretensions and
adventures so much has been writ-
ten suddenly appeared in Rome.
His name was David Reubeni,
prince or ambassador of the Reu-
The Jeivs of Rome in Christian Times.
benites in the desert of Chobar,
from whence he travelled to Djid-
da by way of the plains, crossed
the Arabian Gulf to Abyssinia,
and for some time wandered about
the Nubian Empire and Egypt
and Palestine. In 1523 he embark-
ed from the island of Candia for
Venice, and thence journeyed
through Pesaro and Castelnuovo to
Rome, where we know that in Oc-
tober, 1524, he had already been
for eight months. Leaving Rome
for a tour in the southern provinces,
lie returned in February, 1525, and
a year later departed for a visit to
Spain and Portugal. In some of
the cities of Granada the newly-
converted Moorish Jews hailed him
as their Messias, which led to his
imprisonment by the inquisitor-
general of Murcia; but he must
soon have recovered his liberty, for
we find him shortly afterwards again
in Italy and making some stay at
Rome. He is described as a little,
weak, spare man of the age of forty,
speaking Arabic and Hebrew, and
calling himself the envoy of his
brother, King Joseph, who ruled
over the still existing tribes of Reu-
ben, Gad, and the half of Manas-
seh in the desert of Chobar. He
told the pope that he came to soli-
cit aid against the Mohammedan
Arabs, who persecuted this rem-
nant of the people o Israel, and
pretended that he was a lineal de-
scendant of David. His royal pe-
digree was inserted in an epistle
which he wrote to John III. of
Portugal, to urge him to undertake
the conquest of Palestine in con-
junction with his brother's army.
This impostor finally died in a dun-
geon in Spain, after several years'
confinement. Among the Jews of
the Persian, Greek, and Roman
periods there were unquestionably
many legitimate Davidians, as the
descendants of King David were
styled ; but in consequence of the
dispersion and exterminating wars,
the connecting links of the old
families were lost or confused as
early as the first centuries of the
Christian era. It was a characteris-
tic weakness of some eminent Jews
to boast of noble, and particularly
Davidic, blood, and spurious pedi-
grees were often drawn up and tri-
umphantly exhibited the " endless
genealogies" which St. Paul con-
demns (i Tim. i. 4). During the
middle ages two families above all
others asserted their Davidic de-
scent the Nesiim of Narbonne,
which had branches at Mosul, Da-
mascus, and in Andalusia, and the
Negidim of Egypt. It is curious
in this connection to recall of
Benjamin Disraeli that, being at
Jerusalem in 1831, and visiting the
traditionary tombs of the kings,
" My thoughts," he says, " recurred
to the marvellous career which had
attracted my boyhood;" and he
soon after published the Wondrous
Tale of Alroy, an Oriental romance
of extraordinary eloquence and
power, depicting the adventures of
a prince of the house of David
who in the twelfth century pro-
claimed himself the Messias and
called the Jews of Persia to arms.
Solomon Ben Virga, a Spanish
Jew and physician, wrote a singu-
lar history of the calamities of the
Jewish nation, which was translat-
ed into Latin by Gentius, at Am-
sterdam, in 1690. The most re-
markable part of the work is its
close. It is a bold attempt by an
apologue, which assumes the form
of history, to place all the Jews of
the world under the protection of
the Sovereign Pontiff. In fact,
Christian Rome has always been
"from child to child, from pope to
pope, from age to age," the asylum
Fearl.
39
and home of this oppressed people, ually but surely melting away be-
and even the mild restraints to fore the benign influence of the
which they were formerly subject- illustrious and kind-hearted Pius
ed in the Eternal City were grad- IX.
PEARL.
Y KATHLEEN o'.MEARA, AUTHOR OF u IZA'S STORY," lt A SALON IN THE LAST DAYS Of THE EMPIRE," U ARE
YOU MY WIFE? " ETC.
CHAPTER xii. continued.
MME. LA BARONNE LEOPOLD
mere lived on a rez-de-chaussee
in the Rue du Bac, in an old hotel
between a court and a garden.
She was a sensible woman, and had
never taken up her abode in the
house of her son and daughter-in-
law, although they had repeatedly
pressed on her to do so, the one from
affection, the other with a view to
the interests of her children. Where
was the use of Mine. Mere spend-
ing three thousand francs a year,
which might have gone to swell
Blanche's dot, when she only came
to Paris for a couple of months in
the spring? But Mine. Mere held
to her own pied-a-terre, whether
she occupied it for long or for
short. She was a small woman,
delicately made, and still showing
traces of great beauty. It was
from her that. Blanche got her
creamy white complexion and Leon
his large black eyes ; but the grand-
mother had not given him the soft
lustre of her own, with their long,
curling fringes.
Mine. Mere, as she was called
by the family and their friends,
was not nee; but her mother was,
being the daughter of a Languedoc
nobleman, a descendant of the an-
cient and illustrious house of Bri-
anceaux a circumstance which her
daughter-in-law was careful to bring
forward on fitting occasions, allud-
ing incidentally to " nos aieux, les
Comtes de Brianceaux."
Mme. Mere was buried in a big
arm-chair by the fire, reading, when
Mrs. Monteagle and Pearl were an-
nounced. She knew at once who
Pearl was, and the moment the
young girl looked into her face
with that timid, deprecating expres-
sion that comes into the eyes of a
human being who is going to be
hired by another, she fell in love
with her.
"Mme. Leopold has just told
us," began Mrs. Monteagle, "that
you were looking for a "
" Daughter," said the old lady,
interrupting her. " Will you come
to me ? I am not a very cross
old woman." And she held out her
hand.
Pearl, with charming grace, bent
forward, offering her forehead for a
kiss.
They sat down.
" I wish you had not received
her in this way," Mrs. Monteagle
Pearl.
said. " I was hoping you would
have been rude or patronizing,
and I should have snubbed you
and carried her off."
Pearl laughed, and looked up af-
fectionately at her old friend.
" Pardon !" said Mine. Mere.
"Come a little nearer to me ; I am
rather deaf."
" Good gracious ! This is dread-
ful ! She will wear your lungs out
in no time," said Mrs. Monteagle
in her clear voice, and looking at
Pearl in dismay.
" Let me come close to her,"
said Pearl ; and she took a low
chair and drew it to the old lady's
knee, and spoke, looking straight
into her eyes, and in a high tone:
" Mrs. Monteagle is afraid I shall
grow too fond of you, madame, if
you begin by receiving me as a
daughter."
"Ha! she is jealous. That is
well ; we shail try and make her
more and more jealous ! Tell me,
now, how old are you?" said Mme.
Mere, holding Pearl's hand on her
knee.
"Oh ! don't be frightened at my
age. I am old enough to be steady.
Ask Mrs. Monteagle, madame."
" I would trust her to any ex-
tent," said Mrs. Monteagle.
"What does madame say?"
Pearl repeated if, blushing as she
did so.
"My dear child, the old woman
would make you roar yourself into
a consumption in three months,"
said Mrs. Monteagle.
'* I don't mind roaring ; my lungs
are made of iron." Then, pitching
her voice again : " Do you think I
am clever enough to do all you
want, madame? I can sing and
play very nicely."
;k I am glad of that, mon enfant;
it will be a resource for you. But
I sha'n't want you to do it for me.
All I want is to have a bright young
face to look at, and young eyes to
write my notes now and then, and
to read to me for an hour or so
every morning, and then again in
the evening. Do you like reading ?'
" Very much."
" Good gracious ! Why, the wo-
man ought to pay you five hundred
a year. I never heard of such
selfishness in my life !" said Mrs.
Monteagle.
"Are you fond of the country?
Are you sure you will not die of
ennui alone with an old woman in
a big empty chateau ?" pursued
Mme. Mere.
" I like the country better than
town."
"Ask her how many months she
lives in the country."
Pearl put the question.
"Ten months always, my dear;
sometimes more."
" My God ! it would kill you,
child. You would be dead in half
the time !"
The servant came in with a
note that wanted an immediate an-
swer, and under cover of the man's
roaring Mrs. Monteagle and Pearl
exchanged a few remarks.
" I can't hear of it."
" Oh ! please don't prevent me.
Let me try it for a month, just
while she is in Paris. I shall
never get anything so easy or so
nice ; and then, if it tires me too
much, you will see it before we
leave for the country."
"Your mother never would for-
give me."
" Dear Mrs. Monteagle ! I en-
treat you."
" Well, if you will have it, I sup-
pose I must give way ; but mind, it
is only a trial. I shall tell her that.
And then we have got to settle
about the terms. That is why I
insisted on coming. Mme. Leo-
Pearl.
pold would have screwed you down
to fifty pounds a year."
" I am sure it ought to be enough
for what I shall have to do."
" Nonsense ! You know nothing
about it. I shall send you away
and have a talk with her. She is
rich, and she must pay."
With many misgivings Pearl
yielded, and said au revoir to Mine.
Mere, leaving Mrs. Monteagle to
fight the battle about the salary, if
battle it was to be.
An hour later Mrs. Monteagle
came home and announced that
she had carried all her points.
"You are to have a hundred a
year, and your washing, and six
weeks holiday in the summer, and
a month at Christmas. And I con-
sider you are throwing yourself
away. However, you are as ob-
stinate as a little, mule, and so
there is no more to be said
about it."
Pearl was quite contented. She
had succeeded in doing what she
had come for, and though the suc-
cess was not of a kind to elate her,
to make her happy in the full sense,
still it was very satisfying. She
would be able to help them at
home now ; this was the ostensible
motive of her satisfaction, the only
one she could avow ; but in her
heart what she most rejoiced at
was that she had now secured a
pretext for remaining away from
Polly.
" When I shall no longer be al-
ways before her like a living re-
proach she will get back the old
tender feeling for me ; she will
come by degrees to forgive herself
and to forgive me," thought Pearl.
In the generosity of her love she
never stopped to ask herself what
Polly had to forgive. And she
was right. We have need, now
and then, of something more than
love to make our love accepted,
and win forgiveness for the sins
that are committed against it.
Mme. Leopold called a couple
of hours later. Pearl was in her
room, writing home the news to
her mother.
" Unreasonable pretensions you
call them ? Then, my good lady,
by all means let the engagement
be broken," said Mrs. Monteagle.
" I shall be delighted, for my opin-
ion is that Miss Redacre is throw-
ing herself away."
"Twenty-five hundred francs a
year, and you call that throwing
herself away! I call it throwing
money away. I can't think what
my mother-in-law was about when
she agreed to such terms. The
girl will have no expense of any
sort, and nothing on earth to do !"
protested Mme. Leopold.
" Except to sacrifice her youth
and her spirits and her health to
a deaf old woman. My belief is
that Miss Redacre won't stay there
a month ; the shouting will destroy
her lungs. When does your mo-
ther-in-law go to the country ?"
" She seldom remains more than
a couple of months in town. I
should not be surprised if she went
earlier than usual this year. Now
that she has treated herself to such
an expensive companion, I should
think she might dispense with com-
ing to Paris at all. I shall speak
to her seriously again about giving
up that apartment. It is prepos-
terous paying such a sum for rent
when we could accommodate her
in our house. It would put us out,
to be sure ; but for a month or so
that would not signify. Besides,
I never mind putting myself out
for those I love. It comes natu-
rally to me to devote myself. The
least Pearl can do now is to second
me in this matter."
Pearl.
" Of devoting yourself?"
" Of persuading my mother-in-
law to give up her apartment. It
costs three thousand francs; if it
is given up that will more than
cover the expense of Pearl's
salary."
" If you grudged the salary, as
you call it, so much, why did
you propose Mme. Leopold taking
a companion?" demanded Mrs.
Monteagle.
"I never dreamed of her paying
more than twelve hundred francs
for one. Nobody does. It was
most grasping of Pearl to ask such
a sum, and for doing absolutely
nothing ! However, what's done
can't be undone ; but I look to
Pearl's showing her gratitude to
me by using her influence to get
rid of the Rue du Bac. Mme.
Mere has taken such a fancy to
her that she will be able to make
her do anything. In fact, if Pearl
were not well brought up, and with
good principles, I should be un-
easy ; but I trust she will always
use her influence strictly within
the sphere of her position."
Mrs. Monteagle was so incensed
by this cool impertinence that she
was going to make a retort which
might have broken up the affair
there and then, but before she had
time to say a word Pearl came
into the room. Her eyes were
red, but she wore a happy look in
spite of this, and came forward to
greet Mme. Leopold with a smile
that was very touching. Mme.
Leopold was a mother; indeed, it
was the mother in her that was re-
sponsible for most of her faults.
Her grasping love of money, her
little duplicities and manoeuvres,
her hardness to others, all sprang
from that ill-regulated maternal af-
fection which makes the tigress
pounce upon and eat up any un-
wary beast who comes prowling
near the lair where her cubs are
asleep. She would have been
kind and utterly indifferent to
money and worldly advantages of
every so.rt (so she said, and so she
believed, very likely) if she had
been alone ; but her duty as a mo-
ther compelled her to be perpetu-
ally intriguing for ces chers cnfans,
and kept her on the qui vive to
seize and devour every human be-
ing who crossed, or looked as if
they might by possibility cross, their
path. Yet, with all this, and un-
derlying the tiger, was the woman,
and at the sight of Pearl's young
face, tear-stained and smiling, bear-
ing such a look of anxious care,
the woman was stirred in Mme.
Leopold and smote her selfishness.
She held out a hand to Pearl,
and drew her down and kissed
her.
"Mme. Mere has been thanking
me rapturously for the beau cadeau
that I have made her, ma petite ;
she is quite in love with you. I
am going to be very jealous of you
both."
There was a little talk about
Mme. Mere's ways and her likes
and dislikes, Mme. Leopold giving
Pearl some friendly hints that might
be useful. Then she rose to go,
announcing to Mrs. Monteagle and
Pearl that they were to keep them-
selves disengaged for a family din-
ner which the baron intended to
give.
"It is for Leon's fete, and, alas!
I fear it will be a diner d'adieu to
him. They say that the regiment
is to be ordered out to Algiers at
the end af the month."
" Why need you cry * alas !' over
that?" said Mrs. Monteagle. "It
is the best thing could happen to
him, next to a declaration of war.
A campaign in Algiers counts as
Pearl.
extra service. ' Then the climate
is beautiful."
"But it is such a wearisome
campaign !" And the mother heav-
ed a sigh. "There is no society,
no distraction ; the officers die of
ennui."
" Not they ! They hunt the
tiger, and they make expeditions
into the desert, and when they
bore themselves too much they
marry a pretty Jewess ; the Algerian
Jewesses are marvels of beauty."
" Grand Dieu ! what a conso-
lation to offer me. My son marry
a Jewess ! I should die of de-
spair. But no, he is a good son ;
he loves his mother; he is incapa-
ble of marrying except to please
her. Ah ! madame, you have put
a knife into my soul."
"Ha! ha!" chuckled Mrs. Mont-
eagle. " He has not done it yet,
and, as he is such a dutiful son, he
may never do it ; but I have known
two young men bring home African
daughters-in-law to their mothers
after three years' absence."
" They were not like my son ; he
is incapable of it," protested Mme.
Leopold.
" They were uncommonly nice
young fellows, of good position and
with excellent prospects, and might
have married anybody. But they
bored themselves to the brink of
suicide, and rather than cut their
throats they married a little Jewess.
And they did quite right."
"Quelle horreur!" exclaimed
Mme. Leopold, holding up her
hands in appeal to a more merciful
Providence than this cruel tor-
mentor. " Madame, you are not a
mother, or you could not thus make
sport of a mother's most sacred
feelings. But I know my son. He
is incapable of anything so wicked,
so ungrateful, so base !"
She left the room, repeating to
herself: " Mon Dieu! Epouser
une Juive ! Jamais!"
"Why did you say that?" said
Pearl. " She thought you were in
earnest."
" And so I was. I hope he may
marry a Jewess, an Ethiopian, or a
Hottentot. Serve her right if he
does."
Pearl was surprised at her friend's
vehemence, but she only laughed,
and went away to put on her bon-
net for their afternoon walk.
"Serve them both right if he
does," thought Mrs. Monteagle.
" She will find out when it is too
late what a fool she was to hinder
him marrying Pearl Redacre sim-
ply because she had no money ;
though what the girl can see in
that black stick to care for is be-
yond my comprehension."
They were soon both ready and
back in the drawing-room.
" I don't think we will be asked
to the diner de famille after that
sortie of yours," said Pearl, button-
ing her glove.
" So much the better ! If there
be a thing I hate, it is a diner de
famille. It is a toss-up between
that and an amateur concert which
is worse."
But she remembered that this
dinner might have been a pleasure
to Pearl, a last opportunity of meet-
ing the " black stick," and she de-
termined to make it up with Mme.
Leopold, so that the invitation
might be renewed.
44
Fearl.
CHAPTER XIII.
PEARL'S FRIEND.
II I U V 1 Cl
ON the Monday morning after
that visit to Mme. Mere, Mrs. Mont-
eagle drove with Pearl to the Rue
du Bar. She had been in a very
bad temper the worst of tempers.
She had done nothing but snap and
chuckle and scold all the morning;
she quarrelled with Parker for being
so slow in dressing her ; she fought
Adolphe for not lighting the stove
in the dining-room, although a
fire would have been an insult to
the eastern sun that poured in
through the two tall windows,
flooding the room with light and
warmth. She lectured Pearl on her
abominable obstinacy, and warned
her with tenfold severity of the
doom that awaited it : " When
your left lung is gone the left
generally goes first, I don't know
why, except, it may be, the action of
the heart has something to do with
it you will come to me, and I will
do the best I can for you. Taken
in time, we may save the right lung ;
but I would not have you trust too
much even to that. What do you
say ? People live to be old with
one lung ? Perhaps they do ; but I
should say they are the exceptions.
And I don't believe they are the
ones who lose their other lung by
sheer perversity ; it is by a visita-
tion of Providence, and so Provi-
dence helps them. But you will
have no one but yourself to blame.
One thing I insist upon : you must
wear flannels. They are a great
protection to the lungs."
" When one's lungs are delicate,
dear Mrs. Monteagle, and against
cold or damp ; but mine are as
tough as india-rubber," protested
Pearl.
" Tough as fiddlesticks ! But
you are right : flannel can't lessen
the strain of the shouting. That is
what will kill you. Not that it
matters to me. What a fool I am
to trouble myself at all about it !
Happily, I don't care a straw about
you or any one else. I hate every-
body. I always told you I did, so
don't pretend to be hurt or as-
tonished at my saying it now. I
wish you were all dead. It would
be a relief to me. I should only
have to think of myself then."
" I know exactly how much to
believe of all that," said Pearl.
"Give me a kiss, and don't look
cross."
"Look cross! I am cross." But
she let Pearl take the kiss.
The cab stopped at Mme. Mere's
door, and they got out.
" Here she is," said Mrs. Mont-
eagle, laying her hand on Pearl's
shoulder as Mme. Mere came for-
ward to welcome them. u See that
you are good to her, or I will come
here and murder you, madame. I
am a very wicked woman, as this
child will tell you, and capable of
doing anything when I am angry.
I am very angry with her for
leaving me." She said this with
her mouth close to the little French
lady's ear, and then, without wait-
ing for an answer, turned abruptly
away and was leaving the room
without a word to Pearl ; but Pearl
put her arms round her and kissed
her, clinging to her.
" There, there, that will do, child ;
you know I hate being kissed,"
said Mrs. Monteagle ; but she made
no movement to disengage the
arms from her neck, or to draw
FearL
45
away her face from the soft, warm
kisses ; and when at last Pearl let
her go, there was a tear on her
sleeve that could hardly have drop-
ped there from Pearl's eyes.
It was an odd sensation when
Pearl found herself in her room
alone, and looked about her, and
said to herself, " I am in a situa-
tion ; I am -earning my bread."
It was a comfortless room to
English eyes, though Mme. Mere
had been very anxious to make it
the reverse, and had herself seen to
everything in it being right. A
regular French bed-room of the
old-fashioned type. There was no
carpet, and the floor was polished
so as to reflect everything like a
glass ; so bright and cold and slip-
pery that it gave Pearl the creeps
as she stood in the middle of it and
examined her surroundings. The
bed was in an alcove draped with
white muslin curtains tied up with
red cords ; the chairs were Empire
style, square, hard, and covered in
red Utrecht velvet with that inva-
riable square, hard pattern cut on
it ; the clock on the chimney-piece
was an Empire monument, straight
little gray marble pillars holding
up the gold dial, and two slim gray
marble candlesticks on either side
of it ; the table in the middle had a
gray marble slab, and looked 'so
cold that Pearl -thought it must
freeze her if she touched it ; there
was an armoire-a-glace with pillars,
and brass rings grasping them, and
a chest of drawers with gray marble
top ; the window had red woollen
curtains, that made the light mur-
ky as it shone through them. Al-
together a dreary room to poor
Pearl, and it required all her cour-
age not to sit down in one of the
straight-backed and angular chairs
and have a good cry when she had
taken off her things; but she resisted
the temptation, and set to work to
unpack her trunk, and arrange its
contents in the armoire-a-glace
and the chest of drawers, and then,
without allowing herself the dan-
gerous luxury of half an hour's
thinking, she went into the salon,
where Mme. Mere was anxiously
waiting for her. The drawing-
room was, in its way, as rigid as
the bed-room. It was not carpet-
ed ; there were only little squares
of carpet before all the chairs, like
patches of flowers floating on the
water-like surface of the shining
floor, and a large flowery rug be-
fore the fire and under the centre-
table an Empire table with straight
legs and a white marble top. The
cheerless character of the furniture
was relieved, however, by a fire
big blocks of wood that smoked
away against a mountain of ashes
piled half-way up the chimney
and by books and newspapers ly-
ing about on the sofa and little
tables. Mme. Mere was a great
reader, and just now, as Pearl re-
entered the salon, she was hid
away behind the Journal des De-
bais a sin that she indulged in pri-
vately of a morning when no one
was likely to come in and catch
her at it. She was a very pious
woman, and would have scrupled
to give scandal to the weaker ves-
sels ; but her own principles were
robust enough to seek the danger
and not perish therein, so she read
the Debats and kept it dark.
" Come and sit by me, and let
us have a little chat until dejeuner
is ready," said the old lady ; and
Pearl drew a low chair close to the
roomy fauteuil and sat down.
" Would you not rather I read
to you, madame ?" she said.
" No, ma petite ; let us talk. I
want to hear all about you from
yourself. Tell me everything, what
4 6
Pearl.
you like and what you dislike, and
what sort of life you are in the
habit of leading at home. I know
you are fond of music, so I have
ordered a piano for you. Mme.
Monteagle has been good enough
to go and choose it. I thought
she would know the kind of in-
strument that would suit you. And
she tells me you have not a very
strong chest ; so we must limit our
reading to the evenings when I
can't do much in that way. My
old eyes don't bear the lamp-light ;
but I won't be very exacting, ma
petite, and you must be frank al-
ways, and tell me when you are
tired. Mme. Monteagle promised
me you would."
Pearl took the old lady's hand
and kissed it. She had to get over
a choking sensation in her throat
before she could say anything, and
just as she was going to answer
the door opened, and Mme. Leo-
pold and Blanche came noisily in.
" Chere enfant !" cried the bar-
oness, with a motherly embrace,
and Pearl and Blanche paired off,
leaving the two ladies to discourse
alone.
" Let us go to thy room," said
Blanche, who was more sisterly
than ever since Pearl had come
back in the capacity of une amie
malheureuse ; " I have much to say
to thee." And Pearl knew at once
that there was a parti on the tapis.
" Yes ; this one looks serious,"
said Blanche when they were safe
in that icy, pillared little room of
Pearl's " so serious, ma chere, that
I am positively forbidden to men-
tion his name; but it is a parti
magnifique ! Tout y est : for-
tune, position, alliances on every
side mamma is so happy about it !"
"Suppose I guess who it is?"
said Pearl.
" Ah ! in that case I should not
have disobeyed; but I don't see
how you could guess. Say, whom
do you suspect ?"
" Le Marquis de Cholcourt."
" Oh ! no. It is not so magnifi-
cent as that," and Blanche heaved
an imperceptible sigh ; " that would
have been the ideal !"
In Pearl's gospel the fiance al-
ways was the ideal ; but then she
knew that hers and Blanche's dif-
fered.
"And do you like him very
much ? the other, I mean."
" II n'est pas mal. He is not
quite as tall as I should like, but
he is three centimetres taller than
myself, so we should not look ri-
diculous. But, ma chere, he has a
chateau, vrai huitieme siecle. I
have seen the photograph of it
un chateau comme on en
reve !" And the fiancee that hop-
ed to be dragged out the words
with a weighty emphasis that spoke
volumes.
"Are you to live most of the
year in it ?" inquired Pearl.
" Oh ! par exemple, no. I never
would marry any man who con-
demned me to live out of Paris
more than four months. What an
idea ! But, ma chere, there is an-
other great affair on the tapis.
Mamma wants to marry Leon, and
she has found him such a nice wife,
a splendid dot atod everything; but
Leon won't be married. Is it not
disagreeable of him ? Mamma is so
vexed ! She has come this morn-
ing to try and get bonne-maman to
talk him over about it. He is so
fond of bonne-maman he would
do anything to please her. She
paid his debts for him two years
ago ; but that is a secret. Mamma
knows nothing about it, so mind
you never let it out ! Was it not
good of bonne-maman ? But she
is rich. I dare say she will give
Pearl.
47
me my trousseau. How I wish you
could be here to help me to choose
it ! It would be such fun ! But
bonne-maman will not stay more
than a month in Paris this year.
There are some works going on
down at Gardanvalle that she wish-
es to superintend. You will die of
ennui at Gardanvalle. But I ; will
write to you often, and you will
answer me, nice long letters, and
that will desennuyer you a little."
" The marriage, then, is as good
as settled, since you are already
thinking of the trousseau," said
Pearl.
M I believe it is bien en traine.
Our notaire has had an interview
with theirs; but I have nothing to
do with that, you know. All that
I have to worry about is the trous-
seau, and after all that is the most
troublesome part of the thing, is it
not? And then it is never time
lost reflecting about it, for if one
parti falls through another is sure
to turn up, and the trousseau is the
trousseau, whoever one gets it for."
The conversation was interrupt-
ed by old Pierre knocking at the
door and announcing that dejeuner
was served. The two girls kissed,
Pearl swore profound secrecy, and
then they went back to the salon.
" I will do what I can," Mme.
Mere was saying ; " but don't over-
rate my influence. A young man
may do a good deal to please his
grandmother, if he is fond of her;
but I never knew of anybody mar-
rying to please his grandmother.
Indeed, my dear, I should say
Le"on was a fool if he did it."
" Bonte divine ! If you are go-
ing to say that to him he had bet-
ter not come, ma mere," said Mme.
Leopold. But Blanche declared
bonne-maman was right, and that
the best way to manage Leon was
not to seem to manage him.
" My good Pearl, I count on you
as an ally," said the anxious mo-
ther; " urge on Mme. Mere the
immense necessity there is for mar-
rying my boy before he starts for
Africa. Providence must help me !
That idea of his marrying a Jewess
out there -has haunted me ever
since Mme. Monteagle spoke of it.
But Leon loves his mother ; he
will never bring her a daughter
that she has not chosen."
At last they were off, and Mme.
Mere and Pearl went in to their
breakfast.
" Sophie is very clever," said the
old lady, " but she is too apt to
think that the rest of the world are
fools ; that they have no will of
their own and no right to oppose
hers. I hope you like your bifteck,
ma petite ? I ordered it to be
done a 1'Anglaise. I know Eng-
lish people like their meat under-
done."
It was all Pearl could do to con-
trol her feelings when the scarlet
slice was put before her; for the
cook had overdone madame's sug-
gestion, and sent up the bifteck
red-rare. Happily, madame was
too full of the two marriage schemes
to notice her young friend's coun-
tenance ; she went on with her
own dejeuner, meditating what she
was to say to Leon.
Blanche and her intended were
to meet at the theatre one of these
evenings, and Mme. Mere had
promised to go too and give her
opinion of the gentleman.
" Not that it can be of any im-
portance to any of them what I
think of his to urn u re," she said;
u but Sophie wishes me to go. I
think myself he is too old for
Blanche. It would not matter for
some girls ; but for her to marry a
man of sixty is, I fear, a risk."
" Sixty ! And Blanche is not nine-
4 8
Pearl.
teen yet! What could possess her
to marry a man of sixty ?" ex-
claimed Pearl, aghast.
" He unites every condition that
Sophie wants; his age is his one
defect. He is bald, and he has false
teeth ; but his sight is good and
his hearing. But it is a mistake.
What have you there, Pierre ? Bei-
gnets de pomme. Ma petite, I hope
you like beignets ?"
But ma petite was too much
shocked by this discovery to care
about beignets. She ate without
tasting them, and then they went
into the salon, where Pierre served
the coffee and brought in letters
which had just come. There was
one from Polly. Pearl's heart al-
ways beat at the sight of a letter
from home ; but Polly's handwrit-
ing had a more exciting effect on
her than any one else's.
" BROOM HOLLOW, May 10, .
" MY DARLING PEARL : It was a great
surprise to everybody to hear that you
had factually engaged yourself, and I
don't think papa or mamma would ever
have consented to your having your own
way if I had not fought your battle. I
wonder myself why I did. For, of
course, I hate the idea of your being in
the position of a dependant, and above
all amongst those Leopolds. Papa was
so dreadfully angry at first, I thought he
would never have calmed down. He
wanted to know if there was a love af-
fair in the way, and, as I knew he meant
Leon, I was able to declare with a clear
conscience that there was not. He then
said he supposed you were tired of the
dulness and the disagreeable work you
had to do here, and that that drove you
away. I did not know what to say to
this, for in my secret soul I suspect he
was partly right. Indeed, I don't wonder
at it. I don't find that poverty improves
on acquaintance, and one certainly can't
say of it, as one does of some unpromis-
ing acquaintances, that the longer you
know it the better you like it. Mamma
was very unhappy about you and misses
you frightfully. So does everybody, if
that is any comfort to you. Our room
looks very lonely without you. Mrs.
Monteagle has written a long letter to
mamma, singing your praises. It made
mamma cry, and I think it was this that
decided her to let you have your way.
Mrs. M. talked about your 'vigorous
individuality,' and about allowing peo-
ple to follow the dictates of conscience
and character, and develop this, that,
and the other. Even papa was set down
by all she said ; but it did not convince
me. I still think you are acting very
ridiculously and unkindly. ' But enough
of this, Horatio !' (papa is reading
' Hamlet ' to us of an evening now) ; let us
talk of something else. We are as live-
ly as usual here. Lady Wynmere has
been laid up with neuralgia, and so the
one civilized element in our existence is
pro tem. at an end. The Badows bounce
about the county in their saddles, and
occasionally pay us a visit. Cousin Bob
came back with papa and stayed a few
days, which cheered us up, and gave us
another lift in the eyes of the neighbor-
hood, I dare say. We will want a good
one now, for of course it will soon be
all over the place that you have taken a
situation as a humble companion, and I
don't see how we are to live down that,
unless I marry a peer; and no peer, un-
less he walked straight out of the Garden
of Eden, would marry a girl whose sis-
ter was in service. But I don't care
what becomes of me. I am no worse
here than I should be anywhere else,
and it will all come to an end some day.
I must not forget to answer your ques-
tions about domestic affairs. Mrs. Mills
does the cooking (most abominable
cooking it is, half the time not eatable),
and she has engaged the postman's
daughter to come and help in the dairy
and the laundry, and so between them
this gentlemanlike establishment gets
on as best it may. Mrs. Mills begs me
to send you her duty, and you will be
glad to hear that the 'ens and chickens
are numerous and thriving. Fritz sends
you a wag of his tail ; the said tail at
this moment presents a sorry sight, be-
ing exactly like a long black sausage
dripping from an ink-bottle, and the
rest of his unfortunate person says ditto
to the tail. He was washed yesterday,
and looked lovely with his thick white
hair standing out like a muff, and his
tail like a bunch of snow-white feathers ;
but there was a rat-hunt at the end of
the meadow this morning, and, though
Pearl.
49
Jacob shut him up in the kitchen, the
moment my friend heard the report of
the gun he leaped upon the table and
took a header through the open window,
and away with him to the sport ; and be-
fore any one could stop him he was
burrowing half a mile under ground,
whence he emerged into public life in
the miserable condition I have describ-
ed. Balaklava is tolerably well, I sup-
pose, for we hear little about him.
Mamma is really wonderful, and bears
the climate, and the cookery, and the dul-
ness, and all the ills of this valley of
tears with the serenity of a philosopher.
I suspect she has a private cry every
now and then about you ; but I have
never been able to catch her in the act.
I wonder how you are going to like
your ' situation,' and how long your he-
roic fit will last. The boys persist in
saying you are after a lark of some sort ;
their infant minds being incapable of
believing that anything else could have
tempted you from the bosom of your
family. Now I have told you all the
news, so good-by. Write soon. Give
my love to everybody, and believe me
always your affectionate sister,
" POLLY."
There was only one line in all
this letter for Pearl : ''Mamma has
a private cry about you every now
and then." It made her heart
heave to bursting, and all her self-
control could not keep the tears
from overflowing. Happily, Mme.
Mere was absorbed in troubles of
her own, and the little outburst was
unnoticed.
The old lady laid aside her letters
and finished her coffee in a hurry.
u Ma petite," she said, " I want
to see my son, and I must go at
once or he will be out. Pierre,
fetch a coach ; and you, my dear,
which do you prefer, to stay at
home or to come with me ? If
you come, you and Blanche can
make lacausette together while I am
with my son."
Pearl was too glad to be an hour
alone, and said she would much
prefer staying behind.
VOL. xxix. 4
"These work-people are so diffi-
cult to manage !" sighed Mme. Mere,
taking up her letters and bustling
out of the room. " They will pull
half the house down under one pre-
tence or another unless my son goes
down himself to stop them."
She was soon rattling across the
river to the Champs Elysees, and
Pearl was alone. Alone ! Yes, she
realized for the first time this morn-
ing that she was alone ; that she had
to bear her burden and fight her bat-
tle without help from any one; that
she stood by herself, her own coun-
sellor, and to act the part of moni-
tor to her own heart. You must
not suppose from this that she had
taken up the attitude of a victim,
and fancied herself playing at he-
roics. She was too simple and had
too much common sense to do any-
thing of the kind. Her circum-
stances were uncongenial, but she
was not suffering morbidly from
them. She knew, moreover, that
they were of her own creation and
that she had no right to complain.
But rights and feelings do not always
adjust themselves harmoniously.
Our lives are complex; we accept
with glad enthusiasm on one side,
and we repel with fierce antago-
nism on the other ; the fiat of con-
sent goes up from our soul with the
same breath that utters its rebel-
lious anathema. Pearl was satis-
fied to relinquish the external joys
of life, its sweet home happiness,
its personal independence and con-
sideration; but she had not realized
that in surrendering these she was
condemning herself to a moral iso-
lation, which was the hardest sacri-
fice of all. No one knew what her
motive was in cutting herself adrift
from her family, so no one pitied
or praised her for it. She would
have to suffer and get no sympathy;
and, to her ardently sympathetic
Pearl.
nature, there was scarcely any suf-
fering to be compared to this. She
could have gone on discharging
the duties of her self-elected posi-
tion cheerfully, with quiet gentle-
ness, never suggesting the idea of
sacrifice to those around her, and
needing no stimulus of conscious
heroism to sustain her all this she
could have done, if only her heart
had been fed with the sympathy of
that one for whose sake she was
immolating herself. If Polly had
repaid her by a return of the old
tenderness, the sweet sisterly union
that had once made the joy of their
lives so perfect ; if she had let Pearl
see that she guessed some generous
motive in her conduct, how largely
this would have compensated Pearl !
But Polly guessed nothing, and ab-
sence, which Pearl had expected so
much from, was so far only pas-
sive in its effect ; it checked the
growing irritation between the sis-
ters, it averted collisions, but it was
not restoring or revealing anything
to Polly. Nothing seemed to reach
her, nothing moved her. Pearl's
gentle, deprecating silence had gall-
ed instead of soothing her ; she
chafed under the generous love that
would have multiplied itself to fill
up every other void, and cheat her
into forgetting what she had lost
through her own fault.
The magnet has no power to at-
tract some metals, while on other
baser ones it seizes with irresistible
force ; so there are natures on whom
luve, the sovereign magnet, does
not act. It is not that they are the
worst, or even particularly bad;
they have simply no power of re-
sponse in them.
Pearl read her sister's letter over
again, and then cried bitterly. But
the weakness did not last long ; she
wiped her eyes and swallowed the
sobs, and took herself to task for
being so foolish. What was there
to cry for after all ? Her mother
was there, with her great heart full
of mother's welcome waiting for
her the moment she chose to go
home. There was comfort enough
in this to carry her through a few
months' loneliness without behav-
ing like a coward. She went to
the window and threw it open to
let the air blow upon her face, that
was hot with the tears. There was
a lilac-tree in the courtyard, and
the May 'breeze swept its blossoms
and bore the scent to her like a
sweet kiss. The porteur d'eau was
filling his pails ; a bird perched on
the barrel and sang to the silver
rush . of the water; but the rumble
of the street grew louder for a mo-
ment, and drowned the duet be-
tween the two. Pearl stood watch-
ing them until the bird flew away
and the broad-shouldered Auver-
gnat stopped the crystal spout, lift-
ed his pails, and went tramping on
with the water flapping at his heels.
Then she closed the window, and,
turning into the room, saw Captain
Darvallon standing there waiting
for her.
" I startled you," he said, holding
out his hand.
" Yes," said Pearl frankly, and he
saw that her eyes were red ; but she
did not seem abashed or annoyed
by the intrusion. " I never thought
of seeing you here," she said; "I
thought you were in London."
" So I was yesterday. I have
only arrived by the mail that came
in at midday. I have come straight
here from the hotel."
" How did you know that I was
here ?"
Pearl had no sooner said this
than she blushed scarlet ; for it was
a tacit admission that she knew it
was herself, and not Mme. Mere, he
had come to see.
Pearl.
" Leopold told me," replied Dar-
vallon, looking away and drawing
a chair towards her. 4< I had a let-
ter from him yesterday, and he said
you were coming to stay with his
grandmother. How do you get on
with the old lady ?"
" I have not had time to find out
yet, but I dare say we shall get on
very well; she will neither beat nor
bully me. She is a dear old lady."
"In Paris it will do very well ;
but how when you are buried
with her down at Gardanvalle ?
Leopold says you will die of en-
nui."
" Mourir pour mourir one may
as well die of ennui as anything
else." Pearl shrugged her shoulders
and laughed.
"You are tired of life already?"
said Darvallon, with his deep-set,
gray eyes fixed upon her.
" Not the least !" said Pearl ; and
she took up her work, a long strip
of canvas, and unrolled it, and
opened her ivory necessaire.
"Then why do you talk of dy-
ing?"
" It was you who began to talk
of it ; you announced to me, without
so much as a word of preparation
to break the shock, that I was
condemned to die this summer of
a particular disease, and I say that,
all things considered, I like it bet-
ter than small-pox or a railway
collision."
She spoke in a jesting tone, hunt?
ing assiduously for a certain shade
amongst her wools.
" Mademoiselle, would you mind
putting aside those corn-flowers
and talking to me for a few min-
utes?" said M. Darvallon.
Pearl stuck her needle in a moon-
daisy, rolled up the band of canvas,
and folded her hands upon it.
" Now, monsieur, I am all atten-
tion," she said, looking at him
across the work-table with a gleam
of fun in her eyes.
"And so you have carried out
your resolution and are earning
money," said Darvallon. " Hon-
estly/don't you find it very bitter?"
" I have not had time to decide ;
but I don't believe I shall. I don't
mean to pose for la femme incom-
prise, and make miseries for myself
out of mole-hills. Mme. Mere is
very kind, and I intend to be very
happy with her."
"And yet you were crying when
I came in ?"
* Pearl's eyes fell, and the color
rose to her cheeks.
" I am your friend. I have a
right to ask why you are unhappy,"
persisted Darvallon, not in soft, lov-
er-like tones, but with the quiet in-
terest of a friend.
" 1 had just been reading a letter
from home," she replied, and her
under-lip began to quiver till she
bit it angrily.
" Pauvre enfant ! This is what I
foresaw. This is what will be hard
on you : the loneliness, the isolation.
Strangers don't replace kindred ;
kindness can't make up for affec-
tion. There are people who can
dispense with both ; but you you
will starve without them. I would
not say this if the starvation were
a necessity; but I went down to
Broom Hollow before I left, and
from what they all said, especially
Colonel Redacre, I feel convinced
your absence is a greater loss than
any money you can gain will make
up for. I am sure, moreover, that
you exaggerate the need for this
self-sacrifice. Lord Ranperth has
great hopes of getting some literary
work for your father, and this
would make everything easy at
home. Think well what you are
doing while there is yet time.
Consider if you would not do bet-
Pearl
ter to return home instead of going
to Gardanvalle."
Pearl listened without interrupting
him; but when he ceased speaking
she said in a low voice:
"I cannot return home."
"And I must not ask why?"
" No ; you must trust me with-
out knowing. Friendship is built
upon
trust, is it not ?"
" Yes; I will prove it and trust
you, since you cannot trust me."
Her lips parted quickly, as if to
utter an exclamation ; but they
closed again and she said nothing.
"When does Mine Mere leave-
Paris ?" said Darvallon after a pause,
during which Pearl, unable to bear
the oppression of the conscious
silence, again unrolled her scroll
of field flowers and began to work.
"In six weeks or so."
" Leopold has told you, I suppose,
that the Fourth Hussars are expect-
ing to be ordered out to Algiers ?"
" Your regiment !" said Pearl,
dropping her canvas and looking
up with dismay in her eyes.
Something purer than vanity
thrilled through Darvallon as the
involuntary confession escaped her ;
but he did not let her see this.
"Yes, my old regiment. An in-
surrection has broken out near Bli-
diih, and they don't know how far
it may spread ; there will be some
hot work anyhow to put it down, so
the troops are wild to be off. 1
have to make up my mind at once
whether or not I shall cast in my
lot with them ."
"But can you throw 7 up your ap-
pointment ?"
" If I prefer to be sent on active
service I can do so ; if I apply for
it they will reappoint rne to a regi-
ment ; the question is whether I
ought to do so or not."
Now, Pearl was a soldier's daugh-
ter, and she knew enough about
military matters to understand
that, without some exceptional mo-
tive to justify the act, a man would
be voted a lunatic to throw up an
appointment like this for the sake
of going off a-skirmishing with the
Arabs; but she merely remarked :
" A campaign in Africa counts as
extra service, does it not?"
"Yes; it is considered a stroke
of luck to be shipped off there for
a few years ; there is nearly always
some fighting going on, so that one
has a chance of promotion."
" Then, I suppose, diplomacy
will go to the wall," said Pearl, not
daring to look up, but pulling her
thread into a knot. " The fighting
is irresistible, is it not ?"
" It is always tempting to a fight-
ing man ; but there are other con-
siderations that may sometimes
outweigh even that." Then, after
waiting in the faint hope that Pearl
might express some curiosity as to
what these considerations were, he
added : " I don't see my way clearly
to a decision. What do you think
I ought to do, mademoiselle ?"
"You must consult your family
first, I suppose," she replied, closo-
ly counting the stitches in a scar-
let poppy.
"I have no family to consult.
My father and mother both died
while I was a lad at St. Cyr. I
have no near relatives living."
"St. Cyr!" repeated Pearl with
three notes of exclamation; and
then she could have bitten her
tongue, for the astonishment was
an admission of what might seem
offensive.
" Yes, I was educated at the
military school of St. Cyr. You
thought I entered as a soldier?"
" Oh ! no," said Pearl, with a little
start, and blushing the deepest
carnation that ever burned in the
heart of a rose
Pearl*
53
" Yes, you did," said Darvallon,
smiling pitilessly at her distress.
" You heard I was a self-made man,
and naturally concluded that I had
risen from the ranks. And, indeed,
except for the fact of my military
education, the assumption is true.
My father was a working-man, and
I should have been brought up to
follow his calling, no doubt, but for
an accident. He had occasion to
render a service to a marshal of
France, who saw no better way of
evincing his gratitude than by
placing me at school, and after
that sending me to St. Cyr. So
you see, although I started with
my epaulet, I am as genuine a ple-
beian as ever fought his way up
from the ranks."
" If your mother had lived she
would have been proud of you,"
said Pearl, looking up at the ple-
beian speaker with unabashed ad-
miration.
" Ah ! yes. Pauvre mere !"
His eyes grew moist, and he
made no attempt to conceal the
weakness, not feeling it any shame
to his manhood.
11 But she is no longer here to
care whether I go to Africa or
not," he continued presently; " no-
body need care, unless my friends
do. Leopold, of course, would like
me to go, though he protests he
will shoot me for a madman if I
do. What does my other friend
say ?"
He tried to speak in the tone of
placid interrogation that became
a friend consulting a friend ; but
Pearl detected a note in his voice
that set her heart beating. After
a pause that seemed never-ending
to him she said :
"I shall be more lonely when
you are gone."
Darvallon did not trust himself
to answer, but he bent his eyes on
her with a passionate tenderness
that Pearl felt though she did not
see it, for the blush rose steadily to
her neck and brow. He tasted the
sweet triumph in silence, till its in-
tensity grew almost painful. Ris-
ing abruptly, he said :
" I must be going. I have an
appointment with Marshal N
at three. Well, since you are de-
termined to be a worker, we must
be content to let you have your
way. The life you have chosen is
not one of ease, but it will have its
compensations."
"A life of duty always has,"
said Pearl brightly.
"Yes; it is the only life worth
living, for it is a life of effort, and
lofty hopes, and hard-won joys."
There was a ring of triumph in his
voice that sounded to Pearl like
the note of the war-bugle. " Good-
by. I shall see you again before
I leave. '
" For Africa ?"
"For London. I am under
orders to return, am I not?"
Pearl stood smiling, with down-
cast eyes, while the sunbeams
streamed in through the high win-
dow, making a glory of amber light
around her. She looked like one
of Fra Angelico's saints in her
clinging drapery against the golden
background, the flowery scroll rip-
pling to her feet. Captain Darval-
lon thought her - more beautiful
than her sister Polly, or any other
woman his eyes had rested on.
He raised her hand to his lips,
kissed it, and left her without an-
other word.
The soldier's heart beat high as
he stepped forth into the sunshine.
He had no fortune but his sword;
but what of that ? He would be a
match for the churlish dame; he
had a will and a strong right hand,
and he loved a noble woman.
TO BE CONTINUED.
54
CatJiolicity and Pantheism.
CATHOLICITY AND PANTHEISM.*
ON EVIL.
IN our articles under the above
title published some years ago we
endeavored to explain the plan of
the universe independently of the
question of evil. The difficulty of
the subject, the number and diffi-
culty of the questions to be treated,
obliged us to this course. But now
that our readers have the whole
plan of God's external works in its
first stage laid before them, we
may take up the question of evil,
and, after investigating its nature
and its cause, see what new rela-
tions it creates, what new results
it gives rise to, what new modifica-
tions, in fine, it introduces in the
world. We approach a question
which, for its obscurity, for its
depth, for its consequence, is
the very hardest that can occupy
the human mind, and, for its very
close connection with the best in-
terest of man, is of paramount im-
portance to him. Hence we find
that it has always engrossed the at-
tention of man's intellect, from the
rudest and most uncultivated in-
tellect of the savage to that of the
loftiest of the most polished na-
tions of the earth whose natural at-
mosphere was the highest region of
the sublimest metaphysics.
Evil is in man, around him, in
all his relations, as individual, as
a member of the domestic and civil
* The attentive reader will observe that some
opinions expressed in this article differ from those
generally advocated in this Magazine. The learned
writer of the article is well known, and we leave to
him the liberty of arguing according to his own (
convictions upon open questions of theology, and to
the reader the profit and pleasure of perusing and
considering arguments presented with so much
ability. ED. CATH. WORLD.
societies ; it pursues him at every
stage of his life, from the instant
he begins to draw his breath in this
world to the moment when he
yields up his spirit into the hands
of his Creator. Evil threatens man
beyond his grave with all the hor-
ror of a mysterious, most powerful,
and inevitable enemy. All man's
occupation in life consists mainly
in preventing, warding off, freeing
himself from, or in committingevil.
Hence the interest which man has
taken in this great question, though
he has never been able to solve it,
the question being too high, too
deep, too far above his comprehen-
sion ; and his efforts have resulted
in implicating him more and more
in the mazes and intricacies of this
eternal labyrinth. We approach
the question with calm confidence;
for we plunge into this dark and
profound abyss guided by the light
of revelation as explained and de-
veloped by the philosophical ef-
forts of nineteen centuries of
Christian genius.
NATURE OF EVIL ACCORDING TO
PANTHEISM.
In accordance with the system
and method we have pursued in
our preceding articles, we shall at
the outset expound the pantheistic
theory in reference to evil. What
is the nature of evil according to
this system ?
The Infinite in this system, as
our readers will remember, is some-
thing void of, and free from, all de-
terminations and limits whatsoever,
Catholicity and Pantheist*.
55
whether we consider these limits
or determinations in a physical or
metaphysical sense. Hence this
Infinite has no limits either of es-
sence or nature, or existence or
subsistence, or individuality or
personality, no concreteness in any
sense whatever. For if it were
any of these things, essence, nature,
existence, individuality., or person-
ality, it would have some definite-
ness, some limit, and would no
longer be infinite but finite, each
one of those ontological notions
being a kind of limit or the cir-
cumscribing of a being. It is con-
sequently the supreme and abso-
lute indefiniteness, the highest pos-
sible abstraction. Now, this su-
preme and absolute indefiniteness,
which is in no sense circumscribed
and limited by any metaphysical
notions, contains, in some unac-
countable manner, an interior and
necessary impulse to unfold and
develop itself that is, to put on
limits and determinations. So far
we have described the supreme
Unity) as it was called by the Neo-
platonists ; or the Substance, accord-
ing to Spinoza ; or the Me, accord-
ing to Fichte ; or the Universal Iden-
tity, according to Schelling; or the
Idea, according to Hegel ; or Na-
ture, or Society, or Humanity, with
the progressists, socialists, and hu-
manitarians. Multiplicity begins
as soon as this impulse to develop
itself begins to act or to put on
limit. This circumscribing or ex-
trication of the Infinite is of course
progressive, and begins from the
minimum to arise to the maximum
of perfection. The different forms
or limits which it assumes realize
that perfection.
Let the Infinite, therefore, from
all eternity launch forth into this
progressive development. From
the very highest pinnacle of ab-
straction it descends gradually,
to become less and less abstract
until it arrives at reality and con-
creteness, and takes up the form
of existence. -But this existence
is at first of a very imperfect and
inanimate kind matter. Then,
mounting the steps of limitation, it
assumes an organism of the lowest
kind and appears in the vege-
table kingdom. Gradually re-
doubling its efforts and limiting
more and more its organization, it
breaks forth into sensitive life,
and by continued process of efforts
and developments it finally ar-
rives, in man, at the highest form of
life and reaches the goal it aspires
to the consciousness of itself.
But even then the process is grad-
ual and slow, because this life does
not at first manifest itself in the
plenitude of its perfection, but as-
cends step by step from the mini-
mum of intellectual life to the
maximum. Hence in the first'
cycle of the life of humanity pre-
dominate those powers which are
akin to sense, such as the imagina-
tion and fancy, and thus the cra-
dle of humanity is the age of poet-
ry, of legends and myths. Con-
tinuing the march onward, the in-
tellectual faculties begin to obtain
the ascendency and create the age
of philosophy, until humanity, pro-
gressing in this ascending scale, ar-
rives at the plenitude of the con-
sciousness of its own infinity in
Christ, who is nothing else than hu-
manity conscious of its own infi-
nite powers.
But in all these forms which
this Infinite assumes in order to
attain to limitation and perfec-
tion, does it always succeed ? Are
these forms which it endeavors to
cast, to extricate from itself, so
good and perfect as to be so many
steps forward in the march 01 pro-
Catholicity and Pantheism.
gress, or does the Infinite sometimes
fail, and, instead of advancing, go
backward? Here is the problem
of evil in its full force in the sys-
tem of pantheism. Of course the
advocates of this system cannot
deny the existence of the problem ;
for it is evident that there is some-
thing which mankind calls evil both
in the physical and moral world.
All the revolutions and cataclysms,
both in the physical and moral world,
proclaim the fact too loudly to be
denied by any system. Pantheists
are therefore compelled to admit
that the Infinite, in the gradual and
successive development and extri-
cation of itself, sometimes fails, but
that the failure is an absolute neces-
sity of that development, and can-
not be called evil. " Whatever is
first in rank and perfection," says
Spinoza, "becomes that which is
most imperfect to attain that which
is last and most perfect. There is
not, therefore, in the nature of things
either good or evil. All is neces-
sarily as it is."*
Evil, therefore, according to Pan-
theism, is failure in the progressive
movement of the Infinite, caused
by an absolute necessity inherent
in that movement.
We have already in our former
articles refuted all the premises of
pantheism, and might take for
granted the refutation of the con-
sequences of those premises con-
cerning the present question. But
a few remarks bearing directly upon
the point will, we trust, be not al-
together out of place.
To explain a thing scientifically is
to give the cause, the origin, or the
principle of that thing scire rem
per causam. To explain the na-
ture of evil, therefore, it is neces-
sary to study its cause. What is
* Ritter, History of Modern Philosophy, art.
" Spinoza.' 1
the cause, according to pantheism
of that which all mankind calls
evil ? An absolute necessity in-
hering in the movement of the In-
finite, answers pantheism.
Now, this does not resolve the
problem, but leaves it where it was,
because we have a right to ask,
What is the cause of such necessity?
Or, in other words, why is it that
the Infinite, in its gradual assump-
tions of new forms, both physical
and moral, must oftentimes neces-
sarily fail ? Pantheism cannot give
any other reason but an inherent
necessity. Now, to show the ab-
surdity of such an answer, let us
inquire into the metaphysical rea-
son of the failure of a necessary
cause. How can a cause acting by
necessity fail in the production of
its effects? We can see no possi-
bility of such a failure, except in one
of these two cases: ist, either the
cause which is supposed necessary
is not sufficient to produce its ef-
fect, or, 2d, we must suppose the
interference of another agent neu-
tralizing the action of the cause.
In no other supposition is a failure
metaphysically possible.
For, in the first case, to suppose
a cause failing in the production of
its effect, for which it is fully ade-
quate and sufficient, and which it
must necessarily produce, is to sup-
pose the cause sufficient and neces-
sary in one breath, and to deny
those two attributes in another
breath ; it is to say yes and no of
the same thing, at the same time,
under the same circumstances.
If it, the cause, is necessary, h
must and cannot fail to act; if it is
sufficient, it is. fully adequate for
the effect ; how, then, can it fail ?
A free cause might be unwilling to
employ all its power, an insufficient
cause would not be able to produce
the effect, and in both cases the
Catholicity and Pantheism.
57
failure would be intelligible, but not
otherwise.
In the second supposition the
failure might be possible. A neces-
sary, sufficient cause might act, but
another agent might neutralize the
action of the cause, and cause the
effect to fail.
Applying now these evident prin-
ciples to the subject, it is plain
how absurd is the answer of pan-
theism to the problem of evil. In
the first place, the Infinite cannot
fail in the gradual development of
itself because of the supposition of
another agent counteracting its ac-
tion, since in that system no other
agent is admissible but the Infinite.
In the second place, the Infinite
being a necessary agent and suffi-
cient cause, because infinite, the
effect must necessarily follow, and
no possible failure can be conceiv-
ed. What, then, becomes of evil
in the pantheistic system ? The
same result, as the reader may have
remarked, is obtained here which
we elsewhere found to have fol-
lowed from pantheistic solutions of
the problems of the human mind.
The solution renders the terms of
the problem incompatible. A ne-
cessary and sufficient cause, be-
cause not free to withhold its ac-
tion, and because fully adequate,
must necessarily obtain its effect.
Consequently, in the supposition of
a necessary, infinite cause, the first
term of the problem evil or failure
is impossible. Evil, then, is swept
away by the first term of the prob-
lem. Failure, on the other hand,
necessarily implies defect and limi-
tation in the agent when by sup-
position, as in the present case, no
alien agent is called to interfere
and to neutralize its power. Con-
sequently, if evil exists it cannot
originate in an infinite and neces-
sary cause ; hence the other term
swept away in the pantheistic prob-
lem the Infinite. If the Infinite
alone exists evil is impossible ; if
evil exists it cannot come from the
Infinite, and pantheists must either
give up the problem altogether or
admit the solution of the Catholic
Church, that evil originates in a
finite, free cause.
CATHOLIC SOLUTION OF THE PROB-
LEM OF THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.
The Catholic Church teaches
that evil originates in a cause
which is both finite and free, two
necessary elements which render
evil possible.
We prove this statement as fol-
lows : A necessary cause, though
finite, and consequently limited
and circumscribed as to the pro-
duction of effects enclosed within a
certain sphere, cannot fail in pro-
ducing its effect. For suppose the
effect to require ten degrees of
power and activity; and suppose, fur-
ther, that the cause possesses them,
and is not free either to employ or
not employ them, but must necessa-
rily act and employ those ten degrees
of energy; it is evident that the
effect must follow and that failure
is impossible. For whence could
the failure arise ? So much power
is required, so much power is at
hand and is necessarily employed ;
how, then, could the effect fail?
The supposition of an alien agent
neutralizing the power of the cause
would not affect our argument, be-
cause in such a case sufficient pow-
er is not employed to cause the
effect when the original power of
the cause is neutralized and coun-
teracted by another cause. A ne-
cessary, finite cause cannot possi-
bly fail in its action, and to explain
the problem and the existence of
evil or failure, or whatever panthe-
Catholicity and Pantheism.
ists may be pleased to call it, we
must admit that it arises from a
finite, free cause the solution of
the Catholic Church.
But, the better to illustrate and
strengthen this solution, we will
give the doctrine of Catholic phi-
losophy about the nature of evil
with as much accuracy as we are
capable of. There is an essential
difference between these three on-
tological ideas, which are common-
ly confounded : negation, limitation,
and privation. The first merely
conveys the idea of the absence of
being. It is founded on a logical
relation : supposing a being to ex-
ist, and then supposing it not to
exist, we form the idea of negation.
Limitation implies the absence of a
further perfection in a being not
necessary either to its nature or es-
sential attributes. In other words,
limitation excludes the fulness of
being and action fulness which is
not required by the very essence
and nature of the being. Priva-
tion conveys the absence of a per-
fection in a being necessary either
to the nature, attributes, or pro-
perties of the being. Thus, blind-
ness in man conveys the idea of
the absence of a perfection which
ought to be found in man, and
hence involves the idea of pri-
vation.
Evil, in its strictest metaphysical
acceptation, is nothing but priva-
tion, or the absence of a perfection
necessary to a being or to the act of
a being; and by the term act we
mean to include whatever modifica-
tion may affect or take place in a be-
ing. That such is the idea which
all mankind has formed of evil is
a fact so well established as to be
beyond dispute. That man should
be without the power of flying like
the feathered tribes, or that he
should not be a pure spirit like the
angels, are things which imply the
absence of some perfection, but
an absence of which no man ever
complained or regretted, and much
less called evil, without being laugh-
ed at by the common sense of man-
kind ; because those things, though
perfections, are not at all necessary
to the nature, attributes, or proper-
ties of man, and he cannot consider
them as a privation or evil. Again,
that man is not almighty, all-wise,
all-good was never thought to be
an evil, because man, being a crea-
ture, is necessarily finite and limit-
ed, and cannot count the absence
of the fulness of being which those
things imply as a privation or evil.
But all mankind calls evil sickness,
the loss of a limb, of personal liber-
ty, the impairing of the intellectual
faculties, the absence of moral rec-
titude, because all these things are
necessary to man's nature, attri-
butes, and properties. They ought
to be found in him.*
The foregoing remarks illustrate
that distinction of evil made by
philosophers into metaphysical,
physical, and moral. By metaphy-
sical evil they mean that necessary
limitation which is natural to con-
tingent beings, and which, as we
have just said, is not, strictly
speaking, evil, but is called so in a
wide sense and because it is the
necessary foundation of the other
two.
Physical evil is the absence of a
perfection which a substance or its
faculties ought to have.
Moral evil is the absence of a
perfection necessary to the action
of a moral agent. These two last
kinds are strictly called evil, be-
cause they truly imply a privation
of a thing which ought to be in a
substance or in its acts.
" Privatio est eius quod quis natus est habere et
debet habere " (St. Thomas).
Catholicity arid Pantheism.
59
But to have a perfect idea of the
essence of evil it is necessary to
distinguish its material and its for-
mal being. The material being of
evil is that something really exist-
ing which is the foundation of its
formal being. In evil there must
be something real, something actu-
ally existing as a foundation, so to
speak, for its formal being ; because
if there was nothing real or posi-
tive in evil it would be a mere ne-
gation and no evil at all:
The formal constituent of evil is
that which really makes it evil.
For instance, a man is killed by
poison ; this is an evil, but in this
evil there is something positive
the action of the person who ad-
ministers the poison, the action of
the poison upon the body, the
change produced in the body in
consequence of the action of the
poison, and so forth. Now, every
one of these elements is something
real, actual, positive, and consti-
tutes what we have called the ma-
terial being of evil.
What is, therefore, that which
makes it evil? The absence of
the organic and natural state of
the body, which causes death, pro-
duced by the action of the poison
upon the body. It consists essen-
tially in the privation of that or-
ganic state which is natural to the
well-being of the body, and without
which it cannot live. And to make
the reader understand wherein, pro-
perly speaking, lies the evil in the
case, let him suppose the murdered
man to be seen by an animal which
cannot compare the organic state
of an animal body with that of a
body in dissolution and decay.
What is it that the animal could
see in that body? Nothing but
being or reality ; nothing frc.c what
exists. T. could see nothing want-
ing or amiss. But why is it that
man can see evil in it ? Because
he compares the organic and natu-
ral state in which the body ought to
be with the absence of it in the
body before him, and proclaims
evil. He can see the privation.
The material being of evil, or that
which is positive and real in evil, is
always good, because these two
terms are ontologically identical,
differing from each other only by a
logical relation.
We conclude, then, that evil is
the absence of a perfection which
ought to be found in a substance,
its faculties, or its acts ; that in
evil there is a double element the
one, positive element, that some-
thing really existing which forms
the substratum of the negative ele-
ment ; and the latter, in which the
formal essence of evil consists, and
which is the absence of a perfec-
tion necessary to a being, its facul-
ties, or its acts.
Having thus briefly explained
the nature of evil, we enter upon
the inquiry, What can be the cause
of evil? And we answer: It must
be a finite, intelligent, free cause
intelligent, because evil consists es-
sentially in a relation, being the ab-
sence of something which ought
to be. To cause, therefore, such an
absence an activity is required
which can perceive the relation
existing between a substance, its
faculties, and its acts, each withjts
natural perfections. Now, only an
intelligent being can perceive rela-
tions; consequently an intelligent
being alone can be the cause of
evil.
The better to perceive this con-
sequence, let the reader analyze the
cause of good. Good, objectively
considered, is being or reality.
Whence is it that mere reality be-
comes good ? When that reality
becomes the object of a tendency
Catholicity and Pantheism.
which it can satisfy and bring to
perfection. It is evident, therefore,
that good in its formal essence lies
in a relation the relation of an
object with a faculty which it can
bring to perfection. The formal
cause of good cannot be anything
else but an intelligence perceiving
the relation.
What we have said of good may,
in a contrary sense, be said of evil.
Evil consists in the absence of a
certain perfection to which a facul-
ty or an act really tends, and hence
that alone can cause it which can
perceive the faculty or the act, the
perfection to which they tend, and
the relation between them.
It follows from this that no be-
ing which is not intelligent can be
the real and formal cause of evil.
An unintelligent being can only be
the material cause of evil.
In the second place, the real
cause of evil must necessarily be
finite and contingent, because an in-
finite cause could never fail either
in activity or in causing the effect
to correspond with its type ; in
other words, it could not fail
either as efficient or typical cause
not as efficient cause, since an in-
finite cause is essentially an infi-
nite activity, actuality itself, and as
such it .must necessarily attain its
effect.
Again, in an infinite cause, as St.
Thomas elegantly explains, there is
no distinction between its activity
and its ideality, but both are es-
sentially identical and only dis-
tinguished by a mental distinc-
tion of our own making. So
that in an infinite cause the ac-
tivity which produces the effect,
the plan or type which delineates
its nature and perfections, are one
and the same thing, and both, being
infinite, can never fail in producing
the effect in the reality with all
the perfection which it has in the
idea. But the case is entirely dif-
ferent as to finite causes. The
activity of the latter is limited with-
in a certain sphere, and that ac-
tivity, even in its own sphere, is not
identical with the type, the rule, of
the perfection of the thing to be
effected. Hence a failure is abso-
lutely possible, because the activity
not being identical with the rule of
the perfection of the object to be
effected, it is possible that it may
depart from it and fail. An ex-
ample of St. Thomas will illustrate
our meaning. To make the plan
of a building absolutely perfect
three things are required the ac-
tivity of the architect, the mathe-
matical rules of architecture, the
application of those rules to the
building. Now, if the activity of
the architect were identical in na-
ture with the mathematical rules
of architecture, it would follow that
the architect's activity would be
itself the rules, and consequently
when applied would act according
to those rules, and no failure in such
a case could be possible. But be-
cause the case stands quite con-
trary a failure may occur in a plan
drawn by the very best artist.
Again, suppose a moral agent.
If the supreme principle of moral-
ity were identical with the faculty
and the act of a moral agent, it
would follow as a necessary conse-
quence that his action would not
only be moral but morality itself;
and consequently, by the principle
of contradiction, no possible failure
or sin could occur, in the act of
such an agent, just as it is the
case in the infinite. But because
those things are necessarily dis-
tinct as to the finite, the one being
universal, eternal, and objective,
and independent of the finite, the
latter being particular and subjec-
Catholicity and Pantheism.
61
live, a failure may and will occur
in the acts of the same.
Yet the failure requires another
element to be possible that is, free-
dom of will. As we have above said,
a finite, necessary cause, though
limited in its sphere of action, yet
when acting within that sphere, and
acting necessarily, can never fail by
the very force of the supposition.
It may be interfered with by a for-
eign agent, but, so far as itself is
concerned, it employs its amount of
action by necessity of its nature, and
the effect must necessarily follow.
A necessary, finite cause cannot
fail. In order, therefore, to render
the failure possible, a cause is re-
quired which can perceive the rela-
tion between an act and its per-
fection, and which may be able to
give its act that proper direction
which will lead it to perfection,
and at the same time choose to
give that act a wrong direction
because free.
It follows from all we have said
that a finite person alone can be
the real efficient cause of evil. Be-
cause evil implies three elements :
It is, ist, a relation, and consequent-
ly it requires for its cause an intelli-
gence able to perceive that relation,
ad. It implies the absence of the
plenitude of being and activity, and
therefore it seeks the cause to be
finite. It demands, finally, a cause
which is not necessarily bound to
act, to act thus and not otherwise,
but a cause which is master of the
use, and of the kind of use, it may
make of its activity in a word, a
free cause.
It follows, again, that God cannot
be the cause of evil, because his
activity and the transcendental rule
of his actions are identical and in-
finite. He can be said to be the
cause of the material being of evil
that element in evil which is
really existing and positive but ns
to its formal element he is cause in
no other sense, except inasmuch as
he does not interfere in preventing
it, but allows it to be caused by
the free actions of his creatures ;
because he cannot prevent the ne-
cessary limitation of their being,
nor take from them the liberty with
which they are endowed.
Leibnitz illustrates this conclu-
sion by a beautiful comparison,
which we shall quote : " The cele-
brated Kepler, and after him Des-
cartes, have spoken of the natural
inertia of bodies; it is something
which may be considered as a per-
fect image of the original limitation
of creatures, to show that priva-
tion constitutes the formal part of
the imperfection which may be
found in a substance or its action.
Let us suppose that the current of
the same river carries along several
vessels which do not differ from each
other except in their cargoes some
being laden with wood, others with
stone ; some carrying more, some
less. Such being the case, it will
happen that the vessels which are
more heavily laden will go more
slowly than others always suppos-
ing that neither wind nor oars nor
any other similar means hasten
them on. It is not, properly speak-
ing, the weight which is the cause
of the slowness, because the ves-
sels descend instead of ascending;
but it is the same cause which in-
creases the weight in bodies which
have more density that is, which
are less spongy and more charged
with matter proper to them ; be-
cause that matter which passes
through the pores, not receiving the
same movement, cannot be taken
into account. The cause, there-
fore, is that matter is naturally in-
clined to slowness or privation of
velocity, not in order to diminish
62
Catholicity and Pantheism.
it by itself for that would imply ac-
tion but in order to diminish by
its receptivity the effect of the im-
pression when it has to receive it.
And consequently, because there is
more matter put in motion by the
force of the current when the vessel
is more heavily charged, it is neces-
sary that it should go more slowly.
Let us now compare the force which
the current exercises upon the ves-
sels, and which it communicates
to them, with the action of God
which produces and preserves what-
ever is positive in creatures and
gives them the perfection of being
and force let us, I say, com-
pare the inertia of matter with the
natural imperfection of creatures
and the slowness of the vessel
charged with the defect which is
found in the quality and action
of creatures, and we shall find that
there is nothing more appropriate
than this comparison. The cur-
-rent is the cause of the movement
of the vessel, but not of its slow-
ness. God is the cause of the per-
fection in the nature and in the
action of his creatures, but the
limitation of the receptivity of
creatures is the cause of the de-
fects which, may exist in their ac-
tion. Hence the Platonists, St.
Augustine, and the Schoolmen were
right in saying that God is the
cause of the material element of
evil, which consists in something
positive, but not of the formal ele-
ment, which consists in a privation,
as one may say that the current is
the cause of the material element
of slowness without being the
cause of its formal element that
is, the cause of the velocity of the
vessel without being the cause of
the limits of that velocity." *
It follows, finally, that a physical
agent cannot, properly speaking, be
* Leibnitz, Theodicte^ part i. par. 30.
called the cause of evil, because, as
we have shown, evil consists in a re-
lation ; and to be, in the strict sense
of the word, the cause of evil, it would
require an agent capable of perceiv-
ing that relation. Hence evil exists
only for finite personalities as pas-
sive subjects or agents of it. Thus,
if a stone falling on my foot should
lame me for life, assuredly such
an accident would be an evil for
me ; but I could not, with propriety
of language, call the stone the effi-
cient cause of that evil, because
all that the stone has effected is
something real and positive ; that
which makes it evil for me is the
discrepancy which that something
positive has with my well-being
a relation which the stone can
never perceive.
Again, everything hurtful to sen-
sitive beings affects them painfully,
of course ; but they cannot attach
to that painful sensation the idea
of evil, because they cannot detect
the relation between that some-
thing positive which hurts them and
the injurious or unpleasant effect
of which they are sensible. ' Finally,
we must remark that, although we
are absolutely certain that a finite
person alone can be the cause. of
evil, yet we can only partially un-
derstand how he can determine to
choose it. Not being infinite actu-
ality, the plenitude of force and
energy, but only limited and contin-
gent, more akin to not being than to
being, it follows that it is absolutely
possible for him to fail in acting in
such a manner as to give the whole
perfection to his own act or to
give it its right perfection. Now,
whatever is absolutely possible may
sometimes really come to pass ; and
hence evil. But it is beyond the
reach of the human intelligence or
capacity to explain the psycholo-
gical genesis and the internal, sub-
To St. Matthew leaving his Money to follow Jews.
jective history of that process by
which a finite, intelligent, free agent
comes to the determination of
choosing evil. It must be ranked
among the many profound myste-
ries which surround our souls and
their acts.*
Why does God permit evil ?
We have already pointed out the
two great reasons why God permits
evil. The first is the necessary
limitation of his creatures, which
establishes the possibility of evil,
and which limitation God could
not remove without contradiction.
The second is the free-will with
which he has endowed them, and
of which he cannot deprive them
without changing their nature and
essential attributes. Consequent-
ly, if the limitation of their nature
renders evil possible, if their free
activity renders it actual, God can,
without contradicting any of his
attributes, permit it, and the human
mind can have no reason against
that permission. Let the human
mind show that the permission
* See Rossely de Lorgues, La Morte anterieure
aliHomme.
of evil consequent on the natural
limitation and free agency of crea-
tures is in direct opposition to any
of God's attributes, and then, in-
deed, it could object to the per-
mission of evil. But human rea-
son has never and will never be
able to do that. Thousands upon
thousands of sophistries have been
brought forward to show such con-
tradiction, but all these are mere
cobwebs, spun out of weak brains,
which the slightest touch can
break. The creature is limited,
and God could not make it other-
wise ; rational creatures are free,
and God cannot deprive them of
that essential attribute of their in-
tellectual nature which, apprehend-
ing the universal, can yet allow it-
self to be attracted by the particular
and individual. These two things
will sometimes result in evil, and
how can God be made accountable
for it ?
There is one real objection
which can be raised in this great
question of evil. This we shall
examine in a future article.
TO ST. MATTHEW LEAVING HIS MONEY TO FOLLOW
JESUS.
"Whose image and inscription is this?" ST. MATT. xxii. 20.
11 He is the image of the invisible God." COL. i. 15.
THY trade, O Levi ! was well learnt, I trow,
And -served thee better than the Rabbin's lore
Thus speedily the One True Coin to know
Impressed from Virgin mould. Yet heart served more
Than wit. Love gains by loss; and, losing all,
Doth all things win. Lost is thy money-stall
And hoarded coins. For stall hast gained a throne :
For coins all wealth in One whose worth is known
By image and inscription both divine.
Enough : give Caesar his. Heaven's wealth is thine !
Osimo.
OSIMO.*
EVERY one who, like Mr. Boffin,
has undertaken in some literary
mood to "Decline and Fall-off"
the Roman Empire according to
Gibbon, and thereby become in-
terested in the fortunes of that
great military leader whom the
bold Mr. Wegg unflinchingly "col-
lars and throws " under the some-
what Britannic name of Bully Saw-
yers, will remember that this hero,
perhaps better known to fame and
easier of identification as Belisa-
rius, nearly lost his life at the siege
of Osimo by an arrow discharged
from the walls that would have in-
evitably slain him had not the mor-
tal blow been intercepted by one
of his devoted guards, who thereby
lost his hand. A reader of this
classical turn of mind will not fail
to look for so historic a place on
his map, but he may not carry his
love of research quite- so far as we
did one soft, spring-like day in
February, 1877, when we set out
from Loreto to visit Osimo in com-
pany with the English gen'tleman
who has so ably abridged Father
Bambozzi's life from the more
diffuse Italian work, but who,
modest as he is accomplished, has
chosen to conceal his name under
the designation of " a lay tertiary
of St. Francis." From prolonged
Fesidence in Italy he was familiar
with all this region, and therefore
an invaluable companion. We must
confess, however, that it was not
with any intention of ".looking into
the affairs of Bully Sawyers " we
* Life of Father Benvenuto Bambozzi^ some-
time Master of Novices of the Conventual Friars
Minor at Osimo. Abridged from the Italian by a
lay tertiary of St. Francis. London: R. Wash-
bourne. 1879.
undertook the excursion, or, indeed,
out of any classical interest what-
ever in the to\vn of Osimo, though
it is a place of high antiquity,
known before Christ under the
name of Auximum, and spoken of
by Lucan as
11 Admotse pulsarunt Auximon alae."
It was not, therefore, with any
preoccupation of mind with re-
gard to the uncertainties besetting
the Roman Empire that we drove
down from the sacred heights of
Loreto into the lovely valley be-
neath. At our right lay the blue
Adriatic, which the cliff of Ancona
partially intercepted. To the north
and south the receding hills revealed
a country at once beautiful and fer-
tile, while in the west rose the im-
posing Apennines, clothed in a light
gauzy mist, now violet, now rose,
or gray or golden, but always like
the veil to some enchanted land.
We crossed the fatal battle-field of
Castelfidardo, where so many mod-
ern crusaders gloriously fell in the
service of the Church, and before
long struck into the rich valley of
the Musano, with a low ridge of
hills on one side covered with vines
and olives. In an hour or so
Osimo and its towers appeared,
picturesque on its steep hill nearly
a thousand feet above the sea, well
fitted to stand out stoutly against
the enemy. It is in the March of
Ancona, about six miles from the
Adriatic, near the old Flaminian
Way. It still retains a part of the
ancient Roman wall which Beli-
sarius, or his guard, had so much
reason to remember. In these old
places the past and the present lie
Osimo.
in such close juxtaposition that
time is annihilated. A thousand
years seem but as a day. It was a
strong sense of this that now
caused a little confusion between
the ancient and modern in our
mind, so that we began to feel
somewhat alarmed as to the affairs
of our hero of the Britannic name,
and wonder if the weather was go-
ing to be favorable for the impend-
ing expedition against the Persians !
But we quickly rallied from the
weakness of "Declining and Fall-
ing" to such a degree, and began
to attune our minds to the more
modern and more glorious recol-
lections of the place, in honor of
which we had .undertaken the pil-
grimage. Osimo is now more fa-
mous at least in the Christian
world for the tomb of the wonder-
working St. Joseph of Copertino
than for any classical associations,
and is probably destined to acquire
additional renown from the saintly
Father Benvenuto Bambozzi, the
preliminary steps of whose "cause,"
with a view to his canonization,
were taken by Mgr. Seri-Molini,
Bishop of Osimo, in September,
1877. Both of these holy men be-
longed to the order of St. Francis,
and ended their days in the con-
vent of the Minor Conventuals of
this place. We drove directly to
the convent, where, thanks to the
merit of our companion, we were
most cordially received by the guar-
dian, formerly a novice of Father
Benvenuto's, and now the postula-
tor of his " cause." There were
but a few friars left in the house,
the community having been sup-
pressed some years previously by the
Sardinian government, and the for-
lorn aspect of the deserted convent
was melancholy to the last degree.
The cheerful endurance of those
who were left, under the heavy
VOL. xxix. 5
hand of the powers that be, was no
less touching. As an example of
this spirit we quote the following
passage from our author :
"When I visited the shrine of St. Jo-
seph of Copertino, nearly two years ago,
I found only one lay brother in the con-
vent opposite, doing the whole house-
work and waiting on three priests, one
cleric, and myself as a guest. This good
lay brother, Fra' Pippo, . . . though well-
nigh threescore and ten years weigh on
his head, is as lithe and quick about his
work as he is ready with an answer.
When there is bread to knead or maca-
roni to prepare, he gets up some three
or four hours after midnight ; at other
times he rises at five o'clock in the morn-
ing. This same Fra' Pippo was impri-
soned and exiled to Elba (!) on the false
charge of persuading a young friar not
to enlist in the model Italian army. He,
however, drove his keepers desperate
by his cheerful ways and ready wit, for
he would say : ' I have to be very thank-
ful to this new government. Per Bacco !
when I was a friar in the Pope's time I
never went beyond the kitchen and the
church, and now I am travelling about
scot-free and seeing the big world with-
out having any work to do.' He was
later on confined fn Ancona, but as he
drove the ruffians with whom he was
pent up mad by his holy and cheerful
resignation, he was let off civ ap, and
went back to his kitchen and church
among his own brethren, and there I
found him, a perfect example of the hal-
lowing influence which true religion can
work, even on a Neapolitan peasant."
We were received in the snug
library, packed full of ponderous
tomes bound in parchment, delight-
ful to the eye, and from there we
went to the studio where the fa-
ther guardian, who is something of
a sculptor, finds his chief recrea-
tion in modelling. But the princi-
pal points of interest were the tomb
of St. Joseph of Copertino and the
cell he occupied during the last
years of his life. The latter is now
an oratory, and in the adjoining
room are a thousand objects asso-
ciated with his memory and care-
66
Osii/tc.
fully preserved as relics. The tomb
is in a vast church full of gloom.
We visited it at midday, when it is
for an hour or two closed to the
public. It should be seen on the
festival of the saint, when it is hung
with brilliant draperies and lit up
with countless lights. Then it is
thronged by the inhabitants, who
at night illuminate their houses
and have fireworks on. the principal
square. They look on St. Joseph
as their great protector. When
Ancona was smitten with the cho-
lera in 1865, the whole town of
Osimo was in consternation. The
shrine was opened and the body of
the saint exposed. In spite of an
attempt on the part of the civil au-
thorities to prevent all such assem-
blies, as tending to increase the
panic, and thereby the danger of
disease, the basilica was crowded
all day long by people of every
rank. Moans, sighs, and the sound
of weeping rose from the throng
gathered around the glorious shrine,
and many were seen praying who
at other times seldom set foot in
God's house.
We had already come upon the
traces of this great saint in the
sagro convento at Assisi where he
spent thirteen years. His cell
there is still shown with honor.
St. Joseph was born at Copertino, in
the kingdom of Naples, in 1603,
and, like St. Francis and several
other saints, in a stable where his
mother had taken refuge from her
husband's creditors. He entered a
house of the Minor Conventuals at
the age of eighteen, and from the
first led a life which was one con-
tinued miracle. The animal world,
and indeed all nature, seemed sub-
ject to him, as they were to St.
Francis. And he was as much en-
amored of Poverty as that great
patriarch, who chose her as his
bride. When he and his compan-
ion entered Rome they had but
one small piece of silver between
them. This he left on the boundary,
that, as he said, he might enter the
holy city poor and humble as St.
Francis. When he arrived at As-
sisi, and first saw the church, glo-
rious as Christian art could make
it, that had been built over the
tomb of that gl arioso p over ell o di
Christo, he fell prostrate before the
altar and cried out in 'his astonish-
ment : " How is it, holy father,
that you, who during your life so
loved the Lady Poverty, are now
in the midst of gold and brocade,
and your church so sumptuously
decorated?" But an interior voice
at once replied that all this pomp
was not for St. Francis, who lay be-
neath the ground in obscurity and
humility,* but in honor of the Di-
vine Presence on the altar.
Though poor by birth, and what .
might be called illiterate, so great
was St. Joseph's gift of wisdom
and infused light that princes and
dignitaries came to take counsel of
him. That venerable servant of
God, Mary, Infanta of Savoy,
daughter of King Charles Ema-
nuel, took up her residence at Pe-
rugia for several months, that she
might have the privilege of fre-
quently consulting him. Prince
Casimir of Poland, whom the pope
had dispensed from his ecclesiasti-
cal obligations after he had become
a Jesuit and been made a cardinal,
in consequence of the urgent de-
mands of the Poles to have him
for their king after the death of his
brother, Ladislas IV. who left no
posterity fearing God might be
displeased at this change of life,
went to Assisi to obtain the opinion
of St. Joseph. " Is it with the car-
* The body of St. Francis had not then been
exhumed.
Osimo.
dinal's hat, or the sword, I am call-
ed to serve the Divine Majesty?"
he asked. " With the sword," un-
hesitatingly replied the saint. He
was right. Casimir strengthened
the kingdom of Poland, and bene-
fited all Christendom by his vic-
tories over the Turks. But, whether
in camp or at court, he always
found time to keep up a corre-
spondence with the saint. The
Spanish ambassador went to con-
sult St. Joseph, and was so satisfied
with the interview that he wished
his wife to have the same privilege ;
but when she saw the saint borne
across the church over her head
on the wings of ecstasy she faint-
ed with terror. The pope finally
sent St. Joseph to Osimo, to with-
draw him from the pious importu-
nity of the world, and here he died
in 1663.
About the middle of September,
1861, Prince Umberto (now king)
and his brother Amadeo stopped at
Osimo on their way to the battle-
field of Castelfidardo. As soon as
the Minor Conventuals heard they
were to show the princes over the
basilica of St. Joseph of Copertino,
they ventured to hope their con-
vent would be spared, especially in
view of the relations of Donna
Maria of Savoy with the saint.
But Father Bambozzi quickly sup-
pressed their joy with the words :
" Cursed is he who putteth his
trust in princes !" It was after-
wards found that the decree for the
suppression of the convent was
dated the very day the princes vis-
ited Osimo. The expulsion of the
friars took place the following De-
cember.
Father Benvenuto Bambozzi is
another instance of an Italian pea-
sant's rising to a sublime degree of
sanctity by the practice of the low-
ly virtues. We first heard of him
at Rome, but it was at Osimo we
conceived a genuine veneration for
his character, which has only been
increased by the life before us.
We remember visiting the humble
cell where he died, seeing his in-
struments of penance, and praying
at his tomb in the public cemetery,
which, though he had not been
dead three years, had more than
once required important repairs, in
consequence of the people's carry-
ing away portions of it as relics.
Father Bambozzi was born on
the 22d of March, 1809, in the ter-
ritory of Osimo, and the following
day received in holy baptism the
name of Benvenuto Leopardo, in
memory of the two first apostles of
this region St. Leopardo being
the first bishop of Osimo, and St.
Benvenuto the second. From his
childhood he seemed predestined to
a life of special sanctity. When his
mother wished to send him to school
he begged to be let off, because, as
he said, he "wished to keep good all
his life." But when he found his
brother Giuseppe* was learning to
read without any visible change for
the worse, he acquiesced in his mo-
ther's wishes and regularly attend-
ed school, without,- however, neg-
lecting his work at home. But it
was not till some years later, when
hebegantofeeladecidedinclination
towards the monastic life, that he
seriously applied himself to study
at the college of Osimo, that he
might be fitted to enter among the
Minor Conventual friars. A wretch-
ed garret, poorly lighted and scan-
tily furnished, constituted his stu-
dent's quarters. His meals were
of the coarsest fare, and his dress
that of a peasant of those days.
One can hardly wonder that the
town scholars, seeing this country
* This brother afterwards became a lay brother
among the Oratorians at Sant' Elpidio-al-Mare. \
68
Osimo.
lad in his short, tight breeches, an
outgrown smock frock, and a pea-
sant's cap of mottled wool, from
which hung a tassel that continual-
ly dangled from shoulder to shoul-
der, with his school-books under
his arm, and one or two pieces of
brown bread peering out of his
pocket, should make him an object
of raillery. And when one day he
was introduced to the novices he
was soon to join, in spite of their
religious training they could
scarcely refrain from laughing at
his ridiculous dress and rustic
bearing. This did not escape the
keen eye of their master, who after-
wards rebuked them, saying they
little knew what a beautiful nature
lay hidden under such a rude ex-
terior.
Benvenuto had a most exalted
idea of the monastic life. In after-
times he was often heard to say :
" We shall never properly under-
stand on earth how great is the gift
of a religious calling; we shall only
know in Paradise." "After the
grace of being born in the Catholic
Church, the most special grace of
God is to be called to religion."
Accordingly, it was for him one of
the happiest days of his life when,
at the age of twenty-two, he passed
his examination before Father Bar-
tolini, of distinguished memory,
and was received into the order of
St. Francis. His religious clothing
took place December 3, 1832, at
the hands of the late Father Francis
Ventura, after which the guardian
of the convent handed 'him over to
the master of novices for his year
of probation. During this year no
profane studies are allowed. The
entire period is spent in acquiring
a knowledge of the spirit and prac-
tices of the order, laying the founda-
tion of the interior life, and taking
part in the religious exercises of
the community. How seriously
this young peasant applied himself
to acquire the spirit of his calling
may be seen from a few extracts
taken here and there from his note-
book, begun shortly after his en-
trance into religion :
" I will always remember that my aim
is to become holy. I will constantly en-
deavor to do all things with a view of
pleasing God and not mysef. I will al-
ways live in the holy feurof God. striving
to shun every deliberate venial sin and
to fulfil my duties to the best of my abil-
ity. I will often call to mind that, being
a religious, I am a victim destined to be
consumed on the altar of Jesus Christ. I
will bear my cross, whatever it be, and
follow in his footsteps without murmur-
ing knowing that whatever befalls me,
either from the world, the flesh, or the
devil, great as the evil may be, is still
permitted by God for mv good. There-
fore I will endure everything in silence,
and conform myself to the divine Will.
I will bear in mind that I must deny my-
self inwardly, and hence must daily re-
joice, even to the end of my life, when
my wishes are thwarted in :my wav. I
wish to have charity for all, however
wicked any particular individual may be,
since it is my bounden duty to look
upon everybody as God's creature.
Should the Almighty ever grant me the
grace to preach, I will do so in a way
that shall have for its first object the
good of the poor and ignorant masses,
avoiding all attempt at oratory and de-
sire of praise. If I am not called upon
to preach from the pulpit, I will never-
theless strive to preach every moment of
my life by the force of a good example,
by often speaking of God, the eternal
truths and the claims which Jesus has
on our love. Should I even be the means
of converting the whole world, I will
still look upon myself as a useless ser-
vant. The greatest of all mi -cries would
be not to be able to look upon myself as
the chief of sinners. I will pray with
fervor for the ministers of ti:e church,
that the world may be renewed through
the holiness of their lives. I will, more-
over, weep for their sins, which above
all others pierce through our Redeem-
er's Heart. I will often renew my vows,
bearing in mind that they are the wings
with which I must rise to holiness. I
Osimo.
will take Obedience for my device, and
will, whenever I can, anticipate my su-
perior's commands. Chastity, that mak-
eth us like unto the angels, that raiseth
us to th-j knowledge of heavenly things
and bindeth us closely to Jesus Christ,
the Spouse of souls, will I make my cho-
sen virtue. I will at all times chastise
my body and hold the strictest watch
over my eyes, denying them even lawful
if nee iless, gratification, that I may the
more easily restrain them in clearly for-
bidden cases. I will mortify the sense
of smell. I will delight in putting up
with any inconvenience in this respect,
especially when tending the sick, the
aged, the poor, or fulfilling any other
distasteful duty set before me. Since
necessity compels me to take food, I will
direct this act to God, begging his grace,
so that It may not lead me into sin. I
will deny myself in s >me way, however
slight, with regard to my food, at every
meal, and be satisfied w.th whatever is
set before me, refraining from choosing
my portion in any way. In order to keep
the Franciscan rule of Poverty, I will
look upon everything I use as given me
in charity. I will gladly wear the coars-
est clothing, using only what is abso-
lutely needed. And as our nature never
says ' enough ' with tespect to money
and commodities, I will try to forego
even what is necessary, and frequently
examine my conscience on this score. I
will take pleasure in seeing the convent
bestow alms, and to this end will gladly
give up something that would otherwise
have fallen to my lot. I will often medi-
tate on the Way of the Cross, and ponder
on the Passion of our Saviour, and gaze
upon his wounded Heart, in whicli I
would fain for ever dwell, thinking un-
ceasingly on the price which my soul
and the souls of those around me have
cost. One great means to help me in
carrying out my resolutions is prayer.
I will therefore pray without ceasing, or
at least beg our Lord to give me the
spirit of prayer With regard to vocal
prayers, I will rather say a few well than
many in a slovenly manner, and I will
increase their number when I find my-
self less apt for mental prayer. The
greatest need I have is to meditate on
the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ ;
on the sorrows of his Mother, who is
also our mother ; and on the eternal max-
ims. I will not fail, especially in spare
moments, to make holy ejaculations in
order to ward off temptations and unite
myself to God. As the fruit of ea~ch
prayer, I will aim at acquiring a deeper
and deeper knowledge of my own no-
thingness and the most wretched way in
which I respond to the calls of grace,
and strive to show an unbounded love
for God and trust in him. Knowing as
I do how essential peace is to holiness
of soul, I will always show myself meek
and courteous towards all, especially
towards religious, even should there be
any among them bearing me a grudge.
I will take care not to meddle in world-
ly affairs, unless prompted by motives
of charity, justice, obedience, or some
other virtue proper to my state. I will
shun melancholy as much as I can,
knowing that true joy is found in a
peaceful heart, in a holy life, in collect-
ed thoughts, and a cheerful kindliness
tempered by modest reserve."
These disjointed fragments are
unsatisfactory, but they serve to
show that the spiritual enlighten-
ment of this young Italian peasant
compares favorably with that of
persons in any other nation, and how
little need there is of foreign inter-
vention for the moral improvement
of Italy, unless to procure freedom
for the clergy to exercise their min-
istry.*
After his profession Father Ben-
venuto was sent to Urbino to
study theology not so much dog-
matic as moral theology, his chief
aim being to fit himself for .an
apostolic life among the poor and
unlettered. He received 'Holy
Orders in 1834, and after various
temporary charges was sent to a
convent in the small domain of
Fratte Rosee, which stretches along
the southern slope of a smiling,
well-cultivated hill, about twelve
miles from Fossombrone. East-
ward, on an eminence, stands the
*We remember passing through an obscure
street in Rome, and smiling as we looked up and
saw over the door of one of the new chapel* opened
under the present government (a Waldensian chap
el) the device of a candle trying to dispel the thick
clouds around it, and the words : Lux lucet in
tenebris the light shineth in darkness !
Osimo.
castle of Torre, and from the top
of another height towers the con-
vent of Santa Vittoria, the founda-
tion of which is said to date from
the middle ages. It is a beautiful
spot, but solitary, the convent be-
ing remote from any other dwell-
ing. There is a handsome church
connected with it, and no place
could be more delightful to those
who wish to give themselves up to
a life of devout seclusion. It was
in this sweet solitude that Father
Benvenuto acquired such a taste
for the contemplative life that he
wished he could hew out a grotto
in the mountain side where he
might abide solely with God. And
yet such was his charity that he
was always ready to exercise the
duties of his ministry, especially to
those who had incurred some mis-
fortune, or had an aching heart he
could heal or soothe. He used to
go on foot across the hills to visit
those who could not come to him ;
sometimes, by a sort of divine pre-
monition, arriving just in season to
aid some poor sinner in his dying
moments.
It was at Fratte Rosee that Fa-
ther Benvenuto found leisure for
the first time to read the great mys-
tic authors of the church, such as
St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross,
etc. These opened to him new
heights in the spiritual world, and
enabled him to comprehend better
the workings of his own soul. He
now underwent a great spiritual
transformation, passing through
those ascending grades of prayer
by which God purifies the soul,
fitting it for more complete union
with him, and giving it a special
light to discern the faintest blemish
that mars its purity in his all-see-
ing eye. This clear perception of
the guilt of our nature, and of not
fully corresponding to divine grace,
produces an unutterable anguish
in the soul, and Father Benvenuto
was often seen to shake like a leaf
at the thought. He was so pro-
foundly convinced of his sinfulness
of nature that he wondered how
God could bear with him any long-
er and not cast him into the depths
of hell. But as this state of
mind is only the effect of a sincere
love of God, it becomes a means of
purifying the soul, and little by
little it rises out of this obscurity to
a region of light and peace and
most sweet union with God.
It was this experience that gave
Father Benvenuto such a know-
ledge of divine things as to enable
him afterwards to unfold and ex-
plain abstruse points of mystic
theology with so much clearness
and precision as to astonish many
a master in divinity. Above all,
it fitted him for the spiritual direc-
tion of others, enabling him to dis-
cern the wants of different na-
tures and guide them in the mazes
of the religious warfare. *
One anecdote is related of Fa-
ther Benvenuto which shows him
not without a certain shrewdness
in spite of his unworldly nature.
'flie convent of Santa Vittoria, as
we have said, stands in a very
lonely spot, and previous to his
coming here had been repeatedly
attacked and plundered by bri-
gands. He had not been here
many months before he secretly
learned that a fresh assault was in-
tended. The brethren were nat-
urally alarmed, expecting to be at
the mercy of the ruffians, as on
former occasions no means of de-
fence being at hand. Father Ben-
venuto alone was undismayed.
Gathering together all their avail-
able lamps, he filled them with oil,
and, when night came, lit up every
room in the convent, and went
Osimo.
into the church, where he prayed till
a late 1i our. The brigands came, as
had been expected, but, seeing so
many lights, thought a large force
was on hand, and decamped with-
out any attempt at violence.
Father Benvenuto's sister wish-
ing to embrace the monastic life,
he provided her with a teacher for
the study of Latin, that she might
become a choir nun, and obtained
her admittance into a Benedictine
monastery at Mondavio, a little
walled town on a height between
the valleys of the Metauro and the
Cesano, not far from Fratte Rosee.
[t was there she made her vows in
1844, under the name of Dame
Scholastica, and lived twenty-one
years. She was cheerful, open-
hearted, and pleasant in her ways,
but had withal a certain religious
gravity. It is related that she was
naturally quick-tempered, but she
fought so resolutely against this
defect that it seldom gave her any
trouble at last. She ardently de-
sired to make progress in the spir-
itual life, and it was in reply to her
request for advice that Father Ben-
venuto drew up the Ladder of Per-
fection a kind of rule of life,
which shows how this brother and
sister sanctified the tie of nature.
We will barely enumerate the de-
grees of this holy ladder for scal-
ing the heights of virtue, though he
makes a practical comment on
each one :
I. The Desire of Perfection. Let this
be your continual longing.
II. Observance of the rule. Let this
be the road.
III. Love of God. Let this be the
motive.
IV. God's glory. Let this be the end
in view.
V. The Will of God. Let this be its
rule.
VI. The Grace of God. Let this be
its origin and source.
VII. Trust in God. Let this be its
soul.
VIII. God's Presence. Let this be
the spur.
IX. Obedience. Let this be the guide.
X. Humility. Let this be the ground-
work.
XL The unceasing practice of virtue.
Let this be the way of raising the edifice.
XII. Prayer. Let this be its main
stay.
XIII. Mortification. Let this be its
bulwark.
XIV. Frequenting the Sacraments.
Let this be the means.
XV. Silence. Let this be its keeper.
XVI. The love of your neighbor. Let
this be its test.
XVII. Detachment. Let this be its
token.
XVIII. Remembrance of our Lord's
Passion. Let this be its solace.
XIX. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin.
Let this be its safeguard.
XX. Purity of intention. Let this be
its fulfilment.
In Father Benvenuto's last letter
to his sister he says : " Now is ,the
time to abandon ourselves wholly
to God, to stifle all earthly crav-
ings and affections, to deny our-
selves even in holy things, and
greatly humble ourselves for our
failings. Let us not, however, give
ourselves too much anxiety about
them, but live peacefully and calm-
ly, whatever may happen, like the
fish in an angry sea." And he re-
commends her to often recall the
presence of God and think of her
own wretchedness, but to dwell
thereon in holy peace, to gather
her thoughts home and speak to
God, heart to heart.
Dame Scholastica fell ill in Oc-
tober, 1865. She called all the
sisters to her bedside, begged their
forgiveness for all her shortcom-
ings, embraced them for the last
time, and asked them to repeat the
Seven Penitential Psalms, and, with
the words of the Royal Psalmist in
her ears, she calmly died on the
Feast of the Presentation. Her
Gsimo.
father was already dead. He
breathed his List on Christmas eve,
1851, with Father Benvenuto at his
bedside praying for his departing
soul. When all was over Father
Benvenuto comforted his mother
and then went back to the con vent,
where, laying aside his own private
griefs as usual, he celebrated the
festival of the Nativity with the
fulness of joy breathed into him by
faith.
A few years after his mother lost
her sight, and from that time Fa-
ther Benvenuto visited her fre-
quently, administering every com-
fort his kind heart could suggest.
She died about a fortnight after
Dame Scholastica, with him to aid
her in the great passage to Eter-
nity.
Meanwhile Father Benvenuto
had been sent back to Osimo as
master of novices a post for which
he was eminently fitted and here
he spent the remainder of his days.
How faithfully he had put in prac-
tice the resolutions he made when
a mere novice in the house was
evident from his severity to him-
self, his indulgence to others, his
readiness to serve his sick breth-
ren, even in the most humiliating
offices, his sympathy for the poor,
his zeal for the salvation of souls,
his cheerfulness amid fatigue and
suffering, and his constant prayer-
fulness and union with God amid
his multiplied duties. He sancti-
fied even the most material acts.
If he walked about the convent he
sought to give boundless praise and
glory to God by the very act, as
though he were touching at every
step some musical chord in honor
of the Divine Majesty. If lie went to
his cell it was to collect his thoughts
more fully and to find himself at
once in peaceful quiet with God.
If he went to the choir it was as
the disciples went to the cenacle
to await the coming of the- Holy
Ghost. While vesting in the sa-
cristy he made acts of love to God.
At the Holy Sacrifice he " seemed
to be in Paradise," to use his own
expression. At the Elevation he
adored our Lord with profound
love even as Mary did quern
getmit adoravit. When he made
the Way of the Cross it was with
such intense devotion and so keen
a realization of the awful scenes of
the Passion that any one gazing at
his features would have thought
the woful tragedy being wrought
in his very presence. He was so
studious that he was seldom seen
without some theological work at
hand; for, as he said, " though it is
by prayer that we ourselves draw
nearer to God, it is only by a sound
knowledge of moral theology we
are enabled to bring our neighbor
nearer to him." Like many other
holy souls, he honored some spe-
cial Christian mystery every day of
the week, as on Thursday the in-
stitution of the Eucharist. " Every
Thursday throughout the year has
now become a day of great remem-
brance and fresh love for me," he
s'ays. Friday he consecrates to
the Passion, and says it is the day
which "comforts me most in this
vale of tears, and makes me hope
great things for the church." Sa-
turday to Our Lady. " On this day
I also call to mind the great work
of Creation, which seems ever new
to me, and I keep the day as a
preparation for Sunday." Sunday,
he says, "is to me the day of all
days; only in heaven shall we
realize something of its greatness."
In an account of his interior life,
drawn up for his spiritual director,
he says :
" During certain days, and even weeks,
Osiwo.
73
in which I am overflowing with joy and
filled with spiritual consolation, I seem
to lose sight o! my \vretchedness ; arid
yet even at these times, when perhaps
thinking least of my \vorthlessness, I de-
tect some fault in myself, and in fact
discover flaws in every one of my ac-
tions. At other times, when looking
over my life in general, but more parti-
cularly when searching into my acts one
by one, I see these faults of mine pour-
ing down like drops of rain and bound-
less as the ocean. I see these things
most clearly by the light of grace, which
teaches me to live ever united with God,
to direct all the affections of my heart to
him, and to do all even the smallest of
my daily actions thoroughly and with
the one object of pleasing him. I hold
it enough if, at the sight of this great sea
of imperfections, I can bow down and
humble myself a thousand times a day
and offer continued acts to God, my Sa-
viour, in order to prove my exceeding
sorrow for my sins and my earnest wish
to begin a new life."
When the Marches were overrun
by the Piedmont troops in 1860,
Father Benvenuto offered himself
to God as a voluntary victim to
stay the divine wrath; but, though
bowed down by affliction at the
evils he foresaw, he never lost his
peace of mind and quietude of soul.
And when the decree for the sup-
pression of the religious orders was
issued, and the plundering of their
goods followed, he never uttered a
word of complaint. " They may
hunt us out," he said, "but they
can never tear us from the Heart
of Jesus or from his love. The
love of God is not confined to
cloistered walls." When some one
thought to please him by speaking
of the harsh treatment he had re-
ceived from the municipality, not-
withstanding his services during
the cholera, he replied : " If you
but knew how many sins I have to
account for, you would not com-
passionate me in this way. Let
the Almighty smite this wretched
creature as he deserves." And he
often said : " I am content to be
humbled and despised, so that the
power of Jesus Christ dwell within
me."
When the expulsion of the friars
of Osimo took place, Father Benve-
nuto and an old religious of four-
score were left as custodians of the
church of St. Joseph of Copertino ;
but when Osimo became a recruit-
ing centre, and Father Benvenuto,
by direction of the ecclesiastical
authorities, declined administering
the oath of fealty to the soldiers,
he and his companion had three
hours' notice to leave the convent.
The whole town was dismayed, and
the better part indignant, but no
one dared open his door to the
houseless father except a priest at-
tached to the little church of St.
Bartholomew. Father Benvenuto
applied to the civil authorities for
permission to say Mass and hear
confessions in the basilica of St.
Joseph, but he and his brethren
were formally prohibited from set-
ting foot in it. "Viva Maria!" he
exclaimed. " God be blessed ! Now
I am happy, for I have done what
I could, and feel no remorse." And
the next morning, long before day-
break, he was found in his usual
attitude of profound contemplation
before the altar of St. Bartholomew.
His confessional was crowded, and
he often rose an hour and a half
after midnight to be ready for those
who wished to consult him. Noth-
ing could prevent him from the dis-
charge of his priestly offices ; neith-
er the wrath and threats of the
wicked, nor distance, nor his own
bodily infirmities, nor the ill- fame
or poverty of those who had need
of his services.
" How often," says the author of his
life, " have we not seen him returning
from some filthy hovel, his clothes swarm-
ing with loathsome vermin, which he
74
Our Diplomatists.
had no sooner shaken off than he went
to work again among his beloved poor !
The hope of increasing God's glory by
leading souls away from the paths of sin
has been known to make him face dan-
gers of no small magnitude, and many a
time to climb over rude cliffs that might
have daunted a nimble youth. Times
without number have we known him,
when haggard and weary, to exclaim :
* Now I am happy. Viva Maria !' and
set to work again as if he were only be-
ginning the labors of the day."
During the last months of Father
Benvenuto's life he gave himself up
more and more to deep, earnest
prayer. He had, in fact, the habit
of constant prayer, as he had an
abiding sense of God's presence.
Every instant was turned to ac-
count, and his energy and self-for-
getfulness, and his absorption in di-
vine things, made him overlook his
own bodily infirmities. In the
midst of his duties he was, in
March, 1874, stricken down by
pneumonia, and died with the cru-
cifix clasped to his breast on Wed-
nesday of Holy Week, March 24,
at the age of sixty-six.
OUR DIPLOMATISTS.
" FOREIGN intercourse " costs
the people of the United States
about $1,230,000 per annum. As-
suming the population of this na-
tion to be 45,000,000 of persons,
each poll is taxed about two cents
and seventy-three mills to sustain
our consular and ' diplomatic ser-
vice. Again, assuming that 12,-
000,000 persons actually pay the
taxes, each taxpayer pays ten and
one-quarter cents per annum for
the privilege of being represented
abroad by a number of American
politicians. The total expenditure
of the government of the United
States last year was a trifle under
$237,000,000. Fully one-half of
this amount is paid for interest on
the public debt, so that about the
one hundred and twentieth part of
the expenditure of the United
States government goes to sustain
the diplomatic service.
Two and three-quarter cents per
capita as an annual tax, or an
average annual payment by each
taxpayer of ten and one-quarter
cents, does not at first sight seem to
be a very onerous burden. Com-
pared with the annual outlay of
England, France, *and Germany to
sustain their respective diplomatic
services, our expenditure under the
same head appears moderate in-
deed/ The United States govern-
ment does not expend on its foreign
service all told twenty-five percent,
of the sum spent by any first-class
European power for a similar pur-
pose. To many persons $102,500
per month will seem a very small
sum for sustaining our agents
abroad.
In one sense the sum is small
and the burden is far from heavy.
But a low-priced thing may be very
dear. It is always in order to in-
quire of a purchaser who is boast-
ing of his bargain, What did you
get for your money ? A tin whistle
might be dear at five cents, while
an organ might be very cheap at ten
thousand dollars. A " chromo "
might be dear at any price most
of them are while a painting of
Raphael or Murillo would not be
dear at any figure. What one pays
Our Diplomatists.
for a commodity or a service by no
means decides the question whether
or not he has made a good bar-
gain. The complete decision de-
pends upon what he has received
for his money.
What, then, have the people of
the United .States received for the
expenditure of $1,230,000 which
was last year appropriated for
"foreign intercourse"? The aver-
age man who reads his newspapers
and who follows the debates in
Congress will have some difficulty
in answering this question satisfac-
torily even to himself. It might
probably prove a hard problem
even for the acute lawyer who is
now Secretary of State. We have
not drifted into a foreign war,
true enough; but is any one pre-
pared to say that, if Mr. Noyes,
and Mr. Welsh, and Mr. Kasson,
and Mr. Stoughton, and Mr. May-
nard, and Mr. Marsh, and Mr. Fos-
ter had been during the past year
quietly attending to whatever pri-
vate business they may happen to
have at their respective homes, the
people of the United States would
l)e at this moment engaged in a
conflict with France, Great Britain,
Austria, Russia, Turkey, Italy, and
Mexico, the countries to which
those gentlemen are respectively
accredited ? The mere suggestion
is absurd. That we are at peace
with all the world is not primarily
due to the fact that certain repre-
sentatives of American political life
continue, for a longer or shorter
period, to reside at the capitals
of the principal nations of the
world. Wars arise between nations
much more ably represented abroad
than we now are, and between na-
tions who pay much more money
for their diplomatic service than
we are likely to spend, and between
nations who deal with their foreign
intercourse much more intelligent-
ly than we. The fact is, our immu-
nity from foreign wars is not due
to the exertions of our diplomatists
nor to the excellence of our diplo-
matic service. Our fortunate situ-
ation, far removed from ambitious
neighbors, is the main cause of
our exemption from this dreaded
curse. Indeed, one would not be
far out of the way in asserting that
the indiscretions and bigotry of
some of our foreign ministers
misrepresentatives, and not repre-
sentatives, of the American peo-
ple would long since have driven
us into war, had it been pos-
sible for any action of theirs to
have brought about such a calamity.
But what return have we receiv-
ed for our money from our foreign
ministers ? At the opening of the
second annual session of the Forty-
fifth Congress, in December last, the
President sent with his message to
the Senate and House of Repre-
sentatives Papers relating to the
Foreign Relations of the United
States. These papers have been
printed at the Government Print-
ing-Office in Washington. Exclu-
sive of the President's message,
the analytical table of subjects, and
the index, the papers relating to
our foreign relations cover nine
hundred and forty-eight pages,
most of them in large type. This
is the ostensible return for an ex-
penditure of $1,230,000. This book,
then, cost the government about
$1,295 per page. A very fair
volume ought to be obtained at
that figure, which does not include
the cost of printing, paper, and
binding.
And what does this costly vol-
ume record ? Are there any diplo-
matic exploits narrated on any one
of its thousand pages ? After a
careful examination we have been
Our Diplomatists.
unable to find one. During the
year covered by this correspond-
ence no treaty has been concluded
between the United States and
any foreign power; or, to be more
exact, if any such treaty has been
concluded no record of it appears
among these papers. With two or
three exceptions, to which reference
will presently be made, there is. not
a striking letter in the whole col-
lection, not one letter on purely
diplomatic business, which any man
or, to restrict it a little, any re-
porter could not have written with-
out having either his salary or his
expectations increased. The read-
er will search the volume in vain
for a paper that will give him any
information of what is going on in
the country to which the writer is
accredited. When our ministers
do write in regard to current* af-
fairs they write in a perfunctory
and half-hearted way that shows
that they are too indolent to make
themselves masters of their sub-
jects, and perhaps, also, with the
well-grounded suspicion that what-
ever they may say will be but a
faint echo of what the newspaper
correspondents had said long be-
fore them. The impression one
receives after turning over half a
dozen pages of this volume the
Black-book one should call it is
the impression that clings to him
after he has perused it to the end,
and that is that the book is the
veriest commonplace; that it had
and has no reason for existing ;
that it is a waste of money to print
and bind it; and that if the State
Department is desirous of sustain-
ing whatever reputation some of our
abler foreign representatives have
in time past conferred upon our
diplomatic service, it must sup-
press the greater number of their
present successors, or at least sup-
press the rubbish which they write.
If it is beyond the power of the
President and Secretary of State
to choose persons to represent us
abroad who will confer lustre on
the office and the nation, it cer-
tainly should not be out of their
power to file away in a dark closet,
where only the eye of the antiqua-
ry of the twenty-fifth century would
meet them, the dull and purpose-
less letters which are now printed
by Congress as Papers relating to
the Foreign Relations of the United
States.
To descend to particulars, let us
begin with what may appear to
many as a small point. A number
of papers relating to the foreign re-
lations of other countries inter se,
and not with this country, are in-
troduced as enclosures in the let-
ters of some of our foreign minis-
ters. Mr. Horace Maynard, our
representative in Turkey, for in-
stance, introduces in his letter No.
241, of' April 3, 1878, a copy of the
treaty of San Stefano. He relates
in his letter that he endeavored to
obtain an authentic copy of the
treaty for transmission to the Sec-
retary of State, but that " applica-
tions at the Porte disclosed the fact
that the government has printed
no copies even for office use, his
Excellency Safvet Pasha himself,
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and
one of the plenipotentiaries who
negotiated the treaty, using for re-
ference a copy of a newspaper
which had published it as current
news." The Secretary of State is
apparently so enamored with his
excellency's mode of doing busi-
ness that he will have us all follow
his example. Because Safvet Pasha
uses a newspaper copy of the treaty
of San Stefano, every person who
is so fortunate or unfortunate as to
possess a copy of the Papers re-
Our Diplomatists.
77
/citing to the Foreign Relations of
the United States, transmitted to
Congress December 2, 1878, must
until the end of time read that
treaty as given in the said newspa-
per. As printed in this volume the
preliminaries of San Stefano are
thus headed : " Tire Treaty of Peace
Official Text"; and immediately
after the document is properly
credited to " the Levant Daily
Herald of March 30, 1879." And
the Levant .//<?ra/</ itself, in introduc-
ing the treaty to its readers, gives
the following account of the origin
of this "official text": "The offi-
cial text of the treaty of San Ste-
fano was published at St. Peters-
burg on March 21, under the head-
ing of ' Preliminaries of Peace/
and was telegraphed in full by the
correspondent of the Times to that
paper of the 22d of March." The
text that Mr. Secretary Evarts la-
bels " official " is simply a reprint
in a Levant newspaper of a tele-
graphic despatch in the London
Times embodying the translation
into English of a treaty drawn up
in the French language, and in that
language signed by the plenipoten-
tiaries of the high contracting par-
ties.
Now, it may be consonant with
Mr. Evarts' peculiar notions of no-
menclature to call a document with
this history " official," but persons
less liberal will hardly agree with
him. In the despatch from which
a few words have been quoted
above Mr. Maynard continues his
narrative :
41 He [Safvet Pasha], however, kindly
placed at my service the original in-
strument, either to have it copied ot
collated with the newspaper impression.
This has been done, and in this form a
copy of the original French text is en-
closed, which I believe to be accurate.
As neither of the two contracting na-
tions uses the English language, there
is, of course, no authorized translation
in that language. I enclose a copy of
one made for her Britannic Majesty's
government, and undoubtedly correct."
Mr. Maynard's use of the Eng-
lish language leaves much to be
desired, but he makes it sufficiently
clear that he sent the Secretary of
State a copy of the original French
text, and also the Times' corre-
spondent's translation of the docu-
ment as reprinted in the Levant
Herald. Why it was necessary to
print this treaty among Papers
relating to , the Foreign Relations of
the United States is not clear.
But if it were to be printed it
should have been printed in the
official text with a careful English
translation.
Mr. Maynard is apparently a
studious reader of the newspapers.
He uses his shears to some pur-
pose, as hardly a despatch leaves
his hands without containing one or
more clippings from his " exchan-
ges." Mr. Secretary Evarts appears
to regard it as a duty to reprint
them all. Mr. Maynard sends "The
Marquis of Salisbury's Circular,"
" The Russian Reply to England,"
newspaper account of the recent
attempt at revolution, a series of
despatches from the Marquis of Sa-
lisbury to Sir A. H. Layard, and
from the latter to the former, a
memorandum of the Turkish gov-
ernment in reply to the complaints
of Greece, the treaty of Berlin, and
numerous other extracts, most of
them from the Levant Herald. In
one sense the Secretary of State
has turned his space to good ac-
count. The enclosures are much
better reading than the letters, even
if no care has been taken to print
the enclosures accurately. But one
should draw the. line somewhere.
It may be pardonable to print pub-
lic treaties,, but to print mere news-
Our Diplomatists.
paper gossip about the movements of
generals, the exile of Pasha this and
the promotion of Pasha that, is un-
pardonable. And yet page after page
of this twelve-hundred-thousand-
dollar volume is devoted to this use.
But Mr. Maynard has achieved a
greater success than the mere print-
ing of newspaper copies of treaties,
or of the circulars of foreign minis-
ters, or even of court intrigues or
newspaper personals. He has giv-
en as enclosures in his letter 230,
of March 7, 1878, a number of ex-
tracts from newspapers detailing
Gen. Grant's movements while at
Constantinople. These clippings,
as printed, fill nearly three pages
of this volume. ^It was a piece of
enterprise in the Levant Daily He-
rald of March 4, 1878, to reprint
verbatim the article on " General
Grant " from the " Men of the
Time"; but this newspaper enter-
prise is quite thrown in the shade by
Mr. Maynard and Mr. Evarts, who
insist on reprinting the same article
from the Levant Herald among the
Papers relating to the Foreign
Relations of the United States.
Sources of information in regard to
Gen. Grant's career are not want-
ing to his countrymen. They need
neither go to the " Men of the
Time " nor to the Levant Herald
to learn the main outlines of his
career. Both his military achieve-
ments and his civil administration
are still fresh in our recollections.
In fact, all the extracts that are
here printed in regard to Gen.
Grant's movements might have been,
and ought to have been, left out of
this volume. They have no place
in it. A few lines in the minister's
despatch would cover all that was
needful to say about Gen. Grant.
But then Mr. -Maynard's de-
spatches would make a beggarly
showing were it not for the col-
umns of the Levant Daily Herald.
He keeps his shears and paste-pot
handy, doubtless, and whenever
news at the legation runs low he
repairs to his newspaper and helps
himself to some tid-bit, which he
sends, with an appropriate intro-
duction, to Mr. Evarts.
And this is American diplomacy
according to Mr. Maynard, whose
ideal of what his office demands
seems to have received at least the
tacit endorsement of Messrs. Fish
and Evarts, both cultivated gentle-
men, who certainly, if they were out
of politics, would not tolerate such
discharge of duty in a subordinate.
The readers of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD will remember that the sec-
tarianism of the American diplo-
matic service has frequently been
exposed in its pages. In our num-
ber for May, 1878, it was said, in
an article especially devoted to the
sectarianism of the American di-
plomatic service, that
"The State Department has been for
years, and is now, conducted as if it were
an agency for a religious sectarian pro-
paganda. The gentlemen whom it has
sent to represent us at foreign courts
have acted, in numberless instances and
with few exceptions, as if they were the
emissaries of Protestant or infidel mis-
sionary societies rather than as the am-
bassadors, ministers, and charges d'af-
faires of a government which professes
no religion, but which nevertheless has
among its citizens eight millions of Ro-
man Catholics, whosa rights and opin-
ions it is bound at least to respect."
The indictment then found
against our diplomatic service was
sustained by the amplest proofs.
The names of offending ministers
were given, and their very lan-
guage was cited to show that they
had not been unjustly dealt with.
Whether or not the exposure then
made of this disgraceful wrong
called the attention of the authori-
Our Diplomatists.
79
ties to its correction and suppres-
sion we do not know. But we
must in fairness say that, on the
ground of sectarianism, the present
volume contrasts very favorably
with its predecessors for some
years past. A careful perusal of
it has only brought to light three
or four instances of statements
which the most sensitive Catholic
could resent. Two of these in-
stances are mere intimations, and
were probably not intended by the
writers to be more than g a state-
ment of what they conceived to be
facts. But the American minister
to the kingdom of Italy is a per-
sistent sinner. He always means
to be offensive to Catholics, and he
never fails to offend when the slight-
est opportunity is afforded him. If
G. Perkins Marsh has ever written
a despatch in which Catholics, the
pope, or the relations of the church
to the state were mentioned with-
out at the same time the aforesaid
G. Perkins Marsh filling his letter
full of sneers against, and positive
misstatements of, the position of the
church and its spiritual leaders,
and even of their lay followers, then
that letter has not fallen in the
writer's way. Such a letter may
exist, but the fact of its existence
is at least highly improbable. Last
year it became a painful duty to
comment upon the slanders against
the Pope and the Catholics of
Italy contained in the letters to the
Department of State written and
sent by G. P. Marsh. The tone
of his letters in the present volume
shows no improvement ; their num-
ber is less that is all. In his No.
679, dated "Rome, June 2, 1877 "
(Papers, p. 457), in referring to
the fact that " the influx of pil-
grims to attend the fiftieth anni-
versary of Pope Pius IX. 's election
to the episcopate has ceased," this
model representative of a sectarian
diplomatic service comments as fol-
lows : " The pilgrims have not form-
ed a body sufficiently strong in
numbers to venture upon organized
violence in the face of the forces
of the government and the muni-
cipality." As if the pilgrims whq
went to Rome in the summer of
1877 contemplated violence either
organized or unorganized ! Many
of Mr. Marsh's fellow-citizens were
among those pilgrims a numerous
body leaving our great metropolis
and if no other consideration had
any weight with a politician, at
least the reflection that some of
these persons, so foully stigmatized
as brigands coming to attack the
civil government, were citizens of
the United States" ought to have
caused even Mr. Marsh to think
twice before publishing this libel
to the world. " Still," he writes
in continuation, " there have been
not a few instances of provocative
words and acts on the part of the
pilgrims, and the zealots of both
parties are greatly excited." It is
the pilgrims who are guilty of these
provocative words and actions. It
never occurred to Mr. G. Perkins
Marsh that the infidel and anti-
Catholic mob in Rome could do or
say anything that would provoke a
Catholic. It is even doubtful wheth-
er Mr. Marsh has the power to put
himself so far in another's place as
to be able to appreciate how offen-
sive his insinuations against Catho-
lics may be and are to every right-
minded person into whose hands
they fall. And now for the in-
stance he gives of the fell designs of
these blood-thirsty pilgrims: "Not-
withstanding this, a numerously-at-
tended public meeting, held in this
city on Thursday, the 3ist of May,
to protest against the excesses and
usurpations of the clericals, and at
8o
Our Diplomatists.
which strongly denunciatory lan-
guage was used by the speakers,
was conducted with perfect tran-
quillity." The Catholics are so dis-
orderly and intent on violence that
they actually permit a meeting of
their opponents, at which they were
denounced in the bitterest terms, to
be held in ''perfect tranquillity."
In Mr. Marsh's opinion it is the
lamb that is always the aggressor,
and the wolf is the meek saint,
who only devours the lamb because
of his excesses and usurpations.
Our minister then proceeds to give
Mr. Evarts a piece of real news.
"The pilgrims," he writes, "are in
very large proportion ecclesiastics, com-
prising a large number of cardinals and
other dignitaries of the church, who
visit Rome not as pilgrims simply, but
for purposes of mutual consultation, and
as members of the probably approaching
conclave for the election of a successor
to the present Pope. Of course the
consultations of these personages are
not public, but it is ascertained that, at
a recent meeting of the most conspicu-
ous amongst them, it was decided by a
nearly unanimous vote to advise Pius
IX. to abandon his profaned and dese-
crated capital, and to retire, with his
whole curia, to the purer soil of Lyons
in France. It is vehemently suspected
that the coincidence of this resolution
with the recent political movement of
the chief of the French state was not ac-
cidental, and at Rome, where all things
are contemplated through a clerical
mist, this belief is very general. It is
believed that the Pope would have yield-
ed to this advice but for the strenuous op-
position of his physicians, who were of
opinion that to attempt such a journey
would involve his certain and speedy
death."
If all things at Rome are con-
templated through a clerical mist,
all things at the American Legation
presided over by Minister Marsh
are regarded through a "no-popery
mist." Catholic pilgrims cannot
enter Rome to rejoice with the
late Holy Father on the fiftieth
anniversary of his elevation to the
episcopate but Mr. Marsh must
suspect them of coming on vio-
lence bent. The shepherds of the
Catholic flock cannot meet in con-
sultation without its being "vehe-
mently suspected " that they are
plotting for the exodus of the
Holy Father and his whole curia
from Rome. Why did not Mr.
Marsh say they were going to take
the Vatican and at least one of the
seven hills away in their train ?
They ar not only to be held ac-
countable for tlit-ir own sins but
for those of the civil power in
France. The cardinals and bishops
are not only plotting against the
Italian government but are'plotting
against French liberty. Is it not
quite time that Mr. Evarts intimat-
ed to Minister Marsh that lie had
quite enough of such " diplomacy "?
And if Mr. Marsh will write, why
cannot Mr. Evarts suppress his
malicious nonsense ?
Mr. Marsh's No. 291, dated Rome,
February 8, 1878, is devoted to re-
flections on the death of Pope
Pius IX., which occurred the even-
ing before. He is good enough to
declare that though the Papacy, as
an institution, has " lost its regal
position," and though "the Roman
See and the life or death of its in-
cumbent have, strictly speaking, no
longer any direct political signifi-
cance," yet "the moral influence
of the Papacy is as formidable as
ever, and it can and does thus pow-
erfully affect political action; but
its power is exerted not by the
chair of St. Peter, but by organiza-
tions which surround and control
it to such an extent as to render
the personal will or character of
the pope a matter of little impor-
tance." The first half of this sen-
tence may be taken for what it is
worth. It is useless to discuss it
Our Diplomatists.
81
at this time. But the latter half
challenges discussion. Will Mr.
Marsh be good enough to inform
us through the Secretary of State
what authority he has for asserting
that not the pope, but organizations
which surround him, wield the real
power of the Catholic Church ?
As well say that, because the hands
and feet are thoroughly organized
for the work of the body, it
makes no difference what kind of
mind directs their actions, as to say
that because in its eighteen cen-
turies of triumphal progress the
church has been enabled through
the guidance of the Holy Spirit to
surround the Supreme Pontiff with
councillors and congregations and
organizations fitted to execute his
wishes -and the Master's plans,
" the personal will or character of
the pope is a matter of little impor-
tance." These things were never
a matter of little importance. And
they were never more supremely
important than they are to-day in
the face of the trials and perils
that beset the church at its very
seat. We can all rejoice that when
the princes of the church were call-
ed upon to select a successor to Pius
IX. they did not take Mr. Marsh
as their guide, but, appreciating the
supreme importance of the per-
sonal will and character of Peter's
successor, chose as Supreme Pon-
tiff a man of the highest character
for integrity, learning, and piety,
and a ruler whom Mr. Marsh him-
self in a subsequent letter declares
to be firm and energetic. Our
minister evidently regards the pope
and his curia, and the heads of
orders in connection, therewith,
through the mist of the American
caucus system. He cannot think
of a ruler who is not like a mayor,
a governor, or a president that is,
a creature of caucus and party,
VOL, xxix. 6
who must obey the commands and
meet the demands of party leaders.
The pope is not such a ruler. He
acts on his own responsibility un-
der God. He is no man's man.
To him the keys are committed,
and he it is who must keep the
treasure secure. His responsibili-
ty is higher than to caucus, Con-
gress, parliament, or king. Men
may say " Do this or do that ; com-
promise here or trifle there "; but
the pope is called upon to resist
all the seductions of the enemy,
and he must say, even if it provoke
a jibe, "In the face of God I can-
not." What have outside associa-
tions or organizations to do with
this ? It is a personal matter a
supremely personal matter. Leo
is now the shepherd, as Peter was.
He has all the duties and responsi-
bilities of the whole church cast
upon him. He must decide.
Others may wait ; he must act.
He makes use of the organizations.
Why should he not? But they
neither use him nor control him.
In his No. 741, dated " Rome,
February 20, 1878," Minister
Marsh announces to the Secretary
of State the election of a successor
to Pope Pius IX. The letter is
characterized by the small and bit-
ter intolerance which marks all the
correspondence of this misrepre-
sentative of America when Catho-
lics or the Catholic cause is in
question. He takes a perverse
pleasure in misinterpreting the acts
and misconstruing the motives of
Catholics. For instance, he de-
clares that " the reputation of Car-
dinal Pecci for moderation was
thought to form a still stronger
objection to his choice by the [Sa-
cred] College " than the fact of his
being chamberlain of the curia an
officer who " has been generally
understood not to be in the line
82
Our Diplomatists.
of preferment." " Bat " and now
hold your breath, gentle reader,
while G. P. Marsh proclaims to the
world a great state secret "but
great efforts had been made by the
Catholic governments of Europe,
strengthened by a powerful public
opinion among political men, to
induce the cardinals to agree in the
selection of a man of the temper
which is ascribed to Cardinal Pec-
ci," and tell it not in Gath Car-
dinal Pecci was accordingly chosen
Supreme Pontiff. These " political
men " to whom Mr. Marsh attri-
butes the choice of Leo XIII. were
so successful in that undertaking
that one wonders why their names
were not mentioned, and why they
do not turn their massive intellects
to the many and intricate political
problems that are pressing for so-
lution in Germany and Italy, with-
out mentioning any other states of
the great European family which
are to-day face to face with the
most momentous questions. Will
Mr. Marsh and those of his in-
tolerant ilk neve^r learn that the
church is equal to the discharge of
her own duties ; that the only fa-
vor she asks is to be permitted to
deal freely with her own interests;
and that if " political men " would
only deal with questions of purely
temporal concern they would find
ample scope for the use of all the
talents which have been given to
them? Leo XIII., as every one
knows, was the free choice of the
Sacred College.
"Strong passions," said Edmund
Burke, " awake the faculties."
And intolerance is a strong "pas-
sion. It blinds the eyes or it opens
them. In most cases it certainly
blinds Mr. Marsh's eyes, but in
one it has certainly opened them.
He scouts as absurd the intima-
tions in certain European journals,
which were copied from them into
American newspapers, that Leo
XIII. was going to reverse the poli-
cy of his predecessor going to
make, in the slang of the day, " a
new departure."
" Certain minor arrangements of Car-
dinal Pecci during his regency as cham-
berlain after the death of the late Pope,"
writes Mr. Marsh, "are construed by
many as indicative of comparatively lib-
eral intentions, and particularly of the
purpose of abandoning the farce of a
pretended restriction of the liberty of
the Pope by the Italian government,
which was kept up by Pius IX. from the
entry of the royal troops into Rome on
the 20th of September, 1870, to the day
of his death. I do not attach much con-
sequence to any of these demonstrations,
nor shall I to any initial professions of
liberalism which may be made on behalf
of the new pontiff, who will feel as little
bound by such professions as did Pius
IX. by those which accompanied the
commencement of his reign, and who
in the long run must shape the policy of
the Papacy by the rule, ' Sit nt est ant
non sit? "
Nothing could well be worse
than the form into which Mr.
Marsh puts a perfectly true obser-
vation that the churcli will not
and cannot follow a course mapped
out for her by her enemies. She
has a path of her own, and that
she must follow. Mr. Marsh and
his kind make it a reproach to her
that she is not turned aside by
every wind that blows, but he sees,
what very few of his colleagues see,
that whatever may be his and their
wishes, the church stands squarely
on the rock and will not be moved
by rain or storm. Every compli-
ment paid to our minister's intelli-
gence but adds to the severity of
the condemnation to be meted out
to him for the course which he
actually follows. He does not sin
through ignorance but through
malevolence. Had he the desire
Our Diplomatists.
to treat the church fairly, he lias
the necessary means of knowledge
at his hand. But he chooses to
insult and revile the church and
the faith of unnumbered millions
of Christians for eighteen centuries
past, and of eight millions of his
own fellow-citizens now living, who
are taxed to support him in writing
these abominable diatribes against
what they hold not only dear but
sacred.
One more extract, and we shall
drop Mr. Marsh, from whose com-
pany our readers will doubtless be
glad to escape. In his " No. 736,"
from which 'we have previously
quoted, appears the following clos-
ing passage :
" Attempts will be made [to bring
about a reconciliation between the tiara
and the crown of Italy ; but King Hum-
bert will, I trust, be found as firm in
his adhesion to the principle of the su-
premacy of the civil government as his
father showed himself, and there is
nothing to encourage the expectation
that the successor of Pius IX. will be
permitted to propose or accept any mo-
dus vivendi incompatible with the civil
liberties of the Italian people, or with
the rights of private conscience and
opinion."
One would infer from this that
Mr. Marsh had the Italian gov-
ernment and people in his keep-
ing. What is it to him, as the re-
presentative of the American peo-
ple, what contracts or engagements
are entered into between King Hum-
bert and the Pope ? He does his
whole duty when he sees that, what-
ever these engagements may be,
the rights of the government of
the United States and of its citi-
zens are not invaded. Further
than this it is an impertinence for
him to interfere in any way. One
would think he was a demon of
discord and hate to hear his vehe-
ment protests against anything like
accord between church and state.
He is up in arms in favor of " the
rights of private conscience and
opinion," for his friends, no doubt ;
but he applauds the violation of
the rights of private conscience
and opinion when the consciences
and opinions belong to Catholics.
Mr. Marsh always asserts, what-
ever he may think, that the church
is ever in the wrong. She has no
rights that Mr. Marsh is bound to
respect. He applauds all the as-
saults against her integrity and
freedom, and he himself never fails
to scoff and revile her. It is per-
haps too much to ask the Secretary
of State to tame his fiery minister.
But is there no member of Con-
gress no senator or representa-
tive who will rise in his place
and rebuke this abuse of our dip-
lomatic service? It is not neces-
sary that a Catholic should perform
this duty. Any person who can
read the Constitution of the United
States knows that turning any por-
tion of the public service into a
sectarian engine is a perversion of
the whole letter and spirit of our
organic law. Every fair-minded
man, whether Catholic or Protes-
tant, must resent the intrusion of
Mr. Marsh's bigotry into our dip-
lomatic correspondence. If this
matter is once ventilated on the
floor of either House, Mr. Marsh will
cease to be minister or his bigotry
will cease to appear in the diplo-
matic correspondence. Until such
intolerance is denounced in Con-
gress there is no hope of suppress-
ing our diplomatic Whalley.
From Italy let us turn to Spain,
and from G. P. Marsh to James
Russell Lowell. Mr. Lowell strug-
gles manfully to work up an in-
terest in the Spanish differential
duties in favor of national vessels
and against foreign bottoms a sub-
Our Diplomatists.
ject on which Mr. Evarts writes
with evident zest. Probably Minis-
ter Lowell's representations on this
knotty point were as effective as
they could have been had the most
acute admiralty lawyer presented
them. And yet one feels that Mr.
Lowell is not quite at home in
dealing with the topic, and in all
probability the Spanish Govern-
ment felt so too, for it is notice-
able that Mr. Mantilla, the Spanish
minister in Washington, deals with
the subject at large in communica-
tions addressed to the Department
of State, though it is but justice to
add that Mr. Mantilla is endeavor-
ing to make out a case against the
United States, while Mr. Lowell
was endeavoring to bring to the at-
tention of the Spanish government
alleged discriminations against
American shipping. But be this
as it may, Mr. Lowell, unlike Mr.
Maynard, can write the English
language, and he can intimate his
want of sympathy with the man-
ners and customs of the people and
the court to which he is accredited
without descending with Mr. Marsh
into denunciation and misrepre-
sentation. In his " No. 65," dated
"Madrid, February 6, 1878," Minis-
ter Lowell writes of the marriage
of King Alfonso and the unfortu-
nate Mercedes. It is a letter worth
reading. This is no newspaper
clipping, but a genuine piece of de-
scription by a master-hand. One
could wish that some expressions
in it were toned down, but as a
whole it is a piece of writing that
is not met with every day. It is
one of the three or four letters that
at the beginning of this article
were excluded from the general
condemnation passed upon the
rest of the "papers" contained in
this volume. For only one paragraph
can we find room. After declar-
ing that " nowhere in the world
could a spectacle have been pre-
sented which recalled so various,
so far-reaching and in some re-
spects sublime associations, yet
rendered depressing by a sense of
anachronism, of decay, and of that
unreality which is all the sadder
for being gorgeous," and after re-
ferring to some of the elements of
this pageant the banners of Le-
panto, "the names and titles that
recalled the conquest of western
empires, or the long defeat whose
heroism established the indepen-
dence of the United Provinces and
proved that a confederacy of
traders could be heroic," the state
coaches, plumed horses, and blaz-
ing liveries, the gay or sombre cos-
tumes from every province in Spain,
and the dense and mostly silent
throng which lined for miles the
avenues to the church he con-
tinues :
" There was everything to remind one
of the past ; there was nothing to sug-
gest the future. And yet I am unjust.
There were the young king and his bride,
radiant with spirit and hope, rehearsing
the idyll which is charming alike to
youth and age, and giving pledges, as I
hope and believe, of more peaceful and
prosperous years to come for a coun-
try which has had too much glory and
too little good housekeeping. . . . The
bent of ages is not to be straightened in
a day by never so many liberal constitu-
tions nor by the pedantic application of
theories drawn from foreign experience,
the result of a wholly different past. If
the ninety years since the French Revo-
lution have taught us anything, it has
been that institutions grow and cannot
be made to order ; that they grow out of
an actual past, and are not to be con-
spired out of a conjectural future ; that
human nature is stronger than any in-
vention of man."
Mr. Lowell is not prepared to
say how much of this lesson has
been learned in Spain, but it is
perfectly safe to assert that very
Our Diplomatists.
many of the very radicals who will
be found complaining with Mr.
Lowell himself that antiquity
means "anachronism, decay, and
unreality " have not learned this
lesson. They will be found sub-
stituting "the pound of passion for
the ounce of patience," and expect-
ing that stable institutions can be
conspired out of a conjectural fu-
ture.
The marriage and the death of
Queen Mercedes occurred in the
same year, and both are chronicled
by the same hand, and within a
few months of each other. " No.
65 " described the wedding and re-
flected upon the event to the pur-
pose above set forth. " No. 95 "
gives an account of the young
queen's illness, of her death, and of
her funeral. Here is an eloquent
passage :
" During the last few days of the
queen's illness the aspect of the city had
been strikingly impressive. It was, I
think, sensibly less noisy than usual, as
if it were all a chamber of death, in
which the voice must be bated. Groups
gathered and talked in undertones.
About the palace there was a silent
crowd day and night, and there could
be no question that the sorrow was uni-
versal and profound. On the last day I
was at the palace just when the poor
girl was dying. As I crossed the great
interior courtyard, which was perfectly
empty, I was startled by a dull roar not
unlike that of the vehicles in a great
city. It was reverberated and multi-
plied by the huge cavern of the palace
court. At first I could see nothing that
accounted for it, but presently found
that the arched corridors all round the
square were filled, both on the ground
floor and the first story, with an anxious
crowd, whose eager questions and an-
swers, though subdued to the utmost,
produced the strange thunder I had
heard. It almost seemed fora moment
as if the palace itself had become vocal.
At the time of the marriage I told you
that the crowd in the streets was indiffer-
ent and silent. . . . On the day of her
death the difference was immense. Sor-
row and sympathy were in every heart
and on every face. By her good temper,
good sense, and womanly virtues the
girl of seventeen had not only endeared
herself to those immediately about her,
but had become an important factor in
the destiny of Spain. . . . Had she lived
she would have given stability to the
throne of her husband, o*-er whom her
influence was wholly for good. She was
not beautiful, but the cordial simplicity
of her manner, the grace of her bearing,
her fine eyes, and the youth and purity
of her face gave her a charm that mere
beauty never attains."
We will not argue the question
with those Gradgrinds who want
" facts " and figures about the
movements of trade whether or
not such letters should find any
place at this day in the despatch-
bag of a modern diplomatist. But
we do say that if more of our min-
isters could write the English lan-
guage it would be better for our
diplomatic service ; and it is cer-
tainly better to fill a few pages of
the volume containing "papers"
relating to our foreign relations
with descriptive letters than to
lumber them up with newspaper
clippings and the heated imagina-
tions of an intolerant brain. Mr.
Lowell, like all our foreign repre-
sentatives, suffers from lack of train-
ing for his special calling; and lack
of training means in this case lack
of knowledge of the persons, official
and other, with whom a minister
must deal. But whatever may be
his shortcomings, we need not blush
when reading his productions. As
far as mere literary finish is con-
cerned they leave little to be de-
sired, and so far surpass the pro-
ductions of any other American
minister represented in this vol-
ume that there is only contrast
and no comparison between them.
Mr. George F. Seward, who is at
this writing still our minister to
China though he himself is in
Our Diplomatists.
Washington, where a committee of
the House of Representatives has
been for a long time, and is now,
eng'ged in investigating charges
of grave official misconduct made
against him has prepared a memo-
randum " On the Currency of
China," which was submitted to
the State Department and is print-
ed in the present volume (pp. 133-
139). This memorandum appears
to be carefully done, and it has
been commended by members of
a special committee of the Shang-
hai Chamber of Commerce, who
are familiar with the subject, as
they had recently endeavored,
but in vain, to induce the gov-
ernment of China to place the
currency on a more satisfactory
basis. This memorandum and Mr.
Seward's letter " No. 425," dated
"Peking, March 22, 1878," are
among the exceptions to the gene-
ral condemnation passed upon the
volume. The letter is an extreme-
ly forcible presentation of the un-
wisdom of abrogating certain parts
of our treaties with China by spe-
cial legislation. Congress has late-
ly taken this course, but Mr. Sew-
ard's reasons against it are still un-
answered. He shows that, from
the diplomatic point of view, we
have always been at a disadvantage
in dealing with China, because
we voluntarily accorded to her
people within our borders all the
privileges of the most favored na-
tions, while China has only yielded
to us a few privileges, and even
these cannot be enjoyed without
constant diplomatic representations.
We are therefore continually ask-
ing something from China, and, on
the contrary, she has nothing to
ask from us, her subjects having all
that we can give. Now, reasons
Mr. Sevvard, if we legislate the
treaty out of existence by a mere
act of Congress, we will set China
an example of an arbitrary and wil-
ful abrogation of a treaty or a part
of a treaty, and this example the
Chinese, who are apt scholars,
might not only follow but improve
upon. " Would it not, indeed," he
asks, "imperil all our relations
with the empire, and afford a cer-
tain ground of reproach against us
by China, and by all the powers
that are interested here ?" The
question of Chinese immigration is
a many-sided one, which cannot- be
solved off-hand by the passage of a
mere statute.
It is not improper to ask in clos-
ing why it is that in reading
through the correspondence of
our ministers one meets with so
much chaff and so little wheat.
Here is, for instance, an extract
from " No. 60 " of Mr. Jehu Baker,
dated " Caracas, October 30, 1878."
Mr. Baker is describing, or at-
tempting to describe, the national
festival of Venezuela in commemo-
ration of Bolivar :
" The Plaza Bolivar," he informs Mr.
Evarts, " was, on this as on other occa-
sions, the centre of public reunion and
display. ... In the centre of the plaza
stands an equestrian statue of Bolivar,
supported upon a pedestal of granite,
surmounted by a beautifully wrought
and polished superstructure of dark-
colored syenite. This work, I under-
stand, was done in Europe, and I sus-
pect it may be superior, as a work of
art, to anything of the sort we have in
Washington."
This choice morsel is the last
letter in the volume, on the last
page before the index. It has one
of the posts of honor. And well it
deserves some special mark of con-
sideration. How Mr. Evarts must
have rubbed his eyes when he read
it ! The writer is careful to tell us
what the pedestal and the super-
structure are made of, but he does
Our Diplomatists.
not think it worth his while to
mention the material out of which
the statue itself is made. This
would be more important informa-
tion than his vague understanding
that the work " was done in
Europe." Was there no one to
inform Mr. Baker on this point ?
If it was worth writing about at all,
it was worth writing about, if not
in good English, at least with some
approach to knowledge of what the
writer was treating. But Mr.
Baker's " understanding " is infe-
rior to his suspicion. " I suspect,"
says he cautiously, " it may be
superior, as a work of art, to any-
thing of the sort we have in Wash-
ington." What sort ?
To return to our question, Why
is there, with all this waste of paper
and printer's ink and money, so
little in this volume? Why is it
padded out with newspaper clip-
pings, some of them of very in-
different quality? Why is Mr.
Marsh permitted to print his in-
tolerant utterances in defiance of
the very principles on which the
government is founded, and to
the direct insult of about twenty
per cent, of the population of the
country ? Why is Mr. Jehu Baker
permitted not only to write, but to
print at public expense, the pre-
cious art criticism of which a
specimen is given above ; and when
his imagination or his industry is
not equal to the task, why is he per-
mitted to fill his letters with news-
paper clippings, and have these,
too, printed at public expense ?
Why is Mr. Maynard allowed to
send home the files of the Levant
ffera!d, and have important treaties
printed from its columns and la-
belled "official," when the text
bears every evidence of not only not
being official but not even being
correct? Why does not the Secre-
tary of State edit these papers
and throw the greater part of them
into the waste-basket ? They give
no information. Most of them are
badly written. Some of them are
low in tone. Ninety per cent, of
them would never have been writ-
ten at all, were it not that the
minister wished to impress the
State Department with his dili-
gence to show how much he was
doing for his money. The activity
of the majority of our ministers is
time wasted, and unfortunately it
leads to a new outlay of money
when Congress prints the collection
covered by the " President's Mes-
sage and accompanying Docu-
ments." Why do our representa-
tives abroad never think of doing
some careful piece of work in re-
gard to the people to whose gov-
ernment they are accredited? One
would think that, if our Mr. Kasson
only knew where to look, there are
at hand ample materials for com-
piling a memorandum that would
repay perusal on the monetary and
financial expedients of Austro-Hun-
gary, and on her political experi-
ment with a dual government, in
which, as a politician, he must take
some interest. Germany would af-
ford an observant minister ample
scope for a political study on the
relations of the government to the
chambers and to the people, and
on the relations of the state to the
church. Why are such things never
done, or attempted to be done, ex-
cept on rare occasions ? The an-
swer is that we have in reality no
diplomatic service at all. Training
and experience are at a discount.
All men are equal ; therefore any
political hack or newspaper writer,
or Congressman whose constituents
have chosen his successor, is fitted
to represent the United States at
any of the courts of the Old World
88
To Pontius Pilate washing his Hands.
and the capitals of the New. Is it
not wonderful that we have any
prestige at all abroad when the
mode by which we aim at creating
and sustaining it is considered ? We
send strange beings often to courts
famous for their elegance and in-
tellectual character, and we wonder
that they make little progress in
delicate matters confided to them.
To Catholic nations we do not send
Catholics, when our diplomatic suc-
cess would be rendered much more
probable if we did. But there are
Protestants and Protestants. No
one asks as a matter of right that
there should be Catholic ambassa-
dors to Catholic countries, though
as a matter of expediency there
ought to be. But we send bigots
to Catholic governments men who
do not know and will not learn
anything about the people among
whom they have temporarily to re-
side. Our whole diplomatic ser-
vice, from top to bottom, is char-
acterized by " how not to do it."
There is a cry for its abolition.
If it were simply a question of sus-
taining the service as it now is,
with its ignorant Bakers and intol-
erant Marshes, we should say let it
go ; we cannot be worse served if
not served at all. But it is because
there are hopes that there will be
a change for the better in the near
future that we are inclined to tole-
rate the service a little longer. If
the service were properly officered
and organized it could do good
work. But there must be a change
of methods and of men. Hapha-
zard, and equality, and chance, and
rewarding partisanship will not give
us even a tolerable diplomatic ser-
vice. We must have trained dip-
lomatists men educated for their
life-work ; persons who will not
only know how to deal with diplo-
matic questions, but will know how
to avoid sectarianism and bigotry.
A very few years will show wheth-
er we are to have a reformed diplo-
matic service or to try the experi-
ment of no diplomatic service at
all.
TO PONTIUS PILATE WASHING HIS HANDS.
HOLD, fool ! Not all the floods that gird the earth,
Or from the clouds of heaven receive their birth,
Can wash thy hands. If of that blood one drop
Be on thy guilty palms, there let it stop.
- Thou'lt need it sorely in that Day of Woe
When souls, not hands, are called to make clean show.
The Story of Agnes.
THE STORY OF AGNES.
YEARS ago there lived and flour-
ished in Prague two Jewish bro-
thers named Trendellsohn, who,
by their wealth and known integri-
ty, had acquired for themselves an
honored position even in that city,
where the prejudice against their
race held strongest sway. Side by
side rose their stately homes, the
boasted ornaments of the Juden-
stadt, alike yet differing widely ;
for in the house of the younger
brother, Mark, were heard on all
sides the noise and clatter of child-
ish play. Dark eyes set in sallow
little faces peeped through every
window, and the narrow slip of
garden rang with the merriment,
which sounded sweetly in the fa-
ther's ears, and echoed even
through the quiet halls where
Reuben's wife sat childless child-
less, and sorrowing as Anna sorrow-
ed over the one great happiness
which, for the first seven years of
her married life, was denied her.
Then came a joyful time for the
rich Jew's household, for at last a
baby was born to them a tiny, dark-
eyed, dark-haired baby-girl who
lay calmly sleeping in the happy
mother's arms, while all the little
cousins tiptoed in and out of the
room for a glimpse of the welcome
new-comer, and the momentous
question was 'raised, What should
she be named ?
"You will call her Miriam after
our mother, I suppose?" said Mark
to his brother, whose grave, firmly-
lined face looked strangely soften-
ed with the light of this new-found
joy.
"Your eldest girl is named Mir-
riam," said Reuben absently, as
though hardly hearing the ques-
tion.
" Our mother's virtues might well
bear diffusion among a dozen de-
scendants," was the proud reply ;
"you need have no fear in multi-
plying her honored name."
" Mark," said the elder brother,
rousing himself from the retrospec-
tion into which he had fallen, "no
one can more love and revere his
mother's name and memory than I
do; but I am going to fulfil a pro-
mise I made lightly enough in
early youth, and call my first girl
after our old and faithful nurse "
" What ! Agnes ? " exclaimed
Mark hastily.
" Yes, Agnes," was the reply, so
decisively given that the other bro-
ther attempted no remonstrance,
merely expressing his disapproval
with an emphatic shrug of his
broad shoulders. And so the mat-
ter was settled; and the baby, re-
ceiving the most un-Jewish name
of Agnes, took to it kindly, and
grew prettier and brighter as every
month went by, until the mother
thought in her fond, proud heart :
"If I have but one, she is fairer
and sweeter than all my brother-
in-law's many children, and I am
more than satisfied." At three
years old the little Agnes might
have passed for no unfit portrait of
that other Jewish maiden, purest
and loveliest of earthly children,
who went to the Temple to offer
her infant holiness to God.
At this time the mother died,
leaving her precious gift, just when
the charge had grown sweetest, to
the care of others, to receive from
stranger hands her baby wants, to
The Story of Agnes.
give to stranger hearts her baby
love. She was a good woman, who
looked into futurity with calmly
hopeful eyes ; and yet she felt, as
many mothers have felt before and
since, that it was hard to go while
those little hands clung to her so
desperately, holding her down to
earth with links like adamant.
But yet she died, and after this the
child grew up alone, manifesting
from her earliest years certain dis-
tinct peculiarities, which, uncheck-
ed by any guiding hand, grew with
her very growth. Noticeable among
these were a passionate admiration
for rich dress and bright colors, a
very positive and plainly shown
aversion to the society of her
merry little cousins next door, and
a great love for pictures of all kinds
and degrees. She drew almost as
soon as she could hold a pencil in
her tiny hands, and no other occu-
pation ever gave her prolonged
amusement. Dainty forms began
to grow beneath the child's deli-
cate fingers baby faces with in-
nocent, staring eyes and pretty,
pouting lips ; angels with floating
drapery and heads thrown back in
winged ecstasy; or kneeling, as
above the Ark of the Covenant, with
downcast eyes and humbly-folded
wings ; or soaring upwards with
outspread pinions, and clear eyes
penetrating through the veil of
heaven.
Reuben, while proud of his little
daughter's talent, grew alarmed at
the intensity of her devotion to it,
and tried to force her into the free
and commonplace life of his bro-
ther's children, but without much
success. At home she was merry
enough, but among them she seem-
ed to change entirely, and grew si-
lent and unhappy amid their boister-
ous fun. Every fibre of the child's
delicate soul shrank instinctively
from contact with these coarser na-
tures, until at times their very pre-
sence grew insupportable to her ;
and then a careless word, a rude
and hasty act, would result in a
burst of such uncontrollable weep-
ing that it was no wonder her little
cousins soon ceased to care much
for her company, and gradually
learned to leave her to her own
devices.
As she grew into girlhood she
gave more and more of her time to
the one pursuit that seemed for the
present to fill and satisfy her life.
Her father's wealth procured for
her good masters even in Prague,
and they all acknowledged that she
had great talent, though it wasmarred
by the extreme difficulty of direct-
ing or controlling it. While she
could not be trusted to work two
days alike, yet there were certain
mannerisms that seemed already to
haunt her style and threatened to
block her future progress. Patience,
that one great requisite of a true
artist, she undoubtedly possessed.
Never satisfied, yet never despair-
ing, she toiled on, now trying vainly
to express in definite form the in-
distinct visions that dwelt for ever
in her fancy ; now painting and re-
painting her own head, with a keen
artistic appreciation of its dark
young beauty which was too ab-
stract a feeling to have anything in
common with mere vanity. Of the
same kind was her passionate love
for dress. She valued it, not for its
effect on others, but solely for the
pleasure it gave herself a pleasure
redeemed from vulgarity only by
the intensity of its selfishness.
Humored by her father to the ut-
most in this respect, her silks and
jewels became objects of wonder
and admiration to her cousins and
her few friends, and, though unsuit-
ed to her years, they seemed a nat-
The Story of Agnes.
ural part of her, a fitting frame-
work to her ripe young loveliness
and stately, girlish grace. She was
self-possessed, because in a great
measure self-centred; unrevealing,
as having never had any one to
whom she could speak her hidden
thoughts; yet beneath her outward
calm lay concealed a strife of ever-
contending elements a mind un-
trained, undisciplined, and unsatis-
fied, a soul full of undefined yearn-
ings after better things, but hedged
in by earthliness and by its impo-
tence to rise unaided, and mani-
festing its possibilities for good
only by its ever-increasing restless-
ness under the load it bore. Add-
ed to these were the thousand min-
ute shocks and jars the high-strung,
sensitive nature received from all
it touched. The poverty, the dark-
ness, the filth of the Jew's quarter
in which she was obliged to live;
its narrow streets, filled with coarse,
loud-voiced men and women jost-
ling against each other in their rude
haste; the low tastes and aims of
those around her; the atmosphere
of grasping cupidity and impotent
malice, though biit the natural fruit
of persecution and oppression,
weighed her down. She hated near-
ly everything that surrounded her
and that formed part of her daily
life, and, turning to herself for
comfort and sympathy, found none.
If all was hateful without, all was
dark and unsatisfied within ; and
Agnes, looking into life with sad,
passionate eyes, and finding no-
where what she hungered for,
groped her way blindly onward,
rebellious, suffering, silent. Re-
ligion was to her but an honored
name. If it had once really touch-
ed her heart, it would have flooded
with light all these daily trials en-
dured in its name and for its sake;
but alas ! for those who suffer un-
willingly for the faith they hold
martyrs, without the crown of mar-
tyrdom.
Painting was the safe and natu-
ral outlet of all her emotions ; but
when she flew to it for solace she
found herself baffled by the limits
she could not pass, the iron bar-
riers that hemmed in her one tal-
ent till it grew almost useless to
her impatient eyes. About this
time she was fond of drawing all
her inspirations from the Sacred
Scriptures, as though with some
vague hope that with such subjects
would come the light to help her ;
and yet everything that she did
was but the reflection of her own
sorrowful mind : Ruth standing
sad-eyed and drooping amid the
stranger's harvest ; Jephte's doom-
ed daughter, shrinking yet heroic,
with strained, pathetic gaze and
quivering, patient smile ; and Agar
turning darkly away in mute an-
guish, lest her eyes should fall upon
her dying boy.
The cousins shrugged their
shoulders at such pictures, and re-
ported at home that Agnes was
growing more melancholy and pe-
culiar every day. Mark Trendell-
sohn advised his brother to take
her away, at least for 'a time ;
Prague was no place for her. And
Reuben tried hard to make up his
mind to follow this advice. His
daughter did seem to droop in the
vitiated atmosphere of the Juden-
stadt ; he felt how much more
suited to her would be any one of
the Italian cities which he had
visited, but of which she knew
nothing. There, at least, her artist
nature would find its proper food.
He knew that she was cast in a
finer mould than her cousins and
those around her, and that the
things they scarcely heeded weigh-
ed cruelly on her shoulders. He
9 2
The Story of Agnes.
loved her and was proud of her ;
and yet, though he believed himself
willing to sacrifice everything for
her good, he put cff from month to
month, from year to year, the evil
day of departure.
It is strange that a Jew, who has
no home and no country, should '
be susceptible of such intense af-
fection for his birthplace. Prague
had been, at best, but a harsh step-
mother to her Jewish children ; and
yet Reuben Trendellsohn loved
every street and every stone of the
gloomy quarter in which he had
spent his life.
Just where his handsome house
now stood had leant over into the
street the crazy pile of buildings
in which he had been born. There,
in its narrow rooms, had worked
and smiled' the dark-eyed mother
whose memory was green in her
children's hearts. There, in an
upper story, had dragged through
the last ten years of life the grand-
father, withered, crippled, and in-
firm, whose crabbed age the boys
were taught to reverence, though
they could not love. By their
unaided efforts had he and his
brother risen to wealth and to
such reputation as a Jew \could
have. To him the narrow streets
were endeared by a thousand
tender recollections binding him
to the happier past. It was like
tearing his very soul asunder to
leave all this, and begin life again
in a strange place and with strange
people. He was willing to go, if
his daughter really needed the
change; but what wonder that he
deferred the bitter moment which
should separate him from his past ?
And in the meantime a merciful
Providence did for Agnes more
than it was in her father's power
to do.
Strangely trivial are the events
which at times alter the whole
course of our lives. The turning-
point of our career is often so faint-
ly marked that a few months or
years obliterate all trace of that
whose after-consequences follow us
to death's very door, and perhaps
mark our souls for eternity.
It was one day in the early spring
that Agnes, listlessly turning over
some prints in a picture-dealer's
store, heard a sweet voice near her
say : " There, my dear, is a picture
of your patroness, the blessed St.
Agnes." Turning instinctively at
the sound of her own name, she
saw that the speaker, a very young
girl, was really addressing her
companion some distance off; but
on seeing trie stranger mechani-
cally hold out her hand for the
print, the child for she was no
more courteously offered it to her,
with a shy glance at the lovely
dark face and sombre, dreamy
eyes.
It was a time-worn copy of that
rare engraving of Martin Schoen's
where the saint, palm-branch in
hand, stands looking down, a pic-
ture of meek, girlish beauty, her
heavy tresses falling to her feet, her
lamb lying sleeping by her side.
Agnes looked long and curious-
ly at the tender loveliness of this
child-martyr who bore her own
name. She wondered much who
she was and when she suffered, but
did not like to ask partly because
ashamed of her own ignorance, of
which she was at all times painful-
ly conscious, partly because too
proud to acknowledge the interest
which she, a Jewish girl, felt in a
Christian saint. So, putting the
picture softly down and stealing a
wistful look at the two children,
she left the store, resolved to buy
for herself the history of St. Agnes,
if there was one in Prague.
T/ie Story of Agnes.
93
Why should she not know some-
thing of those whom the old paint-
ers deemed the worthiest subjects
of their canvas? There could be
no possible harm in it; and yet it
wns with a feeling of guilt she
could not quite subdue that she
sat down in her room that night
to read the story of this purest and
sweetest of saints and martyrs.
There was not much to read.
The history of those thirteen years
of life was quickly told ; but every
word went straight to Agnes' heart,
because of her natural assimilation
with the saint's character. The
likeness between them, it is true,
lay deep down, for on the surface
everything seemed so different ; but
the passionless purity of the girl's
soul, which had so long recoiled
from all that touched it, went forth
in intense yet half-despairing love
for this its natural ideal.
During those first hours of
thought despair indeed predomi-
nated ; for Agnes, applying the key
of the saint's inner and outer life
to her own, read by its help all
that was earthly and false in her
own nature.
From infancy St. Agnes had
lived in the clear vision of God.
Every throb of her white soul was
open to his loving eyes ; every im-
pulse, and thought, and deed
found its natural end and means
in him ; while she, who had found
nothing but bitterness in her earth-
ly world, had yet lived in it and for
it alone. She had been the centre
of her own life ; God had been the
centre of the saint's ; and Agnes
clearly saw the different results.
Even in remote details how un-
like she was to this favored soul !
The saint, though young and beau-
tiful and nobly born, esteemed all
these things as nothing, wrapped in
more perfect joy. And she! The
rich dress in which she delighted,
her pride in her own loveliness,
her indolence and luxury, all the
earthly bonds she hated and yet
bowed beneath, came surging
through her mind with sudden,
cruel force. And yet what were
these things compared to the dif-
ference in their inner lives?
Her sense of self-abasement
seemed to stifle her, and she leant
from her window for a breath of
the cool night air. Above her
spread the quiet beauty of the
heavens, and their silent majesty
soothed her troubled mind ; but
below, through the deserted streets,
crept two men, and as they passed
one of them struck the other angri-
ly and muttered a low blasphemy ;
and Agnes, shrinking back into her
room, fell upon her knees and pray-
ed. Then for the first time it came
upon her mind with overpowering
force that St. Agnes was a Chris-
tian, and perhaps only Christians
could .reach to such ideal purity
and love. If that were so, what
would become of her ? Must she
always remain what she now was,
or could she take .the terrible step
and renounce at once faith, and
race, and kindred ?
She felt rather than knew with
what deep-seated, unrevealed dis-
like and hatred her father looked
upon the Christian faith ; for Reu-
ben Trendellsohn was not one to
lightly express his intense emotions.
Very little had ever been said to
her on the subject, yet heretofore
she had remained docile to the reli-
gious training of her earliest years.
Now she was confused and terri-
fied at the greatness of the struggle
that raged within her soul a strug-
gle in which she had no one to
help her, and seemed so powerless
to help herself. " St. Agnes, pray
for me ! pray for me !" she sobbed,
94
The Story of Agnes.
half unconscious of her words ;
and still repeating at intervals,
" Pray for me ! pray for me !" she
knelt motionless as a stone until
the first gray light of morning peer-
ed softly through the open window.
Spring had gone, and the dying
glory of a summer day lit up the
many carvings that adorn the
church of St. John Nepomucene,
and, slanting through the stained
windows, wrought delicate little
patterns on the floor, and settled
here and there on the walls in
streaks of burnished gold. The
sunshine played softly like a halo
around the few old women who
still lingered near the altar; but
no ray, however small and faint,
reached to the farthest end of the
church, where, close to the ponder-
ous door, and shrinking into the
shadows, knelt a girl with her face
buried in her hands. When at last
she rose to go, and passed from
the dimness within to the dazzling
light without, you saw that it was
Agnes Trendellsohn, who, with a
quick, apprehensive look around to
make sure that no one followed
her, walked rapidly towards the
Judenstadt.
When she reached the bridge
with its many statues, she paused
for a few minutes before the figure
of St. John Nepomucene, and, lay-
ing her little hand softly upon the
hem of his stone garment, she
stood looking silently down upon
the rushing Moldau beneath. A
passer-by would have thought her
merely idling away a little while
by watching the smooth black wa-
ters as they sullenly washed the
great arches ; but the saint doubt-
less knew that in her unspoken
way she asked for his protection
asked it with her heart, and with
her imploring eyes, and with the
gentle touch of her hand upon
his image, as a child begs by
pulling at its mother's skirt. He
is so pitiful in heaven, this St.
John, who was on earth so strong
and courageous, that doubtless he
heard and answered.
As she stands thus, looking down
upon the waters, Agnes shows that
she has strangely altered. Her
dark eyes have lost their dreamy
wistfulness, and shine with a new
light, hopeful yet longing; the air
of scornful weariness that hung
about her like a veil is gone. She
looks like one who seems almost to
reach the happiness of her life, and
longs to annihilate the minutes that
must come and go before it can be
consummated. " To-morrow," she
murmured softly to herself " to-
morrow " ; and she turned to go.
Only one more night, and to-mor-
row she was to be baptized ; but,
in the intensity of her desire, that
one night seemed to stretch before
her like a lifetime, and what might
not happen before another sun?
The old priest to whom she
had come, doubting, fearing, and
torn with conflicting emotions, felt
that he had never had a soul like
this under his hands. He had in-
structed many converts and raised
up many fallen ones in his long
years of ministry. Sore and wound-
ed souls had been so often laid
bare before his pitying eyes that
now the lights and shades of hu-
man nature were as an open book,
to which experience had given him
the key. But this soul, so weak
and yet so strong, so turned to
heaven yet so bound down to
earth, so pure and yet so shame-
laden, puzzled him strangely. It
was an easy task to show the light
to one already touched by divine
grace. Agnes could readily under-
stand, and, understanding, believe;
The Story of Agnes.
95
but the one feeling he could not sub-
due, and that nothing but the wa-
ters of baptism could entirely van-
quish, was this terrible sense of
shame. It was pain for her to
enter a church where she knew
dwelt the living God while this pro-
found consciousness of sin weighed
her down. Kneeling always in the
farthest comer, she yet shrank
from so close a contact with the
Divinity. Her love for God made
the thought of her unbaptized soul,
on which his pure eye could not
rest with pleasure, insupportable to
her. Added to this was the mis-
ery she felt in being of her race.
She seemed to carry on her deli-
cate shoulders the crushing weight
of that terrible curse whose echo
sounds from generation unto gen-
eration : " His blood be upon our
heads and upon our children " ;
and there were times when the ter-
ror of this thought took away her
breath and stopped the prayers
upon her lips. How could she
dare to pray to the risen Christ
when in her ears, carried through
ages, rang the cry of " Crucify him,
crucify him "? How could she lift
her eyes to the sorrowful Mother
standing at the foot of the cross
and gazing at her dying Son ?
This unconquerable sense of fear
and shame swayed her so strongly
that the priest, unable to overcome
it, and knowing too well in what
strangely subtle ways the arch-
enemy often ingratiates himself,
making of a virtue exaggerated the
easy road to vice, determined to
hasten the day of her baptism, trust-
ing that, once purified in God's
sight, these fears would vanish in
the full light of love. And so it
was that on this June evening Ag-
nes, as she hastened home, thought
with bated breath, " Only one night
more, one little night, and then "
And she smiled as the Christian
smiles who sees opening before his
eyes the gleaming gates of Paradise.
As she passed through one of the
narrower streets of the Jews' quar-
ter a sudden thought struck her,
and turning into a filthy little court-
yard, whose wretched houses stood
tumbling against eacli other like a
party of drunken revellers who
crowd together for support, she
hastily went up to one of the door-
ways, where a coarse-looking young
Jew of the thick-lipped, light-hair-
ed type stood lazily looking out
upon the darkening street.
" Is your mother at home, An-
ton ?" she said ; " and how is your
sick brother?"
The young man's heavy and al-
most brutish face brightened and
softened when he saw the ques-
tioner.
" My mother is at home and will
be glad to see you, Miss Trendell-
sohn," he said; "and the baby is
worse. I, for one, do not expect
him to live."
He made room for her as he
spoke, and she ran lightly up the
broken stairway. A mingled smell
of dirt, foul air, and disease filled
the house, and Agnes turned sick
and faint before she had reached
the second story. She paused for
a minute, not to make up her mind,
but to gather up her strength.
" For thy sake, O blessed St. Ag-
nes !" she whispered, and, making
a strong effort, she went on and
opened a door to her right. The
sick child lay on the bed, consumed
with fever, and the mother, a mid-
dle-aged woman, with a skin like
chalk and a tangled mass of light
hair hanging down her shrunken
shoulders, sat in the reeking room,
her hands folded listlessly in her
lap, and her sad eyes fixed with a
vacant stare on the grimy floor.
The Story of Agnes.
" Is it you, Miss Trendellsohn ?"
she exclaimed, rising to her feet as
Agnes entered, while a dim smile
played for one instant on the worn,
stolid face. " How can you bear to
come here? Even my own kin-
dred have forsaken me, and Anton
will not so much as enter the room.
He says that if one must die there
is no reason why two should. But
do you, too, think that he must
die? Is there no hope, at all?"
she asked wistfully, as the girl bent
over the flushed and pitiful little
figure on the bed.
" God is good," said Agnes soft-
ly, " and he holds life and death in
his hands ; but has the doctor I
sent been here ?"
" Oh ! yes," replied the woman,
a sullen shadow stealing over her
face ; " he came here, and ordered
this and that and the other for the
child, just as if I had the money to
pay for them."
" I told you," said Agnes gently,
putting some silver in her hand,
"that I would pay for all that he
ordered ; but what else did he say?"
" He said the boy wanted air,
and a clean room, and a clean
bed," said the other unwillingly ;
but, as if softened by the touch of
the money, " Doctors are for ever
preaching, 'clean, clean, clean.'
What can I do with a den like this ?"
" Did he say that the child could
be "moved?" asked Agnes, shudder-
ing as she glanced at the foul walls
and rotten ceiling.
" Yes," was the sullen answer.
" Then take him away to-mor-
row," she said peremptorily. " No
human being could hope to live in
a spot like this. Mother Rachel
over the way will give you clean
rooms, and I will pay the cost;
only rouse youself, and do not let
your little boy die for want of the
care you owe him."
The woman trembled all over,
then, with a wailing cry, threw her-
self on the floor and kissed the
hem of the girl's dark dress; but
she did not utter a word of thanks.
Agnes bent down and softly touch-
ed the baby's face With her cool
hand ; then she glided rapidly down
the stairs into the gathering twilight,
a strange sense of weakness and
giddiness creeping over her at
every step. Once in her room, she
sat down to try and collect her scat-
tered thoughts and ease her aching
head. Directly over her bed hung
a painting, to which her tired eyes
constantly strayed. It was a 'pic-
ture of St. Agnes, on which she had
lavished many hours of tender, lov-
ing work. She would not paint
the saint with downcast, modest
eyes, as in Martin Schoen's rare en-
graving, but looking upwards in the
boldness of perfect purity; nor
clad in costly drapery, as is Titian's
masterpiece, for the spouse of
Christ needs no earthly adornment ;
nor seated in the full glow of
womanly beauty, as Andrea del
Sarto painted her, for the childish
loveliness of the maiden of thirteen
bloomed into prime not on earth
but in heaven.
Day after day, week after week,
Agnes toiled over this picture, and
now it hung finished on her wall
a slender child in soft, white
drapery, her deep eyes raised in
loving ecstasy, her sweet lips part-
ed in the shadow of a smile; strong
in her youthful purity, happy in
her burning love. She carried no
lamb or palm-branch which might
betray her to that Jewish house-
hold, but hung there in their midst,
the highest type of weak humanity,
the crowning triumph of the Chris-
tian faith. And as Agnes knelt to
pray it almost seemed to her that
in the gloom the saint's dark eyes
The Story of Agnes.
97
were turned upon her in loving pity
as, growing fainter and fainter, her
head drooped on her pillow. " To-
morrow," she repeated half uncon-
sciously " to-morrow" ; and, trying
to rise, her strength entirely failed
her, and she knew no more.
But when the morrow came
Reuben Trendellsohn stood by his
daughter's bedside with compress-
ed lips and flashing eyes, as over
and over again in her disjointed
ravings she revealed the secret she
had striven so hard to hide ; and as
he heard and understood his dark
cheek paled with mingled anger
and sorrow. Agnes was very ill.
The cousins thought it hard they
were not allowed to see her, even
for one moment, for her danger had
quickened the love in their warm
. hearts; and Mark's wife turned bit-
terly away when her brother-in-law
refused her kindly offers of assist-
ance, and closed the door of his
daughter's sick-room to her, as to
all others except the doctor and
the nurse, a strong-faced, taciturn
Jewess, with whom he had an in-
terview before she took her post'.
Only these three ever saw the
patient, for Reuben meant to guard
the secret at any cost. " Better
that she should die," he bitterly
thought, " than live to desert her
faith and kindred"; and so for long,
long days and nights Agnes fought
with the deadly fever that consum-
ed her, watched only by those
three stern faces, and by the white-
robed, soft-eyed saint upon the
wall.
And when at last the fever left
her she lay so weak that her life was
more than ever in danger, and her
father, standing by her bedside and
meeting the imploring glance whose
meaning, he read too well, walked
quickly to the window, to gain a
moment's time and to strengthen
VOL. xxix. 7
his resolution. It was early even-
ing, and the noisy streets were
hushed into something like quiet.
Reuben stood looking down upon
them, revolving once more in his
mind thoughts that had grown to
be his hourly guests. He was
firmly determined that no grief or
anger should prompt him to a mo-
ment's harshness to his motherless
child. He was a scrupulously just
man, and he now took ,on his own
shoulders the greater part of the
blame for jvhat had occurred.
Had not his little daughter been
left to his sole care, and had he
not in many ways neglected her?
And if in her loneliness and dis-
satisfaction she had wandered off
to the Gentiles, was not the re-
sponsibility his, and his alone ? If
it were not too late even now she
might be saved, and must be sav-
ed, at any cost. Reuben did not
shrink from the thought of what
that cost might be ; but he pro-
mised his dead wife that he would
be gentle in all things to the child
that she had given him.
Then, and not till then, he re-
turned to his daughter's bedside,
and took one of her little hands in
his, steeling his heart meanwhile
against the passionate entreaty that
burned in her wistful eyes. For a
minute there was a breathless si-
lence in the room ; then Agnes
spoke :
" For my mother's sake," she
whispered, "do not refuse me."
He looked at her inquiringly, but
said no word. A little wail broke
from her parched lips.
" I am unbaptized," she moaned ;
" for God's dear love do not let
me die thus.. For the sake of the
love you bore my mother, and have
always borne me, let me be baptiz-
ed before I go to meet my God."
A joyful light came into Reu-
9 8
The Story of Agnes.
ben's eyes then it was not too
kite; but it faded away as he glanc-
ed at his daughter's pale face.
" Listen to me, Agnes," he said.
' ; I.do not reproach you for the
grief that you have brought upon
me, because I blame myself too
bitterly for my neglect of you. I
will still hold you as my child when
you have cast away from you the
Christian faith, and returned hum-
bly and contritely to the belief of
your fathers. I will, do all in my
power to cure your sv^k mind of
its fancies ; but do not presume to
ask me to consummate your ruin.
Dearly as I love you, I would ra-
ther you died a Jewess than lived
a Christian. Above all do not
dare " here his enforced gentle-
ness failed him for an instant, but
he regained it with a powerful ef-
fort "do not dare to conjure me
in the name of your mother, whose
memory you have wronged so deep-
ly, and who, thank God ! is spared
the pain I feel to-day."
He paused, and Agnes in her de-
solation, knowing that no earthly
power could move him, turned her
sad eyes from his set face to the
saint's above her pillow. " St. Ag-
nes, pity me !" she moaned with a
faint gesture of her hand towards
heaven. t
Reuben's eyes flashed fire ! The
effort he had put upon himself was
stronger than could be imagined,
and he seized this loophole to give
vent 'to the overwrought feelings
he could no longer restrain. Here
was the work of his daughter's
hand, and to it, like an idolater, she
prayed. A knife was lying on the
table, and with one quick step and
rapid action he ripped the picture
from side to side. As he did so
he heard a low cry, more like pain
than sorrow, come from his daugh-
ter's bed as she saw her best-be-
loved work so ruthlessly destroyed,
and the sound, faint as it was, re-
called him to himself. What he
had done was the almost uncon-
querable impulse of a deeply ex-
cited man breaking through the
forced calmness that choked him,
and venting his rage upon what
was innocent b'ecause he 'might not
touch the guilty. Ashamed of his
momentary outbreak, he paused for
an instant, and then with downcast
eyes he left the room to try and
gather strength to meet the trou-
ble^ that encompassed him.
But Agnes, left alone in her sor-
row and helplessness, lay white and
motionless, her dark eyes fixed
upon the mutilated picture, but her
heart lifted up in pitiful prayer to
God. She had no hope of living;
the faint spark of life within seem-
ed almost burned out; she must
die, and she was unbaptized. In
vain she tried to think of all that
the priest had told her of that mys-
tical sacrament, the baptism of de-
sire, in which many a longing soul
had by God's mercy been purified.
In her exhausted state she was far
less able than ever to overcome the
terrible feeling of shame and fear
that had always proved her stum-
bling-block ; and now all thought,
all hopes, all prayers were swallow-
ed up in an infinite longing for the
sacrament that was denied her. So
the long night wore on. The nurse
lay sleeping at her feet ; the lamp
burned dimly in the room; the
wind swept mournfully by the win-
dows ; the tattered picture hung
upon the wall, and beneath it the
dying girl fought single-handed with
the demon of despair.
Suddenly a soft light shone about
the bed, and by her side she saw
one whom 'she knew to be St. Ag-
nes, her deep eyes full of tender
love and pity a love which has its
The Story of Agnes.
99
rise in God alone, a pity with no
shade of sorrow in it. She held in
her hand a lily, whose fragrant urn
was full of sparkling water, and in
it Agnes thought she saw reflected
her own passionate, longing soul.
The vision smiled and raised the
lily over the sick girl's head. " I
baptize tbee, Agnes," she said in
clear, sweet tones, " in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost. Amen." And
the cool waters fell upon her burn-
ing brow, and a great wave of joy
surged through her heart, and
strains of glad, triumphant music
rang in her ears ; and the room
seemed full of light and perfume,
and snowy angel wings, and radiant
angel eyes; and then the vision
vanished and the music died away,
but the troubled soul was at last in
peace.
For hours had Reuben Trendell-
sohn sat lost in thought, revolving
in his .mind his future course of
action, hardening his heart against
Ins only child. When morning
dawned he nerved himself to go
again into her room. He would
be more gentle, he said, and per-
haps his love would win her back
to him ; he would be patient, too,
but always firm. She was only a
child after all, and must yield in
time ; and yet and yet he had
known others who w.ere struck with
this same madness, and he remem-
bered that they had never yielded.
Quietly he entered his daughter's
room. She was lying peacefully
upon her bed, her eyes open and
shining with a new, soft light that
he had never seen before. Her
whole face, wan and thin with ill-
ness, was radiant with joy; and as
she turned to see him her delicate
lips were curved into the tender
smile she used to wear as a baby
before her mother died.
She tried to put her little hand
in his. " It is over, my father,"
she whispered gently ; " the blessed
St. Agnes came to me during the
night and baptized me. I will pray
for you always, dearest, when I am
in heaven, and our Lord will have
mercy on you too."
Reuben Trendellsohn started
back, his face ashy pale, his lips
trembling. Had he driven his
child to madness? The thought,
was terrible to him, and yet what
mad woman ever smiled like that
or looked so strangely happy ? She
was not feverish ; her hand lay cool
and moist in his, but the pulse
was beating low. Terrified, he
knelt by the bedside and took her
in liis arms. " Agnes ! Agnes !" he
cried, " you have been ill or dream-
ing. Do not think of such things,
but try and get well, and I swear
that I will give you all that your
heart desires, at any cost to me."
She laid her head gently on his
breast; he had not held her so
since her mother died. " I am rvot
ill or dreaming," she said slowly,
" but Christ has already given me
all that my heart desired. I go to
him, not shrinking away in shame,,
but pure and trusting."
"You are raving, Agnes," said
her father huskily, and he put her
from him and rose to his feet; but
his daughter, touching his arm with
weak, white fingers, held him as
though chained to her side, for he
loved her dearly.
"St. Agnes, pray for him!" she
murmured ; and as she spoke, in-
stinctively he raised his eyes to the
picture he had destroyed. But the
look of- shame was lost in one of
wonder, and the strong man trem-
bled like a child ; for the painting
hung whole and uninjured on the
wall, and the saint's soft eyes seem-
ed to look reproachfully at nim as
100
Crux Ave !
he examined the canvas. There
was no sign of cut or tear about it
to show the treatment it had re-
ceived. A thousand wild conjec-
tures surged through Reuben's
brain as he stood transfixed and
bewildered. Then a ray of faith
pierced through the darkness of his
soul, and he gave a sobbing cry,
like a man in danger of drowning.
And as he knelt reverently by his
daughter's bedside, Agnes opened
her eyes once more, and then closed
them for ever in the sleep of death.
CRUX AVE!
Stand fast, ye spruces ; lift your heads ! Ye catch
The earliest dawn ; unweariedly ye watch
The changing seasons, swiftly passing days ;
Nor frost, nor bitter wind, nor darkness stays
Your course. Your arms, with patient, high emprise,
Still lift their myriad crosses to the skies. L. D. PYCHOWSKA.
THE summer day was dying in the sky,
And deep'ning shadows had begun to lie
On field, and wood, and river flowing by-
Flowing in shade save wher,e it caught the light
Of golden skies, slow melting into night,
Where hung the hollow moon faint-lined and bright.
Of stars shone, here and there, the uncertain gleam ;
Like altar-lights the kindled orbs did seem
Faint at first lighting, soon undimmed to beam.
As if forgetting that the day was dead,
Some bird poured song triumphant overhead ;
Pure, sweet, and clear the quivering notes were shed.
Tall spruces wafted balm, as if to place
Sweet perfume on the shroud that, fair in grace,
Lay gently folded round the day's dead face ;
And lifted o'er that day in death so blest
The cross's sign as token of true rest
By that calm dead for all the years possessed.
Crux Ave ! 101
n.
A golden vision mingled with the still,
Prayer-laden peace that seemed the hour to fill
With angels' tidings unto men of gentle will :
A Christmas altar rose before my sight,
Shining with slender tapers crowned with light
Like Love Divine consuming souls all white
The altar robed, like bride to meet her lord,
In garments rich where loving hands had poured
The thoughts of loving hearts that Him adored,
In ancient symbols wrought bright, silken thread,
Full, purple grapes, of Calvary hallowed,
And golden wheat-ears, sign of Living Bread,
Telling with silent grace of Love Divine
Hiding itself within the earthly shrine
Where, e'er unquenched, faith's mystic light doth shine.
From Raphael's canvas gazed our Heavenly Queen,
Clothed with the sun, and fair with smile serene,
Clasping her Son his humble saints between.
Below, with varying light, the Christmas star
Twinkled, and told of Eastern lands afar,
And Gentile kings of old whose heirs we are ;
Shining the star as once in Juda's town
Above the King of kings laid helpless down,
His Godhead veiled, with faith and love for crown.
All hearts, in loving worship lost, bent low,
While angel hosts seemed wandering to and fro,
Singing, as once the crowded years ago :
" Glory to God, to men of gentle will
His peace " seeming that peace each heart to fill,
Earth's longing hushed, forgotten earthly ill.
Above the crib arose the laden cross
With arms outstretched to save the world from loss,
Cleansing the nations from sin's clouding dross :
. *
So e'er upon the day of this dear birth,
The Christmas season glad with Christian mirth,
The cross's shadow falls aslant the earth ;
IO2 Crux Ave !
The stable's walls with Calvary's echoes ring-
Fair Bethlehem's offering to her Infant King
Jerusalem's proud scorn foreshadowing.
in.
Where lowlier altar stood apart, less fair,
Clustered tall spruces, nursed by mountain air,
And late the crown of hillsides cold and bare,
Now pouring forth their perfume, spicy sweet,
Like Eastern kings hastening their Lord to greet,
Their worship laying at their Master's feet.
Here mirnic manger lay amid the green
That framed the pleading pathos of the scene
The Holy Child two angels white between,
Whose lifeless silence adoration wrought,
Each folded pinion filled with wondering thought
Of Infinite Might through love so lowly brought.
Here rose the cross above the crib once more,
Crowning the stately spruces, towering o'er,
That 'mid their green redemption's symbol wore.
Their perfect boughs held forth the holy sign
Grown with their daily life with art divine :
Obedient wrought each fibre strong and fine.
IV.
Ah ! happy tree, dowered so rich indeed,
Bearing the sign by which our souls are freed,
As if dumb earth sought God's dear cause to plead.
Brave spruce ! firm in thy constant green, e'en though
The winter heap thee with its weight of snow,
And biting winds with icy torment blow;
As faithful witnesses thy branches throw
The cross's shadow on the sunlit snow
Heaven's own blue that shadow here below.
Crux Ave ! 103
Distilling balm, thou fill'st the bitter air :
Like to the incense of ascending prayer,
Wreathing the cross thyself dost proudly bear.
And, 'mid thy fragrance, comes the blessed thought
Of those sweet spices that the Marys brought
When to anoint the Crucified they sought.
Telleth of her, thy perfume-laden bough,
Who, sorrow-struck with love and sin, bent low
To wipe his feet, winning forgiveness so.
Lo ! through thy solemn boughs the wandering breeze
Grows sadder-voiced, as if it toned 'mid these
The Passion chant's appealing harmonies.
v.
The Christmas dream grew dim, the day was gone,
The lingering summer eve so softly flown,
The twilight into night fast drifting on ;
The bird grown silent, and the low-voiced breeze
Whispering amid the ghostly birchen trees
Faintly as wave-break on scarce-ruffled seas.
Damp from the fog-wreathed meadow rose the air-
The meadow in the day's late light so fair,
With summer's sweet grass harvest lying there.
The stars o'erhead bright promise of our peace
The earth below, awaiting its release,
And crowning earth its heaven-aspiring trees.
Above the crib the cross ! our cradle earth
Lifting the symbol of our heavenly birth
Blest symbol, kindling light on darkest hearth' !
Pure light wherein all earthly fires grew pale,
Blest sign that doth God's perfect love unveil !
O holy cross, on earthi in heaven, all hail !
IO4 The Proposed Expulsion of the Teaching Orders
THE PROPOSED EXPULSION OF THE TEACHING ORDERS
FROM THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF PARIS.
THE municipal council of Paris,
in its sitting of December 14, 1878,
passed the following resolution :
"The council, considering that the
prefect of the Seine, in continuing to en-
trust the direction of a large number of
public schools in the city of Paris to
congregational teachers, could not fail
to be aware that this proceeding was
utterly in opposition to the decided opin-
ion of the council, and also of the ma-
jority of the population ;
" Considering, moreover, that a circu-
lar issued by the Minister of Public In-
struction, September 24th ult., reminded
the prefects that, while retaining the
liberty and responsibility of 'decision
without appeal,' they were bound to
take largely into account the advice of
the municipal councils in the matter of
choice between lay and congregational
teaching ;
" Considering that there is reason for
again representing seriously to the pre-
fect of the Seine the advisability of con-
forming himself to the recommendation
of the Minister of Public Instruction, to
the unmistakable feeling of the majority
of the Parisian population, and a formal
resolution of the municipal council, ' the
natural and legitimate interpreters of
the commune' ;
"The council prays that the di-
rection of the public schools and Salles
d'Asile (infant schools) of the communes
of Paris be placed exclusively under lay
teachers"
The moment appears to have ar-
rived for those who especially claim
the title of republicans to put into
execution projects which have long
been in existence, and which were
never more accurately demonstrated
than during the terrible days of the
siege and Commune. These de-
signs, ripened by eight years of re-
flection and study, present a three-
fold interest, accordingly as they
are considered with reference to
(i) the finances of the city, (2) the
progress of primary education, or
(3) public morality and social ad-
vantage. We propose briefly to
examine the motives which must
be supposed to actuat'e these de-
signs, and those which alone could
render their accomplishment ac-
ceptable.
And, first, with regard to the in-
terest of the budget. On this
point, at least, the municipal coun-
sellors cannot be acting with their
eyes shut, being perfectly aware
that the congregational teachers
cost far less than laics, and that the
substitution of the latter would lay
a serious additional burden on the
city.
This consideration does not in
the least trouble the counsellors.
But the taxpayer, who is at this
moment bearing the maximum of
the charges it is in his power to de-
fray, has some right to be anxious.
He is promised a reduction of
taxes a reduction which is always
postponed, and, instead of this, fresh
duties, rights of octroi, and munici-
pal taxes are annually created, old
imposts are increased, and new
loans in course of preparation.
The tax upon house-rent, for in-
stance, has just been raised to thirty
per cent., although trade is far from
flourishing and thousands of work-
men are out of employment. It is
true that the Chamber of Deputies,
for the consolation of the people,
has lately suppressed the duty upon
chiccory and- oil ; but bread, meat,
wine, and vegetables continue to
pay an enormous duty. Does not
from the Public Schools of Paris.
105
the city, then, know what to do
with its money ? And this, too,
when, as is well known, so much
requires to be done, especially in
supplying the material needs (as to
deficiencies of building, etc.) of the
public schools ; some localities be-
ing too small or otherwise un-
healthy, others needing rebuilding
or repair. There are at this mo-
ment in Paris 16,000 children who
cannot be received into the exist-
ing schools for want of room. And
this is the time chosen by the mu-
nicipality to carry out its project !
The following table indicates the
importance of the change propos-
ed by the municipal council :
STATISTICS OF THE ECOLES COMMU-
NALES OF PARIS.
Boys' Schools Lay, 87, comprising
500 masters. Congregational, 54, com-
prising 350 brothers.
Girls' Schools Lay, 86, comprising 446
mistresses. Congregational, 58, com-
prising 390 sisters.
Infant Schools Lay, 97, comprising
212 mistresses. Congregaiional, 33,
comprising 98 sisters.
Thus it is on a total of 145
schools, and a personnel of 838
teachers, that the transformation is
to be effected. But besides the
titulars, the supplementary teachers
must be taken into consideration,
and the indemnities received by
them for replacing the titulars when
ill or absent.
This source of expenditure does
not exist among the congregational
teachers. If a brother or sister is
ill or obliged to be absent for a
time, the superior immediately
provides a substitute, and the sick
or absent teacher no longer counts
as a recipient of payment. Indem-
nities for lodging must also be add-
ed to the account, as the lay mas-
ters could not (and certainly would
not) inhabit the poor and narrow
cells of the brothers and teaching
sisters.
After a careful calculation, based
on the minimum of the salaries al-
lowed to lay teachers in virtue of
the decree* 'of February 3, 1873,
it is ascertained that the lowest
sum which the new personnel, with
requisite accommodation as to
lodging, will annually cost the city
of Paris amounts to 1,977,190
francs.
We will now see what is the cost
of the congregationists ; but, in or-
der not to make the triumph of
their friends too easy, we do not
take as the basis of our calculation
the figures of 850 and 700 fr. for
the salary of the Christian Bro-
thers, and 600 fr. for the sisters, as
they really stand in the budgets of
1878 and 1879 these sums being,
as it were, war prices, and having
for their object to starve the con-
gregationists into capitulation or
retreat but we go back to those
of the budget of 1877, which are as
follows :
Salaries of 350 brothers, at 950 fr 332,500 fr.
" 390 sisters, at 850 fr 331,500 fr.
Various indemnities, 3,700 fr 3,700 fr.
Salaries of 98 sisters in the infant schools,
at 850 fr 83,300 fr.
751,000 fr.
We have now only to subtract this
'sum from the foregoing amount of
I '977 I 9 fr- to fid that the lay
teachers will, at the lowest estimate,
cost Paris annually 1,226,190 fr.
more than those whom they are to
replace.
This, moreover, is only the ap-
proximate increase for the first
year ; lay teachers being allowed
an annual rate of increase, up to
* According to this decree the minimum salary
of a " director ;" is 2,800 fr. of a directress, 2,600 ;
of a male assistant, 2,000 ; female assistant, 1,800 ;
directress of infant school, 1,600 ; assistant, 1,200 ;
supplementary assistants, 800 fr. each, 600 fr. in
infant schools.
io6 The Proposed Expulsion of the Teaching Orders
4,000 fr. for directors, 3,500 for di-
rectresses, 2,400 for male assistants,
and 2,200 for female. Thus the
yearly augmentation . of salaries
would in a short time exceed two
millions more than is paid at the
present time.
But, it might be asked, why
should this fact be an obstacle, if
it be likely that popular education
would gain by the change ? We
will examine the probability of this
result.
The municipal council, to justify
the terms of "ignorantins," "ob-
scurantists," and " extinguishers "
(e'teigtioirs), which it applies so
freely to the Brothers of Christian
Doctrine, would have it believed
that their schools are so inferior,
both as regards the kind of instruc-
tion imparted and the qualifica-
tions of the teachers, that a mar-
vellous improvement, or rather " a
complete transformation," may be
confidently expected from the mo-
ment they are placed under laics.
We must again have recourse to
figures, which are not without their
eloquence. In this time of uni-
versal suffrage the votes of fathers
and mothers ought to have some
value as showing what is thought
by that "majority" of which the
council claims the support.
There are in the 173 lay schools
of Paris (not reckoning the Salles
d'Asile) 52,683 children, and 40,474
in the 112 congregational schools.
The comparison of these figures
shows that, proportionally, the reli-
gious are more frequented than
the lay schools, their average be-
ing 361 pupils, while the lay aver-
age is 104, and this notwithstand-
ing the strenuous efforts made by
the subordinates of the radical
mayors to obtain recruits for the
lay teachers, and also the fact that
many parents send their children
to the latter for the sole reason
that the brothers' schools are au
grand coinplet and cannot receive
another pupil.
It is therefore false to say that
the " majority " of the population
of Paris is hostile to the teaching
of the congregationists ; on the
contrary, it has a confidence in its
results which is strengthened by
constant success a success proved
by official documents of unques-
tionable impartiality.
The city of Paris annually offers
for competition a certain number
of prizes in money, called bourses, for
the primary schools of higher edu-
cation i.e.j those of Turgot, Col-
bert, Lavoisiez, J. B. Say, and the
College Chaptal. We have care-
fully examined the official table in
which* are registered the results of
this competition each year, from
1848 to 1877 inclusively. From
this table we find that, during this
interval of twenty-nine years, out
of 1,445 bourses, 1,148 were gained
by the brothers' schools, the lay
schools gaining 297.
The last year, 1878, the result
was the same; 788 pupils from all
the schools took part in the trial.
Of the 339 who were declared ad-
missible, 242 belonged to the 54
schools of the brothers, and 97 to
the 87 lay schools. Of the 50
candidates who took the highest
places for the general certificates,
43 belonged to the brothers, and to
the laics, 7 !
This, however, is only one aspect
of the successes obtained by the
" ignorantins."
With them originated the method
of simultaneous instruction, now
acknowledged to be the best. In
-the analysis which appeared in the
Journal Officiel of M. Greard's
voluminous report for the Paris
Exhibition, his statement was quot-
from the Public Schools of Paris.
107
ed that "it is also the Christian
Brothers who have given the best-
known method for teaching draw-
ing," and that " at the Exhibition
of 1867 they saved the honor of
France."
They were the first who in Paris
opened classes for adults. Twen-
ty-two of their communal schools
are open every evening for appren-
tices, young working-men, or any
who wish to commence or complete
their primary education. They
have organized scientific and pro-
fessional cours at their establish-
ments at Issy, Passy, St. Nicolas,
and the commercial school of St.
Paul, and their books have been
honored by the highest recompen-
ses at the Vienna Exhibition in
1873, the Geographical Exhibition
at Paris in 1878, and at the u Uni-
versal " Exhibition in 1878. At
the last they obtained for special
subjects (agriculture among the
rest) three gold medals, three sil-
ver, two bronze, various mentions
honor ables, besides s*haring in the
great prize of the Ministry of Pub-
lic Instruction, with which they ex-
hibited.
Nor are the schools of the sis-
ters inferior to those of the bro-
thers, although they cannot, like
them, publicly prove their effici-
ency by competing for the bourses.
They had their share of honor
at the Exhibition of 1867, when
112 schools under religious receiv-
ed prizes, while 68 only of the lay
schools obtained honorable mention.
They maintained their excellent
reputation at the Exhibition of
1878, and won the admiration of
competent examiners. The re-
ports of the inspectors and can-
tonal delegates are full of praises
of the state of their schools, which
these reports assert to be habitually
superior to that of the schools
under lay direction. It has
even been enthusiastically eulogiz-
ed by writers in the Revue des Deux
Mondes,
The 42 schools in Paris directed
by the Sisters of St. Vincent de
Paul have, during the interval from
1874 to 1878, presented 2,815 pupils
as candidates for certificates. Of
this number, 2,248 have been suc-
cessful in obtaining them. During
this time 18 of their girls have been
admitted into the Normal School,
51 hafe obtained diplomas as as-
sistant-mistresses, 52 diplomas of
capacity, 44 " medals of honor/'
and 88 mentions honor ables.
From the foregoing facts it will
be seen how unwise it is, as well as
unjust, to attempt to substitute for
teachers of such proved efficiency
persons recruited in haste and
coming no one knows from whence.
For the city of Paris would be
seriously perplexed to find a per-
sonnel sufficient, either as to num-
ber or qualifications, to replace the
religious. The normal schools,
according to the report of M.
Greard, have, during the five years
from 1872 to 1877, furnished no
more than 204 male and 156 female
teachers that is to say, it will be
necessary to accept all comers. It
is true, however, that in these days
any one may hope to pass mitster
for anything, the fitness of a per-
son for a post being often the last
consideration. If it were not so
we should scarcely see as recent-
ly in France coachmen and valets
suddenly transformed into justices
of the peace.
We now come to the chief and
decisive argument. La (morale
publique, we are told, forbids the
teaching by religious to be any
longer tolerated, because, even
should it not obscure the under-
standing of children, it is at least
108 The Proposed Expulsion of the Teaching Orders
incapable of making them ties antes
fibres and true patriots, and de-
grades them (les abrutit) by " the
practices of bigotry."
And so the Christian Brothers
and the Sisters of St. Vincent de
Paul, who have quitted their fami-
lies and all future prospects or
position to devote themselves to
teaching the children of the people
a work upon which they spend
their lives and energies, and by
which they are often worn-out in
the flower of their age are vile
beings, unfit for the companionship
or even the sight of children (cjiiil
faut soustraire a la vue de t enfant).
They have had the magnanimity to
offer their life, and have joyfully
laid themselves out for the most
ungrateful of occupations, in which
they give a daily example of patient
toil, of disinterestedness and disci-
pline ; and to their virtues they owe
their proscription !
Athens banished Aristides be-
cause he was "just." Paris, among
not a few other Athenian procli-
vities and pretensions, must also
have her ostracism. We ma)' rea-
sonably imagine the thoughts of
the citizens forming the municipal
council of Paris to run this wise :
"What!" they exclaim to them-
selves " these people are making
our children docile, obedient, dili-
gent; they teach them that a life
of industry is an honorable life,
and that there is a nobility in
honest and intelligent labor. The
children believe them. They will
become first-class workmen, or,
mounting the social ladder, will rise
to positions of eminence, and one
and all will proclaim that they owe
their success to the teaching of the
Christian Brothers! This must
not be ! We have had too much of
it already. The people must be
freed from its prejudices and the
swaddling bands of an effete and
bigoted despotism. Vive la lib-
erte!" Yes; all that these free-
thinkers of "independent morals "
clamor for, for the children of
France, is the negation of every
higher good. No more catechism,
no more creed, no more prayer, no
more God ! And since religion is
the basis of the brothers' teaching
and the source of their success,
their animating principle and in-
vigorating power, their schools,
odious to these men of progress,
must be closed, their voice's si-
lenced, their spirit extinguished.
Henceforth let the juvenile citoyen
vociferate to his heart's content :
Qiiun sang impnr abreuve nos sillons !
but beware of letting the sweet
canticles, O Dieu de Clemence or
Sottvenez-vous, 6 tendre Mere, sound
pleasantly in his parents' ears,
bringing the thought of God and
his blessed Mother to shed a breath
of sacred fragrance in his humble
home.
Alas ! it has already been said,
with too much truth, that " in
France there are no more children."
And, in fact, the workshops and
manufactories swarm with boys
who, at twelve years of age, are hope-
lessly corrupted. Daily before the
tribunals are brought precocious
malefactors whose language is as
cynical as the nature of their mis-
demeanors is frightful. The statis-
tics of crime in France show the
number of robbers and assassins to
be increasing every year, and also
(to the shame of our era be it
spoken) the number of fathers and
mothers obliged to have recourse
to the courts of justice to compel
their children to allow them in
their old age a sufficient " alimen-
tary pension " to keep them from
starvation.
Is it possible, we ask, that these
from the Public Schools of Paris.
109
men sincerely believe that the
"moral independence" they de-
mand so loudly will arrest these
evils ? No ; they well know that it
will not. Every man' not wilfully
self-blinded is compelled to ac-
knowledge that religion alone is
efficacious to arrest them.
It would be well if the municipal
council would reflect upon the fol-
lowing words of Victor Hugo. Re-
peating what his eminent col-
leagues, Guizot, Cousin, and Ville-
main, had expressed before him, he
says :
" Far from wishing to proscribe re-
ligious teaching, I consider it to be more
necessary at the present day than it has
ever been. The older a man grows the
more needful it is that he should believe.
The bane of our t'ime is to make this life
all. In giving to man this earthly life as
his sole end and aim, all its miseries are
aggravated by the negation at its close,
which, to the already oppressive burden
of the unfortunate, adds the insupport-
able weight of future nothingness, and,
instead of suffering, which is the law of
God, causes despair. Hence spring vast
and deep social convulsions. I would,
with unspeakable eagerness, desire to
ameliorate the material condition of those
who suffer, but the first and most neces-
sary amelioration is to give them hope.
Mingled with an infinite hope, how
much smaller do finite miseries become !
". . . Death is a restitution ; own it
boldly. God is found again at last ; let
us remember this, and teach it to all.
There would be no dignity in living, and
it would not be worth the trouble to live,
if, when we die, we die wholly.
" And that which lightens suffering
sanctifies toil. That which makes a
man good, wise, courageous is the per-
petual vision of a better world shining
through the darkness of this. . . . I here
declare that my profound belief in that
better world is the supreme certitude of
my reason, as it is [the supreme joy of
my soul."
There is yet another charge
against the Christian Brothers
that they are not patriots.
If this is because they do not
bear arms, being dispensed from
military service, the same reproach
must be made against the 530 lay
schoolmasters, not one of whom
has been a soldier, any more than
the 500 more who are to be sent
to replace the brothers in the
schools of Paris.
But he surely is a " patriot " who
does all in his power to promote
the welfare of 1iis country. And
the brothers -have rendered no
small service to theirs, not only by
their unremitting personal toils,
but also by having, at the cost of
long and too-easily-forgotten strug-
gles, succeeded in organizing a sys-
tem of teaching which produces
intelligent workmen and employes
and also learned and scientific
men. It is, in fact, to them that
France is, in a particular manner,'
indebted for .the constituent ele-
ments of national prosperity.
Besides, can it be that their ac-
cusers have already forgotten the
battle-fields of Bourget, Buzenval,
and Champigny, the attack of
Monthelon, and the noble conduct
of the Christian Brothers and of
the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul
in these and many another scene of
carnage around their beleaguered
capital ? Have they forgotten the
acclamations, not only of Paris but
of all France, when the French
Academy awarded to the brothers
the prize offered by the city of Bos-
ton for the noblest acts of patriot-
ism performed during the war of
1870-71 ?
The following is a quotation from
the report read during the sitting
of the Academy, August 8, 1872 :
" We have awarded this recompense
to an entire body as modest as it is use-
ful a body known to all, esteemed by
all, and which, in these unhappy times,
has won for itself true glory. You are
all aware to what career the Brothers of
1 10 The Proposed Expulsion of the Teaching Orders.
Christian Doctrine consecrate their lives,
and with what disinterested devotion
and paternal simplicity they pursue this
career. . . . When, however, they saw
their country in danger, the same feel-
ing which filled us all filled their hearts
also, and they asked themselves in what
way they could contribute to its defence
and relieve its sufferings. ... On the
i5th of August their venerable superior,
Brother Philip, wrote to the Minister of
the Interior, placing at his disposal for
the sick and wounded all the establish-
ments and communal- schools in the
possession of his Institute, as well as all
the members which composed it, his
council, his novices, and himself. The
minister gladly availed himself of the
offer. The brothers established, at their
own expense, a large ambulance in the
Rue Oudinot, and furnished a numer-
ous and efficient personnel to the various
other ambulances of Paris, particularly
those organized in the railway stations
for the immediate reception of the train-
fuls of wounded. The Society of the
Press also appealed to them for assist-
ance as brancardiers , or fitter-bearers, on
the fields of battle, as well as attendants
in its ambulances. In these two services
six hundred of the brothers were con-
stantly and gratuitously occupied. On
days when there was an engagement
they were more numerous.
" During the whole time of the siege
their schools were never closed nor
their classes interrupted. They sufficed
for everything ; they seemed to multiply
themselves. Each brother^ marched in
his turn. One day he taught in class,
the next he went under fire. The day
Brother Nethelone was killed at Bour-
get it was not his turn to march ; he had
taken the turn of another. Daily, in the
intense cold, very early in the morning,
they might be seen, to the number of
three or four hundred, traversing Paris,
saluted by the population as they passed
with Brother Philip at their head, in
spite of his eighty years ; he sending
them to the combat whither he could not
follow them. As to the brothers, they
faced fire as if they had done nothing
else all their lives, admirable for their
discipline and ardor.
" They marched like a regiment, in
companies of ten, each with a surgeon.
Arrived at the scene of action, girt with
a cord, they advanced, with a litter be-
tween every two, running always in the
direction of the firing, lifted up the
wounded, and carried them carefully to
the ambulances. ' Mes freres /' exclaim-
ed one of our generals, 'you exceed all
that humanity and charity can demand !'
Another leader dismounted to embrace
one of the devoted band, saying, ' You
are admirable, you and all yours.'
" The day after an engagement they bur-
ied the dead. Two of their number were
killed on the field, and eighteen died
from- maladies contracted in tending the
sick and wounded."
With regard to the sisters, it is
needless to speak of their heroism
and devotion in the ambulances,
the hospitals, and on the fields of
battle. Have the people of Paris
forgotten the forty-seven sisters
sent to Bice'tre to nurse the sol-
diers suffering from smallpox, and
that, when eleven of their number
caught the disease and died, thirty-
two immediately offered to replace
them, so that the requisite number
was chosen by lot ?
During the siege of Paris the
sisters tended, in their ambulances,
15,000 sick and wounded soldiers,
established soup-kitchens to feed
the famishing people for the small-
est sums possible, and all this time
never omitted their daily visits to
the poor, even during the bom-
bardment.
But the radical municipality of
Paris, if it remembers, at least cares
for none of these things. And
thus, while other nations have rea-
son to envy France her Brothers of
Christian Doctrine, and seek to at-
tract them, as well as the daughters
of St. Vincent de Paul, to their
shores, Frenchmen, who ought to
be jealous of their national glories,
especially at a time when so few re-
main to them, are seeking to drive
them away !
And these men call themselves
patriots, and have ever in their
mouths, as on their charred palaces,
Bayard Taylor.
ill
the false formula of Libertc, Egalite',
Fraternity Liberty of teaching
and liberty of conscience are alike
to be stifled by these liberal op-
pressors, who for ever accuse the
Catholic Church of intolerance the
church which has never ceased to
claim liberty of teaching for all who
should be found worthy of it, and
which has not only not set aside lay
teaching, but has ever made a point
of inviting distinguished Christian
laymen to teach in her schools, and
in all her works accepts, and even
solicits, lay co-operation. We
would fain believe that Paris, which
paid grateful and enthusiastic horn-
mage to Sceur Rosalie and' Brother
Philip, will never consent to drive
the religious from her schools.
BAYARD TAYLOR.
IT is with a genuine emotion of
thanksgiving and joy we learn that
the late Bayard Taylor did not
even begin his contemplated bio-
graphy of Goethe. We are glad
for two reasons : First and prin-
cipally, because the sooner the
world forgets that passionless and
scientific advocate of lust the bet-
ter; and, secondly, because we be-
lieve that Mr. Taylor had no real
sympathy with, or just estimate of,
him. We should be sorry to think
that one who represented the most
popular, if the crudest, department
of American literature should have
lent the charm of his style and the
generous fervor of his imagination
to reproducing for his wide circle
of readers and admirers the most de-
testable man of letters of the nine-
teenth century. We believe that
Mr. Taylor intended to blend the
biographies of Goethe and Schil-
ler a purpose which betrays a fatal
critical misconception. The genius
of Schiller is human ; but we can
parallel Goethe only with his Me-
phistopheles. Mr. Taylor would
have been certain to have invested
the hierophant of the Kulturfampf
with his own glowing fancies. We
should have a Goethe projected
from the imagination which con-
ceived Deukalion, and arrayed with
the moral virtues that adorn the
sages of the Poems of the Orient.
The real Goethe, the calm and self-
approving sceptic, measuring the
mental calibre of Jesus Christ and
sneering at his simplicity; making
the intellect of man the gauge of
eternity ; and classifying woman
as the ministrant to imperative
animal needs, is capable of analy-
sis only by himself. He has left
us his own biography, and it is one
of which Ktdtur should be asham-
ed, if it did not regard shame as a
conventionality. We are profound-
ly grateful that American literature
has escaped the infamy of such a
book as Lewes' Life of Goethe;
and as Mr. Taylor was not a phi-
losopher in any sense, his work in
all probability would have been
more dangerous than Lewes', who
dwells mainly upon the opinions of
the German sage, and thus produces
in a sensible and pure-minded man
a hearty hatred and detestation of
them.
'We can understand the enthu-
siasm of such a mind as Taylor's
112
Bayard Taylor.
over Goethe's Faust. Indeed, the
American writer quickly glowed
overevery form of literary and natu-
ral beauty. It was a boyish fervor,
which brings a smile of pleasure to
the face of the bias/ man of letters.
No doubt a schoolmaster enjoys
the keen delight of his pupils when
first they encounter some of the re-
sounding lines of Homer or Virgil's
rapid dactyls keeping time to a
storm or a battle. The old theatre-
goer at the end finds himself more
interested in the audience than in
the stage. Taylor's translation of
Faust was evidently a keen enjoy-
ment to him. Everything is a sur-
prise. No one before ever saw as
he the scenes of his travels. It is
this freshness of perception which
gives his writings their charm.
Most of his books read like the
letters which a bright schoolboy
writes to his mother. It is clear
that he has no deep perception of
Goethe's purpose in Faust. His
translation is sparkling, pictur-
esque, and felicitously imitative, but
it is like the music of the opera.
The real purpose of Goethe in the
poem, which is unfit and unintend-
ed for dramatic or operatic render-
ing (at least s.o far as such render-
ing aims at representing Goethe's
idea), is a complete reversal of
every Christian canon and the-
ory of the other life. It was for
this that Goethe lived and wrote.
In Wilhelm Meister he parodies
Christian symbols with the em-
blems of Kultur. In Faust he
aims a blow at the essence of Satan,
the failure of which he has by this
time discovered. In Helena we
have the pagan idea of love restor-
ed ; and in his Elective Affinities,
written in the impotency of old
age, he gloats over veteris vestigia
flajiimce, and formulates a theory
of matrimonial morals which makes
adultery the normal rule of life.
His abilities might have secured
him from the fear of rivals near his
throne. But he was so jealous and
envious that he kept his little court
of Weimar barred against talent
till it thundered for admittance and
the echo resounded throughout
Germany. Professing the greatest
love for Fatherland, and writing
fierce diatribes against Napoleon,
he was enraptured with a medal
which the conqueror threw to him
as a sop to a poetical Cerberus ;
and in fulsome verses he compar-
ed the subduer of his native land
to all the doves, Marses, and Apol-
los in every mythology which his
learning could suggest. It would
have been a pitiful spectacle to see
Mr. Taylor trying to make this
man out a demigod, as is the Ger-
man fashion. A less heroic char-
acter there is not in all history.
Old Sam Johnson, or Washington
Irving, or Mr. Taylor himself, is a
far more* excellent specimen of the
man of letters. Possibly, when the
present culture fever is passed,
literature will appraise Goethe at
his true valuation. As it is, it may
be of interest to note that Taine,
the French critic, and Jeffrey, the
English one, are unsparing in their
castigation of the Master, as Car-
lyle and Emerson call him, perhaps
for the reason that nobody is likely
to have sufficient courage to chal-
lenge them to a critical examina-
tion of his works.
It is the object of this criticism
to measure the literary status *of
Mr. Taylor, and to draw from hij
career a few lessons applicable to
the body of litterateurs of which he
was a distinguished representative.
We do not offer our views] in any
Rhadamanthine spirit of critical
infallibility. We should have been
proud to regard Mr. Taylor as
Bayard Taylor.
deserving of the high literary en-
comiums which have been passed
upon him. Our American litera-
ture is too sparse to leave ungar-
nered excellence in any field. But
after all criticism is criticism, and
it is simply nonsense to represent
Taylor as an unrivalled poet, a sci-
entific traveller, a safe and sound
critic, and a distinguished states-
man ; and we are sure he would have
been the first to condemn many of
the laudatory notices which his
lamented death has occasioned.
We have reason to think that he
merited all the tributes which speak
of his genial, kind-hearted, and open
disposition, his honest literary am-
bition, and that wonderful versati-
lity which, however creditable to
him under one aspect, was never-
theless fatal to his abiding literary
fame.
The reader, then, need not deem
us ungracious in saying that Mr.
Taylor's chief, if not sole, excel-
lence was that of a newspaper cor-
respondent. When we have said
this the inexorable conclusion fol-
lows that under no circumstances
can his writings ever become or be
regarded as classics. The average
daily journalist must make up his
mind to forego any claim upon pos-
terity. It is different with a maga-
zinist ; and, indeed, the tendency
of contemporary literature sets to-
ward the magazine. The best
minds, that a few decades ago
would have waited for a folio vol-
ume, now give their thoughts to
a periodical. But the newspaper
correspondent writes for the day
and the hour. He has no liberty
of opinion. He addresses a mixed
audience impatient of reflection.
His mind quickly sinks into the
state of the writer- of weekly ro-
mances. Every letter must have
a " hit " indeed, every paragraph.
VOL. xxix. 8
No doubt Mr. Taylor could have
turned out better work if he had
not been a slave to that awful mon-
ster, the daily press. He was like
Jack in the fairy story, trying to
amuse the hungry giant, without
Jack's luck, for he could not kill
it, though he poured into it a vast
amount of porridge.
Taylor's career is another illus-
tration of the possibilities of the
American printing-office. He was
a contemporary reproduction of
Benjamin Franklin, whom he ap-
pears to have taken for a model.
He had many vicissitudes of for-
tune, and could parallel Benjamin's
Philadelphia experience of want of
food and shelter. He picked up
that multifarious knowledge which
" lies around loose " in a printing-
office. He had no educational
discipline, and, being of an ardent
disposition, he felt a craving for
travel and excitement a restless-
ness which is generated by the
humdrum existence of most Ameri-
can hamlets. 'Our great cities fo-
cus all the vitality of American
life, leaving none for the villages.
His book Views Afoot, which de-
scribes a pedestrian tour in Eu-
rope, is one of the most painful that
we have ever read. Nothing but
sheer penury should have induced
him to publish it. There is a dis-
agreeable self-complacency in many
Americans, who seem to think it a
grand exploit to have lived on five
cents a day. We have no quarrel
to find with rigid economy, but it is
due to the biensfances not to obtrude
our makeshifts. No one attaches
any value. whatever to Mr. Taylor's
judgments, though often correct, in
this book. We refuse to believe
that a man who " tramped it "
through Europe can have arrived
at any just conclusion upon its po-
litical, social, or religious condi-
114
Bayard Taylor.
tion. However unjust it may seem,
the general conviction is that the
intelligence, morality, and sociolo-
gy of a land are' best studied in its
well-to-do and middle classes. Mr.
Taylor's ingenious expedients to se-
cure food and lodging, his disputes
with and triumphs over his land-
lords, his observations upon his
fellow-passengers, his strictures on
the wretched moral condition of
the European peasantry, his strug-
gles to preserve his scanty ward-
robe from thieves, leave his book
worthless and uninfluential as a re-
cord of travelling experience.
He saw Norway and Sweden,
Palestine and India, under more
favorable conditions. In all these
books there is displayed the pecu-
liar talent of the newspaper man.
They were written for the New
York Tribune, and it is curious to
notice how deftly this versatile
writer adapts his tone to the ears
accustomed to the music of Horace
Greeley. We long since learned
not to mind the reliable corre-
spondent when he begins to moral-
ize ; but if any one contemplates a
new edition of Mr. Taylor's trav-
els, we should suggest for the sake
of the departed, quite as much as
for the, sake of truth and justice,
that all his chapters touching upon
religious topics be omitted. The
chapter on Jerusalem (Land of the
Saracens], in which he expresses his
emphatic disbelief in the divinity
of Christ ; the offensive chapter in
his book on Greece, in which he
defends the marriage of the Greek
priesthood as preferable to the con-
cubinage of the Latin priesthood ;
and his general laudation of the
Mohammedan religion over Chris-
tianity, are instances of shameful
ignorance and captious criticism
which should not be suffered to re-
main. His lack of any definite re-
ligious training is painfully and of'
fensively apparent in every instance
in which he touches upon a reli-
gious question. Nor has he the
well-bred sneer of the genuine infi-
del. His assaults are always vul-
gar and in bad taste. He speaks
of the saints, for example, as " un-
washed " and "holy drones." A
Te Deum to which he listened
gives him an opportunity for a poor
pun on the word "tedium." Fes-
tivals and holydays are character-
ized as " loafing-spells." There is
an abundance of poor satire upon
priests and monks. Now, if a
tourist is a hearty hater of the
Catholic Church, we rather re-
lish h\s fret and fume. Some Eng-
lish tourists are really enjoyable
on this account. Their indigna-
tion, however ignorant, is honest.
They -fly into a passion at an Ital-
ian throwing kisses to the Madon-
na, and they cannot contain them-
selves at the sight of a bandit with
a large rosary and several crucifixes
strung around his neck. They
make grim fun of the pilgrims
whose feet the pope washes, and
scold the begging friars to their
hearts' content. If 'their hat is
knocked off during a procession of
the Blessed Sacrament, they go at
once to the British consul and
write a sardonic letter to the Lon-
don Times. We think, however,
that these good people are obsti-
nately sincere, and we laugh at
them, but do not get angry with
them. But such is not the indig-
nation of Mr. Taylor. It is a
coarse burlesquing of the very es-
sence and idea of sacred things.
His art is clumsy. He has not the
infidel's indifference nor the Protes-
tant's wrath.
Yet one would suppose that Mr.
Taylor journeyed enough to have
mastered the simple rule of the
Bayard Taylor.
trustworthy tourist, "Put yourself
in their place." No. It is marvel-
lous that one who travelled so
much has so little to tell. It is
true that in the preface to his
book on Sweden and Norway he
expressly disclaims any intention
of giving a social, religious, or po-
litical picture of the countries ; but,
if not, of what practical value is
his book? We may as well keep
to the geography. But he is not
bound by his declaration ; for we
find in the same work the differ-
ence between the Catholic and the
Lutheran doctrine of the Euchar-
ist compared to the distinction be-
tween " tweedledum and tweedle-
dee." Not all the graphic descrip-
tions of scenery or vivid pictures
of travel can make these books
aught but newspaper literature.
He is fearful of giving offence to
anybody but to a Catholic. There
is not a reflection above the ca-
pacity of any well-informed man
who never left his native town.
Indeed, we think that, had Mr.
Taylor kept at home and read
books of travel, he would have ar-
rived at much juster conclusions,
and, with his poetic powers, have
given -'us brighter and bet.ter
sketches of scenery and character.
His poetry furnishes evidence of
remarkable versatility and an al-
most mechanical power of rapid
composition. But there is no life
in it. In a little book called the
Echo Club he imitates the style of
contemporary poets, and fully dis-
plays this remarkable talent, which
was certainly equal to that of the
authors of the Rejected Addresses.
He could roll off a poem on any
subject to order. But it is mechan-
ism. How, indeed, could he infuse
life when he had no living faith or
hope ? Turning over these mani-
fold poems, some of them of strik-
ing symmetry and finish, we con-
fess to a feeling of sadness and dis-
appointment. His poetry never
took hold of the popular heart.
His Centennial Ode was as great a
failure as Sidney Lanier's. There is
no thought, no soul, no mensdivinior
in it a symphony of unmeaning
sounds, but no inner music. He iS
best in his poetical descriptions of
natural scenery. He had a good
eye for this, and he manages to
catch the expression. His trans-
lations are invariably good. In-
deed, to speak phrenologically, he
had imitation large but ideality
small. So, too, the best reflections
in his prose works are unconscious-
ly copied from, the vast stores of
his reading, though he himself is
perfectly honest. Still, he must
pay the penalty of the versatile
genius of the journal in having
most of his writings classed as
ephemeral.
If Mr. Taylor was a fair speci-
men of the American journalist
and we think he was his inevita-
ble literary fate should be ponder-
ed over by the class to which he
belonged. There has been a revo-
lution in journalism since the days
when he wrote his first letters.
The telegraph has effected good in
forcing the correspondent to con-
dense his thought. The Associat-
ed Press, too, is as impersonal as
possible. Nor is any part of the
world difficult of access since the
era of steam set in. The news-
paper correspondent is generally
resident, and is forced to stick to
balls and society gossip. He is
usually too busy with politics, when
not with society, to give heed to
religion, unless it falls under the
spectacular head. Books of travel
need to be well scrutinized now
before publication. It is no longer
true that half of the world does not
n5
Bayard Taylor.
know how the other half lives.
Othello used to tell the gentle Des-
demona tales about the Anthro-
pophagi, and men whose heads
do grow beneath their shoulders ;
but he would now have no silch
credulous listener. Travellers have
found out that they need not ex-
'pect open-mouthed wonder at their
tales. Unless a man discovers the
north pole there is little heed given
to him in our day. It is impera-
tive on every contemporary travel-
ler who contemplates publishing to
study the ethnology of the people
he visits ; or set on foot some
scientific investigation ; or at least
gather certain trustworthy statis-
tics. The world has outgrown,
Because it has satisfied, its curiosity
about the mere externals of nations
and of lands.
If a man has not a broad mind,
a trained religious character, and a
sympathetic disposition, the closer
he keeps to his own house and
home the better for him and for
those on whom he meditates in-
flicting a book of travels. He
must be either a cosmopolitan like
Goldsmith, who was as much at
home on the banks of the Loire as
the Liffey, or else a stolid scientist
like Humboldt, who thought more
of a stratification or a new fauna
than he did of the Deity. What
call had Taylor to travel, beyond
an untrained curiosity ? What spe-
cial fitness' has the average news-
paper correspondent at Paris, at
London, at Rome ? In many cases
the gentleman or the lady is not
a Catholic in a Catholic country,
or, indeed, the professor of any
creed. He is frequently a member
of a legation, who has at least one
idea drilled into him to tell noth-
ing of any importance. His pro-
motion in the Circumlocution Office
will depend upon his reticence or
his evasiveness, which he is taught
is diplomacy. He perforce con*
fines himself to the visible and ex-
ternal, and has no intention of
touching upon any real, moral
issues. No reliance can be placed
upon the general correspondence
which appears in our newspapers,
and it might as well be written in
the office, which is not tmfrequent-
ly the case, as in Europe or Asia.
One may read all of Mr. Taylor's
travels and not obtain a clea,r idea
of any nation or its institutions.
Only, if the reader is not a Catholic,
he is likely to remain so.
Thebooks of travel quite popular
and authoritative thirty years ago
are now known to be wretchedly
inaccurate. It is interesting to
turn over the pages of the United
States Catholic Magazine to see how
the reviewer had to correct mis-
statements at every step in books
about Catholic countries ; and we
believe that this inaccuracy runs
through the non-religious portions.
A sensible man nowadays never re-
fers to his trip to Europe; but it
was once a very great adventure.
It is singular that these old tourists,
and some of their successors, never
appear to reflect upon their incompe-
tency to pass judgment upon nations
of which they know nothing outside
a spelling-book at home. One should
fear to misinterpret certain, cus-
toms of the Hottentots, let alone
the immemorial habits of the most
civilized nations of Europe. Peo-
ple ignorant of the language, the
religion, and the customs of France
raid through that land, unconscious
of their insolence, vulgarity, and
ignorance, and write by every post
the most astounding descriptions of
vice and immorality. Italy and
Spain fare as badly. England is
slobbered over as the " mother
country " ; and, in a word, an
Bayard Taylor.
117
American scholar would be glad,
for the sake of his country's litera-
ture, if the bulk of this branch of
letters, distributed in innumerable
books, magazines, and carefully-
preserved newspapers, manuscript
journals, and diaries, were bundled
off to Washington and presented to
the government printer, with a re-
quest that it be reduced ft) pulp
and utilized in his department.
The Congressional Globe and pub-
lic documents may be dull reading,
but they are eminently respectable.
We may congratulate ourselves that
this species of tourist literature is
now hardly possible. Even a Pro-
testant minister must be .careful of
what he says about Rome. The
detestable gossip about society is
no longer tolerated in our best
journals, and the day seems coming
when we shall study a nation and
its life from its own authorities, not
in the letters of some obscure
scribe.
The ^ newspaper stimulated the
versatility of Taylor, and so did
him injury. There is nothing like
a journal to exhaust intellect. It
dries up the most succulent brains
in a few years. We read that Mr.
Taylor used to work fifteen hours
a day. This struck the public with
surprise, but it is not uncommon.
After his day's work at the office
he would go home and write poetry.
People have no appreciation of the
amount of downright brain-work
that must be put into any periodi-
cal. The slaves of the pen are
the only ones that have no sympa-
thizers. Whatever favorite taste
in letters a man has, he must sacri-
fice it unflinchingly if he is to suc-
ceed as a journalist. There must
have been a wearying conflict go-
ing on in Taylor's mind between
the harsh, prosaic newspaper work
and his poetical dreams. Yet he
did his journalistic work conscien-
tiously.
In journalism a very few men on
the staff really do most of the work.
A magazine may* now and then
have an article from some eminent
man, or its prospectus may an-
nounce a brilliant array of .talent ;
but the editor knows that he can
safely depend only on the working
staff. So the steady, trustworthy
work on a daily is done regularly
by a few. Taylor was a man who
could write a poem, a leader, a
criticism, a story in fact, could
write, and write well enough, on any
theme submitted to him. He al-
lowed himself to spread over this
campus, and the inevitable conse-
quence was that he failed to attain
any high excellence. A newspaper
should be obliged to fortify its
staff, if its income at all warrant,
sooner than the promise of a good
workman should be spoiled. We
believe that few leading journalists
have time to read a book. They
are, in fact, sick of reading and
writing. They are weary of print.
They hate to think outside of the
profession, and they escape from
thought as soon as the pressure is
withdrawn. And who is to blame
them ? Their vocation is a sla-
very. They are in the grasp of a
public for ever bellowing for more
information, sensation, jokes, sto-
ries, politics, and criminal news.
If the monster is not glutted, it will
turn upon and rend them.
The strong imagination of Tay-
lor gave him an advantage over his
fellow-journalists, and this should
suggest to them the need of culti-
vating the higher faculties. He
'could never have written so long
and so well if the mental fountain
had not been supplied from the
Pierian spring. Most journalists
get into what Carlyle calls the
iiS
Bayard Taylor.
threshing-mill. There is no fresh-
ness either of conception or of ex-
pression. An automatic mental
routine takes the place of wide and
varied thought, tind the opening
sentence of an editorial is frequent-
ly the only attempt at originality.
Then succeeds the old application
of old platitudes. If one speaks to
an editor on this subject, he smiles
sarcastically and asks you if you
would change places with him ;
and one who knows the editorial
life has not the heart to press the
point. A man who must make up
his mind on a hundred different
subjects between dusk and dawn
is entitled to the largest considera-
tion.
It would be false to say. that
American journalism has been fatal,
or even detrimental, to our scholar-
ship. But this may be set down as
incontrovertible: that the man who
enters the sanctum without a pre-
paratory mental discipline, sound
and wide learning, and a fearless
and truth-loving disposition, will
assuredly deteriorate into the nar-
rowest-minded of sciolists. A news-
paper writer is asked to surrender
his individuality, his convictions,
and his tastes, and offer them in
sacrifice to the genius of the Public
Press. The last thing an editor
wants in his paper is religion ; and
thus what should be the first in the
thoughts of both writer and reader
is rigidly excluded by this strange
creed of journalism. The unedu-
cated public are intolerant of rare
learning, and should a writer ven-
ture upon a classical quotation or
an unfamiliar word, he is sure to
be coarsely ridiculed in the " fun-
ny" bucolic press. A thoroughly
educated gentleman of the press
informed the writer that he once
wrote a good style, but work on
the local columns completely vi-
tiated it. Every newspaper should
write up to a high standard, and
not be fearful lest the people may
not understand it. The newspaper
does injury to scholarship by its
exaction of quick work. Few can
write rapidly and well. An edito-
rial sprawls over a column or two,
when a little time and thought
would have put it into a paragraph.
The frightful necessity of " filling
up " is of course destructive to any-
thing like nervous force and point.
It is like the "talking against time "
in Congress, when wandering law-
givers have to be hunted up. It
may be observed that since the
predominance of the periodical
press there are fewer solid books.
The press is responsible for that
impatience which makes the public
clamor for immediate literary re-
sults. A confirmed newspaper read-
er rarely opens a book.
We are of opinion that the news*
paper spoiled Bayard Taylor. What
he should have done was to have
passed a few years in quiet study ;
nor did such a mind need a col-
lege training, except, perchance, for
its opportunities of emulation and
correction. His friends ill-advis-
ed him to make his first trip to
Europe, and they injured him per-
manently by allowing him to pub-
lish a book about it. When he
adopted journalism he should have
confined himself to one department,
no matter what temptations lay in
his way, whether of better pay or
greater fame. He had in him the
intellectual power that would have
made him a representative Ameri-
can writer. And we cannot say
that his work, varied as it was, has
not special merit.
It is a rather saddening reflec-
tion that all this vagueness of pur-
pose might have been obviated had
he had a clear ethical conception ;
Bayard Taylor.
119
above all, had he been a member of
the Catholic faith. He flattered
himself that as a disciple of cul-
ture he had religion enough. He
did not clearly apprehend what
culture is, and never could he rest
satisfied with its boasted passion-
less calm. If he fancied that this
delusion is sufficient to answer all
life's problems and lead humanity
to its highest perfection, his minis-
terial experience in Germany must
have completely undeceived him.
We see no real hope for Ameri-
can scholarship so long as it wil-
fully divorces itself from religion
and pursues this phantom of cul-
ture. All knowledge supposes, cer-
tain great facts and principles
which, in the ultimate analysis, are
moral. The being and nature of
God, his attributes, his relations to
us, his moral governance of the
world, and, in short, the loci com-
munes of theology, form an integral,
if not an essential, part of know-
ledge. A mind cannot go for-
ward in the pursuit of truth and
ignore all these. Culture is a self-
contradiction, by assuming the pos-
sibility of attaining all real know-
ledge independently of any natural
or revealed divine truth.*
The dreams of the German
idealists took hold on Taylor, and
in his later poetry we have a curi-
* See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for March, 1879,
' The Reality of Knowledge.''
ous mixture of pantheism and Pla-
tonism, only the metempsychosis
into animals is rejected, and that
of beautiful forms, lights, etc., sub-
stituted. A good course of logic
would have cleared his mind of
this cant. We understand that this
is the noble end of culture self-
renunciation. No aspiration to-
ward God is permitted. We must
say with Marcus Aurelius : If there
be gods it is well ; if there be no
gods it is well. It is of sublime
unimportance whether we survive
or perish utterly after death. "The
eternities, immensities, and fates will
march on in their unending course,
and thou, poor man, thinkest of
thy smallest soul when the Great
Soul itself sleeps placidly upon its
ever-spinning wheel."
We trust that no one will mis-
construe the purport of this essay,
which is simply an endeavor to de-
termine the literary worth of an
American author. We are not
disposed to wait for an English
verdict, which would turn aside
from the review on hand to sneer
at the crude American criticism
which could rank Taylor among
the immortals. We hold his me-
mory in respect. He was a scholar,
and a ripe and good one ; and if he
failed to attain to commanding
literary eminence, the cause must
be looked for in the unfavorable
conditions under which he worked.
120
Catholic Colonization as actually Established.
CATHOLIC COLONIZATION AS ACTUALLY ESTABLISHED.
IT is more than a year and a
half since we reviewed in these
pages the history of the European
exodus to America and dwelt upon
the new features of Catholic colo-
nization and of the prospects of fu-
ture emigration.* We have now be-
fore us a pamphlet entitled Catho-
lic Colonization in Minnesota. It
has been issued by the Catho-
lic Colonization Bureau of Minne-
sota, which is under the auspices
of the coadjutor-bishop of St.
Paul. The pamphlet is not only
remarkably interesting in itself, but
especially gratifying as a practical
demonstration of the soundness of
the views which we expressed in
the articles to which reference is
made. We sought to show in those
articles that the congregation of
our Catholic people in the large
cities, so far from being an evil,
had been the means of bringing
about inestimable blessings in the
past; but that the time had now
fully arrived when not only many
of our present urban inhabitants,
but the great bulk of our future
Catholic emigrants, should be in-
vited to the West and planted there
upon the soil as its owners and cul-
tivators. The pamphlet before us
shows to what great extent this has
already been effected in a single
State ; and we propose to summar-
ize its contents. Readers will find
the facts neither uninteresting nor
uninstructive. We are tolerably
confident that if, in the preparation
for the census of the United States
next year, proper arrangements are
* See THE CATHOLIC^WORLD for July and Au-
gust, 1877, articles " The European Exodus " and
l4 Colonization and Future Emigration."
made for a correct enumeration of
the actual strength of the various
religious bodies, the result will
show that even the most sanguine
estimates of the numerical force of
the Catholic Church have not been
exaggerated. By natural increase,
by emigration, and by conversion
we continue to grow; by the spirit
of unity which animates us we re-
main without division ; and through
the wisdom and good management
of such associations as this Catho-
lic Colonization Bureau, as well as
through the individual thrift and
enterprise of our people, we are
possessing ou-r fair share of the
land. It is a goodly inheritance,
and we have every right to it.
Catholics discovered the continent ;
Catholics first settled it ; Catholics
shed their blood, spent their money,
and gave their talents to bring about
its independence and secure the
establishment of its free institutions.
It will be Catholic talent, Catholic
work, Catholic faith, and Catholic
conservatism which will mainly
help to keep the land in peace and
prosperity, and save it from the
crushing domination of monopolies
on one hand and from destructive
and anarchical communism and
agrarian ism on the other.
It appears that there are at
present four Catholic colonies in
Minnesota : two in the western and
two in the southwestern part of
the State. The first of these colo-
nies was opened only in the spring
of 1876, and two of them were
founded in the spring of last year.
The oldest and most widely known
of the settlements is that of Swift
County. Its lands commence one
Catholic Colonization as actually Established.
121
hundred and twenty miles west of
St. Paul, and extend for thirty-six
miles on each side of the St. Paul
and Pacific Railroad. This colony
has two divisions, or parishes, each
eighteen miles in length and twelve
miles wide, there being in both
four hundred and thirty-two square
miles. One of these, which lies on
the east side of the Chippewa River,
is called De Graff. It has for its
pastor the Rev. F. J. Swift. The
other is called Clontarf, and its pas-
tor is the Rev. A. Oster. Each has
its Catholic church and its Catho-
lic schools. Bishop Ireland, three
years ago, obtained control of the
then unsold railroad lands within
the limits of these colonies, but
there was also a large quantity of
government lands lying beside
those belonging to the railroad.
The government lands were open
to entry under the Homestead and
Pre-emption laws, and many of the
colonists were able to obtain their
farms, sometimes of eighty acres
and sometimes of one hundred and
sixty acres, by merely paying the
fees of the United States Land Of-
fice, which amounted only to four-
teen dollars under the Homestead
Act, and from one dollar and twen-
ty-five cents to two dollars and fifty
cents an acre under the Pre-emption
Law. The provisions of these two
laws may perhaps be here stated
with advantage, since our article,
we trust, will be read by many who
may wish practical information on
these points for their' own guid-
ance.
The provisions of the Homestead
Law are extremely liberal and
tempting. Not only the heads of
families, but single men, and even
single women, may acquire proper-
ty under this law with very little
difficulty. They must be twenty-
one years of age, and must be citi-
zens of the United States or have
declared before a court their inten-
tion to become citizens. Along
the line of. almost all the railroads
throughout the far West the gov-
ernment has given each alternate
section and a section is one mile
square to the railroad. This
grant extends ten miles each side
of the railroad. So that the land
left open to persons desiring to
avail themselves of the provisions
of the Homestead Law is within
these limits curtailed one-half.
Accordingly, while outside the ten-
mile limit on each side of the rail-
road one may 'enter only eighty
acres of land under the Homestead
Law, beyond this limit he may en-
ter one hundred and sixty acres ;
and he may take this from any of
the lands yet owned by the govern-
ment. He must pay fourteen dol-
lars as the fees for entering and
recording his claim. This being
done, within the next six months
he must take actual 'possession of
his land and begin to cultivate it.
When he has lived upon it and cul-
tivated it for five years, he must
make an affidavit of the fact, and
obtain the testimony of two wit-
nesses to the truth of his statement;
and then the land becomes his own
in fee simple. He is by no means
required to cultivate the whole of
his land during this period ; all
that is necessary is that he should
dwell upon it and show a reason-
able degree of industry in cultivat-
ing a portion of it. An exception,
well worthy of notice, is made in
favor of every man who has served
in the army or navy of the United
States for even so short a term as
three months, and has received an
honorable discharge.. Each one
of these may enter 160 acres, even
within the limits of the railroad
grant, upon the payment of $i for
122
Catliolic Colonization as actually Established.
registration fees, and the time
which he has spent in the service
will be deducted from the five
years' residence required from others
before a full title is given. There
are thousands of good Catholic
citizens of this country who have
served in the army or navy of the
republic one, two, three, or perhaps
five years, and whose " honorable
discharge " is lying among their
other papers. Let these reflect
upon what is offered them by the
Homestead Law. If they have con-
trived to save a little money
enough to begin the cultivation of
a few acres of land and to build a.
temporary* cabin let them reflect
that by availing themselves of the
provisions of the Homestead Law
they may, perhaps in one, or two,
or three years, be the absolute
owner of a farm of 160 acres, with-
in ten miles, of a railroad and in an
excellent country. Unfortunately,
in the four Catholic colonies al-
ready established in Minnesota
government lands can no longer
be certainly promised; but others
will probably soon be commenced
in which the lands can be obtained
in this way. And, as we shall soon
show, even without the advantages
of the Homestead Act it will be
no hard thing for a thrifty man,
with good health, a strong heart,
and a willing mind, to win for him-
self and his family a home in one
of the Catholic colonies of Minne-
sota.
Let us first, however, complete
our explanation of the laws. Any
one making a Homestead entry is
also entitled to make an additional
entry under the Timber Culture
Act. He may thus acquire 40, 80,
or 160 additional acres of land, on
condition that within three years
he sets out and nourishes a certain
number of trees. Under these two
acts it would be easy for a family
consisting of a father and mother,
and a son and daughter each twen-
ty-one years or more, to secure for
themselves an entire "section"
that is, a square mile, 640 acres, of
land. The father can enter 160
acres under the Homestead Law
and 160 acres under the Timber
Culture Act; the son and the
daughter can each enter 80 acres
under each act; and .the family
can thus place themselves in pos-
session of 640 acres, a square mile,
an estate large enough to support
themselves and their descendants
for many generations yet to come.
There remains the Pre-emption
Act, which, although it existed be-
fore the enactment of the Home-
stead Law, is now in a manner its
useful supplement and complement.
Under the Pre-emption Act one
may enter 80 acres of land within
ten miles of the railroad line, or
160 acres beyond that limit, and
become its owner on the payment
of $2 50 per acre for the 80 acres,
or $i 25 for the 160 acres, within
two years from his pre-emption, on
condition that he has lived upon
the land and improved it. Having
done this, he can enter 80 or 160
acres under the Homestead Act,
and as much more under the Tim-
ber Culture Act ; so that a man,
. even without adult children to aid
him in his " land-grabbing," may
soon find himself in the possession
of 480 acres ; that is to say :
By Pre-emption. 160 acres, cost $200 oo
By Homestead Law, 160 acres, cost 14 oo
By Timber Culture Act, 160 acres, cost. . . . 14 oo
480 acres cost $228 oo
Thus his 480 acres of land, for
the fee simple in them, will have
cost him less than forty-eight cents
an acre. Of course to this must
be added the labor expended upon
Catholic Colonization as actually Established.
them, and the cost of the agricul-
tural implements necessary to cul-
tivate them. But when all these
things are taken into consideration,
and fully weighed and counted, the
ease and the cheapness with which
lands can be acquired in the West
are startling.
Let us now return to our Minne-
sota colonies. The conditions un-
der which the two colonies in Swift
County were founded were perhaps
exceptionally favorable, and the
earlier settlers got remarkably cheap
bargains. But there is still a great
quantity of land within the limits
of these colonies that can be had
at temptingly low prices. The rail-
road company is compelled to take
in payment for its lands its own
bonds at par ; and these are to be
bought at a very considerable dis-
count on their nominal value. This
year, also, the lands belonging to
the State, and to the school fund of
the State, will be thrown upon the
market ; and there are a number
of non-Catholic settlers who unfor-
tunately feel uncomfortable %t be-
ing so swamped by papists, and
are willing to sell out and move
away. In these two divisions of
the Swift County colony there are
about eight hundred Catholic fami-
lies, each owning its own farm.
They are for the most part Irish ;
the minority is made up of Ger-
mans, Poles, and Frenchmen. We .
take from the pamphlet the follow-
ing description of the almost ma-
gical work that has been accom-
plished since the Catholic Coloni-
zation Bureau opened the colony
in 1876 :
" IXriving west from De Graff to Clon-
tarf, seventeen miles, and still eleven
miles farther west from Clontarf to the
Pomme de Terre River, one is never out
of sight of a settler's house ; and some of
these farm-houses would be a credit to
a much older settlement, for we have
settlers who farm as much as five hun-
dred acres, while others again farm but
eighty acres. De Graff has a railroad de-
pot and telegraph office ; a grain eleva-
tor, with steam power which is the
same as saying a cash market for all
farm produce six or seven stores, with
the general merchandise found in a coun-
try town ; lumber yard, machine ware-
house ; blacksmith, carpenter, and wagon-
maker shops ; an immigrant house, where
persons in search of land can lodge their
families until they are suited ; a resident
doctor, and resident priest, Rev. F. J.
Swift ; a fine, commodious church ; a
handsome school-house and pastor's re-
sidence. No saloon. The businessmen
of the town are our own people, and a
Catholic fair, for the benefit of the new
church, held last fall, and patronized ex-
clusively by the colonists, netted $1,000
clear. Travelling along the railroad and
passing through Benson, half way be-
tween De Graff and Clontarf, we come
to the latter, the youngest town in this
young settlement. Clontarf has two gen-
eral stores, a grain elevator, an immi-
grant house, a railroad depot, blacksmith
shop, a large church, and a very hand-
some residence for the priest, the Rev.
A. Oster. Swift County colony is fast
beginning to wear the features of a set-
tled community. Many of our farmers
have harvested this year their second
crop ; our merchants report that they
are doing a lively business ; bridges are
being built, roads laid out, plans of im-
provement discussed by the settlers ;
and we challenge any part of the West
to produce a more intelligent rural class.
True to the memory of the old land and
their love for their church, the settlers
have given familiar names to many of
the townships in the colon) r , such as
Kildare, Cashel, Dublin, Clontarf, Tara,
St. Michael's, St. Joseph's, St. Francis',
etc., etc."
The next of the Minnesota colo-
nies is that of Graceville, in Big
Stone County, which lies west of
Swift County. The Bureau during
the months of March, April, and*
May of last year located one hun-
dred and seventy-five families upon
lands selected in this county, and
thus began the new colony. A
124
Catholic Colonization as actually Established.
letter from one of the residents
of-the colony thus describes it, and
tells how it was established :
" During tha months of March and
April, 1878, a great number of claims for
our people were entered in the United
States Land Office, but before any of
(hem came on to their lands Bishop Ire-
land shipped, in March, five car-loads of
lumber for erecting a church building ;
the church was commenced the same
month, and completed, in the rough, in
about three weeks. This is the first in-
stance in my knowledge where a church
was erected in advance of settlement.
Our Right Rev. Bishop must have had a
foreknowledge of what was to follow.
In the short space of three months there
were built, in a radius of six miles from
Graceville church, over 150 comfortable
cabins, and on each claim from five to
ten acres broken for a garden and plant-
ed with potatoes, corn, beans, turnips,
etc., etc., which yielded quite a good sup-
ply for the present winter. Our colo-
nists had the advantage of being early
on the ground and had their gardens
planted in May. The colonists broke
during last summer from fifteen to thirty
acres per man, so that next spring they
will be able to get in wheat sufficient to
carry them through the second winter
handsomely. They are all in the very
best spirits and could not be induced to
return to the cities, for they already feel
independent and masters of the situa-
tion. The soil here is splendid and the
country beautiful gently rolling prairie,
with numerous ponds or small lakes
and plenty of the finest hay. And now
to tell you about our little village,
Graceville, named in honor of our rever-
ed bishop, the Right Rev. Thomas L.
Grace. It is beautifully situated on the
north shore of one of the two large lakes
known as Tokua Lakes, and has three
general stores, one hotel, one blacksmith
and wagon shop, a very handsome little
church and the priest's residence attach-
ed. Around the lake is a fine belt of tim-
ber, which adds much to the beauty of the
place. The village is twenty-six miles due
east from Morris, on the St. Paul and Pa-
cific Railroad, but the Hastings and Da-
kota Railroad, now built close to the
line, will run through our county next
summer ; by and by we will have a cross-
road running through the colony lands."
Let the reader remember that
this was the work of but a year
practically less than a year. It
seems like magic or a miracle.
Where but a little more than a year
ago there was only a wilderness
is now this happy, thrifty, and
growing Catholic colony. "The
Holy Sacrifice," writes one of the
colonists, " is offered up in our
church every day; and on Sundays
we have High Mass, for Graceville
has a sweet church choir. It is
most edifying to see the crowd of
men, women, and children who
flock in from all points of the com-
pass to church on Sundays. Father
Pelisson had the first temporary
church taken down, and in its place
he has erected one of the prettiest
and neatest churches in the State.
From the roof of the church I can
count to-day over seventy houses
where last March there was nothing
but a bare prairie."
Let us look at the colony of St.
Adrian, in Nobles County, in the
southwestern portion of Minnesota
and near the Iowa Ijne. Here the
Bureau acquired control of 70,000
acres of land for colony purposes,
and of these 22,000 acres have al-
ready been sold to settlers. The
colony adjoins the new town of
Adrian, which is on the Luverne
and Sioux Falls branch of the Sioux
City and St. Paul Railroad. In Sep-
tember, 1877, when Father Knauf,
the parish priest, arrived there,
there were only three houses in the
place. Writing fifteen months
afterwards, Father Knauf says :
" Now there are 68 houses in the vil-
lage. T was the first Catholic to arrive
here ; now we have 60 Catholic families
in the colony. Next spring we shall
have 160 Catholic families. We have a
public school-house, costing $1,800; a
Catholic churchr well finished ; and the
pastor's house, the latter costing $1,840."
Catholic Colonization as actually Established.
125
The lands yet to be bought in this
colony are sold at from $5 to $7 50
per acre. A discount of 20 per
cent, from these prices is allowed
for cash. The conditions for time
contracts are as follows : at time of
purchase, one-tenth of principal
and interest on unpaid principal;
second year, interest only ; third
year, one-fourth of remaining princi-
pal, and interest on unpaid princi-
pal; same for three ensuing years,
after the expiration of which the
full price of the land is paid.
The newest, and most interesting
in some respects, of the colonies is
that of Avoca, in Murray County,
Southwestern Minnesota, adjoining
Nobles County on the north. Here
Bishop Ireland secured 52,000
acres of land for the colony.
These lands are sold at from $5 to
$6 50 per acre ; and the sales are
made upon a peculiar system. An
illustration will, best explain it. In
January last an intending purchas-
er contracted to buy 80 acres at $5
an acre. This will amount to $400,
and in addition he must pay ,7 per
cent, interest on the amount until
the transaction is completed. The
payments would be made thus :
Jan. i, 1879. At time of purchase,
one year's interest in advance, at
7 per cent $28 oo
Jan. i, 1880. One year's interest in
advance, at 7 per cent 28 oo
Jan. i, 1881. Ten per cent, of prin-
cipal $40 oo
One year's interest on balance,
$360, at 7 per cent 25 20
65 20
Jan, i, 1882. Ten per cent, of prin-
cipal 40 oo
One year's interest on balance,
$320, at 7 per cent 2240
Jan. i, 1883. Twenty per cent, of
principal 80 oo
One year's interest on balance,
$240, at 7 per cent 16 80
Jan. i, 1884. Twenty per cent, of
principal 80 oo
One year's interest on balance,
$160, at 7 per cent n 20
62 40
96 80
91 20
Jan. i. 1885. Twenty per cent, of
principal 80 oo
One year's interest on balance,
$80, at 7 per cent 5 60
? 5 60
Jan. i, 1886. Twenty per cent, of
principal 80 oo
Total $537 20
" The advantage of the terms is that the
principal payments are all postponed
until the farmer has had time to raise
several crops from his land. A quarter
section of land will support a family,
pay for itself, leave after seven years a
balance in cash, and be worth more than
twice its original value."
The Bureau states that the best
time for an emigrant to go to Min-
nesota is in the spring, arriving not
later than the first week in May.
The emigrants, on arriving at St.
Paul and repairing to the office of
the Bureau, will be furnished with
every necessary information and
with tickets at reduced rates, sup-
plied to the colony for transportation
to their points of destination. The
pamphlet before us fills a number
of its pages with most interesting
stories of the success attending the
colonists. These are not fancy
pictures. The names of the people
are given, and the entire history of
their first settlement, their strug- .
gles, and their quick success is pre-
sented.
Of course success is not won
without industrious toil, some
self-denial, and sober persistency.
But the difference between the
condition of these colonists and
of the people in the same class of
life living in our tenement-houses,
or gaining a precarious livelihood
upon the outskirts of our great
cities, is striking. As we said at
the outset, the conditions which
made emigration into the far West
twenty-five or thirty years ago dan-
gerous and undesirable from a reli-
gious point of view are now wholly
changed. As in the case of one of
126
Chicago.
the colonies which we have men-
tioned, the church now actually
precedes the settlers. The priest
came before the people, and the
holy tabernacle was set up before
there were more than half a dozen
worshippers to attend it. Almost
every portion of the West has now
its Catholic priest, its Catholic
church, and its Catholic schools.
Bishop Ireland, in organizing the
Catholic Emigration Bureau, had
chiefly in mind the religious wel-
fare of those whom he invited
westward. The rule was estab-
lished that whenever a colony was
planned and people were invited
to it the resident priest and church
should go in with the first settlers,
be their number large or small.
To this rule is to be attributed to
a great extent not only the imme-
diate success which has attended
the bringing of settlers to these
colonies, but their general content-
ment in their new homes, and
their cheerfulness in meeting the
trials and hardships which are in-
cident to new settlers, but which
after all are nothing compared to
the constant evils, discomforts, de-
gradation, and danger to morals and
religion which too often attend the
life of the poor in the great cities.
CHICAGO.
FEBRUARY IQ, 1879.
THE servants of our Lord must follow him.
Many the paths they tread the end is one ;
So towards one ocean distant torrents run
Down mountain steeps, 'mid valleys deep and dim.
To find him these through floods of sorrow swim ;
And those his scourge of righteous anger bear :
Some sit with him at Cana's feast, and share
Its heavenly vintage till their cups o'erbrim ;
Such was his happy place, and thence he brought
Pure joy that all his look transfigured,
Celestial peace from haunts of seraphim.
O flock bereft ! your shepherd's fondest thought,
That our poor sight to faith's great heights be led.
The servant of our Lord has followed him.
M. G. M,
Private Charities and Public Lands..
.' \\
PRIVATE CHARITIES AND PUBLIC LANDS.
THE difficulty which honest peo-
ple sometimes find in stating the
exact truth on a subject which ex-
cites their prejudices has been illus-
trated in a most remarkable man-
ner by a recent correspondence in
the Atlantic Monthly. We may well
pause and consider the historic
value of " contemporary records "
when .we find a gentleman for
whose character we have a high
respect, and in whose good faith
we have entire confidence, writing a
wholly mistaken account of impor-
tant public transactions occurring
.in his own city during his own time,
and, when his errors are pointed out,
excusing them by the perpetration of
other inaccuracies hardly less seri-
ous than the original blunder. If all
this may be done with good inten-
tions by an honest contemporary
'observer, how may not history be
daily falsified by people who write
without opportunity of knowing
the truth or without the desire to
tell it ?
Mr. Clarence Cook contributed
to the February number of the
Atlantic Monthly a criticism upon
the new cathedral in this city, and
in order to give more force to his
strictures he represented the whole
work as a monument of fraud, chi-
canery, political immorality, and
outrageous taxation of the poor.
He asserted that the wages of ser-
vants are extravagantly high be-
cause " the receivers of these wages
are obliged to pay the greater part
of what they get to the support of
their church, and are regularly tax-
ed besides for the building of their
cathedral." But even this plun-
dering of the poor was not enough ;
and Archbishop Hughes (whose re-
spected memory Mr. Cook assailed
with extreme bitterness) supplied
the deficiency with " the money
of Protestants and non-Catholics."
" Of course," said the critic, "it
was a subject of no little wonder
where the money was to come
from, not only to build the church
itself but to buy the land, which
under ordinary circumstances would
have cost no small part of the whole
sum. How this latter Teat was ac-
complished we all know now, and
New-Yorkers are disposed to say
as little about it as possible. The
city was jockeyed out of the finest
site on the island by a crafty and un-
scrupulous priest playing upon the po-
litical hopes and fears of as base a
lot of men as ever got the government
of a great city into their power. For
the consideration of one dollar the
Archbishop of New York became
possessor of the deed for the whole
square bounded west and east by
Fifth Avenue and Madison Ave-
nue, and south and north by Fif-
tieth Street and Fifty-first Street,
a plot of ground 420 feet on the
cross streets and 200 feet on the
avenues, situated in the heart of
the most fashionable part of the
city, and on one of the highest
points of the whole island." This
would appear from the context to
have occurred in 1858; Mr. Cook
no doubt supposed that it did oc-
cur at that date. He added, how-
ever, that the Protestants would
have generously pardoned the rob-
bery if the Catholics had built a
better church : " We were willing
even to wink at the scurvy trick by
which the land belonging to all the
128
Private Charities and Public Lands.
citizens was given in fee to a mi-
nority for their own private use.
'Let them have it,' we said; 'there
is no other body of our citizens
who can command money enough
to build such a splendid structure
as the Catholics can.' "
When we say that every one of
the statements we have quoted
from the article in the Atlantic is
untrue, we wish it to be distinctly
understood once more that we do
not impugn Mr. Cook's good faith.
We know that he believed what he
wrote. The story about the cathe-
dral land is an old no-popery in-
vention which, although it has been
exposed a hundred times, is con-
tinually renewed ; and since there is
nothing so hard to extirpate as a
striking lie, it is quite conceivable
that a gentleman who may be no
very industrious reader of the news-
papers should have missed the
numerous contradictions by which
the false statement has been regu-
larly followed. He heard the story
once upon a time ; he assumed that
it was correct ; and he made no
further inquiries. Yet while he
thus acquits 'himself of intention-
al wrong, he remains open to the
charge of a recklessness which is
but too common in the controver-
sies of our time.
The charge that a church, or an
archbishop, or a body of priests
''jockeyed" a community by crafty
and unscrupulous arts out of a
valuable piece of property is too
serious to be made on the strength
of vague rumor. And that it was
made upon nothing better is quite
clear. The slightest investigation
would have shown that the story
had no basis none, at least, in any
transaction of a doubtful or dis-
creditable character. The records
of all transfers of land are open to
public inspection. The conditions
of all sales, leases, or grants by the
city may be examined by anybody
who will take the trouble to go to
the City Hall and ask for the book
in which they are entered. To do
this would have been only an ordi-
nary precaution. But Mr. Cook, no
doubt unconsciously, fell into the
common error of supposing that
headlong denunciation of Catholic
priests was entirely safe. How
carelessly he treated the impor-
tant charge is illustrated, moreover,
by the dramatic incidents which
he adduces in connection with it.
He says that it was a matter of
no little wonder in 1858 where the
money was to jcome from to buy
the land ; that can hardly be, be-
cause the cathedral and St. Peter's
Church had bought the land to-
gether nearly thirty years before
that date; the cathedral had pur-
chased St. Peter's share at public
auction in 1852; and the notorious
fact that this property was held by
the Catholics for church purposes
was kept constantly before the
eyes of citizens by the Orphan Asy-
lum standing on the north side of
the propert)', and the church of St.
John the Evangelist on the east
side. Mr* Cook may have wonder-
ed where the money was to come
from ; but to the community at
large it was well known that the
trustees of the cathedral had been
in possession of the land for a
long while. So, too, Mr. Cook un-
intentionally draws upon his im-
agination when he adds that the
Protestants were willing to wink at
a trick which never was played,
and that they said, " Let the Catho-
lics have this land, provided they
put a fine building on it." The
Protestants could not have said
anything of the kind, because we
had bought the land at auction
and paid the full price for it, and
Private Charities and Public Lands.
129
there was no reason why they
should make the matter their busi-
ness. The public authorities had
nothing whatever to do with the
affair. The lots anciently formed
part of the common lands of the
city, but the city sold them to pri-
vate persons before the close of
the last century, and they had pass-
ed through several hands when they
came into possession of the Catho-
lics by purchase, at what was then
probably the fair price of $5,500, in
1829. When they were put up at
auction again in 1852 the cathe-
dral bought out the half-interest of
St. Peter's for $59,500.
Mr. Cook's mistakes were cor-
rected in a private note addressed
to him by Mr. John R. G. Hassard,
and Mr. Cook, with a frankness
which does him credit, caused this
note to be printed in the next
number of the Atlantic, along with
an expression of his regret for hav-
ing been the means of disseminat-
ing a fiction. Here, it would seem,
the affair ought to have stopped.
What fatality drove Mr. Cook far-
ther? In the desire to excuse his
first error he rushed headlong into
another, less venial, since it was
made after such ample wafning.
Accepting, like a man of honor,
the correction of his statement
about the cathedral, he neverthe-
less added that the blunder was a
natural and, we suppose he meant
to imply, a wholly immaterial one,
because if the Catholics did not
" jockey " the city out of that, par-
ticular block of land they did jock-
ey it out of the next block, now
occupied by the Orphan Asylum.
" The taxpayers of New York
knew," said he, " that they had
been tricked out of a large and
valuable tract of land, and they are
not to be too hardly judged for
having mistaken one block of land
VOL. xxix. 9
for another immediately adjacent,
and not at that time separated from
it by any actually existing street."
To this the reply might be made that
the two tracts were distinguishable
by something much more conspicu-
ous than a roadway between them,
because when the cathedral was be-
'gun the Orphan Asylum grant had
long been occupied by the Orphan
Asylum buildings. This matter,
however, is of no consequence.
We are concerned now in knowing,
not how the error originated, but
by what evil spirit of sectarian hos-
tility it is so* persistently kept
alive.
Mr. Cook's next sentences are as
follows :
" From a point of view outside of any
sect or party I cannot see any defence or
excuse for the transaction I have de-
scribed. The men who were at the
head of the city government at the time
had no right to give away or to lease in
perpetuity for the benefit of any body of
men, secular or religious, lands that be-
longed to the whole people. Nor could
the bargain have been proposed and
consummated except by crafty and un-
scrupulous men. That was a dark day
for our city politics, and I am much mis-
taken in your character if you do not
agree with me that it was a time in the
history of the Catholic Church in. this
city which its best friends must prefer
not to have dragged into the light."
The critic adheres, then, to the
substance of his original charges.
The piece of land involved in the
case is not the one he suppos-
ed, but an adjoining piece of the
same size and value. Otherwise
he holds the accusations to be true.
A crafty and unscrupulous priest
obtained the land from the city by
trick "jockeyed the city out of
the finest site on the island." The
wicked priest accomplished this
feat by playing upon the political
hopes and fears of the Common
Council. The municipal author!-
130
Private Charities and Public Lands.
ties at that time (1846) were as
base a lot of men as ever got the
government of a great city into
their power. The transaction can
neither be defended nor excused.
It was a bargain which could
not have been proposed and con-
summated except by crafty and un-
scrupulous men. The city govern-
ment has no right to give away or to
lease in perpetuity for the benefit of
any body of men, secular or religious,
lands that belong to the whole people.
In this sentence which we have
placed in italics lies the essence
of Mr. Cook's accusations. Upon
this principle alone, propounded
with as much assurance as if it
were a rule in arithmetic, are based
his indictment of the Catholic
church and clergy, of Bishop
Hughes, and of the city govern-
ment of 1846. No reason is as-
signed for calling one party base
and the other crafty and unscrupu-
lous, except that they combined to
violate this principle.
The proposition is not stated
with perfect clearness, because
there is no pretence that the lands
were given away or leased " for
the benefit of any body of men,"
and Mr. Cook knew, as he shows in
the context, that the donation was
made for the benefit of the Orphan
Asylum, the conditions as to the
use of the land being stated in the
deed and lease. Undoubtedly the
critic meant to lay down the gene-
ral rule that the city has no right
to apply the public property to the
endowment of any charitable in-
stitution controlled by a private
corporation or society. If that was
not his meaning we can discover
no meaning at all in the sentence
we have quoted. He raises no ob-
jection to the amount of the en-
dowment. He does not complain
that the Catholics received more
than the Protestants. He does
not denounce the grant for the rea-
son that the institution benefited
was what he perhaps calls " secta-
rian "; but he sets forth the broad
general principle that the city has
no right to endow any charitable
foundations whatever.
If he does hold that opinion he
has the distinction of holding it
almost entirely alone. Neither in
this city, nor in any other Christian
community that we know of, has
it ever been accepted. For the
honor of human nature, for the
cause of civilization, we trust that
it may never be accepted. Dona-
tions of land and money to chari-
table societies have always been
made, with great liberality, by our
national, State, and municipal gov-
ernments, with the cordial approval
of all classes of citizens. All denomi-
nations have shared in them. Trans-
actions such as Mr. Cook denounces
begin in the early days of our his-
tory and reach down to the present
time. Appropriations from the
public treasury or the public lands,
which he thinks could only be ob-
tained by fraud, have been made
habitually in New York, in Albany,
in Washington, in .probably every
State capital and every large city,
to Catholic, to Protestant, to Jew,
to infidel, and have been regarded
by all classes as the best evi-
dences of the enlightenment and
humanity of the American people.
Manhattan Island contains about
one hundred and fifty asylums,
hospitals, refuges, and similar
establishments for the succor of
the unfortunate ; nearly all of them
have been aided from the public
funds; a majority, we suppose,
derive a considerable part of
their revenues from State or city
appropriations ; and many of them
have obtained grants of. land from
Private Charities and Public Lauds.
the Common Council by " transac-
tions " precisely like that which we
have seen stigmatized as a scurvy
trick. It seems strange that a New-
Yorker should be ignorant of the
existence of this long-established
and approved system of distribut-
ing municipal and State aid among
the sick and poor; but we must
infer from Mr. Cook's letter that
he imagined the concession to the
Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum
to be . something extraordinary, if
not unprecedented.
His error is the more remarkable
because the steps which he took to
ascertain the particulars of the
grant for the benefit of the Orphan
Asylum ought to have led him to
the discovery that such grants are
customary, and that their propriety
has always been recognized. The
same books in the comptroller's of-
fice from which the deed and leases
of the Orphan Asylum property were
copied for his use contain numer-
ous other deeds and leases to insti-
tutions of the same class, and for
one grant to a Catholic institution
there are five grants to Protestant
or non-Catholic institutions. Were
they all obtained by chicanery and
fraud ? Are they all without de-
fence or excuse ? Were all the
Common Councilman who voted for
these concessions, and all the may-
ors who approved them, " as base a
lot of men as ever got the govern-
ment of a great city into their pow-
er " ? Was every day on which
such a grant was made a dark day
in our city politics? Are there
times in the history of every reli-
gious denomination in this city
which its best friends must prefer
not to have dragged into the light?
We have caused a careful search
to be made in the comptroller's office,
and memoranda to be taken of all
grants and leases of land executed
by the city to institutions of cha-
rity under the management of
churches, religious orders, or other
societies and private corporations,
"secular or religious." The mu-
nicipal charities, such as the alms-
house, Bellevue Hospital, etc., are
of course not included ; neither
are the schools and colleges, none
of these institutions coming within
the scope of Mr. Cook's remarks ;
but we have endeavored to include
everything else. If any grant has
been overlooked the omission is
accidental, and we shall be grate-
ful for an opportunity to correct it.
Before we proceed there are a few
points which the reader is request-
ed to fix in his mind :
I. If it appear that the propriety
of public grants to private chari-
ties (that is to say, charities not
managed by State or municipal of-
ficers) has been generally admitted
both in theory and practice, and
that such grants are an ordinary
incident of our city administration,
then the charge of Mr. Cook, that
the grant to the Orphan Asylum was
a scurvy trick which could not
have been played upon the people
except by crafty and unscrupulous
'men, falls to the ground.
II. There is no question at pre-
sent of the justice or policy of pub-
lic aid to denomi?iational charities.
Mr. Cook's statement is clear and
broad that a donation of public
land to any body of men, " secular
or religious," is a fraud upon the
taxpayers.
III. There is no question as to
the comparative value of the gifts
to Catholics and to Protestants.
The objection is made on princi-
ple to any gift at all, either to Ca-
tholic, to Protestant, to Jew, or to
infidel. Nevertheless it will be
seen that the grants to Catholics
are far below what we should be
132
Private Clarities and Public Lands.
entitled to under any pro-rata dis-
tribution.
DEEDS AND LEASES OF LAND TO
CATHOLIC INSTITUTIONS.
i. The Roman Catholic Orphan
Asylum. The grants to the Orphan
Asylum, conducted by the Sisters of
Charity, were made in 1846. The
institution had then been in exist-
ence nearly thirty years, and the
buildings in Prince Street contain-
ed about 270 children, who were
supported entirely by private con-
tributions. The accommodations
being inadequate to the demands
upon the society, a petition for the
appropriation of land for a new
asylum was presented to the Com-
mon Council in December, 1845,
but it was not acted upon until the
following July, when the Finance
Committee of the Board of Alder-
men presented a report in which
occurs the following passage :
" It has been questioned by some as
to the right of the corporation to make
similar grants of land, as in the case of
the Colored Orphan Asylum and the
Colored Home, but your committee be-
lieve it to be perfectly legitimate for the
city authorities to dispense charity to the
helpless and the destitute in any manner
which may best comport with the public
interest ; and they consider the object
much more economically and satisfacto
rily obtained by assisting the efforts of
humane associations, by the granting of
a piece of land upon which to erect the
necessary asylum building, than to
maintain the recipients of their bounty
in the almshouse."
The committee consequently re-
commended the grant, and their re-
port was adopted. It does not ap-
pear from the official record of the
proceedings of the Common Coun-
cil whether there was any opposi-
tion to the resolution offered by
the committee, but it was prompt-
ly adopted at any rate both by the
aldermen and the assistants. The
submission of the favorable report
was announced (somewhat conspic-
uously) in the New York Tribune
of the next morning. No com-
ment was made upon it in that
journal at the time, nor does an ex-
amination of the newspaper files
show any trace of a discussion of
the matter outside of the Common
Council. Of course there may
have .been such debate; but we
chance not to have discovered any
indication of the great "stir" of
which Mr. Cook speaks. In ac-
cordance, then, with the resolution
of the Common Council, a deed,
dated August i, 1846, conveyed
to the Orphan Asylum Association
the land now bounded by Fifth
and Madison Avenues and Fifty-
first and Fifty-second- Streets (34
lots), for the consideration of one
dollar, and on the condition that
within three years the managers
should erect a suitable asylum. A
lease was executed on the same
day, transferring to the same so-
ciety the block between Madison
and Fourth Avenues and Fifty-first
and Fifty-second Streets (30 lots),
at the rent of one dollar a year,
during the pleasure of the Com-
mon Council. In 1857 a new lease
was granted of the same premises,
so long as they should be occupied
for the purposes of an orphan
asylum.
On the land thus acquired the Ca-
tholics erected extensive buildings,
and on January 1,1877, the num-
ber of children maintained by their
society was 1,345. The support of
these waifs would have fallen upon
the city, if they had not been cared
for by a private corporation. The
revenue for the previous year was
about $100,000, of which sum $28,-
600 was drawn from the public trea-
sury under general laws making per-
Private Charities and Public Lands.
133
capita allowances to all such insti-
tutions, and the rest, except a few
miscellaneous items, consisted of
the voluntary offerings of the Ca-
tholic people and about $15,000 in
legacies. The expenditures, in-
cluding payment of debts and per-
manent improvements, were some-
what in excess of the income. The
society maintains four establish-
ments namely, the old one in
Prince Street, two asylums (male
and female) on the city grant, and
a farm at Peekskill. The aggre-
gate cost of administration in 1877
was, for salaries of officers only
$3,045 ; wages of servants and la-
borers, $5,660, about half of which
was on the farm ; and maintenance
of the Sist'rs of Charity and Bro-
thers of the Christian Schools em-
ployed in the care of the asylums,
$6,300. The religious give their
services gratuitously. In point of
economy and efficiency the admin-
istration is admitted to bje a model.
The charge that the city govern-
ment which made the grant to this
institution was composed of a par-
ticularly base set of men we con-
fess that we do not understand.
The Common Council of 1846- has
not left in the annals of our city, so
far as we have learned, a bad repu-
tation, or, indeed, a reputation of
any kind. The list of aldermen
and assistant aldermen contains
very few names that are now re-
membered. One of the assistant
aldermen was Mr. Thomas McEl-
rath, for many years Mr. Greeley's
partner in the publication of the
Tribune. One of the aldermen was
Mr. William V. Brady, whom the
Tribune earnestly supported for
mayor the next year. One of the
signers of the report of the Finance
Committee recommending the grant
to the Orphan Asylum was Alder-
man Egbert Benson, whom Mr.
Greeley urged for re-election a few
months later as a reward for his
eminent faithfulness. The mayor
was Andrew H. Mickle.
2. St. Joseph's Industrial Home.
This institution, under the charge
of the Sisters of Mercy, was found-
ed for the protection and support
of destitute girls between the ages
of eleven and eighteen, who are
received free of expense and taught
remunerative trades. In 1878 it
had between 500 and 600 inmates.
The land which it occupies, an ir-
regular block, 200 feet on Madison
Avenue, 255 feet on Eighty-first
Street, and 205 feet on Eighty-
second Street (about eighteen city
lots), was leased from the corpora-
tion February 3, 1866, for the term
of ninety-nine years, at the yearly
rent of one dollar.
3. New York Foundling Asylum.
This establishment, one of the
best of its class in the world, and
one of the noblest in the metropolis,
is under the charge of the Sisters of
Charity. It supports about 2,000
infants, and how much crime, suf-
fering, and mortality are prevent-
ed by its beneficent and extensive
operations the mind can hardly even
conjecture. It is needless to say
that the poor little creatures com-
mitted to its charge have the
strongest possible claims upon the
compassion of the public, and that
they could not be cared for except
by a voluntary association of be-
nevolent women. The land now
occupied by the asylum was ob-
tained from the city December 15,
1870, on alease for ninety-nine years,
at the yearly rent of one dollar.
The grant covers about thirty-four
lots, being the block between Lex-
ington and Third Avenues and Six-
ty-eighth and Sixty-ninth Streets.
These are the only grants or
leases of land from the city to Cath-
134
Private Charities and Public Lands.
olic institutions of which we find
any record, except that, in order to
rectify the street lines, an exchange
of small gores was made between
the city and the trustees of the new
cathedral in 1852. The question
of appropriations of money has not
been raised in this controversy, but
we shall consider it later. We
come now to the concessions of
land to Protestant and other non-
Catholic institutions :
DEEDS AND LEASES OF LAND TO
PROTESTANT AND OTHER INSTI-
TUTIONS.
1. The Colored Orphan Asylum.
On December 29, 1842, the city
sold to the Association for the
Benefit of Colored Orphans, for one
dollar, a piece of land 200 feet on
the west side of Fifth Avenue, and
250 feet on Forty-third and Forty-
fourth Streets (20 lots), which was
a much more liberal appropriation,
considering the number of orphans
to be relieved, than the concession
to the Catholic asylum. The trus-
tees were required to erect a suit-
able building within three years,
and to provide for twelve colored
pauper children committed to their
care by the public authorities.
After the destruction of the asylum
during the draft riots the society
sold this land, and with the pro-
ceeds purchased a new site on One
Hundred and Forty-third Street.
Like other institutions of the same
class, the Colored Orphan Asylum
receives per-capita allowances from
the city and State. The religion
taught the children is Protestant,
although no particular denomina-
tion is recognized to the exclusion
of others. The number of orphans
in the asylum on December i, 1878,
was 307.
2. Protestant Episcopal Orphan
Asylum. This institution is strictly
denominational ; the religions ser-
vices and instructions are those of
the Protestant Episcopal Church,
and all persons to whom children
are bound out from the asylum
must be Episcopalians. The land
which it occupies, 100 feet on Lex-
ington Avenue and 305 feet on
Forty-ninth Street (about 12 lots),
was leased from the city April 26,
1861, for twenty years, at a yearly
rent of one dollar. The asylum
is not a large one, being intended
only for a small class of the poor.
Under the circumstances, it is in-
teresting to note that The Church-
man, Protestant Episcopal journal
of this city, " agrees with Mr. Cook
that the less said aboul^ the leasing
of the thirty-six lots T>y the city
government to the Roman Catholic
Orphan Asylum Society, the better
for the Roman Catholics and the
city government."
3. Hebrew Orphan Asylum. The
Hebrew Benevolent Society of New
York manages an Orphan Asylum,
and also a general charitable fund,
the two branches of the benevolent
enterprise being kept separate.
As the title of the association im-
plies, its object is to relieve the
suffering and destitute of the He-
brew race ; the trustees are requir-
ed to be Israelites; and the chil-
dren in the asylum are instructed
in the Jewish faith, none but Jew-
ish children being admitted. Of
course the number of inmates is
not large. On October 29, 1860,
the city conveyed to the society,
in fee simple, for the consideration
of one dollar, a parcel of ground
consisting of about twelve lots, ex-
tending 300 feet on Seventy-seventh
Street and 102 feet on the west
side of Third Avenue; and on the
i7th of October, 1864, a second
deed, for the same consideration.,
added to the grant the five adjoin-
Private Charities and Public Lands.
135
ing lots on Seventy-seventh Street.
The land is now occupied by the
Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
4. Baptist Ladies' Home. The
Ladies' Home Society of the Bap-
tist churches in the city of New
York manages an institution com-
monly known as the Baptist Home.
Its object is " to provide the aged,
infirm, or destitute members of the
Baptist churches with a comforta-
ble residence, with board, clothing,
skilful medical attendance, with
their accustomed religious services,
and at their death with respectable
burial." It is not an almsjiouse, for
an entrance fee of $100 is required.
At the date of the last published
report (1878) the number of inmates
was ninety-one. This institution
received from the city, November
28, 1870, a lease for ninety-nine
years, at the yearly rent of one
dollar, of the land which it now
occupies, comprising ten lots, be-
tween Lexington and Fourth Ave-
nues, running through from Sixty-
seventh to Sixty-eighth Street, with
a width of 125 feet and a depth of
200 feet.
5. T/ie Chapin Home is an insti-
tution for the aged and infirm
under the control of the Universal-
ists, only members of that denomi-
nation being eligible as trustees.
Its objects are like those of the
Baptist Home, and it demands an
admission fee of $300. In 1878
the number of inmates was forty-
four. The asylum obtained from
the city, March 29, 1871, a lease
for ninety-nine years, at the yearly
rent of one dollar, of the premises
extending from Sixty-sixth to Sixty-
seventh Street between Lexington
and Third Avenues, with a width
of 170 feet and a depth of 200 feet,
being nearly fourteen lots. We
have no fault to find either with
the plan or administration of the
Baptist and Chapin Homes, or with
the liberality of the corporation
towards them ; but we do not be-
lieve it would be easy to select more
striking examples of what Mr. Cook
calls the giving away of the lands
of the whole people for the benefit
of a small minority than these
grants of valuable property, made
not to save the destitute from star-
vation, but to enable forty or ninety
members of a particular church to
obtain a great deal of comfort for
a very small price.
6. Society for the Reformation of
Juvenile Delinquents. The House
of Refuge on Randall's Island is
supposed by many to be a munici-
pal institution. This is a mistake.
It is under the full control of a
private corporation, although it was
founded at the public cost and is
supported from the public funds.
Juvenile vagrants and criminals
are committed to it by the courts.
It is entirely Protestant in its reli-
gious instruction and forms of wor-
ship ; it has a Protestant chaplain ;
Catholic priests are not allowed to
visit the children unless they are
asked for in case of sickness. Yet
that a large proportion of the in-
mates are Catholics may be gath-
ered from the fact that out of 948
boys and girls in the institution at
the beginning of last year, 317 were
of Irish parentage. There were
also in of German parentage, and
many of these, too, were doubtless
Catholics. Formerly magistrates
were required by the statute to
send Catholic children to the Ca-
tholic Protectory, but this law has
been repealed. More than half
the children are committed not for
crime but for truancy, vagrancy,
and disorderly conduct ; so that in
point of fact the society obtains a
large number of innocent Catholic
children, picked up in the streets
Private Charities and Public Lands.
by the police, and keeps them
under lock and key until it has for-
cibly made them Protestants. TliQ
last annual report shows that the
expenditures for 1878 amounted to
$136,754, including about $14,500
for permanent improvements and
$5,000 in payment of a loan. Sala-
ries and wages cost $37,454, or
about one-third of the running ex-
penses ; and the cost of maintenance
of the children, after allowing for
their earnings ($31,000), was $85 87
per capita per annum. The reve-
nues (earnings, etc., excepted) were
wholly from the public treasury :
$68,500 from the State comptroller,
$11,843 from the Board of Educa-
tion, $22,457 from theatre licenses.
In 1824 the society obtained from
the city a grant of a triangular plot
of land on Madison Square. This,
together with an adjoining piece of
property purchased from the United
States, they afterwards transferred
to the city in exchange for premises
on Twenty-third Street and First
Avenue. A further grant of ad-
joining lots was made in 1854, and
the society then had the whole
block, *97 by 613 feet, between
Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth
Streets and Avenue A and First
Avenue. On November 10, 1851,
the city conveyed to the society
thirty-six acres on Randall's Island,
and the buildings which it now oc-
cupies there were erected partly
with the proceeds of the sale of the
Twenty-third Street property, part-
ly by fresh appropriations from the
State. We shall have occasion to
examine hereafter the enormous
grants of money to this cruelly sec-
tarian institution. The Catholic
Protectory, which does for Catholic
children what the House of Re-
fuge does for those of , Protestant
parentage, has never received any
grant or lease of land from the city
or the State.
7. Nursery and Child's Hospital.
This institution, founded (under'
another name) in 1854, has three
departments. It comprises, i, an
asylum for children who from any
cause are deprived of the care of a
mother; 2, a hospital for sick chil-
dren ; 3, a lying-in asylum and a
foundling hospital for illegitimate
children. Last year the society
received $102,000 from the city
government. The city granted the
land which the asylum occupies,
consisting of about fifteen lots, be-
tween Fiftieth and Fifty-first Streets
and Lexington and Third Avenues.
The concession was in the form of
two leases made at different times
(August i, 1857, and February 16,
1866), at the yearly rent of one dol-
lar, to hold as long as the property
is used for the purposes of the asy-
lum. The State contributed liber-
ally towards the cost of the build-
ings.
8. St. Philip's Cfatrc/i.This is
a Protestant Episcopal Church for
colored persons. In 1827 the city
conveyed to it for one dollar a
plot of land in First Street, 50 by
200 feet (four lots), to be used as a
burying-ground.
9. Church of the Redeemer. The
city granted permission to the Pro-
testant Episcopal Church of the
Redeemer, Yorkville, December 31,
1864, to occupy a plot of land ex-
tending 204 feet on Fourth Ave-
nue, 200 feet on Eighty-first Street,
and 100 feet on Eighty-second
Street during the pleasure of the
Common Council.
TO. St. Luke's Hospital. Two-
thirds of the land now occupied by
this fine institution was originally
a grant from the city, though not
to this particular establishment.
Private Cliarities and Public Lands.
137
May TO, 1848, the city conveyed
to the Protestant Episcopal Church
of St. George the Martyr a plot
200 feet in extent on the west side
of Fifth Avenue, and 300 feet on
Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Streets
(24 lots), for the consideration of
one dollar, and on condition that
the rector should build a hospital
and chapel for British emigrants,
and that Trinity Church should,
moreover, surrender all its claim
to certain land in the lower part of
the city land of which, if we are
not mistaken, the title was in dis-
pute. The value of the grant de-
pends of course upon the value of
the claim thus surrendered as a
partial equivalent, and as we are
not familiar with all the facts we
state the transaction under reserve,
giving merely what appears upon
the record, and drawing no con-
clusions. Subsequently (November
20, 1851) the Common Council au-
thorized a transfer of the Fifth Ave-
nue land to the managers of St.
Luke's Hospital, on condition that
they should comply with the cove-
nants of the original grant. The
institution is denominational in its
government and character. It was
established " for the purpose of af-
fording medical and surgical aid
and nursing to sick or disabled
persons, and also to provide them,
while inmates of the hospital, with
the ministrations of the Gospel
agreeably to the doctrines and
forms of the Protestant Episcopal
Church. A further object of the
society is the instructing and train-
ing of suitable persons in the art
of nursing and attending upon the
sick." A sisterhood is connected
with the hospital. Service is held
daily in the wards. Although the
hospital opens its doors freely to
accident cases requiring immediate
attention, patients are not usually
admitted except upon payment.
But however freely it might extend
its charity to the suffering, it would
still, according to Mr. Cook's prin-
ciple, be inexcusable for the city
to help it.
IT. Mount Sinai Hospital.
Founded especially for the benefit
of the Jews, and governed by men
of that race and creed, this insti-
tution admits patients. of whatever
belief, and, we believe, allows them
all to receive the visits of clergy-
men of their choice; but naturally
the inmates are nearly all Hebrews.
It received from the city, May 31,
1871, on a lease for ninety-nine
years at the yearly rent of one dol-
lar, the ground which it now occu-
pies, 200 feet on Lexington Ave-
nue and 170 feet on Sixty-sixth
and Sixty-seventh Streets that is
to say, about fourteen lots.
12. German Hospital. The Ger-
man Hospital and Dispensary oc-
cupies the block- between Lexing-
ton and Fourth Avenues and
Seventy-sixth and Seventy-seventh
Streets. It purchased a part of
the land from a private owner, and
obtained the rest (eighteen lots)
from the city February 9, 1866, on
a lease for fifty years, at the yearly
rent of one dollar.
13. Hahnemann Hospital. This
homoeopathic institution, occupy-
ing 200 feet on Fourth Avenue and
125 feet on Sixty-seventh and Six-
ty-eighth Streets (ten lots), obtain-
ed a lease of its land from the city,
January 10, 1871, for ninety-nine
years, at a yearly rent of one dollar.
This would certainly seem to be a
case in which " the land belonging
to all the citizens was given to a
minority for their own private use ";
but we are not prepared to believe
that the felonious deed was accom-
plished by "a scurvy trick."
14. New York State Woman's
138
Private CJiarities and Public Lands.
Hospital This is not only an in-
stitution for the benefit of a small
minority, but it is intended for the
treatment of a certain class of dis-
eases only. A considerable propor-
tion of the patients pay board, but
there is a fixed number of free beds.
The sick are allowed to call for the
services of any clergyman they de-
sire, but only " in extreme cases."
January 10, 1859, the institution
obtained from the city, for one dol-
lar, the whole block between Fourth
and Lexington Avenues and Forty-
ninth and Fiftieth Streets (32 lots),
on condition that twenty-four free
beds should be provided for poor
persons residing in New York City.
15. Deaf and Dumb Institution.
Although the New York Institu-
tion for the Instruction of the Deaf
and Dumb is supported chiefly at
the cost of the State, it is, like all
the other institutions we have men-
tioned, a truly private charity in
its management. In its religious
character it is distinctly Protestant,
and the pupils attend Protestant
service every day. In September,
1827, the city conveyed to the in-
stitution for one dollar a tract of
land between Fourth and Fifth
Avenues extending from Forty-
ninth to Fiftieth Street, and 207
feet wide on each street (eight lots).
In 1850 the city sold to the institu-
tion all the remaining land between
Fourth and Fifth Avenues and
Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets
(25 lots) for $28,000, a price which
made the transaction virtually a
gift. The establishment was after-
wards removed to Washington"
Heights, and the old buildings are
now occupied by Columbia Col-
lege.
1 6. The Association for the Im-
proved Instruction of Deaf Mutes
obtained from the city, August i,
1870, a lease for ninety-nine years,
at the yearly rent of one dollar, of
a block of land extending 200 feet
on the west side of Lexington Ave-
nue, and 155 feet on Sixty-seventh
and Sixty-eighth Streets, or about
twelve lots.
Here, then, we have a total of
nineteen charitable institutions and
churches to which the city has
made grants of land under exactly
or substantially the same conditions
that accompanied the grant to the
Orphan Asylum of the Sisters of
Charity. Only three of these in-
stitutions are Catholic. The other
sixteen, with only one or two unim-
portant exceptions, are distinctly
Protestant or Jewish. We have laid
no great stress upon the religious
influences of these sixteen estab-
lishments, because the question now
is not whether the public authori-
ties have distributed their bene-
ficence impartially between the
two great religious bodies, nor is it
whether the city has a right to aid
" sectarian charities"; it is whether
there is justification, precedent, es-
tablished and approved custom,
for the donation of public lands to
benevolent institutions, or whether,
as we have been angrily assured,
the endowment of an orphan asy-
lum with lands belonging to the
taxpayers was an inexcusable out-
rage, a scurvy trick, an infamous
bargain, which could only have
been proposed and consummated
by a crafty and unscrupulous
priest on one side and a base Com-
mon Council on the other. The
high grounds within a radius of a
mile and a half of the Catholic
Orphan Asylum are covered with
magnificent hospitals, homes, re-
fuges, etc., etc., for the relief of
almost every sort of misery. That
region of the island might almost
be called a colony of charity. We
Private Charities and Public Lands.
139
have seen that the city has given
the land for a large proportion of
the most important of these institu-
tions. We shall see hereafter that
the donations in money have been
still more generous than the dona-
tions in land. Without such aid
from the city and State not a tithe
of these foundations could exist.
To some people we hope they are
not many it may seem that this
expenditure of a part of the funds of
the whole people for the relief of
the suffering and destitute is a
crime. To us it appears to be one
.of the glories of the metropolis.
With respect to the comparative
values of the donations to Catholic
and Protestants charities, although
the matter is not pertinent to the
present discussion, it may be worth
while to remind the reader that the
Orphan Asylum grant which was
the most considerable made to us
is surpassed by many others. At
the date of the deed and lease
(1846) a block of ground on Fiftieth
Street was not worth an extrava-
gant sum, probably not so much as
the grant to the Hebrew Orphan
Asylum was worth when it was
made fifteen and eighteen years
later. And it would be the height
of absurdity to reckon such grants
as additions to the wealth of the
church which holds them. How a
piece of land which can never yield
any revenue, but, on the contrary,
must always make necessary a
heavy annual outlay, can be called
an addition to one's wealth we are
at a loss to understand.
Some of the institutions which
we have classed as Protestant pro-
fess to be unsectarian. Probably
there are only one or two and those
hospitals for adults which are en-
titled to make such a claim. In
all hospitals, if there is no religious
influence or ministration there
ought to be, and it is monstrous
that the sick should be left to die
without the attendance of a clergy-
man unless they ask for one. In
most of the hospitals we have enu-
merated the duty of attending to
the soul is at least recognized. Asy-
lums for the care of children can
never in any case be unsectarian.
If religion is banished from them
altogether, they become nurseries
of atheism and the most cruel of
inventions for the ruin of the little
ones. If religion is taught at all, it
must be some particular kind of re-
ligion, for there is no delusion so
empty as that which hugs the idea
of abstract religion without any
concrete belief.
The question of State aid to reli-
gious charities was argued in the
Constitutional Convention of this
State in 1868. Among those who
came forward most conspicuously
in that body to rebuke the narrow
sectarian spirit which remonstrated
against " sectarian charities " and
which clamored at the benefactions
to Catholic asylums, was no less
bitter a Protestant than Mr. Eras-
tus Brooks, then editor of the
Evening Express. " Let me address
a few words," said he, " to those
who would refuse appropriations to
men, women, and children of the
Roman Catholic faith. Those who
know my antecedents will not ac-
cuse me of any undue partiality for
the adherents of this church. I
would give them no advantage
over others, and I would do them
no wrongby discriminations against
them, an o> least of all in dispensing
charity would I inquire the reli-
gious faith of any who need assist-
ance. . . . While discarding state
and church as combinations, we
must remember that there can be no
true charity where all religion is ex-
cluded, since a pure charity is the
140
New Publications.
very essence of practical Christian-
ity. To say that the state has
nothing to do \yith religion makes
it atheistical; and that education
and charity form no part of its du-
ties, makes it barbarian."
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
A HISTORY OF THE MASS AND ITS CERE-
MONIES IN THE EASTERN AND WESTERN
CHURCH. By Rev. John O'Brien,
A.M., Professor of Sacred Liturgy at
Mt. St. Mary's College, Emmittsburg.
The rites and ceremonies used in the
Catholic Church, and in those separated
bodies also which have retaine'd more
or less of the old liturgy and ritual, are
a most interesting object of study. This
is especially the case with those which
are immediately connected with the
great act of worship, the Eucharistic Sac-
rifice. Even in the baldest and nudest
rite of the "Lord's Supper," as celebrat-
ed by those who have no liturgy, the
ceremony is most solemn and impres-
sive. The Episcopalians and some
other Protestants have retained enough
of the ancient forms to make their Eu-
charistic service even somewhat similar
to the majestic grandeur of the Mass,
which in some of their churches is more
closely imitated. The Oriental sects, it
is well known, are even more elaborate
and profuse in external splendor, so far
as their means will permit, than West-
ern Christians have been led by their
more severe and simple taste to imitate
or rival. Vestments, forms, ceremonies,
as well as religion itself, came from the
East to the West, and in tracing up their
history we are naturally led to study it
in its place of origin and most abun-
dant development.
Father O'Brien has made a thorough
and extensive study of these interesting
matters, and the valuable work which he
has prepared is full of a copious and accu-
rate erudition. Its great practical value
consists, however, in this: -that it re-
quires no learning in the reader in order
to be read with profit and pleasure.
The information which priests and
scholars have to search for in heavy Latin
tomes, or rare books in foreign langua-
ges, is here condensed and placed at the
service of all readers, in plain English.
Even ecclesiastics like to have such a
book, which saves them a great deal of
trouble, and is frequently the only prac-
tical resource for renewing their old-
time acquaintance with a subject of the
greatest interest to them, when they are
no longer within reach of the numerous
and costly works of original resort. All
the pious laity, and all who have some
taste for the aesthetic side of religion,
and curiosity to understand what they
enjoy and admire, must be delighted to
find within moderate compass such a
full explanation as Father O'Brien has
here furnished. He has done a good
work, for which thousands will be grate-
ful, and supplied a great want. Hither-
to there has been no complete and satis-
factory manual of this sort in the Eng-
lish language, although much has been
written about its several topics in detail.
Rock's Hierurgia, which is the best trea-
tise on these matters in English, is not
adapted for general circulation, and has
been out of print for years. This one is
a book for the people, suited for young
and old, level to the capacity of all who
can read, and quite sufficient for the
most educated. We trust that it will
have a large ^ circulation, not only in
America, but in England and Ireland as
well, and therefore venture to call the
attention of other editors to its merits,
trusting that they will endorse them as
fully as we have done.
There is another reason why every
devout Catholic who reads the book
should feel a personal sympathy for the
learned and pious author. He has per-
formed this labor of love, the greatness
of which every scholar will appreciate,
while failing under a fatal malady, and
far more in need of rest and relaxation
than fit for work. We trust that a mul-
titude of prayers will be his recompense,
from pious hearts whose veneration and
devotion toward the august mysteries
New Publications.
141
and rites of our holy religion will be in-
creased by the perusal of what he has
written for the glory of God and their
benefit.
HEALTH, AND How TO PROMOTE IT. By
Richard McSherry, M.D., Professor
of Practice of Medicine, University of
Maryland ; President of Baltimore
Academy of Medicine, etc. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. 1879.
There are many books written on pub-
lic and private hygiene for general read-
ers, but none within the limits of our
reading which displays greater practical
judgment and contains wiser counsels
than this volume from the pen of Dr.
McSherry. The distinguished professor
has the knack of making a technical
subject plain to ordinary minds, and is
gifted with a style which makes one for-
get, from the pleasure derived in reading
his composition, that he has been made
acquainted with what under other pens
would have been a dry subject. This
volume shows a varied and extensive
experience, a familiarity with the stan-
dard authorities of most recent date on
the subjects which are treated, and its
perusal leaves the impression that it is
the ripened fruit of the experience of
a sagacious, judicious, and conscien-
tious physician. " It is offered," says
the author in his preface, " as a contri-
bution to a great cause, and the writer
trusts that it will have some influence
in promoting the health, happiness, and
welfare of all who may honor it with
careful perusal. The principles advo-
cated have een, to a great extent, put in
practice in the personal experience of
the writer in various parts of the world,
and under many vicissitudes, and he
has found them to* be not vague theo-
ries, but practical truths of the greatest
importance."
. The following are the headings of the
chapters : Part i., c. i. Introductory Re-
marks ; Hygiene the better part of
Medicine ; ii. The four Divisions of Life ;
iii. The Young Man ; The Young Woman ;
iv. The Man ; The Woman ; v. The De-
clining or Old Man. Fart ii., c. i. Race,
Temperaments and Idiosyncrasies, In-
heritance, Habit, Constitution ; ii. The
Air we breathe ; iii. Water ; iv. Cloth-
ing ; v. Exercise or Work; Influence of
Occupation upon Longevity ; Limits to
Labor; vi. The Food of Man ; Accessory
Food ; Manner of Eating ; Tea and Coffee ;
vii. Alcohol, use and abuse ; Ardent
Spirits, Wines, Malt Liquors ; viii. To-
bacco, Chewing and Smoking should be
forbidden in Schools ; Report of Naval
Schools.
THE SONG OF LIBERTY. By W. E. Cof-
fin. New York : Harpers. 1879.
This is one of those books that set
all criticism at defiance. Its historical
theory is that American independence
is due to Martin Luther ; its ethical
doctrine is that the Reformation made
a vast advance upon primitive Chris-
tianity ; and its polemical method is to
call the Catholic Church names. It is
dedicated with a flourish to the boys and
the girls of America. We wish that we
could say, with the wit who read an
Ode to Posterity, that the Song will not
reach its address. Children of a larger
growth will present it to the young folk.
Its handsome binding, typography, and
pictures make it available as a present,
while its ardent Protestantism is the
crown of its excellences.
When Jeffrey, of the Edinbiirgh, receiv-
ed a book on cookery or plumbing, he
sent it for review to the appropriate au-
thority. So we entrusted the Song to a
young American, the son of an intelli-
gent Protestant friend, and we asked
him to give us his impressions of the
work. This young gentleman conde-
scended to glance over it during the
leisure permitted by the more important
pursuit of skating and coasting. In
evidence of his critical judgment upon
such a work it may be said that he has
read a good-sized Sabbath-school library
through, and had dipped surreptitiously
into our juvenile secular literature.
His amiable father has no fear of his
genius.
Examined on the general scope of the
Song of Liberty, Young America gave it
as his impression that the title is a fraud :
" It was one of them Sabbath-school
books all about Luther, and the pope,
and burning Protestants. I know the old
story from cover to cover. We get a
regular dose of it, only they're too 'cute
now to print the right name, 'cos fellows
won't read them." This sagacious ob-
servation he confirmed by appealing to
the really preponderating quantity of
anti-popery invective. We felt that our
young friend was somewhat prejudiced
against the book, believing in the de-
142
New Publications.
lusory nature of the title. We could
not instance such a book as the Diver-
sions of Purity as a parallel deception of
title.
" Then wasn't it George Washington,
and the boys of '76, and the Declaration
of Independence, and all that that made
America free ? Here the fellow says it
was Martin Luther. Why, he was dead
long before. Besides, he was a Dutch-
man, and who knows but a Hessian?
Pshaw ! I know more history than that."
Young America also intimated the au-
thor's inability to shut his organs of
vision as to who whipped the Britishers.
The chapter fantastically entitled
''The Man who spoke after he was
Dead " also awoke his ire. It describes
the life and labors of John Wycliff. "I
thought it was a ghost story." From
this writers should be warned of the
exceedingly practical views taken by
youth.
The first two hundred pages are taken
up with the fiercest attacks upon the
pope, the priests, and every institution
of the Catholic Church. The artist
works in full harmony with the author,
or perhaps it is vice versa. Monks of
Falstaffian proportions and Bardolphian
noses are principally engaged in firing
up the stake for heretics. The pope, in
full pontificals, prepares a poisoned
bowl of wine for the Sacred College.
Every slander that can be pictured is,
and well, pictured. A Catholic has
really to laugh, for it is too absurd to
get angry over. The calm and contin-
ued falsification of the writer would
make Munchausen himself stare and
gasp. How a man can write so is a
problem for psychologists ; and how a
publisher claiming to be respectable
can lend his name to so false and ma-
licious a work is a problem that only
the firm of Harper could solve.
Very likely the writer thought that
no one but youth would trouble himself
about his book. He takes a mean ad-
vantage of children. He makes no pre-
tences to proof. He quotes no histori-
cal authorities, and he appears to gather
courage as he advances.
Our young friend exercised his terri-
ble critical power on the picture and
description of the burning of John Huss.
The voice of the martyr was heard clear
and resonant singing the Twenty-third
Psalm. Young America objected to this
on the ground that nobody could shout
so loud and be choked with smoke at
the same time. Grave doubts were also
expressed as to the trustworthiness of
the story about the poor wretch who,
after all the tortures of the Spanish In-
quisition, survived to spread the Gospel
tidings. Papa, who 'had been all over
Europe, assured Young America that the
monks were not such bad fellows at all ;
that they studied, and read, and wrote,
and built monasteries, and painted; that
the pope, at least the one that papa saw,
was the dearest old gentleman that ever
lived, and never said a word about
burning papa ; that this story about
American liberty being from the Re-
formation is too thin ; and that a fellow
gets tired reading about nothing more
terrible than burning a heretic, without
a war-dance or a previous running of
the gauntlet.
What good for Protestantism such
books subserve we leave unanswered.
Surely that must be a weak cause which
resorts to wholesale defamation of the
church before the unformed mind of
childhood. The book is even trashier
than many in the ignoble sphere to which
it belongs, and there are certain passa-
ges in it in which the laws of delicacy
and modesty are violated. We caution
such Protestants as may read this
against it, for the sake of their children,
who would learn nothing but wrong
history, unchristian hatred and slander,
and inopportune moral reflections from
its pages.
THE PRISONERS OF THE KING. Thoughts
on the Catholic Doctrine of Purgatory.
By Henry James Coleridge, of the So-
ciety of Jesus. London : Burns &
Gates. .
" Two.or three years ago," says Father
Coleridge in the preface of this book,
"it fell, to my lot ... to preach during
the octave with which the Society of the
Helpers of the Holy Souls is accustom-
ed to celebrate the annual commemora-
tion of the faithful departed. It occurred
to me that some of the miracles of our
Lord might be usefully applied in illus-
tration of the doctrine of Purgatory, and
thus the substance of some few of the chap-
ters of this book was put tog-ether. ... I
am in hopes that no considerable point
connected with that doctrine has been
altogether passed over. . . . What is
new in this volume is chiefly the appli-
cation of the successive miracles of our
New Publications.
143
Lord to various points of the doctrine of
Purgatory." Such is, in the writer's
own words, the origin and the subject
of this work. Father Coleridge is well
known, not only as a prolific magazine
writer and contributor, but also as the
author of a work which promises to be,
should God spare him, nothing less than
a complete summa of the four Gospels.
In two volumes he has given us the
Private Life of Our Lord, and the Pttblic
Life of Our Lord has been treated in four
volumes, entitled respectively, " The
Ministry of St. John Baptist," "The
Preaching of the Beatitudes," " The Ser-
mon on the Mount,' 7 " The Sermon on
the Mount, concluded." The title of
this fourth, the latest published volume
of the Public Life of Our Lord, shows
how extensive the whole work promises
to be, and how much yet remains to be
done. We sincerely hope and pray that
he may be given time and health to com-
plete his undertaking. Now, to one
who ha/> made such a deep study of the
New Testament it must be a congenial
and easy task to bring the doings and
sayings of our Lord to bear upon any
department of Catholic teaching. In
this book the extensive knowledge which
Father Coleridge possesses of the mira-
cles of the Saviour is applied to the
doctrine of Purgatory. The state of the
holy souls in Purgatory is illustrated by
such applications as the following : The
cleansing of the Temple purity required
by God in those who see him in heaven ;
our Lord's escape from his enemies at
Nazareth gratitude of the holy souls for
their deliverance from hell ; the demo-
niac in the synagogue the holy souls
and the evil spirits ; the healing of the
leper duration of the pains of Purga-
tory ; the cure of the blind and dumb
demoniac the desire of the holy souls
for the society of heaven ; stilling the
tempest peace of the holy souls ; the
raising to life of the daughter of Jairus
the pain of sense in Purgatory ; by these
and other applications the whole doc-
trine, as to its main points, of the pains
and sufferings of Purgatory is most
touchingly and clearly brought out. The
relief of the holy souls is illustrated by
the following miracles : The healing of
the ruler's son devotion to Purgatory as
an exercise of faith ; cures wrought on
the evening of the Sabbath promptitude
in assisting the holy souls; the miracu-
lous draught of fishes the church on
earth and the holy souls; cure of the
man at the probatic pool the applica-
tion of our suffrages to certain souls in
particular; the raising of the widow's
son our Blessed Lady and the holy
souls ; feeding of the five thousand the
holy souls relieved by Holy Commun-
ion ; the healing of the ten lepers visits
to the Blessed Sacrament for the holy
souls ; our Lord's last miracle on the
lake the treasure of the church. In
short, here are forty-one sermons on
Purgatory based upon Holy Scripture,
and yet people imagine that Purgatory
is har'dly a Scriptural doctrine ! This
precious book, admirably written, full
of unction, and redolent of that love
which is born of close and constant me-
ditation on the life of our Blessed Re-
deemer, is a mine for our clergy, a trea-
sure of spiritual reading for the laity.
The month of November is the month
of the holy souls. As May is conse-
crated to Mary, March to St. Joseph,
June to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Oc-
tober to the Guardian Angels, January
to the Holy Infancy, so is November
consecrated to the souls in Purgatory ;
such, at least, is the pious practice of
the more fervent among the faithful. We
trust that Father Coleridge's The King's
Prisoners will be of great use in promot-
ing this most Catholic devotion.
THE CHURCH AND THE SOVEREIGN PON-
TIFF : an Analytical Catechism. By the
Rev. Antoine Maurel, SJ. Translated
from the French by the Rev. Patrick
Costello, C.C., Ballinasloe. Dublin :
James Duffy & Sons.
This work comes to us with a serried
array of approbations. Father Costello
has received for his translated edition
the approbation of his ordinary and the
ordinary's theological censor, and of no
less than twenty-one bishops of the Irish
hierarchy. Many of these are approba-
tions not only' of the substance of the
work itself, but also of the translation,
as a translation. They are more than
the non-committal formulas which often
go by the name of " approbations " : they
are hearty and sincere endorsements
and assurances of effective co-opera-
tion in the disseminating of the book.
A book that can thus enlist the sym-
pathy of the bishops of Ireland must
have a real value. The original work
of Father Maurel has the imprimatur vi
Very Rev. Father Beckx, general of the
1 44
New Publications.
Society of Jesus, the approbation of the
Cardinal Archbishop of Lyons, and
(greatest reward that a Catholic writer
could expect) it has been honored by a
special brief from His Holiness Pope
Pius IX. , of blessed memory. We have
met with very few contemporary books
so well and highly recommended. Father
Costello deserves the thanks of the Eng-
lish-speaking world for having put with-
in our reach Father Maurel's The Chtirch
and the Sovereign Pontiff. The form into
which the matter is cast is catechetical ;
it is not, however, a mere catechism in
the common sense of that word* but an
analytical catechism, as the title of the work
asserts ; it is catechism only as to ques-
tions and answers,- and, because of this
form, might very readily be used in the
higher grades of our Sunday-schools and
the more advanced classes of our paro-
chial schools. It is entirely confined to
the two topics, the church and the Sover-
eign Pontiff questions on which the ris-
ing generation of Catholics whom our pa-
rochial schools and colleges are prepar-
ing and sending forth need to be well
and clearly instructed. The church,
her notes and her governing authority,
are fully treated in a manner so clear
and interesting that even an educated
theologian may condone the catecheti-
cal process through which the reading
takes him. The second part, concerning
" the Sovereign Pontiff," is equally com-
plete, and includes questions which are
rarely or very briefly touched in our ca~
teohisms. There is a chapter on propo-
sitions censured and condemned by the
Holy See, containing such headings
as the following : " Rights and power
of the Holy See in the condemnation
of doctrines and propositions contrary
to Catholic teaching ; infallibility of the
Holy See in these condemnations ; dog-
matic facts ; the Index." Following thte
above is a chapter on "The infallibility
of the Holy See in regard to religious
orders, canonization of saints, beatifi-
cation, the liturgy"; another chapter,
on "The institution and jurisdiction of
bishops." Our readers may gather from
these few extracts from the " contents "
how exhaustively this work, which hum-
bly styles itself " an analytical cate-
chism," treats the two topics of the
church and the Sovereign Pontiff.
Though written before the Council of
the Vatican, it is singularly in accord
with the teachings of that greatest and
most important of the church's coun-
cils. However, there are some ques-
tions touched upon by Father Maurel
that might now be left out, to the greater
clearness of the main end and the great-
er benefit of ordinary readers ; for the
Council of the Vatican has turned into
rubbish, and swept away as such, a great
deal that had to be seriously considered
and treated with some respect formerly ;
it has set the whole question of the Sov-
ereign Pontiff's position in the church
and his relation to it in such a clear and
vivid light that surely a work of this
kind, at least in the chapters on the in-
fallibility of the church and of the Pope,
should be based and modelled on these
later decisions. We trust that some future
edition will be thus amended and brought
up to the requirements of the day ; the
book would gain in freshness %nd use-
fulness.
LIFE OF THE VENERABLE ELIZABETH
CANORI MORA. Translated from the
Italian, with a preface by Lady Her-
bert. London : R. Washbourne. 1878.
The Signora Mora was a lady of un-
doubted sanctity, whose life was a sin-
gular one, and whose sufferings and ex-
traordinary gifts were also equally sin-
gular. She was a wife and a mother,
bound in marriage to a man of very bad
life, who in the end deserted her and left
her free to live in her own house under
vows as a Tertiary of the Trinitarian Or-
der. The most remarkable and surpris-
ing event related in her history is the
fact that her husband became a Francis-
can friar after her death. Apart from
the extraordinary things narrated in
these pages, they present to us a picture
of heroic virtue and goodness in an un-
happy, ill-treated wife, who was a model
matron as wife, mother, daughter, sister,
and neighbor, amid great trials, and who
reaped a great reward for her merits in
the blessings she brought down on her
family and on many others. A book in-
troduced by Lady Herbert needs no
other recommendation to Christian wo-
men.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIX., No. i;o. MAY, 1879.
KING SIGEBERT OF ESSEX; OR, THE FRIEND IN DEATH.
A LEGEND FROM BEDE.
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
" AT last resolve, my brother and my friend,
Fling from you, as I fling this cloak, your gods,
And cleave to Him, the Eternal, One and Sole,
The All-Wise, All-Righteous, and Illimitable,
Who made us, and will judge !" Thus Oswy spake
To Sigebert, his friend, of Essex king,
Essex once Christian. Royal Sebert dead,
The Church of God had sorrow by the Thames :
Three pagan brothers in his place held sway :
They warred upon God's people; for which cause
God warred on them, and by the Wessex sword
In one day hewed them down. King Sigebert,
Throned in their place, to Oswy thus replied :
" O friend ! I saw the truth, yet saw it not !
'Twas like the light forth flashed from distant oar,
Now vivid, vanished now. Not less, methinks,
Long since thy Christ had won me save for this ;
I feared that in my bosom love for thee,
Not truth, alone prevailed. I left thy court;
I counselled with my wisest ; by degrees,
Though grieving thus to outrage loyal hearts,
Reached my resolve : henceforth I serve thy God :
My kingdom may reject me if it will."
Then came the bishop old, and near that Wall
AVhich spans the northern land from sea to ,sea,
Baptized him to the God Triune. At night
The king addressed him thus : " My task is hard ;
Yield me four priests of thine from Holy Isle
COPYRIGHT : REV. I. T. HECKER. 1879.
146 King Sigcbert of Essex ; or, the Friend in Death.
To shape my courses." Finan gazed around
And made election Cedd, and others three ;
He consecrated Cedd with staff and ring ;
And by the morning's sunrise Sigebert
Rode with them, face to south.
The spring, long checked,
Fell, like God's grace, or fire, or flood, at once
O'er all the land ; it swathed the hills in green;
It fringed with violets rift and rock; it lit
The stream with primrose-tufts; but mightier far
That spring which triumphed in the monarch's breast,
His doubt dispelled. That smile which knew not cause
Looked like his angel's mirrored on his face :
At times he seemed with utter gladness dazed :
At times he laughed aloud. " Father," he cried,
" That darkness from my spirit is raised at last !
Ah fool ! ah fool ! to wait for proof so long :
Unseal thine eyes, and all things speak of God!
The snows on yonder thorn His pureness show ;
Yon golden iris bank His love. But now
I marked a child that by its father ran :
Some mystery they seemed of love in heaven
Imaged in earthly love." Wi-th sad, sweet smile
The old man answered : " Pain there is on earth
Bereavement, sickness, death." The king replied :
" It was by suffering, not by deed or word,
God's Son redeemed mankind." Then answered Cedd :
" God hath thee in his net; and well art thou !
That truth this day thou seest and feelest, live !
So shall it live within thee. If more late I
Rebuke should come, or age, remember then
This day-spring of thy strength, and answer thus :
" With me God feasted in my day of youth
So feast he now with others !' '
Years went by,
And Cedd in work and word was mighty still,
And throve with God. The strong East Saxon race
Grew gentle in his presence : they were brave ;
And faith is courage in the things divine,
Courage with meekness blent. The heroic heart
Beats, to the spiritual cognate, paltering not
Fraudulent with truth once known. Like winds from God-,
God's message lifted them. Old bonds of sin,
Snapt by the vastness of the growing soul,
Burst of themselves ; and in the heart late bound
Virtue had room to breathe. As when, that Voice
Primeval o'er the formless chaos rolled,
And, straight, confusions ceased, the greater orb
King Sigebcrt of Essex ; or, the Friend in DeatJi. 147
Ruling the day, the lesser, night, even so
Born of the heavenly mandate order lived :
Divine commandments fixed a firmament
Betwixt man's lower instincts and his soul :
From unsuspected summits of his spirit
The morning shone : the nation with the man
Partook perforce : from duty freedom flowed :
And there where Tribes had roved a People lived.
A pathos of strange beauty hung thenceforth
O'er humblest hamlet : he who passed it prayed :
" May never sword come here !" Bishop and king
Together labored : well that bishop's love
Repaid that royal zeal. If random speech
Censured the king though justly, sudden red
Circling the old man's silver-tressed brow
Showed, though he spake not, that in saintly breast
The human heart lives on. -
In Ithancester
He dwelt and toiled : not less to Lindisfarne,
His ancient home, in" spirit oft he yearned,
Longing for converse with his God alone;
And made retreat there often, not to shun
The task allotted, but to draw from heaven
Strength for that task. One year, returning thence,
Deira's king addressed him as they rode :
*' My father, choose the richest of my lands
And build thereon a holy monastery;
So shall my realm be blessed, and I, and mine."
He answered : " Son, no wealthy lands for us !
Spake not the prophet, ' There where dragons roamed,
In later days the grass shall grow, the reed '?
I choose those rocky hills that, on our left,
Drag down the skyey waters to the woods :
Such loved I from my youth ; to me they said :
' Bandits this hour usurp our heights, and beasts \
Couch in our caves : expel the seed accurst,
And vield us back to God !' "
The king gave ear ;
And Cedd within those mountains passed his Lent,
Driving with prayer and fast the spirits accurst
With ignominy forth. ^Foundations next
He laid with sacred pomp. Fair rose the walls :
All day the wild March s?a its thunders sent
Through far ravines to where in wooden cell
The old man prayed, while o'er him rushed the cloud
Storm-borne from peak to peak. Serener breeze
With alternation soft in nature's course
148 King Sigebert of Essex ; or, the Friend in Death.
Following ere long, great Easter's harbinger,
Thus spake he: " I must keep the feast at home ;
My children there expect me." Parting thence,
He left his brothers three to consummate
His work begun Celin, and Cynabil,
And Chad, at Lichfield bishop ere he died :
Thus Lastingham had birth.
Beside the Thames
Meantime dark deeds were done. There dwelt two thanes
The kinsmen of the king, his friends in youth,
Of meanest friend unworthy. Far and wide
They ravined, and the laws of God and man
Despised alike. Three times in days gone by
A warning hand their bishop o'er them raised ;
The fourth it fell on them like bolt frcrm heaven,
And clave them from God's church. They heeded not ;
And now the elder kept his birthday feast,
Summoning his friends around him first the king.
Doubtful and sad, the o'er-gentle monarch mused :
" To feast with sinners is to sanction sin :
A deed abhorred. The alternative is hard :
Must then their sovereign shame with open scorn
Kinsman and friend ? I think they mourn the past,
And, were our bishop here, would sue his grace."
Boding, yet self-deceived, he joined that feast:
Thereat he saw scant sign of penitence :
Ere long he bade farewell.
That self-same hour
Cedd from his northern pilgrimage returned;
The monarch met him at the offenders' gate,
And, instant when he saw that reverend face,
His sin before him stood. Down from his horse
He leaped, and told him all, and penance prayed :
Long time the old man on that royal front
Fixed a sad eye. " Thy sin was great, my son,
Shaming thy God to spare a sinner's shame :
That sin thy God forgives, and I remit :
But those whom God forgives he chastens oft.
My son, I see a sign upon thy brow !
Ere yonder lessening moon completes her wane,
Behold, the blood-stained hands late clasped in thine
Shall drag thee to thy death." The king replied :
"A Sigebert there lived, East Anglia's king,
Whose death was glorious to his realm. May mine,
Dark and inglorious, strengthen hearts infirm,
And profit thus my land."
King Sigebert of Essex ; or, the Friend in Death. 1 49
A time it was
When Christian mercy, judged by pagan hearts,
Not virtue seemed, but sin. That sin's reproach
The king had long sustained. Ere long it chanced ;
That near the stronghold of that impious feast,
A vanquished rebel, long in forests hid,
Drew near, and knelt to Sigebert for grace,
And won his suit. The monarch's kinsmen twain,
Those men of blood, forth-gazing from a tower,
Saw all, heard all. Upon them fury fell
As when through cloudless skies there comes a blast,
Whence no man knows, that, instant, finds its prey,
Circling some white-sailed boat, or towering tree,
And with a touch down-wrenching, all things else
Unharmed though near. They snatched their daggers up,
And rushed upon their prey ; and shouting thus,
" White-livered slave, that mak'st thy throne a jest,
And mock'st great Odin's self and us, thy kin,
To please thy shaveling !" struck him through the heart :
Then, spurring through the great woods to the sea
Were never heard of more.
Throughout the land
Lament was made : lament in every house
As though in each its eldest-born lay dead ;
Lament far off and near. The others wept :
Cedd, in long vigils of the lonely night.
Not wept alone, but lifted strength of prayer,
And, morn by morn, that Sacrifice eterne
Mightier tenfold in impetrative power
Than prayers of all man's race, from Adam's first
To his who latest on the Judgment Day
Shall raise his hands to God. Four years went by :
That mourner's wound they stanched not. Oft in sleep
He murmured low, " Would I had died for thee !"
And once, half-waked by rush of morning rains,
" Why saw I on his brow that fatal sign ?
He might have lived till now !" Within his heart
At last there rose a cry, " To Lastingham !
Pray with thy brothers three, for saints are they :
So shall thy friend, who resteth in the Lord
With perfect will submiss, the waiting passed
Gaze on God's Vision with an eye unfilmed
In glory everlasting." At that thought
Peace on the old man settled. Staff in hand,
Forth on his way he fared. Nor horse he rode
Nor sandals wore. He walked with feet that bled,
And paid, well-pleased, that penance for his king;
And murmured ofttimes, "Not my blood alone;
Nay, but my life, my life ! "
150 King Sigebert of Essex ; or, the Friend in Death.
But penance pain,
Like pain of suffering Souls at peace with God,
Quelled not that gladness which, from secret source
Rising, o'erflowed his heart. Old times returned:
Once more beside him rode his king in youth
Southward to where his realm his duty lay,
Exulting captive of the Saviour-Lord,
With face love-lit. As then, the vernal prime
Hourly with ampler respiration drew
Delight of purer green from balmier airs : .
As then the sunshine glittered. By their path
Now hung the woodbine ; now the hare-bell waved ;
Rivulets new-swollen by melted snows, and birds
'Mid echoing boughs with rival rapture sang;
At times the monks forgat their Christian hymns,
By humbler anthems charmed. They gladdened more
Beholding oft in cottage doors cross-crowned
Angelic faces, or in lonely ways;
Once as they passed there stood a little maid
Some ten years old alone 'mid lonely pines,
With violets crowned, and primrose. Who were those
The forest's white-robed guests, she nothing knew;
Not less she knelt. Witli hand uplifted Cedd
Signed her his blessing: hand she kissed in turn,
Then waved ; yet ceased not from her song, "Alone
Two lovers sat at sunset."
Every eve
Some village gave the wanderers food and rest,
Or half-built convent with its church thick-walled,
And polished shafts ; great names in after-times :
Ely, and Croyland, Southwell, Medeshamstede,
Adding to sylvan sweetness holier grace,
Or rising lonely o'er morass and mere
With bowery thickets isled, where dog-wood brake
Retained, though late, its red. To Boston near
Where Ouse, and Aire, and Derwent blend with Trent,
And salt sea waters mingle with the fresh,
They met a band of youths that o'er the sands
Advanced with psalm, cross-led. The monks rejoiced,
Save one from Erin Dicul. He, quick- eared,
Had caught that morn a war-cry on the wind,
And, sideway glancing from his office-book,
Descried the cause. From Mercia's realm a host
Had crossed Northnmbria's bound ! His thin, worn face
O'erflamed with sudden anger, thus he cried :
" In this, your land, men say, ' Who worketh prays ' ;
In mine we say, ' Well prays who fighteth well ' :.
A pagan race treads down your homesteads ! Slaves,
That close not with their throats !"
King Sigebert of Essex ; or, the Friend in Death. 1 5 1
Thus, wandering still,
On the tenth eve they came to Lastingham ;
Forth rushed the brethren, kenning them far off,
To meet them ; first the brothers three of Cedd,
Who kissed him, cheek and mouth. Gladly that night
Those foot-worn travellers laid them down and slept,
Save one alone. Old Cedd his vigil made,
And kneeling by the Tabernacle's lamp,
Prayed for the man he loved, and ended thus :
" Thou Lord of souls, to thee the Souls are dear.
Thou yearn'st toward them as they yearn to thee :
Behold, not prayer alone for him I raise :
I offer thee my life." When morning's light
In the great church commingled with its gloom,
The monks slow-pacing by that kneeler knelt,
And prayed for Sigebert, beloved of God ;
And lastly offered Mass : and it befell
That when, the Offering offered, and the Dead
Rightly remembered, he who sang that Mass
Had reached the " Nobis quoque famulis,"
There came to Cedd an answer from the Lord
Heard in his heart ; and he beheld his king
Throned 'mid the saints elect of God who keep
Perpetual triumph, and behold that Face
Which to its likeness hourly more compels
Those faces t'ward it turned. That function o'er,
Thus spake the bishop: " Sing ye next ' Te Deum ' :
They sang it; while within him he replied,
" Lord, let thy servant now depart in peace."
A week went by with gladness winged and prayer :
In wonder Cedd beheld those structures new
From small beginnings reared, though many a gift
Sent for that work's behoof had fed the poor
In famine time laid low. Moorlands he saw
With green corn sprouting; marked the all-beauteous siege
Of pastures yearly threatening loftier crags
Loud with the bleat of lambs. Their shepherd once
Had roved a bandit ; next had toiled a slave ;
Now with both hands he poured his weekly wage
Down on his young wife's lap, his pretty babes
Gambolling around for joy. A hospital
Stood by the convent's gate. With moistened eye,
Musing on Him who suffers in His sick,
The bishop paced it. There he found his death :
That year a plague had wasted all the land :
It reached him. Late that night he said, " 'Tis well !"
In three days more he lay with hands death-cold
Placed cross-wise on his breast.
; 2 King Sigebcrt of Essex ; or, the Friend in Death.
Like winter cloud
Borne through dark air> that portent feared of man,
111 tidings, making way with mystic speed,
Shadowed ere long the troubled bank of Thames,
And spread a wailing round its minsters twain,
Saint Peter's and Saint Paul's. Saint Alban's next
Echoed that cry far northward. Southward soon
It rang amid the towers of Rochester;
Then sea-ward died. But in that convent pile
Wherein so long the saint had made abode
A different grief there lived, a deeper grief,
That grief which part hath none in sobs or tears
Which needs must act. There thirty monks arose,
And, taking each his staff, made vow thenceforth
To serve God's altar where their father died,
Or share his grave. Through Ithancester's gate
As forth they paced between two kneeling crowds,
A little homeless boy who heard their dirge
(Late orphaned, at its grief he marvelled not)
So loved them that he followed, shorter steps
Doubling 'gainst theirs. At first the orphan wept :
That mood relaxed : before them now he ran
To pluck a flower ; as oft he lagged behind,
The wild bird's song so aptly imitating
That, by his music drawn, or by his looks,
That bird at times forgat her fears, and perched
Pleased on his arm. As flower and bird to him,
So to those monks the child. Better each day
He loved them : yet, revering, still he mocked,
And, though he mocked, he kissed. The westering sun
On the eighth eve from towers of Lastingham
Welcomed those strangers. In another hour
Well-nigh arrived they saw that grave they sought,
Sole on the church's northern slope. As when
Some father, absent long, returned at last,
His children rush loud-voiced from field to house,
And cling about his knees ; and they that mark
Old reaper, bent no more, with hook in hand,
Or ploughman leaning 'gainst the old blind horse
Beholding wonder not ; so to that grave
Rushed they ; so clung. Around that grave ere long
Their own were ranged. That plague which dragged him down
Spared not his sons. With ministering hand,
From pallet still to pallet passed the boy,
Now from the dark spring wafting colder draught,
Now moistening fevered lips, or on the brow
Spreading the new-bathed cincture. Him alone
The infection reached not. When the last was gone
He felt as though the earth, man's race, yea, God
One of Rome s Recruits Two Hundred Years Ago. 153
Himself were dead- Around he gazed, and spake :
" Why, then, do I remain ?"
From hill to hill
(The monks on reverend offices intent)
All solitary oft that boy repaired,
From each in turn forth gazing, fain to learn
If friend were t'wards him nighing. Many a hearth
More late, that grief's first bitterness gone by,
Welcomed the creature : many a mother held
The milk-bowl to his mouth, in both hands stayed,
With smile the deeper for the draught prolonged,
And lodged, as he departed, in his hand
Her latest crust. With children of his age
Seldom he played. That convent gave him rest ;
Nor lost he aught surviving thus his friends,
Since childhood's sacred innocence he kept,
While life remained, unspotted. Five short years
He lived there monk, and added reverence drew
To that high convent through his saintly ways,
Then died. Within that cirque of thirty graves
They laid him, close to Cedd. In later years,
Because they ne'er could learn his name or race,
Nor yet forget his gentle looks, the name
Of Deodatus graved they on his tomb.
ONE OF ROME'S RECRUITS TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISTRESS CATHERINE HOLLAND.'
TO THE CLOYSTER OF NAZARETE.
The following things I write down to
Almighty God's honor and glory.
This is a brief narrative of the manner
of my conversion to the Catholic faith,
with the reasons why I forsook the Pro-
testant heresy. September 20, 1664.
1637. I, having had the ill for-
tune to be born in heresy, was bred
up i-n the same by a severe father,
* The autobiography, as here reproduced, consists
of consecutive extracts from the original (hitherto
unpublished) MS. in the private library of the
. Augustinian Monastery at Bruges, and for the use
of which the writer is indebted to the great kind-
ness of the Rev. Mother Prioress. Nothing of im-
portance has been omitted, and, in fact, little else
than the religious reflections with which the narra-
who, though an earnest Protestant,
self-interest, and to advance his
fortunes, made him take to wife a
Catholic lady, f whose riches made
her religion tolerable ; yet much
more was it laudable, since it taught
her so much goodness and virtue
that I have heard him say she was
the mirror of wives, and he would
often admonish me, saying, " Imi-
tive is interspersed, and which make it somewhat
lengthy. Catherine Holland, born in 1637, was
daughter to Sir John Holland, of Quidenham,
Norfolk. She wrote this account in obedience to
the express order of her spiritual director. She
died in 1720, aged 83.
t Alathea, daughter of Fs. Panton, of Bruinshop,
Co. Denbigh, and widow of William Lord Sandys
of the Vine. (Note by Father Morris, SJ.)
154 One of Rome's Recruits Tivo Hundred Years Ago.
tate your mother in all things but
her religion." And, to the end
none of her children should em-
brace it, he took them all into his
own care, and bred them up in his
own religion.
Now, he, being a man of great
capacity and morally virtuous, had
many excellent maxims, gave us
very good moral instructions, and
catechised us himself; yet this I do
remember, that I had a strange
aversion to learn that catechism,
and although I was so young that
I knew not what conscience meant,
yet I would often say that it went
against my conscience to learn it,
for which I was often very severely
corrected.
Although he would not molest
my mother in her religion, yet he
would not permit her to instruct
any of her children, which was no
small cross to her. She, notwith-
standing, did learn us our prayers,
and would be often saying, in my
hearing, there was but one truth,
and out of that there was no salva-
tion, and would admonish me to
pray to God to bring me into it ;
and I did often say in my heart, If
I am not in the truth, Lord, bring
me into thy truth.
Now, between the suggestions of
my mother and the instructions of
my father, which were so contrary
one to the other, troubled I was,
but had nobody to speak unto;
though this I can avow with much
truth, that, from the time I had
capacity to distinguish between
religions, I did incline to my mo-
ther's, but, notwithstanding, the
great fear I stood in of my -father
made 'me dissemble my intention
many years. The seed lay hidden
in the field of my heart that was
to bring forth fruit long after, when
the dew of divine grace had water-
ed it more abundantlv.
In the meantime, being young, I
gave myself to as much pleasure as
I could, though not to so much as
I would ; for, doubtless, had not
my father or Divine Providence,
which acted by him held me back,
I had run, through the perverseness
of my nature, into many great
dangers, both of life and, honor, for
I was an high-spirited girl and of a
daring nature, insomuch that my
father would say : " If that girl
knew she should be hanged the
next hour, she would get her will,"
so that he 'had always his eye upon
me.
I had many fallacies [pretences]
to get my will, and durst act what
my sister, of a more milder temper,
durst not thi?ik. My father, ob-
serving this disposition in me, and
that I was an opiniatour and very
crafty, often abusing my mild mo-
ther's goodness, took me under
his own tuition in an especial
manner, and often told me he
would break my will or my heart,
and was very severe to me, feeding
me, whilst I was in my minority,
with a bit and a knock. Yet, not-
withstanding this strict watch, I
often cozened him and got my will
in secret.
Being about ten years of age,
and my father, for my good, hold-
ing a strict hand over me, severely
corrected me, and, if I learnt not
my catechism, debarred me from
my meat, and if I remembered not
the sermons for I was made to
write them down and for the least
fault, still reprehended, [so that] I
grew even desperate and weary of
my life, and was twice tempted to
put an end to those my tedious
days by making away with myself,
which Divine Providence prevent-
ed ; for once I got out of my
father's hand, going to correct me,
and ran away, with intention to
One of Rome's Recruits Two Hundred Years Ago. 155
drown- myself, but in this passion
called out aloud that I was going
to do it, and did not know I did
so ; upon which my sister stopped
me and held me fast and prevent-
ed me. On another time, fearing
to come into the presence of my
father, having neglected my duties,
I did resolve to fling myself out of
the window, to break my neck ; but
as Providence would have it, [upon
a time] the desire of dying running
in my head, I did chance to ask my
mother if such as were authors of
their own death went to heaven.
She answered, No; they were
damned, because they did an act
contrary to God's will. She little
thought why I asked this question.
Now, just as I had got half out of
the window, what my mother had
told me came fresh into my memo-
ry; as also that possibly God Al-
mighty would not permit me to
die by the fall, but only to break
some limb, and so be lame all my
life. These thoughts passed not as
our ordinary thoughts, but they
were so lively, and made so deep
an impression, as they seemed
rather an admonishment from hea-
ven. Hell and lameness so terri-
fied me that I soon crept in again,
and walked through the briers of
tutorship until I got capacity
enough to see that it was better
bending than breaking. Thus
went Divine Providence fitting my
unpolished soul* for what he had
designed.
Between pleasure and torment
I passed several years, wherein I
had but passing thoughts of reli-
gion, which sprung from my mo-
ther's frequent suggestions that I
was not in the truth. I remem-
ber I ever had an aversion to the
Protestant religion ; methought it
was a very empty way of serving
God.
Now, our family having taken
its flight out of England into Hol-
land, in the times of the troubles
and civil wars in England between
the king and parliament, in the
time of Oliver Cromwell, we remain-
ed in Holland, among those re-
formed, many years, until, new
troubles happening of wars be-
tween Holland and England, being
of that nation, we were again dri-
ven from thence, and went to Flan-
ders ; and about the sixteenth year
of my age I arrived at Bruges, to
which all our family was sent, my
father being in England. This was
a great providence for me, for this
being a Catholic city, my former
inclination began to revive, and
'now I began to see what that was
I had formerly heard of. There it
was that I was unbeguiled, and
saw that all [that] Prptestants had
told me concerning the Catholics
was not true. I had a greater de-
sire than ever to be a Catholic, but
durst not be known that I had such
a desire, for fear of my father.
Often, indeed, did I venture to steal
out to church, though I knew not
what to do there, nor did I un-
derstand what was done ; Mass,
and the ceremonies thereof, was
a strange thing to me ; yet me-
thought there was something, I
knew not what, that moved devo-
tion^norethan anything I had seen
in the Protestant churches. I had
a great desire to know more of the
inside of that I liked so well the
outside, but neither knew how nor
which way, not daring to trust any-
body. At last, I know not how,
I had -learnt the Ave Maria by
hear^ I got a pair of tens, which
I ty'd next me and kept very se-
cret, and a-nights would say them
on my knees before I went to bed,
with much satisfaction, but I knew
not with what intention. All this
156 One of Routes Recruits Two Hundred Years Ago.
time my mind, not having any one
to ease itself unto, was troubled
and infinitely oppressed, and the
more in regard I saw so little pro-
bability of a release so long as my
father lived. I many times ear-
nestly prayed Almighty God to
lead me into his truth, and not to
let me perish through ignorance,
. . . for, as you will see by what
follows, my ignorance was great ;
for, hearing of and seeing in the
Catholic Church so many several
orders of religious, I thought that
every order was a several sect or
religion, which struck me into a
strange perplexity. It was, to my
thinking, impossible, among such a
variety of religions, to find out the
truth, which put me almost out
of hopes of finding it, and con-
sequently less courage to look af-
ter it.
One day, stealing out, I got into
the Jesuits' church, and being
there gotten into a corner, still
praying I might find the truth, and
being much perplexed with divers
cogitations, there chanced to pass
by two of the society ; I looked
earnestly upon them, and said in
simplicity of heart, lifting it up to
God, " Lord, if these men in black
are of thy truth, make me of their
religion," at which time methought
I found my mind eased and my
heart replenished with hopes for a
space.
After three years being in the
Catholic town, I got acquaintance
at the monastery where I new am ;
but at that time 1 thought it a mis-
erable life always to be locked up
as in a prison. That manner of
life did not then please me at all,
and I little thought I was to be
one of them I then thought so un-
happy. In this time my know-
ledge did increase by means of
Catholic books, which I grew so
fond of as I gave a gold ring* for
one.
Now, at the time. of the king of
Great Britain's arrival in Flanders
Charles the Second in the time of
his exile then, I say, did my fa-
ther, out of policy, remove his
family, and went to live in Hol-
land at a place called Bergen-op-
Zoorn. Here now was I again out
of the reach of any Catholics, and
engaged to go to their reformed, or
rather de-formed, church. Here,
for want of fuel, did my former
fire almost go out, or rather it was
raked up, attending time and op-
portunity. In that town did a
German prince, who married the
marchioness of the town, keep his
court; and there it was that I did
give myself up to all sorts of vani-
ties, encouraged thereto by being
her daughter's favorite. I being
of a disposition naturally merry
and recreative, there was no sport
without me, I being still the ring-
leader of all the farces and sport-
ive fooleries.
Thus, whilst I most ungratefully
forgot Almighty God, neglecting
his frequent inspirations, his good-
ness and providence forgot not me ;
and though I did often stumble and
commit many gross follies, his infin-
ite goodness never permitted me to
fall outright. My conscience doth
not accuse me of any deliberate,
malicious act, or any ill intention,
but of great indiscretions.
In this vain and unprofitable life
I spent seven years, after which I
went with my father into England,
out of which I had been from my four
years of age. This novelty, which
I had long desired, took my fancy
wholly up, and, being arrived there,
I lived according to the dictaments
of sense. All sparks of piety seem-
* In one part of her narrative she mentions inci-
dentally that her father kept her " very short."
One of Rome s Recruits Two Hundred Years Ago. 157
ed to be extinguished. Being with
an aunt and uncle who did make
much of me, I had whatsoever my
heart could desire for to please
sense, yet I can avouch this with
truth : that I had no true interior
content, but was many times plung-
ed into deep melancholy. Many
times would I steal away to walk
all alone in the woods, ruminating
and thus discoursing with myself:
What am I ? Why am I ? What
is the world? Who made it? What
will be the end thereof? My own
judgment told me that none but
an infinite, supreme Power could
be the author of such a vast fabric;
but what to conceive of this Power,
and how to represent him to my-
self, I knew not ; and I asked my-
self, Where is this God ? How to be
found and comprehended ? I could
come to no certainty, and, not know-
ing which way to inform myself, this
threw me into great pensiveness.
One time above all the rest, I
remember being in the fields all
alone, deeply engaged in these pen-
sive thoughts. I had a great war
within myself, and, having driven
my mind into a deep labyrinth by
diving into things above my ca-
pacity, I at last began to doubt
whether there was a God or no
measuring everything by the shal-
low measure of my own wit ; . . .
and as for religion and heaven and
hell, I thought [them] but an in-
vention of cunning, politic men for
to keep people in awe and for the
better government of nations, who
must be kept in fear with some-
thing beside moral laws. But pre-
sently a strong contradiction did
spring up in my mind, and a for-
mal dispute, insomuch that since
I have admired how I did not break
my brains, considering how young
I was, weak and ignorant, and no-
body to give me a solution.
Although these former things
were strongly suggested, I did not
rest in them nor gave any delib-
erate consent ; they, notwithstand-
ing, brought with them great dis-
quiets, and left me still upon uncer-
tainties ; . . . for, being wrapped up
in Nature, I could only see by her
obscure lights, and could not com-
prehend anything that was spiritu-
al, no more than a blind man can
conceive and comprehend by his
touch, smell, hearing, or taste what
a color means, so unapt was I to
conceive that God is a spirit, but, like
a blind, ignorant fool, would square
and bring the essence of an incom-
prehensible Deity within the nar-
row compass of my weak capacity.
Thus, with glorious St. Austen, I
went seeking that without me that
was within me. The truth of the
very Scriptures would I call in
question, conceiving them to have
been forged by the wit of man, out
of policy.
Thus far was I straying from my
former inclinations to the Catholic
Church, insomuch as I had almost
lost all religion and turned atheist,
only the goodness of Almighty God
still kept the former spark alive
and kept me from a positive con-
sent. And one certain thought re-
curring to my mind did, as it were,
quicken me and set me on my
legs again. I called to mind that
I had heard many things told for
certain, as that spirits walked and
that many souls have appeared on
occasions ; and although I was not
very apt to believe all the stories I
had heard of that kind, I thought
it absurd to believe nothing, as
well as lightness to believe every-
thing, when it was related by per-
sons of credit; and if I yielded to
believe the return of souls, I was
consequently compelled to believe
the immortality of the soul. Then
158 One of Rome s Recruits Two Hundred Years Ago.
did I conclude that there was an
incomprehensible God, who must
be a spirit, and spiritually to be
comprehended, and I did humbly
beg him to take this misbelieving
spirit from me and direct me into
his truth.
My father, being upon his return,
gave me my choice either to return
to my mother or to remain with
my aunt ; but most happily I chose
to return home, which made a pas-
sage for my future progress.
In this my journey at sea God
touched my heart in a more espe-
cial manner, and I did make a pro-
mise that if he did please to bring
me safe to land, I would turn over
a new leaf and lead a new life.
But these fervorous prayers were
made at sea, and in pain and danger
that lasted several days, and were
soon forgot when once safely got
to land ; for I was no sooner arriv-
ed into Brabant, and at my old
home, amongst my friends and ac-
quaintances, made much of and
caressed, and again lulled to sleep
with the pleasures of the court,
[than I] thought no more of my fine
promises at sea, but fooled away
another two years in vain amuse-
ments.
At the end of these two years
God, in his infinite goodness, gave
me, as I may say, another pull by
the sleeve; . . . for, one morning,
being in my closet saying my wonted
prayers, I found a more sensible
devotion than ever I felt before,
which did, as it were, allure me to
continue praying, and, being insen-
sibly engaged, all the promises I
had made at sea came lively into
my mind ^nd seemed to reprehend
me. I was struck with a deep re-
morse of conscience and grew sad,
and methought that suddenly it
was as if it were interiorly said
unto me, " There is no fooling with
God." And this was so pressing
that I had not power to rise from
the place I was kneeling in until
I had renewed my promises and
resolved positively on something.
At that very same time I renounc-
ed the Protestant errors, and re-
solved to embrace the Catholic
truth, and to break through all
oppositions whatever. I found
myself at the same moment
strengthened and encouraged, and
from this time I stood my ground
and fell back no more.
Now was the resolution made to
enter into the spiritual combat,
besides a moral one, for many ex-
terior things stood in my way that
seemed such giants as, morally
speaking, they seemed not possible
to overcome. My mother, though
a Catholic, yet was of no help to
me but by her pious prayers, which,
as another Monica, with tears she
often offered for me. The love she
had for my father, being loath to
offend him, made her she durst act
nothing on my behalf; so that I
did keep my designs from her as
from the rest. The marchioness
of the town, being my friend and
a Catholic, yet in this occurrence
refused me her help, not to dis-
oblige my father. Which way so-
ever I turned I found none to join
with me, but enough to oppose me.
This cast me into deep perplexities
of mind and a deep melancholy,
the cause whereof none could guess
at, for I. had not yet declared my-
self. Nothing now but solitude,
reading, and prayer was my de-
light, which was often interrupted
by the combats of my mind [at]
being forced to continue in a reli-
gion I thought false, and going
weekly to church against my con-
science, from the fear I was in of
my father's displeasure.
In the midst of these intostica-
One of Rome s Recruits Two Hundred Years Ago. 159
tions, having nobody to lend me
their hand, I made my continual
address to Heaven, and my resolu-
tion grew still firmer, although new
difficulties did daily arise to in-
crease my sadness, insomuch that
it was very notable. Several cen-
sures I passed, and by many it was
said that I was possessed by that
foolish passion called love, or being
in love. It was love, indeed, but
not of that kind they fancied. My
mother was troubled to see me so
sad who used to be so merry, she
not being able to find out the
cause, though she had employed
many to sift it out. At last she
did acquaint my father with it,
who was then in England to pre-
pare for our return, for as yet we
were in Brabant.
I will here add two more motives
to the reason I have given why I
did not impart my mind to my
mother. The one was that I fear-
ed I might have been the cause
of making difference between my
father and mother, who had lived
so many years in such mutual con-
cord. I conceived my father
would have presently accused her
that she had persuaded me ; and,
whilst I left her in ignorance, she
could clear herself and satisfy him,
for it would have been a double
cross to have seen them at vari-
ance about me. My second mo-
tive was that I doubted if she
would have had resolution enough
to have -helped me through those
difficulties I foresaw I was to wade
through ; for I, knowing her to be
of a nature mild and timorous, had
more faith in her prayers than in
her help; [and thus] I was resolv-
ed to acquaint my father with it
first.
He, by letter, desired me to let
him know the cause of so apparent
a discontent that all the world did
take notice of. Upon this sum-
mons I rallied up my forces, and
finding, as if it were, that servile
fear and human respect to vanish
that had held me so long back, I
set pen to paper, and very resolute-
ly told him that, seeing he did so
earnestly command, I would as in-
genuously obey, assuring him that
my discontent that all the world
did wonder at sprung from no
other source but that of a troubled
conscience, I being no longer able
to conform to a religion so errone-
ous as the Protestant religion was,
which discovery I had made by
reading of histories, which had in-
formed me of the antiquity of the
Catholic religion. This I did in-
tend to embrace, and it was the
only thing which could restore me
to my former peace of mind ; and
I did add that I was so fully re-
solved upon it that neither fire nor
sword should alter my mind.
Whilst I was expecting his an-
swer I thought it now time to
discover to my mother the cause of
my discontent. She was overjoy-
ed she should have one child that
would be of her religion. I ac-
quainted her with more than I had
told my father, for I told her the
great desire I had to retire from
the world to some monastery. She
was so ready to comply with me as
even to sell her jewels but i should
have help. I doubted not of her
goodness, but I was sure her power
would be soon restrained ; and no
sooner was my father surprised
with the discovery I had made
him but I had a thundering letter,
wherein he said that he wished he
had not been so curious. Many
conjurations I had not to discover
this my conversion to the world,
but to dissemble until his return,
and he would procure those who
should satisfie my doubts. At the
160 One of Romes Recruits Tuuo Hundred Years Ago.
same time he wrote to my mother,
conjuring her, by the love she had
for him (which he knew was not
little), not to help me to any books,
or give me any help, for that at his
return he would satisfie me.
This conjuration put my good
mother into a great conflict of
mind, as she expressed by her
tears when she told me that she
hoped that Almighty God would
help and assist me, for she could
only pray for me. I comfort-
ed her all I could, and only beg-
ged her blessing and prayers,
saying that I did not doubt but
God would end the work he had
begun.
Now did I behold myself left all
alone to fight the battle ; I still
with tears and earnest sighs im-
ploring the help of God, who never
forsakes a constant mind, and lie,
I found, did strangely inwardly
strengthen me.
I returned answer to my father
that, seeing there was no remedy,
I would, for his .sake, dissemble,
upon condition he would not force
me any more to receive their com-
munion. He in his return * to me
did very willingly consent to that
request.
From this time until my father's
return from England, which was
not very many months after, I lived
a dying life, with many disturb-
ances of mind. I would at times,
to be quit of my trouble", strive to
reconcile myself to the Protestant
religion, but it was impossible. I
was still, as with a forcible hand,
drawn back again, and interiorly
still more confirmed that none but
the Catholic religion was the truth.
At what time soever I acted f
anything in reference to my cofc-
version all fear vanished. Every
one had a greater apprehension of
* Answer. t Did.
my father's rei^rn than r>
though I was greatly in awe ^
in all other . tiling besides what
concerned my conscience and my
religion, for not one of his children
had he kept under the curb so
much as he kept me in my minori-
ty ; but now the fear of God over-
came my natural fear, and I did so
little apprehend seeing him that I
longed for his coming.
The hour arriving, he was no
sooner entered the house but I
was the very first that met him to
give him the welcome, expressing
a more than wonted joy at his re-
turn. I cheerfully begged his bless-
ing, but it was sooner craved than
granted, for he, with a severe as-
pect, seemed to overlook me. He
only returned me a deaf ear and a
dumb mouth, but hastened to my
sister, and with more than an ordi-
nary kindness embraced her. This
being the least I could expect, it
did neither surprise nor daunt me,
but I looked on it as the prologue
to the acts that were to follow.
Notwithstanding this 'foresaid
slight of my offended father, I was
still very officious about him in
being more ready at hand than
ever to serve him at every turn,
but I was still elbowed away, and
none of my little services accepted,
but my sister still employed and
addressed on set purpose to gall
me; but it did not work the effect
fqr which it was done. Still, with
simplicity of heart, I made my ad-
dresses to Heaven, which seemed
to hear me by prospering all I did,
and by giving me strength and
courage to overcome great diffi-
culties.
This disdainful manner of pro-
ceeding of my father's lasted two
or three years, in which time he
gave 'me not one good look, nor
one ill word nor yet a good one, I
One of Rome's Recruits Two Hundred Years Ago. 161
i | ifor he rar/jjy- spoke to me
. !t tiig, doubtless, by thus dis-
countenancing me to have tired
me out. But by nature I hated in-
constancy in my undertakings, and
much more in a thing on which
my salvation depended ; but he
was ignorant who it was that
strengthened me, and whom I was
determined never to forsake.
Whilst my father was thus mute
I was not idle, but began to cast
about how and by what means I
should bring to pass what I was
now fully resolved upon. I saw he
sought only to tire me out, and
used no means to satisfy me any
manner of way. Because of my
promise I still went to church with'
him, which was my greatest tor-
ment, yet I saw no remedy. My
only way was to dissemble my re-
sentments, and with my father also,
as artificially as he had dissembled
with me, until I could find an op-
portunity to give him and the world
the slip. This was now resolved
upon to wit, to make a virtue of
necessity.
I now dissembled all my trouble
of mind, and was more sociable
and cheerful, insomuch that my
father began to think that the
storm of my mind was blown over.
He began upon this to be cun-
ningly kind, intermixing it with a
kind of displeasure. I took all
that came with the same counte-
nance, and, whilst I seemed to do
nothing, did act most, and made
in my heart a firm resolution not
to rest plotting until I had found
a way to convey myself privately
away to some monastery ; for I saw
it was a folly for me to hope, if I
stayed in the world, to have any
liberty of conscience.
On a time when I was revolving
in my mind what to do, it came
into my memory that I had seen a
VOL. xxix. ii
monastery of English Austin Nuns
nine years before, when I lived in
Flanders, at Bruges. I found a
way to convey a letter to the supe-
rior thereof, from whom I received
a very civil return. This was some
small comfort, that I had at least
some one to ease my mind unto.
I found, by her lines, she was a
wise and discreet woman. Many
secret letters passed between us
for above a year. Then she died,
and I continued my correspon-
dence with her successoress.
Now, things beginning to be set-
tled in England, our family was
upon its return to its native coun-
try. I began to cast about how in
England as well as here I might
continue this 'foresaid correspon-
dence, and therefore I desired the
lady of the monastery to direct me
to some Catholic to whom I might
safely confide for the conveyance
of my letters to her. The answer
to this, directing me to a good
lady, an aunt of hers, did very nar-
rowly escape my father's fingers,
which if he had opened I should
have been in a worse condition
than ever; but Providence was more
favorable than to permit it. And
it happened thus : Being abroad
with my father and mother in a
coach, the lackey brought my let-
ter and presented it to my father,
and said that it came from Ghent.
Fancying that it might be mine,
and seeing my father going to take
it, I snatched it suddenly, and said,
" It's mine " an act in another cir-
cumstance I durst not have done;
and I admired that no reproof fol-
lowed. He only said, " From whom
is that letter ?"' I answered, "From
one of my companions "; which he,
contrary to his wonted inquisitive-
ness, let pass and took no further
notice of; but had he observed the
discomposure of my countenance,
1 62 One of Rome's Recruits Two Hundred Years Ago.
he might have seen that there was
more than ordinary in the busi-
ness.
In the year of our Lord 1661 all
our family were conveyed to Eng-
land ; a tedious and troublesome,
dangerous journey it was. My
heart, God knows, sailed one way
while the ship sailed another. All
the comfort I had whilst I rowed
thus against the stream sprung
from an inward assurance : I felt
that I should be a nun and end
iny days in religion ; and in the
midst of the storm, when there was
danger to be cast away, the inward
assurance never forsook me, but I
encouraged all not to fear, espe-
cially my mother, who even de-
spaired of more seeing land. I
desired her divers times not to
fear, and that I was confident we
should not be lost ; and I went still
repeating to myself, " I shall not
be drowned ; I shall be a nun," and
was no more frightened at the vio-
lent rolling of the ship than if I
had been on land.
Towards morning the storm ceas-
ed, and the mariners came and
told us in what an imminent dan-
ger we had been, and how near the
sands ; and added that a thing hap-
pened that night they had never
seen before since they had been at
sea to wit, that, when they were
almost in despair, fathoming the
water, and found themselves so
near the sands, there came sudden-
ly a strong gale of a contrary wind
than what they had had before,
and blew the ship from the sands a
league into the sea, which if it had
blown it as fast forward, it must
have perished, and they themselves
stood surprised at the novelty.
Now, being arrived at London,
I gave myself hardly leave to re-
pose before I was informing my-
self how 1 should find out the
'foresaid lady that I was directed
unto, so that I might renew my
intercourse with the lady of the
cloyster. It was not long before I
found out her lodgings. She, having
had notice of me, entertained me
with much courtesy. There it was
where I first spoke with any priest,
and who confirmed me in the faith
and encouraged me in my enter-
prise. This was some comfort, but
I durst not partake thereof too
often for fear of being discovered.
At last, not daring to go so often
out myself, I did spy a goody honest,
simple wench in the place where I
lodged, that I thought a fit instru-
ment for my purpose, and she very
faithfully carried and brought my
letters.
The fear I was in that my father
would convey his family into the
country made me beg of Almighty
God that he would so dispose that
my father might take an house and
remain [if] but one year at London,
from whence I knew it was easier
to get than out of the country.
My prayers were heard, and, I can-
not tell on what motive, he did re-
main at London just one year, to
my great joy; and, not to lose my
instrument, I prevailed with my
mother to take the 'foresaid maid
for our wash -maid, which she did
to please me, but she knew not my
motive.
Now, most fortunately, the back
door of the house my father had
hired in Holborn came out into a
street called Fetter Lane, and th,ere
were lodged the two Jesuits that I
had just made acquaintance withal,
so that I could easily slip out to
their lodgings.
At this time my father was in
great hopes that I might be wrought
upon, though I was never further
off it. He, to give a trial to his
suppositions, spoke to the Bishop
One of Rome's Recruits Two Hundred Years Ago. 163
of Winchester to sound me, and
try if he could settle me in the re-
ligion I was forsaking. My mother .
informed me that there was such a
thing in agitation, and that this
pretended bishop should come to
use his power to try and pervert
me ; for which his lordship should
have a banquet for his reward,
which was already prepared.
I was very glad to hear this news,
and did assure my mother that I
did not fear his lordship, and that,
as I would order the business, he
should miss of his sweet recom-
pense as well as of his pretence.
Never after this did this bishop
come to our house but I would be
still at his elbow, and often would
my mother say, " Why will you be
still where that man is?" "To
show him, madam," replied I,
" that I am not afraid of him." I
longed for the combat, and when
the time drew near he was to come,
I, to hasten his lordship into the
field, wrote to him, desiring him to
make haste, telling him, amongst
many things, that if Joseph 'had not
gone into Egypt his dream had
never come to pass, and that like-
wise, if so be I had spoken with
him, possibly my designs would be
the sooner effected, leaving it to
my lord's learning to interpret what
I meant.
He returned me for answer that
he would wait on me as soon as he
had been with his Majesty at St.
James'.
The day after my lord came and
called for me. I deferred not long
to hear what his lordship had to
say to me. It were too long to
rehearse my hour's dispute I had
with him. I shall only touch on
some principal passages.
Now, he having blamed me for
offering to forsake the religion my
father had brought me up in, I
asked him if there was no salvation
in the Catholic Church. He re-
plied (most learnedly, if you ob-
serve) that there was for such as
were brought up in that simplicity,
but for one that had been taught
and knew better things he much
doubted, and it was dangerous.
But I fully remember that he spoke
this so faintly, and with so little
vigor, just as a man speaks when
he speaks against his conscience ;
so that this startled me not at all.
He demanded my motives why I
would make a change. I told him
that I thought I could not be saved
in the Protestant faith. He then
told me that the Protestant Church
was conformable to the primitive
times, and that after the first sixth
hundred it was corrupted by the
superstitions brought in by several
popes ; but the Protestant Church
was as a weeded garden, and was
a reformed church and free from
error now. I replied that I found
in the gospel that our Saviour
promised that it should never err,
and that hell gates should never
prevail against it. How is it, then ?
Is man fain to re-form because God
cannot perform or keep his pro-
mise ? This is strange. Moreover,
if the church can err, what assur-
ance can there be of any salvation ?
It can as well lead me to hell as to
heaven. At the same time I told
him that that very confession of
Protestants, " that the church could
err," was the. very thing that had
made me forsake that church ; and
because the Catholic Church could
not err made me the more willing
to embrace their faith.
Then he alleged a whole cata-
logue of errors, speaking against
the belief in the Real Presence, pray-
ing to Our Blessed Lady and saints,
and several ceremonies he con-
demned. To these points I, hav-
164 One of Rome's Recruits Two Hundred Years Ago.
ing no learning to insist upon them,
and knowing, if I did, that he would
speedily overthrow me though not
overcome me by his rhetoric and
scholastic queries, I simply told his
lordship that, as for the Real Pres-
ence, I took the words as they
stood, and seeing it was our Lord's
last will and testament, and that
the divine mouth of Truth had it-
self said, "This is my -Flesh in-
deed," and " This is my Blood in-
deed," it became me not to give
our Lord the lie and say, " It is
not true," as the Protestants do ; I
thought it more just and pious to
submit my judgment. And as for
the other things he called errors, I
thought it absurd for me to call in
question what hath been approved
and denned long since by an uni-
versal church and confirmed by
councils ; and withal that history
could tell me that there had been
a time when no Protestants were
heard of, neither could it be call-
ed an universal church, as God's
church ought to be; and if I went
out of England I could not go to
church.
To this he made I know not what
insignificant replies ; that the Jes-
uits had put these things into my
head; but he did wrong them.
Then I Basked him where the
Church of England was in Crom-
-well's time ? He told me it was
still in being; that every one's
church was in his own heart. I
replied, between jest and earnest,
I was not so artificial * as to build
churches, and so I would go to a
visible church ; to one that was
united (for I could not find ten
Protestants of one mind or opin-
ion).
To all this his lordship answered
so faintly and indifferently, and so
.little to the purpose, that it moved
* Skilful.
me not ; but possibly his dry an-
swers sprung from a disdain he
had to dispute with a girl, 'as I
was, in comparison of him,' who
was ancient enough to have been
my grandfather. In fine, after a
long to-and-fro dispute, and tell-
ing me still that it was the Jesu-
its that had put these things in
my head (although I had not had
an hour's discourse with a Jesuit
in my life, nor hardly half an hour,
in. regard that, my excursions being
by stealth, I durst not be so long
absent from home, and none durst
come to me; yet "it was the
Jesuits that had deluded " me).
Now his grace, being weary, took
a quick way to ease himself and
end the dispute, sending me to
study the Scriptures, saying some-
what earnestly : " Come, madam,
take the Scriptures, and pray Al-
mighty God to illuminate you ;
there is truth to be found in
them/'
I thereupon replied: "Indeed, my
lord, I do believe you do wish you
had not made the Scriptures so
common, for from thence lias
sprung up, by false interpreting
the Scriptures, so many heresies
and false opinions as are in Eng-
land."
He was a little mute upon this,
and waived the answer, still per-
sisting that I should search the Scrip-
tures. Then I told him that indeed
I understood them not, because in
many places they seemed to contra-
dict themselves.
Upon this reply his lordship be-
gan to be somewhat angry, and
told me that it was a blasphemy
to say so. I replied that in their
true sense I knew they did not
contradict themselves, but in the
literal sense there were many con-
tradictions I could not reconcile.
" Show me," said he, raising his
One of Rome's Recruits Two Hundred Years Ago. 165
voice, " one contradiction in the
whole Bible."
My lord bishop thought here to
have posed his effeminate defend-
ant ; but I, no whit daunted, found
a very fit piece of Scripture for his
purpose at that time or rather Al-
mighty God, who sometimes con-
founds the wise by the weak, found
it for me for just upon this pinch
came into my mind a place in the
Proverbs of Solomon that stopped
my lord's mouth,
"I will, sir, show you one present-
ly; for, pray my lord," said I, " doth
it not stand written in such a place
in the Proverbs, ' Answer not a
fool, for fear you partake of his
folly,' and then in the very next
verse doth it not stand, ' Yet an-
swer him, for fear he should seem
wise in his own eyes ' ? Now, my
lord, am I to answer the fool, by
Scripture, or not ? Is not this
a plain contradiction ? * Answer
not,' yet * answer.' '
Upon this he was like a man
struck dumb, and answered not one
single word, but did turn from me
suddenly. Whether it was that he
thought I had called him fool, by
Scripture, or to hide his smile at
the piece I had picked out, I know
not; but, without turning round- he
asked me where my father was. I
told him I knew not; and, bestow-
ing a coy curtsy on his lordship
for his pains, and my father not
being at home, his worship went
away as wise as he came, without
the fine banquet that was prepared
for him, as I had foretold. I was
informed afterwards that the bishop
told my father there was no good
to be done with me, for I was so
obstinate that if an angel should
have come from heaven and tell
me anything but what I had got
into my head he would not be
able to prevail. And I do believe
so, too, if an angel should speak
no more to the purpose, or have no
more zeal to gain a soul than his
lordship had.
Now, having, by Almighty God's
goodness, passed thus happily this
brunt, I began with a new vigor
and courage to prosecute my de-
sign, which I saw must be this
year (1663) or never, because the
year after our family was to go
down to Norfolk. While I de-
spatched letters to the lady of the
monastery, I also took counsel of
the two Jesuits of my acquaintance
how to get away.
One danger more my letters did
escape. One day the [aunt of the]
'foresaid lady sent me a packet of
letters by a lackey of hers, who
asked for the wench that always
did receive them for me. She be-
ing in a chamber above, smoothing
of linen, the cook-n\aid was too
lazy to call her, and did let the
boy stand expecting at the door.
It being hot weather, and he. weary,
he sat down and fell asleep with
my letters in his hand. Here did
Divine Providence help me; for, as
she did assure me (she being a
good, ignorant, simple wench, but
very faithful), she all on the sudden
had such a propension to go down
that she had no power to go on
with her work ; down she must
go, though she knew neither why
nor wherefore. Then her fellow-
servant told her there was a boy
at the door would speak with
her. She went, and found the
youth fast asleep, with my letters
in his hand. She, talcing them,
sent the boy away, and brought
them, telling me what a hazard
they had run ; for, said she, " I had
no sooner taken the letters but
your father came with several gen-
tlemen out of the parlor to go
abroad." I blessed Almighty God
1 66 One of Rome's Recruits Two Hundred Years Ago.
for this great deliverance ; for had
my father intercepted those letters,
I had been quickly secured from
getting away.
As the time grew shorter my
care grew greater and difficulties
did increase. I was [still] constrain-
ed to act two several parts to wit,
to obey God's call, and also seem
to comply with the world.
I kept the world in play,
While God I did obey.
I followed the modes, and talked
of nothing but vanities, but at the
same time I did write to the mon-
astery to .desire them to send one
over to fetch me. The thirty
pound a year that was allowed me
for my maintenance I laid up to
travel withal. I consulted with
such as were privy to my designs,
which were only one lady and two
Jesuits, which fathers were very
zealous in my cause until they
were prohibited to meddle with
my concerns.
I, being ignorant of this com-
mand, and thinking to find help
now at my last pinch, found myself
again left to shift for myself; for,
coming one day, as I was wont, to
the lodgings of one of these fa-
thers, I found him very sad, and
spoke not as he used to do. I
marvelled at his change, but at
last, very unwillingly, he told me
he had a command from his pro-
vincial not to meddle with my
business.
This was most surprising news,
and at first startled me and strook
me even into tears ; I was even
struck dumb for a while ; but recov-
ering myself, I said : " Well, if man
will not help me, I am sure God will !
I will go, though I should wade
through the ocean."
He admired to see me so reso-
lute, and replied, " I think thou
art more than a woman," and bid
me do, in God's name, what I
would, but: he could only pray for
me. I then desired him to let me
know where the cautious provin-
cial was, for I was resolved to let
him know my mind, were it but to
ease it. He then bade me write,
for he was as much troubled as
myself. As soon, therefore, as I
returned home I did set pen to
paper. . . . [Notwithstanding my
letter] he did but redouble his
commands, saying I had courage
enough to do it alone. He after-
wards came to the monastery and
made me his late apology, and told
me indeed my lines made him
weep, but not to compassion. But
Almighty God would have it thus,
to make the work his own.
I did receive a letter from the
lady of the monastery to come
with all speed, and that she would
receive me with open arms. Here
the heavens opened, and I revived,
with new hopes of good success.
By this time the person that was
to fetch me was come to town, and
I appointed her to meet me at a
certain place. Here had I like to
have had another 1 stop, for I found
her in a strange perplexity about
taking me with her, seeing that
some one had scared her, telling
her that she should take heed what
she did, and remember whose
daughter I was ; and that if ever my
father should find out that it was
she that conveyed me away, he
might put her into trouble, and she
should never dare to set her foot
in England again ; so that she in a
manner refused to take me, being
now ready to go with her the next
day. This was another stratagem
of the devil to discourage me, but
it took no effect.
I found a charm that banished
all her fears. I flung into her lap
One of Rome's Recruits Tivo Hundred Years Ago. 167
seven pound, and told her if she
would bring me safe unto the mon-
astery I would demand of her no-
thing else.
This golden cordial revived her
fainting spirits, and she most cour-
ageously told me that, seeing I
had so much courage, she would
have no less. Then she took my
trunk and conveyed it before, and
appointed me to meet her next
morning, about eight of the clock,
in the same place.
This being concluded, I return-
ed home, very thoughtful of what
I was about to undertake. Many
great combats I had that day and
the next night, not being able to
sleep one wink. The night be-
fore I went away my mother bid
me put on my best apparel to go
a-visiting the next day. I thought
to myself, "I have a visit to make
you know little of!"
I rose the next morning betimes,
and went to my prayers a good
while; then went to my mother's
chamber, and stood and discoursed
with her for a while, who wonder-
ed to see me so early up and with
her, which was very unusual with
me. In going out I sighed, for
my heart was full. I begged her
blessing, and thought in my heart,
"Dear mother, you little think you
shall see me no more!"
Now, as if Divine Providence
would give me free passage, this
very week my father, uncle, bro-
ther, and cousin were gone in-
to the country, so that I feared
not to be pursued, which I should
have been in danger of had any of
these remained in town. But the
coast being clear, and I finding my
mind and heart replenished with
a more than wonted vigor and
courage, went to my closet and
writ two letters, the one to my fa-
ther, to beg his blessing and par-
don for my going away without his
knowledge, telling him that no-
thing but the love of God and
liberty of conscience should ever
have made me separate myself
from his obedience; and withal
desired him not to lay my depar-
ture to my mother's charge, for it
was as great a secret to her as to
himself.
In the letter I writ to my mo-
ther, who I knew would be over-
whelmed with sorrow to part with
me, and on the other side no less
joyed to have one child a Catholic
and religious, I comforted her by
telling her how happy I should be
in the place I was going to, acquaint-
ing her with my intention of being
a religious.
These letters I sealed and laid
them upon my table. I put my
hoods and scarfs in my coat, and,
taking a book in my hand, went as
if I was going to walk in the garden.
I met only with the maid that had
so faithfully carried my letters. I
gave her then a reward, though she
did little think it would be the
last, as also the last time that she
would see me. As soon as the
coast was clear I slipped out at
the back gate to meet my conduc-
tor. At my going from my father's
house I did not shed a tear, but
I trembled ; and although Nature
was upon the rack, I found myself
inwardly encouraged and strength-
ened, so that it seemed not in my
power to desist, and all things did
connect to advance my design of
leaving the world.
My conductress, Mrs. Fosset,
stood ready in the place I had ap-
pointed her to meet me. My trunk
having gone before, I did take the
Canterbury wagon, refusing the
coach, in regard that if so be I was
followed and sought after they
would sooner examine a coach.
1 68 One of Rome s Recruits Tivo Hundred Years Ago.
Being arrived at Dover, there I
was examined what my name was.
I told them Catherine Brown, and
by that name I was registered in
the book. I did change my name
for fear of being discovered, and
in effect there were several gentle-
men that went over at the same
time that knew very well our
family ; but thus I escaped, incog-
nita, until I came safe to my jour-
ney's end. The next day I took
the packet-boat, and in twenty-
four hours I was wafted over and
arrived in Flanders, and so came
at last to my desired haven that
was, to the monastery of the Aus-
tin Nuns where I received a very
kind welcome from the superior
thereof, who was the niece of Rev.
Mother Augustin Benedfield, with
whom I had begun to correspond,
but she died before I did compass
my design. So I was accepted
with much charity and goodness,
for they were not certain if they
should ever have a penny with me,
by reason my father was so highly
offended with me for going away
without his leave and. for changing
my religion. But though I was
come, as I may say, blindfold to
the state of life God had chosen
for me for I was as ignorant as a
child what a religious life was and
what would be required of my
hands I was not frustrated of the
hope I had to find the happiness I
had proposed to myself.
A lady that had helped me, after-
wards coming to our monastery to
be a nun in the same, related to me
the great confusion our family was
in when they did miss me, which
was about dinner-time, to which
being called, I was not found.
Servants were sent about to all
that knew me, but none could give
any account of me. It was judged
by all that I was run away with
some gallant, for going to be a
nun and leave the world was the
last of their thoughts. At last they
found the two letters I had left
upon the table in my room, which
informed them whither I had gone,
but I was out of their reach of
overtaking me when they found
them.
Many a letter was sent after me,
especially by my father, blaming
me for my rash action and disobe-
dience; to which I answered that
a thing that had been above three
years in agitation could not be
looked upon as rash, that I did
beg his pardon, and that I was not
able any longer to go against my
conscience.
I again earnestly soliciting his
pardon, he in a few lines answered
me : " I here give you my pardon,
seeing you desire it from my own
hand, and remain your affectionate
father J. H."
After this 'foresaid letter he never
writ to me more, but he would re-
ceive mine, and now and then,
when I demanded it, send me some
token, [as] on the death of my
honored and dear mother, who was
joyed that she had one child of her
own religion, and was very kind;
but when death deprived me of
her I was as a stranger to all the
rest of my kindred.
To the end to be able to settle
myself in religion, I addressed my-
self to a great friend of my father's,
which was the Duke of Norfolk,
Henry Howard. He being a very
good Catholic, and understanding
how the case stood between me
and my father, took the business
in hand to procure me a portion,
to the snd to be professed. He
then did me the honor to adopt
me as his daughter, and told my fa-
ther that, if so be he would not give
me a portion, that he himself would
Protesting Christians.
169
give me one. My father did reply
that he would not give me any
portion, only, in regard he would
not consent any one else should
maintain any of his children, see-
ing he was able to do it himself,
he would send an alms to the mon-
astery, that they might not be
burdened with me; and then, by
the hand of the same duke, sent
four hundred pounds three weeks
after my noviceship had ended.
I did not care what he called what
he sent, a portion or an alms I was
sufficiently joyed ; . . . and then my
mother supplied other charges, and
was very kind to me until her death.
The happy day of my settlement
being come, which was the yth of
September, 1664, the duke came to
my baptism, and gave me, instead
of my father, to God, and was ever
after most obliging.
By this means I was settled,
after a great deal of trouble, in the
state of life I had so long desired,
in the which I live truly content ;
and no little satisfaction of mind it
was to me [that] I was out of dan-
ger of ever being in the slavery of
marriage,* for which I had so great
an aversion, and there was no
other way to avoid it but by em-
bracing the state of religion. In-
finite was the goodness of God
toward me, for he caused all things
to conclude for my advantage,
whilst I did only desire his holy
will might be done to his own
glory, for whose sake I had
forsaken all the pleasures of the
Fair Truth has charms
In such a plenteous store :
Who sees her, loves ;
Who knows her, must adore.
PROTESTING CHRISTIANS.
A PROTESTANT is a Christian
who is not a Catholic. We do not
know that we can get nearer to a
definition. There may be "acci-
dental " distinctions between the
baptized and the unbaptized, be-
tween the more positive and the
more negative sort of Protestants ;
but " essentially " a Protestant be-
lieves in Christ and does not ac-
cept the authority of the Holy See.
It is true that, speaking popularly,
when we use the word Protestant
we mean to imply much more than
this. We mean the angry or sullen
protest against half a dozen dog-
mas, against the spirit of the his-
tory of the church. We mean
schism, and heresy, and fierce
controversy. We mean hatred of
confession, and disbelief in the
Mass, and contempt for the preten-
sions of priesthood. What do we
not mean, in the way of " heretical
pravity," when we use that most
unpleasant word, Protestant ? But
sinceno two Protestants have exactly
thesame belief, or profess exactly the
same grounds for their belief, it
would be idle to attempt to define
the indefinable, or to try to suc-
cessfully postulate a negative.
Our motive for the consideration of
the word Protestant, and for the con-
sideration of whatever it involves, is
the hope that we may be able to com-
* In one of her Prayers, or Meditations, which
in the MS. follow the account of her life, Sister
Catherine again expresses her thankfulness for hav-
ing been preserved from being " ty'd to a lump of
animated clay."
Protesting Cliristians.
bat its newest meaning, which is " to
protest that a true Protestant is not
a Protestant." The English Ritual-
ists have asserted that the true
spirit of the Church of England
(which is admittedly the highest
development of non- Catholicism)
is not Protestant but Catholic ; is
first Catholic, then Anglican; is too
primitive to be in any way Protes-
tant. The assumption is so sub-
lime that it seems irrefutable. We
bow respectfully to a theory which
is beyond us. Because the Church
of England is primitive, because it
is "the purest form of Catholi-
city," because it was born before
the erring Church of Rome, and
was, indeed, the mother of that sad
offspring, therefore who does not
see that the Church of England
cannot protest against an institu-
tion which is so infinitely below
it ? True, indeed, the particular
establishment called " Church of
England " came into modern exist-
ence in the sixteenth century ; true,
its material and its demonstrative
characteristics remained invisible
for the space of, say, a thousand
years ; yet since pure Anglicanism
was the religion of the first centu-
ries, and since pure Anglicanism is
the religion of the Ritualists, it fol-
lows that every Ritualist is in the
position of an heir-at-law who
looks down with contempt on bas-
tard rivals. How can such an heir
condescend to protest against the
pretenders who have appropriated
some of his acres ? He rather lives
in solemn majesty in his hereditary
castle, and does not even recognize
his neighbors. Protest may be for
lesser and weaker minds ; but the
true heirs of primitive truth are
above it.
If this seem but a pleasantry, and
not a statement of position, we re-
ply that it is both the one and the
other. The Ritualists have two ways
of treating the Roman Catholic
Church, and both are a protest against
protest. The one way is to ignore it
as an unavoidable evil ; the other way
is to patronize its good points. As to
protesting, they leave that to Low-
Churchmen. They positively exe-
crate the word protest in its histo-
rical and in its doctrinal meaning.
They will have it that the Church
of England never protested against
Rome,but assumed (in the sixteenth
century) the Catholic attitude ; or
that, at the most, a temporary pro-
test was begotten by Roman atti-
tude, but was no expression of pure
Church-of-Englandism. They ad-
mit that English Protestantism is an
historical fact, but not that it is
Anglican or Catholic. It is an ac-
cident of the corruptions of sheer
ignorance. The Church of Eng-
land is Catholic, was Catholic, must
be Catholic ; people who call them-
selves Protestants are not Angli-
can.
We have not the least intention
of proving that modern Ritualism
is not the religion which was pro-
fessed by the Christians of the
" early church " that would be a
subject beyond our compass nor
is it the immediate subject we
would investigate. What we pro-
pose to do is to show that the
Church of England is essentially,
and also exclusively, a Protestant
church, and that if it were not
Protestant it would be nothing.
There are three ways of proving
this Anglican Protestantism: the
first is the Protestant attitude of
the Reformers royal, episcopal,
priestly, and lay. The second is
the whole history of Anglican for-
mularies. The third is the whole
history of Anglican sentiment.
In a pamphlet which was pub-
lished last year by an English
Protesting Christians.
171
judge of county courts, and of
which the title was, Is the Church
of England Protestant? it was as-
serted that in the reign of Eliza-
beth "there was no union of the
Church of England with Protestant-
ism " ; that Protestantism " may gra-
tify the mental cravings of Scotch
Calvinists and Irish Orangemen,
but, by the grace of God, it is not
the religion of the Church of Eng-
land."
This statement is so opposed to
universal recognition that we must
be excused for pronouncing it to
be eccentric. If there is one word
which would describe the Eliza-
bethan faith and piety ; which
would sum up the religious princi-
ples of the disastrous forty years
during which Queen Elizabeth bru-
tally reigned ; and which would
aptly give the character of all Ang-
lican legislation, as well as of the
hideous penal laws against Catho-
lics, that word is emphatically Pro-
testant. Queen Elizabeth could
only reign because she was a Pro-
testant ; and her successors have
only reigned on the same condi-
tion. The reign of Elizabeth was
the introduction and the firm set-
tling of the principle of political
Protestantism. From the time
when she ascended the throne po-
litical Protestantism has been des-
potic, and Anglican Protestantism
lias been inseparably allied with
the political Protestantism which
created it. Even Charles II. could
only recover his throne on condi-
tion that he supported both Protes-
tantisms. James II. forfeited his
throne for not doing so. In 1688
the new dynasty was established on
the condition of the same twofold
faithfulness. Queen Victoria was
pledged at her coronation to
"maintain the Protestant religion
as by law established," the same
twofold Protestantism being de-
manded of her which was demand-
ed of all her Anglican predeces-
sors. Protestantism and the Eng-
lish sovereignty are inseparable ;
and so are the English sovereignty
and Anglicanism.
But, next, to show that the sym-
pathies of the English sovereignty,
always evinced through the Parlia-
ment and through the church, were
in the direction of " pure and sim-
ple " Protestantism, as opposed to
any relations with Rome, let it be
mentioned that Charles II. and
James I., as well as the Convoca-
tion of the clergy, by many acts of
the most formal and public charac-
ter, expressed their sympathy with
the Protestant churches of the
Continent and their abhorrence of
all sympathy with Catholics. At
the Synod of Dort the officially-
sent Anglicans acted in brotherly
concert with the Protestants. Con-
vocation very frequently addressed
the crown on behalf of foreign Pro-
testant sects. And what is far
more important, for it thoroughly
settles the question of Anglican
indifference about " priesthood "
Anglican bishops, in the time
of the Stuarts, formally recogniz-
ed Presbyterianly-ordained clergy.
This last point is of such obvious
interest in the historical argument
for " Protestantism " 'that we must
give to it a moment's attention.
The late Mr. Keble, a most dis-
tinguished High-Churchman, ac-
knowledged that " numbers had
been admitted to the ministry of
the Church of England with no
better than Presbyterian ordina-
tion," and that this had taken
place " nearly up to the time when
Hooker wrote." And Bishop Co-
sin, writing from Paris in 1650, said
that he had known ministers who
were not episcopally ordained, but
Protesting Christians.
only ordained according to the
rites of a Protestant sect that is,
of some French Protestant sect
admitted to charges by bishops of
the Church of England without be-
ing episcopally re-ordained. " Nor
did our laws," he wrote, " require
more of such an one than to de-
clare his public consent to the re-
ligion received among us, and to
subscribe the articles established."
And he argued that, in the French
Protestant sects, "the sacraments
were duly administered according
to Christ's ordinance in all those
things that of necessity are requisite
unto the same " ; though he thought
that it was better to have episcopal
ordination, as being the most pri-
mitive in type. And Archbishop
Bramhall, an Anglican of much
weight, pronounced that Presbyte-
rian ordination was sufficient for
the due exercise of functions,
though it would not give " legal "
claim to church revenues; and he
instituted and inducted Presbyteri-
ans as " valid," though not " legal,"
Anglican priests. It was the state,
not the church, which required
episcopal ordination ; and this for
legality, not validity. The truth
is that the communion between
the English Protestant Church and
the foreign reformed Protestant
churches was not only recognized
but rejoiced in; and well might it
be so, since the Anglican schism
had put an end to all Catholic
communion.
If we pass to the consideration
of the Protestant character of
church formularies, we are really
continuing the same " historical "
argument for the essential, pro-
found Protestantism of Anglican-
ism. The Thirteen Articles of
1538, like the Thirty-nine Articles
of 1563, were Lutheran in spirit
in origin. The Augsburg and
the Wiirtemberg Confessions were
the sources from which the latter
were drawn. A careful comparison
of these Articles with the Germanic
Confessions will show that, in words
as well as spirit, the paternity was
recognized and venerated. And
throughout the Book of Common
Prayer (not priestly but Common
Prayer), with all its shufflings, eva-
sions, and compromises, Protestant-
ism stands out all the more broad-
ly and offensively from the inci-
dental affectation of Catholicism.
In no one doctrinal statement of
the Anglican Prayer-Book is there
a manly and honest profession of
Catholic dogma; but there is al-
ways the grave quibbling, and wrig-
gling, and haggling which prove
the Protestant bias and enmity.
The Lutheran divines and the Lu-
theran Confessions were the real,
"primitive " sources of the formu-
laries. Just as the orders of the
Church of England were affectedly
episcopal, with apologetic conces-
sions to Presbyterianism, so the
formularies of the Church of Eng-
land were affectedly Catholic, with
wholesale concessions to sectarian-
ism.
But that which proves the Pro-
testantism of the Church of Eng-
land, far more even than its shuf-
fling orders and shuffling formula-
ries, is the national sentiment of
hostility to Catholicism which has
always imbued the whole people.
We find it difficult to argue grave-
ly with those Ritualists who af-
firm that the Church of England is
not Protestant. It would be like
attempting to argue gravely that
the object of the Reformation was.
to intensify the authority of the
Holy See. What is Protestantism
but resistance to that authority to-
ward which all Christian unity must
centre, the setting up the throne
Protesting Christians.
173
of private judgment against the
throne of the Vicar of Christ? And
since, for centuries, every pulpit of
the Church of England has rung
with the protest against Rome, with
the protest against dogmatic infal-
libility, with the protest against
Mass and against confession, with
the protest against priesthood and
against penance, with the protest
against "hampering religious liber-
ty," how unreal is it to pretend
that Protestantism rank Protes-
tantism is not the one master pas-
sion of Anglicanism ! Because a
few educated persons, less preju-
diced than the masses, and less
profoundly unacquainted with Ca-
tholic philosophy, have felt asham-
ed of their unreasoning hostility,
or of what Leo XIII. calls " the
delirium of reason," therefore it
is assumed that the Church of Eng-
land is not Protestant, but, on the
contrary, is more Catholic than is
Catholicism. All history is smooth-
ed over, all facts are softened down,
the whole national "delirium" is
set aside, in order that High-
Churchmen may theorize the posi-
tion that Protestantism is an ac-
cident, not an essence. Yet men
who are well advanced both in
years and experience men who
have lived, say, for fifty years in
England can tell us what are the
recollections of their youth in re-
gard to the national spirit of Pro-
testantism. [We will speak on]y
of England, both because it is the
chief home of Ritualism and be-
cause it is the most missionary
Protestant country.] Before' " Pu-
seyism " was first begotten at Ox-
fordbefore the first of the Tracts
for the Times was composed
there was not one parish in Eng-
land where the word Mass or the
word confession, the word priest or
the words " Sacramental Real Pre-
sence," could be spoken without
eliciting controversy. Every ser-
mon which was preached, both in
towns and in country parishes, was
primarily characterized by the ab-
sence of Catholic doctrine or by
the presence of Protestant recrimi-
nation. Whether from the pulpit
of St. Paul's Cathedral in London
or from the pulpit of any parochial
city church, from the pulpit of St.
Mary's Church, Oxford, or from
the pulpit of any fashionable pro-
prietary chapel, but one voice was
heard, one teaching, one sentiment,
and that was the protest against
Rome. Nor could it matter what
the oral teaching might be, since
the material teaching was so em-
phatic. The furniture of all church-
es, the material exponents of all
doctrine, were expressly framed
with the view of pronouncing em-
phatically that " no Catholic doc-
trine would be admitted." The
altar was always hidden behind the
pulpit. The font was always care-
fully put out of sight. The cler-
gyman's robes were always studi-
ously non-priestly. The clerk's
desk was always pompously vica-
rious. The pews had always doors
and always bolts. The church or-
naments were always offensively
mundane. The monuments were
always pagan or sentimental. The
"lion and the unicorn" crowned
the altar. The Ten Command-
ments were supreme in doctrinal
place. You could not find, in fur-
niture or in structure, in any ma-
terial intimation or symbol, one
single suggestion of one Catholic
doctrine, one emphatically Chris-
tian credo.
The writer of these pages well
remembers with what delight he
used to go, when a school-boy, to
St. Paul's Cathedral. The music
was so pretty, the psalms were so
174
Protesting Christians.
well chanted, the anthem was so
charmingly rendered, that no musi-
cal treat could be more welcome
to musical taste than that very
pretty " afternoon service." But
the music was the all in all of that
service. The clergy and the cho-
risters used to come rushing into
their places like a flock of sheep
which had broken loose from a
pen; and they used to go through
their duties in such a perfunctory
way that they evidently thought
the whole thing a "paid bore."
Now all sucli details are changed.
On Sunday morning such array of
processional prettiness is organized
in the vestry of the cathedral, such
solemn walking precedes taking of
place, that the idea which is sug-
gested is the making the very most
of a barren and non-Catholic cere-
monial. Even the clergy now
group themselves about the altar;
college hoods are widely spread
out like chasubles; and a big cross
is placed on the communion-table,
with two candlesticks and two
noble gold plates. But why has
this reformation taken place? Is
it because Protestantism is no more,
and aesthetic aspirations have sup-
planted it, or is it in professed def-
erence to the High-Churchism of
the age and to a certain apprecia-
tion of dogmatic need? The an-
swer is that Protestantism is not
dead, but that Catholicism has
forced Protestantism to wear its
" Sunday best." The sermons in St.
Paul's Cathedral are still profound-
ly anti-Catholic, tempered only with
an educated ecclesiasticism ; and
communion is administered with-
out requiring confession which
shows that the Real Presence is not
a dogma. No preacher in St. Paul's
Cathedral dare recommend con-
fession, dare advocate the sacrifice
of the Mass, dare profess his vene-
ration for the Holy See; the most
that he dare do is to round pious
platitudes about " church doc-
trines," "church services," "brd-
therly union." The old Protes-
tantism is precisely what it was,
plus the homage of the imitation
of Catholic form. The bishop of
London would be down on any
preacher who overstepped the dis-
creet boundaries of compromise.
To talk High-Churchism while not
practising obedience ; to speak of
sacraments while repudiating de-
finition ; to revere the church while
not deciding what it is ; to be very
Catholic while not abandoning the
national sect ; to respect the coun-
cils while interpreting their teach-
ing; and to quote the Fathers while
expurgating their " popery "such
are the silky shifts, the invertebrate
evasions, which now characterize
the teaching in high places. Pro-
testantism is not so blatant as it
was; it is more cunningly dialectic
and tortuous. It has abandoned
its purely negative attitude for a
^positive affirmation of the indefi-
nite. Yet its spirit is quite as ec-
lectic as ever. Every clergyman
and every layman creates his
church. Implicit obedience is un-
known. How can any one obey
what is not ?
And since Protestantism that
is, the spirit of personal protest
against one, infallible, divine church
authority is as real and profound
as it ever was, let us next put
the question : Is not the spirit of
Protestantism the exact opposite
of the spirit of truth ?
To answer this question it will
be desirable to distinguish clearly
between the protesting against au-
thority and against doctrine. It
is true that the one protest in-
eludes the other in the Catholic
estimation of obedience; but we
Protesting Christians.
175
have to consider that High-Church-
ism proposes obedience to church
while proposing repudiation of some
dogmas. The explanation is that,
when the church was united, it
necessarily taught what was true,
but that, consequent upon the
grave schisms of Christendom, the
power of teaching became lost.
The " protest " is therefore made
against those " corrupt Roman
teachings " which, presumably, en-
sued upon division. Now, first, it
is absurd, in purely logical argu-
ment, to say that the church could
lose its doctorship on account of
the rebellion 'of its children; for
the very use of her doctorship, its
" reason of being," its divine ob-
ject, its power, its gift, was to cor-
rect and to punish, to excommuni-
cate and to receive back, erring
sons who had preferred private
judgment. If the church could be-
come fallible because her sons had
become rebellious, then is rebel-
lion the superior of infallibility ;
and the taught are the masters, the
reprovers of the teacher, and also
its divine excommunicators. Core,
Dathan, and Abiron took from Mo-
ses the divine prerogatives which
God gave to them conditionally on
popular acceptance ! All power,
and justice, and authority are de-
pendent on the criminal's liking !
" I can only teach you," the church
is made to say, " up to the point
where you are so gracious as to
agree with me ; but the moment
you tell me I am mistaken my
teaching power passes into your
hands." This is the (logical) in-
vention of High-Churchmen. It
is indeed the most illogical, the
most monstrous supposition which
could possibly enter any Christian's
head. If we must argue gravely
on its merits, let us say that Al-
mighty God, when he founded his
church, did so with full knowledge
of human nature ; that he was
aware of the pride of the human
intellect; and that he foresaw that,
in long ages to corne, schism and
heresy would abound. Becattse he
foresaw this, say High-Churchmen,
therefore he made the doctorship
of his church to be dependent
on the disobedience of her chil-
dren, and ordained that, directly
church authority should be want-
ed, it should be lost pari passu
with the need. Infallibility being
necessary to judge heresy, heresy
should take away infallibility ; and
authority being necessary to pun-
ish revolt, revolt should put an end
to authority. This is the High-
Church, Oxford logic. It does not
do credit to her schools. How any
student could think this, and yet
take honors in head-work, is in-
comprehensible to the Catholic
common sense.
So that, in truth, the considera-
tion of obedience to authority, and
the consideration of the acceptance
of all its dogmas, are one and the
same consideration. Yet since the
point we are inquiring into is the
Protestantism of the Church of
England in all its. history, its for-
mularies, its sentiment, let us take
one "protesting" doctrine as the
test of the fact that Church-of-
Englandism is essentially non-Ca-
tholic. The thirty-first Article of
the Church of England pronounces
that " the sacrifices of Masses, in
which it was commonly said that
the priests did offer Christ for the
quick and the dead to have remis-
sion of pain or guilt, were blasphe-
mous fables and dangerous deceits,"
while the adoring the sacramental
Real Presence is described by the
same final authority as " idolatry
to be abhorred of all faithful Chris- 1 *
tians." And let it be added, cor-
176
Protesting Christians.
relatively, that on all those many
occasions when the Church of
England has courted the favor of
foreign sects (while never once
courting the favor of the Catholic
Church), the reason given, the
main apology offered, has been
that the rejecting the Mass was
" common ground." Indeed, the
one sovereign pretext of the whole
Protestant schism has been the re-
jection of the sacrifice of the Mass,
" popery " being abhorred as the
embodiment of the theory of sa-
cerdotal prerogative and power.
Now, this being the fact, how can
the modern High-Churchmen, who
make sacerdotalism their great
" Catholic " claim, affect to be not
Protestant on the one ground that
they venerate what all their Ang-
lican forefathers detested ? For,
since Protestantism and Anglican-
ism are the same thing, both must
be accepted or abhorred. If the
Ritualists would repudiate their
"church" and profess themselves
a perfectly new " sect," we might
then contemplate their, pretensions
on their merits ; but to affirm that
they are Anglicans while repu-
diating all Anglicanism is like
a Dissenter giving the toast of
" church and state!" What pre-
cise place a High- Churchman may
appropriate in the oasis between
the church and dissent we should
be sorry to be called upon to de-
fine ; but that he is essentially a
Protestant, and accidentally a sham
Catholic, we can lay down with a
logical certainty. If he hates his
own paternity and disowns his
own mother, we can only regret
that he is 'so ungracious or so un-
natural ; but, as outsiders, we must
regard him as an equivocal off-
spring of an ancestry whom " pious-
ly " he should revere.
Indeed, we regret to have to
think that the High-Churchman is
more Protestant than his Low-
Church or Puritan brothers. They
reject the church because they do
not like her teaching, while they
simply ignore all church authority ;
but he rejects the church while
liking her teaching and affecting
to venerate her authority. So that
he confesses himself a Protestant
without doctrinal motive, arid with-
out plea of an assured (Catho-
lic) authority. The very slight
distinctions which he personally
draws between primitive and nine-
teenth-century Catholicism are too
fragmentary or unsubstantial to
afford him sound pretext for an
isolated doctrinal position ; while
the total absence of any living
(Catholic) authority to which he
can profess perfect obedience
leaves him out in the cold as an
" Anglo-Catholic." " Protestant "
in his rejection of the church,
while "Protestant " in his interpre-
tation of her dogmas, he is really,
in his logical attitude, more inex-
cusably and irrationally anti-Ca-
tholic than they who reject au-
thority with dogma.
And now that we have got so
far as to see clearly that all Angli-
cans are essentially and unavoida-
bly Protestants and that all Chris-
tians who are not in communion
with the Holy See must be generi-
cally classed under the same name
let us consider what is the ani-
mus of Protestantism, what is its
spiritual or supernatural worth.
The first Protestant we know
who he was ! Core, Dathan, and
Abiron we know what they were.
Under the Jewish and under the
Christian dispensation a Protes-
tant was exactly the same thing.
He was a "churchman " who pre-
ferred his own judgment to that
of the divinely-appointed authority.
Protesting Christians.
177
Whether it was Moses or Pius
IX., on Mt. Sinai or in St. Peter's
at Rome, who was resisted when
teaching divine truth, the same
animus, the same spiritual rebellion,
is proved against the advocates
of private judgment. Only, with
Christians, the animus is more
deadly, because the authority resist-
ed is the Holy Ghost. We are
not speaking of private persons
(there must be thousands of sin-
cere Protestants), but of the intel-
lectual attitude of all non-Catholics.
The authority of the church is the
abiding presence of God, the in-
fallible inspiration of the Holy
Ghost, the continued teaching of
the Incarnate Son of God, the final
work of the Divine Father for men's
souls. This, then, is the authority
which is (intellectually) repudiated
by the (intellectual) attitude of all
Protestants. When they protest
they are not protesting against man
but against God, who is speaking
through man. " Ye take too much
upon you," said the Jewish rebels
to Moses and Aaron, " seeing that
all the congregation are holy."
But the congregation was only holy
because elected by God to obey his
supernatural truths. In the same
way all Christians are, in a certain
sense, holy, but only relatively, ac-
cording to their obedience. Every
baptized child is holy; but he may
cease to be holy if he grows up to
misuse his private judgment. Now,
exactly as the Jews said to Moses
and Aaron, in conspicuously Pro-
testant attitude, " Ye take too much
upon you," so do all Protestants
say to the Vicar of God, " All Chris-
tians are entitled to teach them-
selves." All Protestants are as
Core in their pretension to know
better than the authority which is
commissioned by God. It matters
not one pin, in the logical argu-
VOL. xxix. 12
ment, in the rational consistency
of the position, whether one doc-
trine more or less be accepted, if
the authority for that doctrine be
despised. It is not this doctrine
or that doctrine which makes a
heretic ; it is his refusal to be com-
manded by authority. The Rus-
sian schismatics the czar's " ortho-
dox " Christians are as much Pro-
testants as are Quakers or Agape-
monists. The archbishop of Can-
terbury and the most transcendental
of Ritualists, the rationalist dean
of Westminster and any unctuous
Low-Churchman, are in attitude
(we speak not of their consciences)
all emphatically and all equally
Protestants. They disobey eccle-
siastical authority. They set up
their own throne of private judg-
ment. They prefer their "inter-
pretation " to that of the pope, their
" exegesis " to that of the councils,
their " patristic reading " to the
" church's living voice," their su-
preme ego to papal infallibility.
They either believe in infallibility
and claim it for themselves, or
they reject it and so reject all
(certain) truth. But a truth which
is not certain, on the ground of
its authority, cannot possibly be a
truth which is de fide j and so all
non-Catholics are driven either to
believe themselves infallible or to
deny that any truth is de fide.
They may try, indeed, to escape
from the dilemma by affirming that
all "necessary truths are obvious ";
and thus, while they differ as to
what are " necessary truths," they
profess their own ability to number
them. The very question, " What
are necessary truths ?" is the ques-
tion which is radical in the whole
argument ; for, of course, if it could
be determined what truths are
necessary truths, there would be
an end to all schism, all heresy..
178
Protesting Christians*
But to determine this question
there must be a living church
authority a fact proved by all
schisms, all heresies. " Bible Chris-
tianity "means really private Bibles.
A man who reads the Bible and
calls himself a Christian is like
a man who looks up to the starry
heavens and professes himself an
astronomer. " There are more
things in the Bible which I do not
understand than which I do," said
the learned and profound St. Augus-
tine. " I would not believe the Gos-
pel itself, except on the authority of
the church, "said the same thorough-
ly "primitive" doctor. Now, the
.attitude of a Protestant who, while
rejecting divine authority, thrones
himself infallibly in its stead, pro-
fessing that he can define necessary
truths, though God's church is in-
competent to do so, is the atti-
tude of a man who either in vanity
>4s supreme, or in patent imbecil-
ity is ridiculous. While acknow-
ledging that a thousand different
sects are divided on the ques-
tion "what is necessary," he both
affirms that "what is necessary is
obvious," yet that no Protestant
-can possibly ever know it. Has he*,
then, received some strictly pri-
vate revelation which makes him
judge of the whole Word of God ?
Is his learning so colossal, his wis-
dom so profound, his sanctity so
mystic, his life so rapt, that, indi-
vidually, he can teach all churches,
all nations what they have totally
-failed to discriminate ? Are we not
justified in saying that the Protes-
tant (intellectual) attitude is the
denial of the possibility of Chris-
tian ck>gma, save only on the as-
sumption that each Protestant
'Christian is divinely illuminated to
'know the truth? Yet, since this
marvellous hypothesis would in-
volve the necessity of each Protes-
tant being differently illuminated,
it would follow that one God illu-
mines different souls with opposite
yet divinely certain truths. Take
which alternative you prefer, the
whole Protestant attitude, regarded
from the logical point of view, is as
fatal to God as to man.
Fortunately, all Protestants are
not logical, and therefore all Pro-
testants are not guilty of the ab-
surdity of intellectually worship-
ping a fallacy. Yet all Protes-
tants are intellectually guilty of
preferring the weak before the
strong, of preferring a negative to a
positive, of preferring the minimum
of a Christian faith to the maxi-
mum which is offered by the
church. And this choice is intel-
lectually disgraceful. The mere at-
titude of protest against infallibil-
ity is in itself a dishonoring atti-
tude. To protest against know-
ledge while honoring uncertainty ; to
protest against being taught while
venerating self-will ; to deliberately
put confusion before unity, feeble
heresy before mighty Catholic truth,
the disjecta membra of private theolo-
gies before dogma, and purely human
speculation before judgment, is in it-
self, we repeat, the confession of an
attitude most unworthy of the soul
and of the mind. Protestantism is
the humanizing of the divine. It
is the pulling down the immutable
to the level of caprice ; the reducing
the irreversible to the inconstant ;
the degrading the supernatural to
the natural ; the placing human rea-
son above faith. Both dogmati-
cally and devotionally the spirit of
protest is the exact opposite of
the spirit of obedience. And since
obedience is the spirit of Christian-
ity, it follows that protest is not
Christian.
It is most important to remem-
ber in considering protest that true
Protesting Christians
179
devotion is founded on true dogma ;
so that protest against dogma is
protest against devotion protest
against perfect devotion. The sen-
timent of devotion is common to
all mankind, but Christian devo-
tion is more than sentiment. It is
the emotional homage of the di-
vinely-taught intellect as well as
of the aspiring heart. For example,
take the sentiment of devotion in
regard to the Real Presence of the
Host. It is first founded on the
certainty of that presence. Re-
move the absolute certainty, and
you cut away the ground on which
the adoring mind and heart build
their sentiment. But the senti-
ment of devotion is true love; and
since true love must be certain of
its object, protest becomes fatal to
true love. Who could kneel for
hours before a Protestant commu-
nion-table rapt in undivided ado-
ration ? And why not ? Because
protest is not love, but the exact
opposite of love, being the ques-
tioning of the fulness of the gift.
The same reasoning applies to the
Sacrament of Penance, to the dog-
ma of divine absolution. If you
protest against the dogma of the
Sacrament of Penance, as to powers,
as to conditions, as to obligations,
you cut away the certainty on which
the full saving of the soul is aban-
doned to love and to repentance.
Protest becomes the killing of the
sacrament. Since the intellect, the
heart, and the will must be all
abandoned to the certainty of di-
vine law, protest kills the intellect,
the heart, and the will, and there-
fore kills the fruits of the sacra-
ment. One doubt will kill all.
And since protest means not one
doubt but many doubts, a non-
Catholic penitent is in a chaos.
Whereas perfection of devotion
if we may repeat ourselves for
clearness is built on the perfec-
tion of Catholic dogma, imperfec-
tion, first of dogma, then of devo-
tion, is inseparable from the attitude
of protest.
And once more that we may
measure the full horrors which are
involved in the attitude of heretical
protest let it be remembered that
the most ungracious of all ingrati-
tudes is the depreciating the gift of
the giver. God being perfection,
his gifts are perfection ; his authori-
ty, his sacraments are perfection ;
his means of grace, whether dog-
matic or devotional (and we have
shown that the two are inseparable),
are all perfect in theory and in ap-
plication. Now, to protest against
perfection and to prefer imperfec-
tion is, in truth, to protest against
God. We do not know how, intel-
lectually speaking (and we say
again that we are not judging in-
dividuals), to distinguish between
the spirit of protest and the spirit
of most unchristian impiety. The
preference of the imperfect is im-
piety. Since we are not speaking
of man's truths but of God's truths
of all those truths which were
revealed by the Divine Son it fol-
lows that to depreciate divine truths
by lowering the divine standard of
their perfections is to depreciate,
by the most appalling ingratitude,
not only the gifts but the Giver.
When God gives his own Presence^
to protest against it; when God
gives absolution, to protest against
it ; when God gives infallible teach-
ing, to protest against it ; when
God gives a Supreme Pontiff, to
protest against him ; when God gives
seven sacraments, to protest against
five all such protests are so many
acts of impiety, partaking of the
character of gross ingratitude.
Naturally the attitude of protest
is base ; supernaturally it is im-
i8o
Transformation.
pious in the extreme. And being
intellectually disgraceful, as well
as devotionally most unchristian,
the attitude of protest sinks down
to a deformity which is most con-
torted and hideous to contemplate.
Imagine if in heaven the blessed
were to make preference of the les-
ser over the greater of God's gifts ;
if they were to protest against
knowing too much, against too
great a nearness to the divine ful-
ness, against too rich a fruition of
the Divine Mind. Yet Christianity
is the heaven of earth, since not
only is it revealed to us by God,
but God himself is ever with us
and in us. Holy Communion is
God. In true sense absolution is
God. Baptism is God. Infallible
teaching' is God. The church is
the " second Incarnation." Yet
against all this the Protestant pro-
tests. He will not have the ful-
ness of God's gifts. He prefers to
have the minimum^ with doubt.
Is not this, then, the attitude of im-
piety? Unconsciously, and in ignor-
ance, all Protestants are ungrate-
ful, because they are bidden to the
banquet and will not come. They
prefer to be outside the King's
home. They live on, all their
lives, on the outskirts of Paradise,
when they have but to knock at
the gate and to come in. This is the
ungratefulness of protest. Where-
as inside the church there is the
fulness of Divine Wisdom, both in-
tellectual and devotional perfec-
tion, the protesting Christian pre-
fers to be on the outside, tossed
by doubt and unable to love per-
fectly.
TRANSFORMATION.
IN the late winter, when the breath of spring
Had almost softened glazed plains of snow,
A mother died, and, wandering to and fro,
Her sad child sought her frightened little thing!
Through the drear woodland, as on timid wing
A young bird flies ; amid bare bushes low
It sank in sleep, thus losing all its woe,
With smiling lips her dear name murmuring :
No loving arms were there to hold it fast,
There were no kisses for it warm and sweet,
But snowflakes, in their pity, fell like tears ;
Then cried its angel : " Snowflakes, ye shall last
Beyond the life of snowflakes- at spring's feet
Bloom ye as flowers in all the coming years."
'Pearl.
181
PEARL.
BY KATHLEEN o'MEARA, AUTHOR OF " IZA'S STORY," U A SALON IN THE LAST DAY* Or THE EMPIRE,
"ARE YOU MY WIFE? " ETC.
CHAPTER XIV.
DARVALLON S FKIEND.
THERE was great excitement in
the Leopold family. M. le Baron
was named Minister for Foreign
Affairs a position that had been the
dream of Mme. la Baronne's life,
for it was of all others the one that
offered the widest scope of selec-
tion for a husband for Blanche.
Young men of family and fortune
who wanted a step in diplomacy
would be willing to count the
minister's patronage as a heavy
item in Mile. Leopold's dot, and to
set the father-in-law's influence
against any flaw in the matrimonial
transaction. In Blanche herself
there was none ; she was nineteen,
charming to see, well educated, and
had been covered with her mo-
ther's eyes, as that lady touchingly
declared, from the moment of her
birth to the present hour. The
only'obstacle to her making a great
match was that her fortune was not
up to the mark. But that no
longer counted now; her father's
influence would amply supply the
deficiency. The suitor who yester-
day was as good as accepted was
of course no longer to be thought
of. Cette chere enfant need not
now throw herself away. How
providentially things were arrang-
ed ! A few days more and the af-
fair might have been settled be-
yond recall ; but just at the present
point it could be broken off without
the least esdandre. The mere sound
of the word esdandre made the
French mother's blood run cold.
But Blanche was not her only pre-
occupation.
" Now, mon ami," she said to the
new minister, " you must immedi-
ately set about getting this order to
Algiers countermanded. Comme
le bon Dieu nous protege ! Noth-
ing could be more opportune than
the whole thing. You are on such
good terms with the new Minister
of War that there will be no diffi-
culty in getting him to do it. To-
day I breathe. I have not breath-
ed since that thorn entered my
heart about the Algeric Jewesses."
" Nonsense ! Leon must learn
to take care of himself like other
young fellows," replied M. Leopold.
"You don't suppose I could go to
Marshal N with such a story
as that, and expect him to change
the programme of the War Office
on the strength of it ?"
"You mean that you will let my
son be sent out to that horrible
desert amongst the savages, to be
taken hold of by a wretched black
woman? Bonte divine! Have you
not the heart of a father?"
" I hope I have ; but I don't be-
lieve my son is the milksop you would
make him out. He is a soldier,
and he must do his duty, and we
must take our chance for what may
come of it. Where is my portfolio ?
Is the brougham ready? All ! then,
au revoir. Bon jour, ma petite!"
And he kissed Blanche on the fore-
head and hurried away, the hard,
callous man !
182
Pearl.
" Quel egoisme!" exclaimed
Mme. Leopold, throwing up her
hands. But she would circumvent
the egotist, and take her son's des-
tiny into her own hands.
Blanche was quietly triumphant.
She had been reasonably content
yesterday, and would have mar-
ried those cent mille livres de rente
and the false teeth in a thankful
spirit, and done her duty by them ;
but she was conscious of a relief in
die prospect of cent mille livres de
rente without drawbacks.
Mme. de Kerbec was the first to
fly in with congratulations.
" Chere amie! how proud and
delighted we all are. He is just
the man that was wanted at the
Foreign Office. The count was
saying so only yesterday to an old
enrage of the Faubourg, who was
for the emperor naming some bro-
ken-down duke of the old noblesse ;
but the emperor knows his times
better than that. How charmingly
you will do the honors of those
splendid saloons ! I am glad I shall
be able to go and see you there. The
Affaires Etrangeres is a kind of
neutral ground where all parties
can meet without compromising
themselves. And Blanche, how
recherche she will be ! You must
marry her off while you are in of-
fice. She is a brilliant match
now."
"Blanche has only had the em-
barras de choix to complain of,"
said Mme. Leopold, who took this
swinging of the incense-pot for
what it was worth. She took the
exact measure of Captain Jack's
friendship, and had been quietly
observant of her growing affability
ever since M. Leopold had held
a portfolio. But if Captain Jack's
toadying was a degree more bare-
faced than other people's, it was not
a bit meaner in reality and was just
as welcome. " I despise flattery,"
said Napoleon I.,*" but it gratifies
me to see men mean enough to
offer it to me." One who neither
toadied nor flattered was Mrs.
Monteagle, and yet, oddly enough,
she was the first person to whom
Mme. Leopold went herself with
the great news.
" Good heavens ! what is the em-
peror about ?" said the incorrigi-
ble old woman. " M. Leopold has
never had anything to do with for-
eign politics ; he knows no more
about them than the grand lama, I'll
be bound. But things are going from
bad to worse in this unfortunate
country ; I should not wonder if my
concierge were appointed to a port-
folio one of these days. He would
do as well as most of the men go-
ing."
" Franchement, chere madame,
you are complimentary," said Mme.
Leopold ; but she was not offended.
People never were offended by any-
thing Mrs. Monteagle said ; she had
a way of chuckling out her imperti-
nences with a smiling countenance
that left you in doubt whether she
was in earnest or not.
"Complimentary! Certainly not.
You French are a great deal too fond
of compliments; and you know I
hate them."
" They are pleasant all the same,"
said Mme. Leopold, "though one
likes them administered with a little
tact, not as Mme. de Kerbec gives
them to one, thick lumps of honey
that one can't swallow without
choking. Mon Dieu ! what a toady
that woman is. She flew in the
moment she read the baron's ap-
pointment in the Moniteur, and
she went on rejoicing and blowing
the trumpet till I thought she
would never have done."
" And that is all the thanks she
gets for her good nature; serve her
Pearl,
183
right for being such a fool. Cap-
tain Jack has her faults, but she is
one of those people who don't
keep their sympathy for times of
mourning, as most good Christians
do ; she can't help rejoicing with
everybody's good luck, and she is
called a toady for her pains. So
Blanche is going to marry a man of
eighty without a tooth in his head ?
I should have thought you might
have done better for her than
that."
" What a horrible story ! She is
not going to marry any one that I
know of. Dear child ! she is in no
hurry to leave us; her home is so
happy !"
" Humph ! I'm glad to hear it.
And how is your mother-in-law be-
having to my friend ? If that child
is not happy I will take her away."
" Why should she not be happy ?
Mme. Mere is an angel. They are
going down to Gardanvalle next
week. It is rather sooner than we
expected ; but the place is under
repair, and if some one is not there
to look after the workmen it will
not be ready for us in July. I am
so glad Mme. Mere will have la
petite Perle to cheer her until we
go down. Bon jour, chere madame.
I have so much to do ! This was t
my day for visiting mes pauvres ;
but the excitement of the Moni-
teurs news has upset everything.
Indeed, it is a great question how
to reconcile these conflicting duties;
and now society will have a larger
claim on me than ever. People
envy those who are in a high posi-
tion. If they only knew the weight
of care that comes with it !"
And heaving a sigh from the
bottom of her soft double chin,
Mme. Leopold drew up her mantle
and sailed away with a great noise
of trailing silk skirts.
Leon Leopold spent the morning
with his beloved Raoul Darvallon,
and they had a longconfab about the
regiment and Algiers, and the threat
his mother held out meant as a
hope that the order to march and
sail should be rescinded. Leon's
prophetic soul told him there was
more than maternal fondness in this
scheme of hers. " She wants to
marry me," he said, " and I won't
be married. I will sail ; nothing else
can save me."
" Tut, nonsense !" said his friend.
" She can't marry you against your
will."
" Ah ! you don't know what my
mother's will is," replied Leon.
" Mine could no more hold out
against it, once it put forth all its
energy, than that dry twig could
stand against the north wind." And
he kicked the dead thing before him
with the tip of his boot. They
were walking arm-in-arm across
the Tuileries gardens, through the
babies, the nurses in high caps and
flowing ribbons, the perambulators,
and the embroidering mothers, who
sat watching their darlings as they
crowed and played-
"And there is no possibility of
surrender?" said Darvallon. "A
wife is a fate not to be contemplat-
ed on any terms, even with extenu-
ating circumstances ?"
" No ; the richest of the houris
is not worth one's liberty."
" Yet I suppose you contem-
plate having to give it up some
day, and, if so, I don't see what
you gain by waiting."
" I contemplate having to die
some day, but I shall postpone that
catastrophe to the latest possible
date," said Leon.
" Voyons, parlons serieusement,"
said his friend. " What is it that so
terrifies you ? If you fall on the
right woman it is the very most
blessed gift the gods can give a.
1 84
Pearl.
man. To have a home to turn to
after the day's work and its ennui ;
to know that a sweet, pure, loving
woman is waiting for you, watch-
ing the clock and listening for
your footfall on the stairs ; that
little feet will come pattering to
meet you, and and mon cher,
trust me, no garrison larks, no jolly
bivouac nights, are worth a rotten
nut compared to joys like these !"
They were close upon the stone
basin, where the gold fish were
darting through the water, scared
by the children's laughter and the
showers of bread-crumbs they were
pelting at them through the spray.
Leon stopped, drew his hand from
Darvallon's arm, and laid it heavi-
ly on his shoulder.
" Tu es amoureux !" he said,
looking through him with his coal-
black eyes.
" Allons done !" Darvallon shook
him off, laughed, and stepped on
with a freer stride.
" Animal ! Traitre ! To have
done it without telling me," said
Leon, taking his arm again. " Tell
me who she is ; do I know her ?"
"Very likely, if I do. But we
are not talking of me ; we are talk-
ing of you. You must not be a
fool, Leon."
" Say, rather, you will have me
be one because you have become
a fool yourself. Nay, Raoul, don't
put me off with grimaces. You are
in love. No man can talk reason-
ably of love who has not felt" it."
"You admit, then, that I have
talked reasonably?"
Leon would not admit it; but in
his heart he believed that Darval-
lon had spoken wisely. He be-
lieved also that he spoke from pre-
sent experience, and the discovery
shocked him inexpressibly. Dar-
vallon had not groaned, or knit his
brow, or fetched a sigh, and Leon
could feel that his heart was not
leaping in wild tumult under his
coat; nevertheless Leon felt that he
had been speaking from his heart's
abundance and at the dictates of
a new and commanding emotion ;
that he had enthroned the false
god, Love, in the place of the rea-
sonable divinity, Friendship. It
was a horrible revelation ; the ef-
fect on Leon was pretty much as
if he had detected his friend in a
Fieschi plot, or some such insane
and abominable treason. He him-
self knew nothing about love ; he
had known strong preferences and
antipathies ; he had been deeply
attached to a few people in his life,
and he had cordially hated a few
others; but he had never experi-
enced the violent inward disturb-
ance that love brings into a man's
life, and he resented its presence
in his friend's as a usurpation of
his own rights. What business had
Raoul to go and fall in love un-
known to him they who had never
had a secret from each other ? All
this was absurd and irrational on
Captain Leopold's part ; but he
was arguing from false premises,
and judging of this folly of falling
in love as if it were the act of a
man's free will, a condition to be
freely chosen or as freely rejected.
Captain Darvallon, meantime,
unconscious of the commotion he
had raised in Leon's mind, went
on with the current of his own
thoughts.
" Let your mother have her way,"
he said; " if she finds you the right
woman, take her, and you will bless
the day that your liberty capitulat-
ed. Que diable! Of what use is
our liberty, if we are to sacrifice
better things to it ? You have it
in you to make an excellent hus-
band, and the gods are good ; they
will send you an excellent wife, a
Peart.
185
sweet, loyal woman, who will love
you well."
" Pauvre diable ! Mon pauvre
Raoul!" said Leon, heaving a tre-
mendous sigh.
They were crossing the Pont
Royal; the Seine ran high between
its banks; the bateaux mouches
were skimming to and fro.
"Where are you bound for?"
said Darvallon. u The Quai d'Or-
say ?"
" No, I am going to the Rue du
Bac ; and you ?"
Darvallon had meant to go there
too, but instead of saying so he
replied that he had a call to make
in the Rue de Lille. He was in
hopes that, when they stopped at
Mme. Mere's door, Leon would
have asked him to go in for a mo-
ment ; but Leon did not.
"And so I may not know who
she is ?" he said, with a vexed, half-
wistful look, as they held hands.
" Not till she knows it herself,"
said Darvallon.
"Menteur! The woman you
loved would find it out before you
knew it yourself."
And though Captain Leopold
boasted of knowing nothing about
the wiles and ways of love, this re-
mark showed an amount of dis-
cernment that bespoke some latent
power of response in himself.
Mme. Mere and Pearl were
sitting comfortably by the fire,
Pearl shouting out the Debats, the
old lady looking up from her work
with an occasional comment, when
Leon walked in. He bent down to
let Mme. Mere kiss him on the
forehead, and then shook hands
with Pearl. Since she was no
longer a possible candidate for
marriage, he had ceased to fear
her, and was far more cordial and
at ease with her than in the days
when they stood on equal terms.
He had the most profound respect
for her, and he pitied her senti-
ments that made such a safe barrier
against all softer emotions that it
never entered his head to imagine
that this sort of close and friendly
intercourse with a charming girl of-
fered the smallest danger for him
or for her. Mme. Mere idolized
her grandson, and she was glad
that he and Pearl got on so well,
being old acquaintances; but the
idea of their falling in love with
each other no more occurred to her
than it did to him. Pearl's posi-
tion, her absolutely dot-less condi-
tion, made the notion of her getting
a husband as impossible as riding
without a horse or flying without
wings. Thus the young folk had
their little jokes together, indepen-
dent of Mme. Mere, thanks to her
deafness and her confidence in the
natural barriers between the two.
Leon began to find a great attrac-
tion in his grandmother's society ;
it was pleasant to drop in at odd
times and be petted by the old
lady, and talk over himself and his
affairs with bright, sympathetic
Pearl, who was such a capital lis-
tener.
" You have heard the news?" he
said, drawing his chair close to
Mme. Mere. " I am condemned
to marry. The maternal decree
has gone forth, and unless you,
bonne maman, rescue me, I have
no alternative but to blow my
brains out."
" Mon pauvre petit ! How can
I interfere about it if your mother
has made up her mind ?"
" Then I may go home and load
my revolver." And he stood up.
"I never should have guessed you
were such a coward," said Pearl,
with a twinkle in her eye that was
inappropriate to the tragic tone
of the conversation.
1 86
Pearl.
"As regards marriage or sui-
cide ?" said Leon, looking down at
her with his solemn face.
" You are going already, mon
petit ?" said Mme. Mere, who had
missed the threat about the revol-
ver and what followed. " Why do
you not practise a little with made-
moiselle? The piano is excellent,
she tells me, and your mother wants
you to have a succes at Mme. de
Kerbec's concert. Chere petite,
make him sing that romance that I
am so fond of."
" Voulez-vous ?" said Pearl with-
out looking up.
- I am ready. I am always
willing to be victimized."
"And to take no credit for it,
and to consider yourself the only
victim." Pearl rolled up her band
of tapestry and went to the piano.
" I have a letter to write before I
go out," said Mme. Mere. " What
o'clock is it ? Near four. And I
must be at the homme d'affaires' at
half-past. Ring the bell, Leon.
Where is my pocket-book ? Pierre,
I shall want a coach presently."
Pearl struck up the accompani-
ment, and the room sounded to
Leon's sonorous tones apostrophiz-
ing the "Petite Fleur des Bois."
He had been all animation while
discussing the alternative of mar-
riage or suicide, but his manner col-
lapsed into wooden stiffness the
moment he stood up to sing.
"Let us try a duet now," said
Pearl when the ballad was over,
and hoping to stir him up a bit by
her own warmth.
They began " Non ti scordar di
me," but Leon continued to pour
out his anguish to Eleanora with
the same stolid countenance and
manner that had exasperated Pearl
in his address to the flower of the
woods. At last she could bear it
no longer, and wheeling round
suddenly on the piano-stool, " Pour
1'amour de Dieu," she cried, "figu-
rez-vous que je suis un pot de
confiture !"
Leon was so startled that his
invocation to Eleanora stuck in his
throat, and he fell back against the
wall, roaring with laughter. Pearl
had nothing for it but to join in the
laugh, and they were both splitting
their sides like a pair of children
when Pierre opened the door and
announced :
" Mme. la Baronne Leopold !"
Pearl stood up quickly; the music-
book rattled down on the notes
with a loud crash, adding to the
confusion of a scene that she felt
instinctively to be an awkward
one for her.
"Ma mere," said Leon, meeting
his mother with a profound bow,
" behold the most dutiful of sons !
I have been victimizing Mile. Perle
and myself in order that you might
be proud of me on Monday even-
ing."
"It is well, my son; but your
sister would have saved made-
moiselle the trouble and the loss of
time. You should remember that
her time is not her own. Etourdi !
Where is Mme. la Baronne?" she
added, turning to Pearl.
" I will go for her," said Pearl,
with crimson cheeks, and she left
the room.
The mother and son did not
spend the tete-a-tete in pleasantries
or endearments. In a few minutes
Mme. Mere, bonneted and cloak-
ed, came in, and she also heard a
few words that were not very ten-
der. Lon made matters a great
deal worse by declaring that he
would rather cut his throat than
compromise Pearl Redacre, whom
he regarded as a sister and vene-
rated as an angel, and that he would
run any one through the body who
Pearl.
.87
dared to say she could be com-
promised by him or any man living.
His mother was scared by the vehe-
mence lie displayed, and tried to
pour oil on the waters by assuring
him that she was only so touchy
about Pearl because she loved her
as her own child.
Mme. Mere was hurt and annoy-
ed ; but she knew her daughter-in-
law, and made no attempt to ex-
cuse either Pearl or herself.
" Thank Heaven ! they are leav-
ing Paris so soon," thought Mme.
Leopold as she went down-stairs
with her son and her mother-in-
law.
They saw her into her brougham,
and she drove away, smiling and
full of wrath.
" I must go back and apologize
to Mile. Perle," said Leon, turning
to re-enter the house.
" It is not worth while, mon
petit ; I will explain it all to her,"
said Mme. Mere, arresting him.
Leon let her have her way ;
but he was more stirred than she
had ever seen him. He put her
into the hackney-coach that she
had preferred to a seat in her
daughter-in-law's brougham, and
went on to the Foreign Office to
see his father.
Pearl, on her side, was greatly
disturbed by the incident. She
knew French ways and ideas, and
Mme. Leopold's ideas especially,
too well not to understand that she
stood convicted of grievous impro-
priety in being caught laughing
with Leon en tete-a-tete ; and, cir-
cumstanced as she was, the mis-
hap might have serious conse-
quences. Indeed, the scandalized
mother had stingingly reminded
her of this.
" Her time is not her own," she
had said to M. Leon.
" Thank goodness ! we will soon
be gone. There will be no one to
compromise me down at Gardan-
valle, I suppose," thought Pearl.
She hoped Leon would be warn-
ed by the adventure and not come
near them again. But Captain
Leopold, though a coward in some
ways, was not to be bullied into
the reality of cowardice. He de-
termined to go every morning to
the Rue du Bac until his grand-
mother left town. Meantime he
went to look after Raoul Darvallon,
to unbosom to him, as was his habit
in every grievance, great or small.
He did not find his friend at home,
and when he met him in his mo-
ther's salon that evening he was
annoyed and amazed to discover
that she had been beforehand with
him, and that, instead of at once
and unhesitatingly taking his view
of the case, Captain Darvallon lis-
tened with an unsympathizing, al-
most a severe, countenance.
"Your mother must understand
a thing of this kind more clearly
than either you or I," he said ;
" you had better be ruled by her
and not return to the house. It is
of some consequence to Mile. Red-
acre, though of course you attach
no importance to the matter."
" You are mistaken. I attach
considerable importance to it. I
don't choose that Pearl Redacre
should think me a sneak and a
coward," said Leon with some
heat.
"Since you set so high a value
on her good opinion, see you act
so as to deserve it. There would
be more delicacy, it strikes me, in
staying away."
" That depends upon how she
looks at it. I shall not be wanting
in delicacy towards her, at any
rate."
" I hope not," said Darvallon,
looking at Leon ; and as their eyes
1 88
Pearl.
met there was a threat in those of
the older man that Leon read,
though he did not interpret it.
He moved away without making
any comment, and the two friends
had no further conversation that
night.
Destiny is an indefatigable crea-
ture, weaving and spinning over
our heads and under our feet,
catching us in her toils, knotting
the threads when we break them,
snapping them when our shuttle is
flying through the woof. Mme.
Leopold had a mighty web in her
loom to-night. A parti had pre-
sented itself which realized almost
all her ambitions for Blanche.
There was no drawback this time,
except that the gentleman was a
widower and had a daughter two
years younger than Blanche; but
she was at the Sacre Cceur and
was to be married in a year, the
husband being already provided.
Barring this trifling inconvenience
the affair was perfect : old name,
fine income, chateau huitieme
siecle. Mme. de Kerbec had
found him out, and the belligerents
were to view each other at a re-
spectful distance to-morrow even-
ing at the theatre. She was ar-
ranging it all now behind her fan
with Mme. Leopold, both ladies
tenderly confidential and in their
element.
" I am bidden to dejeuner chez
le colonel to-morrow," said Captain
Darvallon when he was going away.
" I suppose we shall meet there ?"
" No," said Leon, " you will not
have that felicity."
"He told me he had asked
you."
u So he did ; but I have another
engagement."
It was an engagement contracted
with himself on the spur of the mo-
ment. For the first time since
their friendship had begun Leon
felt that a vague misunderstanding
had crept in between him and
Raoul ; it was very slight, but it
checked the perfect flow of sympa-
thy, as a touch of east wind chills
the soft kiss of a summer breeze.
He did not care to meet him at the
colonel's to-morrow, because that
would throw them en tete-a-tete for
the rest of the afternoon. Darval-
lon, on his side, was conscious of
some vague antagonistic influence,
and when they said good-night
there was something in the clasp
of Leon's hand that he missed. A
week ago the sensation would have
brought a sharp pang with it. But
as the days go by our life's trea-
sures accumulate and the value of
things changes ; their proportions
alter ; the thunder-storm of yester-
day is only a passing cloud to-day ;
our ship rides at anchor in the
sheltered port, and laughs at the
winds that beat her rudely on the
high seas yesterday, threatening de-
struction to her cargo and the lives
she carried.
Friendship was a jewel beyond
price ; but somehow its lustre was
dimmed to Raoul Darvallon, as he
looked at it, altogether uncon-
sciously, in the light of Pearl Reda-
cre's presence standing there with
the sunshine in her eyes.
Just as Pearl and Mme. Mere sat
down to breakfast next morning a
sharp ring summoned Pierre to the
door.
" Bonne maman, can you spare
me a cutlet ?" said Leon, putting in
his head, his gay hussar uniform
making a bright picture in the
doorway of the red-tiled salle a-
m anger.
" Ah ! mon petit, what a surprise.
Pierre, place monsieur's cover. You
have fallen on evil times, mon gar-
con. Is he not perverse ?" this
Pearl.
189
was to Pearl. " You know how
often I have invited him, and he
never would come, and now he
walks in and takes the bit out of
our mouths."
But the old lady was delighted.
Leon was the apple of her eye ; to
pet him and spoil him, to pay his
debts and pull him through his
scrapes, was the greatest happiness
she knew. She had felt yesterday
that both he and she had been sat
upon by Mme. Leopold they had
caught it, as Leon said and this
community of misfortune drew them
together more closely than usual
this morning. It was very naughty
of him to come straight back so
soon to the scene of his misdeed ;
but it was very plucky, and Mme.
Mere was a true woman and loved
a bold rider.
Pearl was rather frightened at
Leon's audacity, and, if the truth
must be told, a trifle flattered. She'
had grown fond of Blanche's brother,
he had been so kind and brother-
like to her in her altered position ;
and just as the superadded sun-
shine on Captain Darvallon's path
had dwarfed certain figures, so the
shadows of isolation in Pearl's had
magnified objects which she would
scarcely have noticed in the sun-
light of her happy home. Every
cup of cold water was precious to
her now.
" I have risked my head to eat
this cutlet with you, bonne maman,"
said Leon, spreading out his nap-
kin triumphantly. " I have refused
an appeal from my colonel to go
and breakfast with him, and he is
very touchy ; he is certain to cashier
me, if he does not have me shot."
"You wicked boy! And what
excuse did you give the colonel ?"
asked the delighted grandmother.
" That I had a better engage-
ment. The fact is, it bores me to
go there ; he breakfasts at half-past
ten, and one must get up over-night
to be ready at such unearthly
hours. Moreover, I had an official
call to make, as you perceive. I
have just come from the War Office.
Besides, I must see you while I can ;
you will soon be leaving town now.
Mademoiselle, when some one ap-
plies to you one of these days for a
character of me, I hope you will
bear witness to me as a model petit-
fils, ergo the making of a model
husband."
"What is he saying, my dear?"
inquired Mme. Mere.
Pearl explained at the top of her
voice.
"Ah! te voila done converti au
mariage ? How I rejoice, mon pe-
tit ! You have, then, seen her, and
she pleases you?"
"I have seen no one, and I am
not converted," protested Leon ;
" but I know my mother. It was
an ancestor of hers in the female
line who invented the saying, * Ce
que femme veut, Dieu veut.' If
she holds out as she is sure to do
I must capitulate. Mon Dieu !
what a good world this would be
if there were no giving in mar-
riage."
" When does the regiment start
for Algiers?" inquired Mme. Mere,
who had missed the final invoca-
tion.
" It does not know. Perhaps
not at all. My mother is capable
of countermanding the order."
" It will be a great relief to her
when you marry, mon petit. She
will be tranquil about you then."
" Why can she not be tranquil
about me now? I have ranged
myself. You know I have ranged
myself, bonne maman ?" he said,
bending towards the old lady and
pitching his voice to a shout.
" Yes, yes ; but you are still ca-
190
Pearl.
pable of many follies, Leon," said
Mme. Mere, shaking her head.
"What does she mean ?" said Le"-
on, addressing the dish and help-
ing himself to puree de pommes de
terre.
Pearl only laughed.
"What is she driving at?" said
Leon, his curiosity aroused by the
comical expression of the young
girl's face.
" Ask her," said Pearl.
But Mme. Mere would or could
explain nothing beyond the palpa-
ble fact that his mother wanted him
to marry.
"I will not leave you alone till
you tell me," said Leon in a safe
sotto voce across the table; "there
is something in the wind, and you
know it."
His curiosity amused Pearl, and
the spirit of mischief got up in
her ; she determined to mystify
him.
"Whatever I know, I tell no
tales," she said.
" You shall tell me. I swear you
shall ! I will give you no peace
till you do," protested Leon. And
tli en he began to make inquiries
about the works that were going
on at Gardanvalle; how far the
water-pipes were being carried, and
if his suggestion about breaking in
a western window in one of the
rooms had been adopted.
They went into the salon for
coffee, and Mme. Mere dipped into
a newspaper, leaving Pearl and
Leon to fight over their politics
alone. They had not got beyond
the chances for and against Fain
that evening when Pierre came in
with a letter for madame. It was
from Gardanvalle. She opened it
and glanced down the page.
" Ah ! mon Dieu, the chateau is
burned down," she cried, drop-
ping the letter on her knees and
turning to Leon with a face of
dismay.
Leon snatched up the letter and
ran his eye over it.
" Voyons, bonne mam an, it is
nothing to be frightened at," he
said ; "only a part of the left wing
burned your rooms, unfortunate-
ly but the mischief is not so great.
Daron says three months will see
all put to rights ; but you can't re-
turn to Gardanvalle till your rooms
are rebuilt and put in order. So
much the better ! You will have
to stay here till I start for Algiers
or get married."
Mme. Mere was on her feet in a
moment, ringing the bell and or-
dering a coach. She must go and
communicate this disastrous intel-
ligence to the baron ; he would ad-
vise, he would do something.
" Shall I accompany you, or shall
I wait here and practise my sing-
ing with mademoiselle till you re-
turn ?" said Leon.
" Of course you will accompany
me. What an incorrigible boy you
are ! I shall be ready in two min-
utes. What o'clock is it? Just
one ! Your father will be busy
with his audiences if I don't make
haste."
And she bustled off, leaving
Pearl and Leon together.
"Now tell me what is this fly in
my mother's ear," said Leon, dis-
missing the conflagration of the
family roof-tree as a matter of
secondary interest. "Who is she
crazed for me to marry ?"
"I don't know. I give you my
word I don't," protested Pearl;
but Leon looked at the dimples in
her cheeks, with an imp of mis-
chief lurking in each of them, and
he did not believe her.
" Why, then, is she crazed all of
a sudden for me to marry nobody
in particular?"
Pearl.
191
" Perhaps she is afraid of your
marrying somebody in particular."
"Ha!" His black eyes flashed
with a perfect fire of curiosity.
At any cost Pearl must tantalize
him a bit.
" You must ask me no ques-
tions," she said, turning to look
for her work-basket, but in reality
to hide her face. " I know no-
thing; I can tell you nothing."
" Nay, but that is unkind ; that
is wicked. You will tell me her
name ? I adjure you ! Nay " see-
ing Pearl shake her head while
still keeping it averted " if you
are my friend ! We are friends,
are we not ? Well, one word the
name of the family one word to
put me on the scent ! Voyons !"
Pearl moved toward the mantel-
piece, and waved him away with a
mock heroic gesture, but with a
laughing devil in her eyes that
lent their brown lustre a strange
fascination. He seized her hand
a small, tapering hand, soft and
milk-white clasped it in both his
own, and dropping on one knee,
his sabretache clanking with a loud
metallic jingle as he knelt, " One
word the first syllable the first
letter !" he cried passionately and
looking up into her face.
" M. le Capitaine Darvallon !"
called out Pierre, throwing open
the door.
Leon started violently to his
feet, his sabretache ringing. Dar-
vallon hesitated whether to ad-
vance or not. There was an awk-
ward pause as the three stood un-
certain, abashed. But it was only
for a moment, and Mme. Mere
came in and the spell was broken.
"Ah! bon jour, monsieur. They
have told you the news ? Is it not
terrible ! Come, mon petit. Is
the coach at the door? Mon Dieu !
one is never a moment quiet.
How sorry I am that I can't wait !
But you will perhaps look in on
me to-morrow or this evening ? I
shall be delighted."
Captain Darvallon said he would
do himself the honor of calling soon
again, and was going to withdraw,
contenting himself with a distant
bow to Pearl, but she came for-
ward, holding out her hand and
her eyes still full of laughter.
He took her hand, but looked
at her with an expression that
quenched the laughter in a mo-
ment. Was he angry? She turn-
ed instinctively to Leon, as if ex-
pecting him to explain, to say
something; but Leon's face fright-
ened her more than Captain Dar-
vallon's ; there was a defiant flash
in the black eyes that made her
heart stop beating, as if it had been
suddenly frozen. It was not at
her that Leon was looking, but at
his friend. He turned to her with
an air of ostentatious deference
that would have made her laugh, if
she had not been so much more
inclined to cry, and with a low
bow, " A 1'honneur de vous revoir,
mademoiselle," he said.
Captain Darvallon went out after
Mme. Mere, without trying to ex-
change another glance with Pearl.
She felt very miserable as the
door closed behind them.
TO BE CONTINUED.
I 9 2
The Church and Medicine.
THE CHURCH AND MEDICINE
AMONG the calumnies against
the church which are most persist-
ently brought forward by infidel
and Protestant writers, and guile-
lessly accepted by their blind fol-
lowers, the assertion that the church
is, or has been, opposed to science
holds a prominent place. This
falsehood may, in fact, be said to
have become history, so much so
that we are sure whoever should
dispute it would in many com-
munities be regarded as an imbe-
cile deserving pity rather than
anger. It is true that the falseness
of the statement has been repeat-
edly shown, and that no one con-
versant with either general history
or that of particular sciences can
be deceived by it ; the mass of
readers have to get their ideas of
history as they can, and have
neither time nor opportunity to
inquire into the accuracy of the
information. Indeed, many utterly
false statements, like the one in
question, are announced with such
an air of conviction, as being so
far beyond doubt, that the unwary
reader cannot but accept them, and
even Catholics have uncomfortable
doubts lest there be some germ of
truth in them. For those who
know the truth, to put these falla-
cies aside with the remark that
they have been disproved is as if
the gardener should say that the
garden had been weeded and the
lawn mown, and that he need give
them no further attention.
Indeed, it is hard not to think
that men of a certain order of mind
presume on the impunity they have
experienced to make statements
which can stand only by the indif-
ference of opponents. Here is an
instance: "It lias always been the
policy of the church to discourage
the physician and his art ; he in-
terfered too much with the gifts
and profits of the shrines." * To
one knowing the facts such a state-
ment is ludicrous, but it is sad to
think that numbers of honest and
intelligent people accept it without
question.
The attitude of the church to
science is too vast a subject for a
short paper, and, besides, it will be
more profitable to restrict this in-
quiry to her relations with medi-
cine, and especially with anatomy.
In ancient and modern times,
among pagans and Christians alike,
the dissection of human bodies, by
which means alone anatomy can be
learned, has been an object of
popular abhorrence. Superstition
throws a vague shadow of unho-
liness over these investigations,
while the scrupulous might fear
that their tendencies were towards
materialism. In a word, if the
church were what she is often re-
presented, we cannot doubt that
she would attack the study of ana-
tomy with the most intolerant
bigotry.
The following remarks on the
early history of Christian medicine
are restricted to propositions which
are generally admitted or for which
good authority can be shown. It is
admitted that in Italy, during the
early part of the middle ages, medi-
cal learning was nearly confined to
religious orders, who treated the
sick abroad and received the suffer-
* Draper's Conflict of Religion and Science,
1875, p. 369.
The Church and Medicine.
193
ing poor into hospitals in the mo-
nasteries. Few have presumed to
question the great services rendered
to learning by the Benedictines.
Medical science was, no doubt,
still in its infancy, but it is due to
the church that it existed at all.
The light of the medical school
of Salerno is too brilliant in the
general darkness to be ignored.
The only way to avoid giving
credit to those to whom it is due
is to maintain that science was in-
troduced into Europe by those
outside. Prof, Draper* declares
that " the first medical college es-
tablished in Europe was that found-
ed by the Saracens at Salerno, in
Italy " a statement which it would
be difficult to support by a date or
by a convincing authority. We have
been unable to ascertain when this
celebrated school began its benefi-
cent work, but the following de-
tached facts show the folly of as-
cribing this honor to the Saracens.
St. Benedict founded the abbey of
Monte Casino in 528 or 529. In
the annals of the Benedictine Or-
der f there is a description of the
position of the hospital (nosoco-
mium) in that monastery as it was
in 720. Sprengel J goes so far as to
say that Berthier, the abbot of the
same abbey in the ninth century,
was certainly not the first who gave
medical instruction and wrote me-
dical works. There is authority
given by Tosti to show that from
the time of Pope John VIII., who
reigned from 872 to 882, the monks
of Monte Casino were assiduously
devoted to medical studies. Spren-
gel states that the school of Salerno
was founded by the Benedictines,
* Loc. cit., p. 115.
f By Mabillon.
+ Histoire de la Medecine, translated from the
German into French, vol. ii.
\Storia, della Badia di Monte-Cassino,vo\. i.
P- 345-
VOL. XXIX. 13
and asserts that even in the eighth
century it was very celebrated for
medicine. The Saracens did not
capture Salerno till 905, and held
it but fifteen years. One would
not suppose that this was a very
favorable opportunity for an in-
vading enemy of hostile race and
religion to found a school. But
even if we should admit, contrary
as it is to all evidence, that the
Saracens really did found the
school and that it was the first one
of medicine in Europe, is it not
remarkable that after their brief
stay it should not only have per-
sisted but have flourished, as was
the case ? Daremberg, * speaking
of the abuse heaped on the early
part of the middle ages, very justly
observes : " If during these centu-
ries there had reigned only igno-
rance and superstition, or rather if
scientific ideas had been entirely
wanting, it is hard to understand
how first the Arabs, and then the
Renaissance, had been able to
scatter such entirely new and yet
such efficacious germs on such
barren soil." It is true that medi-
cal knowledge in Italy was in-
creased from Saracen sources, and
it is a proof of the catholic spirit
of the monks who took knowledge,
or what passed for such, even from
the infidels. In Spain the Moors
had a considerable influence on me-
dicine, but yet none of the great
discoveries of the era of the Re-
naissance can be traced to them.
In the eleventh and twelfth cen-
turies the school of Salerno was in
its prime, enjoying general respect
and sending forth many distinguish-
ed men. To obtain a degree at
least five years had to be devoted
to the study of medicine alone,
after a preparatory course of two
or three years. To practise sur-
* Histoire des Sciences Medicates,
194
The Church and Medicine.
gery another year was required to
be given to the study of anatomy,
though it is to be feared that this
was generally taught on animals.
Other medical schools sprang up,
and in the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries Salerno lost its
pre-eminence. Prosperous schools
at Naples, Rome, Bologna, Padua,
Pisa, Pavia showed the interest
taken in medicine.
As anatomy is the basis of
rational medicine, and as dissec-
tion is the only means of learning
it, there can be no question of the
gratitude we owe to the authorities
that first permitted its practice.
It is pleasant to be able to record
that this merit, at least, has not
been awarded to the Saracens.
What little 'they knew of anatomy
they had learned from old authors.*
Their religion forbade such inves-
tigations, and the revival of anato-
my in the sixteenth century is due
to Christians. The movement,
indeed, had begun much earlier,
though we do not know exactly at
what time.
Mondino, professor of anatomy
at Bologna, is known to have dis-
sected. He wrote an original
work on anatomy in 1315, more
than a century before the inven-
tion of printing (that " severe blow
to Catholicism "j), which was pre-
served in manuscript and publish-
ed in type in 1478 at Pavia an
instance of the opposition the
church has always offered to the
acquisition and diffusion of know-
ledge. It is thought that artists as
well as physicians studied :!ie inti-
mate structure of the human body.
According to Sir Charles Bell, Da
Vinci, born in 1452, and Michael
Angelo, born in 1474? were the
best anatomists of their day. The
realistic pictures of the Spanish
Sprengel.
t Draper, p. 292.
school imply more than a superfi-
cial knowledge of anatomy. Bene-
detti and Achillini, anatomists of
the fifteenth century, both dissect-
ed. Berenger de Carpi, professor
of anatomy at Bologna early in the
sixteenth century, is said to have
dissected one hundred bodies.*
This would imply the existence of
a law, or at least a custom, allow-
ing the use of the unclaimed dead
in hospitals. Later in the same
century this privilege was enjoyed
by Eustachius at Rome. This is a
proof of liberality not easily to be
controverted, and an example which
many States in the Union would
do well to imitate. f Various eccle-
siastical authorities have author-
ized dissection, sometimes by di-
rect assent, sometimes by silence.
And we are not aware that any
have ever forbidden it. The
church certainly never has done so.
It has, indeed, been claimed that
Boniface VIII. issued a bull
against it in 1300, but it appears
that he simply forbade the custom
of eviscerating and cooking the
dead, which had come into vogue
during the Crusades, in order to
allow the remains of the fallen to
be conveyed to their homes.
The sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries were a glorious period in
the history of anatomy. Then
flourished the men whose names,
attached to organs and parts
which they discovered or describ-
ed, are familiar to every student.
The anatomical chair at Padua was
occupied successively by Vesalius,
Columbus, Fallopius, Fabricius, Cas-
serius, and Spigelius ; Eustachius,
Varolius, and Caesalpinus taught "
* Lauth, Histoire de FA natomie.
tThis is a disagreeable subject, but it was
thought best not to avoid it, as it is of much weight
as an argument. Wise legislation in this matter is
certainly a criterion of civilization ; the want of it
is the cause of many of the disgusting horrors so
common in the newspapers of this time.
The Church and Medicine.
195
at Rome, Vidius- at Pisa, Arantius
at Bologna, Malpighius at Messina.
Many of these taught at several
cities and received marked honors
from prelates and princes.
The services of Vesalius and
Eustachius to the cause of modern
anatomy were so great that some
sketch of their careers will not be
out of place. Vesalius was born at
Brussels in 1514, of a wealthy fami-
ly distinguished in medicine. He
pursued his earlier studies at the
celebrated University of Louvain,
and later studied medicine at
various places. He had a remark-
ably original mind, was not satis-
fied with repetitions of ancient
learning, but would study nature
for himself. He quarrelled with
Sylvius, his professor of anatomy
at Paris, because he would not
pay the respect to the views of
Galen which his teacher thought
proper. At twenty he discovered
the valves of the aorta and of the
pulmonary artery. But three years
later the senate of Venice appoint-
ed him professor of anatomy at
Padua. He appears, however, not
to have spent all his time there, for
he taught his favorite science at
Bologna and Pisa also. At the
age of twenty-nine he published
his great work on anatomy which
made his name immortal. He
was celebrated as a practitioner
as well as an anatomist, and a year
later he gave up his studies to be
physician at the court of the king
of Spain, apparently wearied by
the controversies which the origi-
nality of his genius had brought
upon him. He followed the court
nineteen or twenty years, and then
suddenly set out on'a pilgrimage to
the Holy Land. At Jerusalem he
received letters from the senate of
Venice offering him the professor-
ship at Padua, then vacant by the
death of Fallopius. He accepted
the honor, but on his return he
was shipwrecked and perished on
the island of Zante. His remains
were recognized and deposited in
a chapel of the Blessed Virgin.
There has been much specula-
tion as to the cause of Vesalius'
pilgrimage. There is a romantic,
but probably quite imaginary, sto-
ry of his having cut into a live
body, thinking it dead. Some say
he went for wealth, some to get
rid of his wife, some to escape pro-
fessional jealousies. There have
been vague allusions to the Inqui-
sition, and Canon Kingsley * has pre-
sumed to hint at suspicions of
heresy. The object of his last
journey would suffice to refute this
charge, even if it had some plausi-
ble basis.
What an answer is the life of this
man alone to those who claim that
the church opposed science ! He
threw to the winds old opinions,
venerable only by antiquity, and
replaced them with the results of
original research, carried on by
methods which, though absolutely
necessary, were then, as now, re-
pulsive to the popular mind. Yet
where does this radical investiga-
tor flourish ? Not in some corner
where those who timidly sympa-
thize with him can be overlooked,
if they do not make themselves too
prominent, but in the two most
distinctly Catholic countries of Eu-
rope, and we see the Italian uni-
versities vying with one another to
honor him.
We know but little of the life of
Eustachius. He was a contempo-
rary of Vesalius, but the year of
his birth is unknown. He is one
of those who live in their works.
He was professor of anatomy at
Rome, and physician to Cardinals
* Health and Education^ 1874.
196
The Church and Medicine.
Borromeo and Rovero and to the
Duke of Urbino. He died in 1574.
Like Vesalius, he trusted to ori-
ginal research. The latter, indeed,
has the merit of having given a
great impulse to the study of ana-
tomy, but Eustachius followed it
more perseveringly. He published
a book on anatomy, but unfortu-
nately could not afford to bring
out his anatomical plates, his great
work, which, though finished in
1552, were not made public till
1714.
If the reader will consult tjie
Encyclopedia Britannica, eighth edi-
tion, article "Anatomy," he will
be edified with the following pas-
sage : '' The facts unfolded in these
figures are so important that it is
justly remarked by Lauth that if
the author himself had been fortu-
nate enough to publish them, ana-
tomy would have attained the per-
fection of the eighteenth century
two centuries earlier at least. Their
seclusion for that period in the pa-
pal library has given celebrity to
many names which would have
been known only in the verification
of the discoveries of Eustachius."
Who can read this without a feel-
ing of at least mortification that
neither pope nor librarian during
all these years should have recog-
nized the value of these plates and
rescued them from oblivion ? But
before yielding to this feeling let
us inquire how the plates were
finally given to the world.
In the early part of the eight-
eenth century Lancisi, who either
'was or had been professor of ana-
tomy at Rome, learned that on the
death of Eustachius these plates
came into the possession of a cer-
tain Pinus.* He spoke of the mat-
* As our authority is French, it is probable that
Pinus is some modification of the Italian family
ter to the pope, Clement XI., who
was interested and caused research-
es to be made. The family of Pi-
nus had become extinct, but their
books were traced to the Rossi
family and the plates were found.
They were published in 1714, one
hundred and forty years after the
death of their author. Lancisi
wrote an explanation of them with
the assistance of other anatomists,
among them the celebrated Mor-
gagni, who in 1715 was appointed
professor of anatomy at Padua.
This passage from the Encyclo-
pcedia shows how history is too fre-
quently written. Here we have a
suppression of the true, if not a
suggestion of the false. What makes
it worse is that the account just
given of the recovery of the plates
is taken from the work of that very
Lauth * from whom the writer
quotes, and the two passages are
near together.
A passing mention may be made
of Varolius, born in 1543. He
taught anatomy at Bologna, and
then at Rome, and deserves great
credit for his studies on the brain.
He was physician to Gregory XIII.,
yet his life lasted but thirty-two
years.
English writers are accustomed
to boast of Harvey's discovery of
the circulation of the blood as a
triumph of Protestant science. We
may not find it stated quite as
plainly as this, but the inference
has been offered again and again
that in some way, not very well
explained, the beneficent influence
of the " Reformation " is exempli-
fied in this discovery. We do not
propose to discuss Harvey's claims
to be called a discoverer. There
is much doubt as to what is im-
plied by the title. He certainly
had great merit. He was the first
* Histoire de FA natomie.
The Church and Medicine.
197
to write a book on the circulation
alone; lie gave a better description
of it than had been given; he pro-
bably appreciated better than any
of his predecessors the great im-
portance of the fact, and did more
to spread the knowledge of it. We
have no quarrel with any one who
asserts that this constitutes dis-
covery; much may be said on that
side, even if it be admitted that the
essential phenomena were already
known. Our purpose is not to be-
little Harvey, but to show how
much was known to anatomists in
Catholic countries, and that they
were honored, not discouraged.
William Harvey was born in
1578. He took the degree of B.A.
in 1597, and either that year or the
next went to Italy to study medi-
cine. We may believe that the in-
stinct of an anatomist led him to
choose Padua, where Fabricius was
then professor of anatomy. He re-
turned to England in 1602, and we
hear little of him till 1615, when he
began to lecture on anatomy and
surgery at the College of Physi-
cians. Thirteen years later, in
1628, when he had reached the
age of fifty, he brought out his
great work, Exercitatio Anatomica
de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Ani-
malibus* The greatest praise is
due to the correctness and vivid-
ness of the description of the ac-
tion of the heart, and to the skill
with which the subject is present-
ed. Harvey states in this work
that he had demonstrated the cir-
culation for nine years.
There has been much discussion
whether or not Harvey understood
the system of very minute vessels
by which the blood passes from the
arteries to the veins. In his book
he uses the expression " per porosi-
* " An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion
of the Heart and Blood in Animals."
tates " by pores which some have
said meant indefinite spaces, others
true vessels. The question, how-
ever, is of little importance, for,
even if Harvey had a correct idea
of the matter, it can have been only
an assumption, for it was not till
the latter half of that century that
Malpighius had the fortune to be
the first to enjoy through the micro-
scope the wonderful spectacle of
the circulation in the tissues of the
live frog.
Let us now see what was already
known on this subject and by
whom it had been written, retrac-
ing the course of discovery from
Harvey's to earlier times.
First comes Caesalpinus, a man of
great and varied learning. He was
born in 1519 and died in 1603.
He taught at Pisa, and then at Rome,
where he was physician to Pope
Clement VI II. The following pas-
sages are from his Peripatetic Ques-
tions, published in 1571 :
" With this circulation of the blood
from the right to the left ventricle by
way of the lungs everything discovered
by dissection is in complete accordance ;
for as there are two vessels ending in
the right ventricle so there are two end-
ing in the left. Of the two, however,
one only in each intromits, the other
emits, the valves being so arranged as to
secure this result." Again : " The pas-
sages of the heart are guarded by nature
in such a way that there is free intromis-
sion from the vena cava into the right
ventricle; from thence there is an outlet
to the lungs by the vena arteriosa. From
the lungs, again, there is another ingress
to the left ventricle by the arteria venosa,
from whence there is an outlet by the
aorta ; the valves at the mouths of the
vessels being so placed that they pre-
vent retrogression."
It is difficult after this to main-
tain that before Harvey it was be-
lieved that, though arterial and ven-
ous blood were of different natures,
they both had merely a to-and-fro,
198
The CJiurcJi and Medicine.
tide-like movement towards and
away from the heart. Thereare, how-
ever, very obscure and unsatisfac-
tory passages in Caesalpinus' de-
scription, and, though he had a cor-
rect general idea of the circulation,
he by no means had Harvey's clear-
ness on the subject. It is surpris-
ing to find Dr. Willis' * assertion
that
"No one in those days" i.e., after
Harvey's publication " either claimed
for himself or another so extravagant a
notion as Harvey had been reckless
enough to enunciate. Ascribed to any
respectable member of the medical pro-
fession, his immediate business would
have been to purge himself of the im-
putation. In Harvey's life-time, and for
a good while after, indeed, it was never
his title to be accounted the discoverer
of the circulation cf the blood that was
matter of question, but the fact of there
being any such circulation of the blood
as he proclaimed."
Harvey died in 1657. We are
unable to say how long a " good
while " may be, but the following
passage occurs in Borelli's great
work, De Motti Ammalium, publish-
ed at Rome in 1680-1 :f
" This motion of the blood is, I say,
calleo 1 its circulation. Partly discovered,
indeed, by Caesalpinus, but afterwards
most exactly by Harvey, it has lately
been demonstrated with such evidence
that there remains no one who still
doubts its truth."
In 1696 Pierre Bayle, certainly
no friend of the church, writes in
his Dictionnaire Historique et Crit-
ique as follows : " We should deprive
Caesalpinus of a very precious
glotvy if we did not say that he
knew the circulation of the blood,
the proofs 01 which are so plain
* William Harvey. A History of the Discovery
of the Circulation of the Blood. G. R. Willis, M.D.
London. 1878. Vide p. 211.
t It is only fair to say that we translate from the
second addition (r ditto alteni), not having obtain-
ed access to the first.
that they cannot be eluded by any
cavil."
We come next to the claims of
Columbus, who succeeded Vesalius
at Padua. He taught later at Pisa,
and then at Rome, where he was
the physician of Paul IV. In 1559
he published his work, De Re Ana-
toinica, from which the following
passages are taken :
" Nothing, however, can pass through
the septum " (of the heart) '* between the
ventricles, as is commonly said; for the
blood is carried by the vena arterialis to
the lung, whence, having been attenuat-
ed, refined, and mingled with air, it is
brought by the arteria venalis to the
left ventricle a fact which no one has
referred to in words or recorded in his
writings." Again : " When the heart
dilates it draws natural blood from the
vena cava into the right ventricle, and
prepared blood from the pulmonary vein
into the left, the valves being so dispos-
ed that they collapse and permit of its
ingress ; but when the heart contracts
they become tense, and close the aper-
tures, so that nothing can return by the
way it came. The valves of the aorta
and pulmonary artery, opening, on the
contrary, at the same moment, give pas-
sage to the spirituous blood for distribu-
tion to the body at large, and to the
natural blood for transference to the
lungs."
The statement at the close of
the first of these extracts, that no
one had yet referred to the pul-
monary circulation, is incorrect.
Servetus had done so in the Chris-
tianismi Restitutio (the " Restoration
of Christianity "), a book which he
published in 1553, and which led
to his being burned together with
it by the Calvinists at Geneva in
the same year.
The two accounts are so strik-
ingly similar that it has been urg-
ed with a good deal of plausibility
that one of the few copies of Ser-
vetus' work which escaped the fate
of the unfortunate adventurer had
fallen into the hands of Columbus.
The Church and Medicine.
199
There is no evidence, however,
that this occurred, and it is for
some reasons so improbable that it
is unfair to accuse Columbus of
plagiary on such vague suspicion.
The question, however, may be
allowed to drop, for it can be shown
that before this there was more
than an inkling of the circulation
in Spain. It is, perhaps, not gen-
erally known that Spain as well as
England and Italy claims this dis-
covery. Some ascribe it to Fran-
cisco de la Reyna, the learned far-
rier of Zamora, who wrote a book
in the middle of the sixteenth cen-
tury, but his claim is of very doubt-
ful value. In 1550, three years be-
fore the appearance of the Restora-
tion of Christianity and long after
Servetus had quitted his native
country, Montana of Monserrat *
wrote as follows :
" I say, then, that the said auricles prin-
cipally serve, either one of them alike,
to have and to hold the blood that the
heart hath need of, and to feed the heart's
necessity, in the one ventricle as in the
other, in such sort that, though the heart
may close and drive on the blood from
the ventricle, there should still be in
store with the auricles that very propor-
tionate quantity of blood which the cavi-
ties of the heart require. And the ex-
cellence of the proceeding is apparent;
for does not experience show us that
the said auricles are filled with blood
when the heart is undergoing contrac-
tion, and, when once it loosens out, then
is the time for the auricles to pour fresh
.blood into the ventricles?"
Montana gives also an excellent
account of the pulmonary circula-
tion, which is not reproduced here,
as we have not seen a literal trans-
lation of it, but only an abstract.
In 1549, a year earlier, Pedro Gi-
*For the facts concerning the Spanish anato-
mists (except Servetus) we are indebted to some very
interesting papers in the Medical Times and Ga-
zette of London, by George Gaskoin. See the
numbers for October 5 and 19 and November 23,
-1878.
meno, a well-known Spanish ana-
tomist, wrote as follows :
"The heart drawing the spirit from
the lungs, and directing to the left ven-
tricle the quantity of blood that comes
from the right ventricle, the spirit and
blood become there mixed by the instru-
mentality of friction and compression,
and so it is distributed by the arteria
magna to every part of the body."
We merely allude to the merits of
Aguero of Seville, who lived at this
time, and to those of Juan Calvo of
Valencia, who nourished in the latter
half of the same century, especially
as we do not know the precise date of
their publications. Suffice it to say
that it cannot be doubted that they
knew the chief phenomena of the
circulation, whether they had grasp-
ed their full bearing or not.
So much for this episode. It
may be interesting as showing the
gradual development of discovery.
It is of importance as showing who
were the men, in what countries,
and how encouraged, by whom at
least all the preliminary steps were
made. With the exception of Ser-
vetus, whose claims are no greater
than those of others, they were sons
of the church, living in countries
where her influence was great, and
many of them were honored by her
highest dignitaries.
In even as slight a sketch as this
paper mention must be made of
what may be called the mechani-
co-medical school, which nourish-
ed in the seventeenth century, and
which has since borne great fruit,
especially in Germany. By "school "
no particular institution is meant,
but simply the practice of applying
the laws of mechanics to the mo-
tions and internal workings of the
human body. Were the church
afraid of knowledge, surely this is
the kind of science she would con-
demn, for its tendencies may seem
200
The Church and "Medicine.
materialistic, though only so to the
foolish and the vain.
Borelli, the great light of this
school, was born near Naples in
1608. He was a professor at
Florence, Pisa, and Messina, but,
having become involved in poli-
tical troubles, he took refuge at
Rome in his old age, where he taught
mathematics at the Convent of St.
Pantaleon till 'his death in 1679.
His great work, JDe Motd Anima-
lium, was published a year or two
after his death. For a long time
it was very highly esteemed, and,
though now antiquated, still com-
mands respect as an able and origi-
nal work which marked an era in
medical science.
Malpighius has been mentioned as
the first who saw the capillary cir-
culation. He was born near Bo-
logna in 1628, and was professor of
medicine in that city, and later at
Pisa, where he became intimate
with Borelli, who no doubt exer-
cised a great influence on his ca-
reer. He taught later for a time
at Messina. In 1691 he was call-
ed to Rome and appointed chief
physician and chamberlain to Pope
Innocent 'XII., which office she held
till his death. He was a worthy
follower of Borelli. He is one of
those to whom the credit is given of
having made the microscope an in-
strument instead of a toy. He cer-
tainly used it with good effect. His
name has been preserved in con-
nection with certain points of mi-
nute anatomy.
The name of one more distin-
guished member of this school may
be mentioned. It is that of Bel-
lini, a pupil of Borelli, who was a
most successful professor of anato-
my at Pisa.
The facts mentioned in this ar-
ticle speak for themselves. Little
skill is necessary in presenting
them ; no eloquence is needed to
show their bearing, which is un-
deniably that the church favored
and fostered medicine. These facts
cannot be denied ; it is difficult
even to distort them ; but they can
be ignored. This is the only way
by which the enemies of the church
can conceal the great services she
has rendered to the science of
medicine. How persistently and
effectively this has been done may
be inferred from Prof. Draper's
presuming to inform an intelligent
public that " it had always been
the policy of the church to dis-
courage the physician and his art;
he interfered too much with the
profits of the shrines."
An Evening Service in Lent. 201
AN EVENING SERVICE IN LENT.
THE altar-lights were out ; one lamp alone
Swinging o'er silver urn, with glimmer faint
A pale, red star, constant as cloister saint
That doth one Love upon his heart enthrone.
The prayers were o'er; the earnest voice and low
Of him who unto God the people led,
Their hearts uplifted with words hallowed,
No longer stirred the air with tearful woe
Of Calvary, with blessing for the night
Of God and angels and of heart at rest
As if close folded to the Father's breast,
Where shadows darken not, nor dreams affright.
Not any sound the dim, sweet silence bore,
Save tread of reverent feet on sacred floor.
n.
Into the shadow faded radiant face
Of her whose Rosary our lips had told,
Each bead, in love's hot crucible grown gold,
Blessing our finger-tips with touch of grace.
Dim m the shadow grew the altar fair
Whose silence deep shrouded the Lord of Heaven,
This night unto his little ones not given
In shining benediction, lightening care.
Faint in the silence grew the sound of feet,
The stillness our calm prayer had scarcely stirred,
That had no organ note nor anthem heard,
No music save the unison complete
Of faithful hearts, whose tempered strings along
No doubtful note jarred fulness of soul's song.
in.
Never did angels seem more near than then
With soft, white wings the aisles' dim shadows gleamed;
The very stillness, through its deep peace, seemed
The immortal sweetness of the last amen
Wherewith the guardian spirits blessed our prayer
That gave for our good-night the peace of God.
The darkened aisles the shining creatures trod,
Each with the soul that won his presence there,
2O2
From an Irish Country-House.
So passed the narrow threshold of the door,
Kindling the darkness of the starlit night
With unseen glow of super-earthly light ;
Hushing earth's noises, that seemed sharp no more,
Dulled by the guardian wings that held each heart
In their soft folds in holy peace apart.
FROM AN IRISH COUNTRY-HOUSE.
in.
AT breakfast Y-
AUGUST i.
announced
that he had to go off, in his charac-
ter of magistrate, and settle one of
those never-ending land disputes,
and if one of the Americans cared
to join him the occasion might be
amusing as a novelty. According-
ly they set off before luncheon,
and returned late in the day, X
laughing heartily over the lively
scene he had witnessed. It ap-
pears that there was a dispute be-
tween two men as to the bounda-
ries of their respective acres, and
Mr. Y had promised to go
down as arbitrator, to see the land
in question, and determine the
rights and wrongs of the* case.
Arrived at the place, the dis-
putants came out of their cabins
and on either side of" his honor's "
horse bitterly reviled each other,
the magistrate interfering when the
war of words was too fiercely wag-
ed ; and after an amusing scene, in
which each man's coat was " trail-
ed " very low for his opponent's
ready heel, the case was finally
decided. But who knows how
soon the descendants of these two
men may take it up ? The laws of
boundaries and trespass, it appears,
in this dear green isle, cannot be
too clearly defined, for in the small
courts, and in the great as well,
these subjects are perpetually com-
ing up. At dinner our host told
some piquant anecdotes of what he
had seen in his youth in this way ;
how fights began over a few blades
of grass growing the wrong side of
a hedge, and were carried on from
generation to generation, blood-
shed not seldom following the bit-
ter recriminations. From such in-
cidents of strife and bitterness it
was gratifying to turn to another
phase of Irish character, as our
hostess laughingly announced to
her father that the ancient Brian
had "slipped off" that day. To
explain, she told us of such a case
of fidelity and gratitude as in any
other country would be remarkable,
and perhaps unheard of: how for
years and years a certain man
whom their family had once be-
friended came regularly at harvest
time to give his help in the fields,
refusing all payment, and always
seizing an opportunity to slip away
unperceived, if possible, when the
"master" and "Mr. Z " were
not by to force money or presents
upon him. Gratitude alone actuat-
From an Irish Country-House.
203
ed this visit, and Brian would have
deemed wages an insult ; and so, his
annual duty completed, he silently
stole away, returning, as he came,
on foot to his home in a distant
county. It is pleasant to add that
his benefactor always managed to
requite the honest Brian's toil be-
fore the year was out, in one way
or another, in spite of determined
opposition.
AUGUST 5.
Two of the county magistrates
dined here to-day. When duty calls
them to the court at M they
are usually invited to dine at some
gentleman's house in the neighbor-
hood. I hardly think that conver-
sation would have taken a legal
turn but for the Americans present,
who naturally fell to discussing the
differences between American and
Irish methods of justice. The
government is extremely vigilant
now, both in England and Ireland ;
the police force well established
and maintained upon an admirable
system. Every district has its po-
lice inspector to co-operate with
the local magistrates, and as the
position is a highly honorable one
and in many ways desirable, it is
usually held by men of the best
standing and character in their
class ; and the same is true of the
lesser positions in the service, no
man being accepted as a constable
I' or subaltern unless he comes up to
i'the very high government standard
in point of intelligence and moral
character and reputation, as well as
in size and physique. A curious
little Tour-page sheet, called The
Hue and Cry, is published by the
government twice a week in Dub-
> : lin, and sent all over the coun-
try to every magistrate and every
member of the constabulary in Ire-
land. It contains an account of
the various offenders against law and
order who have escaped or are not
yet apprehended, and is supposed
to set everybody who reads it on the
alert; the constables, I was told, are
expected to commit its contents
to memory, and at stated times to
have to pass an examination in the
back numbers before their inspec-
tor. Some of the descriptions of
fugitives are extremely amusing ;
one man, who had stolen a heifer,
was described as having, among
other marks for identification, " a
dirty face." * In the same issue
we observed an announcement of
free pardon to any person or per-
sons turning queen's evidence in
the Leitrim murder case, while
for the apprehension of the mur-
derers a reward of one thousand
pounds was offered.
In our conversation to-day much
was said about the former methods
of administering justice, or rather
injustice, in Ireland in those days
when a Catholic gentleman's word
was not looked upon as legal evi-
dence. Then naturally, after dis-
cussing the improvement in these
matters to-day, there came queries
as to the actual march of civiliza-
tion and tolerance; and though our
hostess admitted many things to
be better than they had once been,
there was some reason for her to
shake her head gravely. There
was more than Home Rule needed
indeed, something better, perhaps,
than Home Rule.
Talking after dinner of Irish
school-laws, an incautious and pre-
judiced person exclaimed : " But
you never can do very much with
the lower classes. What were they
a dozen years ago, I should like to
know ? Scarce a man or woman
among them could read." Here, in-'
deed, was a theme for different
* Hue and Cry, July 31, 1878.
204
From an Irish Country -House.
tongues in the company ; and in
proving how eager the Irish mind
has always been for information,
how quick to learn, how hard to keep
ignorant, many entertaining and
obscure facts were brought to light ;
stories that lie on old book-shelves,
cobwebbed and forgotten, were
brought out, and figures from the
past rose to show what Ireland was
in the middle ages, what she was
when most oppressed, what she was
all through the dreadful period of
William III. Somebody present
very proudly related the story of
Margaret O'Carroll, that learned
and gracious Irish lady of the fif-
teenth century, who, clever at
books and brewing and baking,
was the most agreeable and hospit-
able hostess and the most pious
of Catholic women. She it was
who made the pilgrimage to the
shrine of St. James of Compostella
of Spain. " And was it not Mar-
garet of Carroll," asked one of the
Americans, " who gave those fa-
mous invitations ?"
" Yes, indeed, to rich and poor
alike. McFirbis, the old antiqua-
ry, relates that twenty-seven hun-
dred people were gathered to-
gether at her invitation, and had
meat and money bestowed upon
them. She was one of the most
learned women of the day, and
Irish to the very heart's core."
"Now," said a lady present, "I
should like to know what the Eng-
lish mean by an ' ignorant Irish-
man.' What have they tried to
make of the lower classes in Ire-
land? I well remember my grand-
father telling of the time when it
was illegal for a Catholic to be em-
ployed in a school, and felony for
a Catholic to give any child in-
struction."
"Yes, that was the law that
brought the 'hedge-schoolmaster'
into vogue/'' says somebody else.
" In the old days there were among
the educated Catholics, oppressed
and hounded as they were by sta-
tutes and penalties, some few who
tried to evade the letter of the law
by teaching under the hedges by
stealth. The Irish peasant long-
ed for education, and in spite of
English laws he continued to get
it. To my way of thinking," this
speaker continues, with a heighten-
ed color, "it ought to be a proud
boast for any man that he was
taught by a * hedge-schoolmas-
ter.'"
MONDAY.
We drove out to-day, and our
recent talk about Irish education
made us look with newly-awaken-
ed interest at the school-houses we
passed. The first was a neat white-
washed building, with a plain in-
terior and thoroughly Catholic air,,
though, of course, the attendance
was mixed. The schoolmistress
was a pleasant young woman of the
middle class, fairly well informed,
and interested in her work, having,
some knowledge of music and a
good common-school education.
" How comes it," said one of the
Americans, " that you have a re-
gularly organized Catholic school
here ?"
"It is not entirely Catholic," re-
sponded Y . " You see Mr.
R (the school commissioner)
is allowed to give Catholic instruc-
tion, but none of the Protestant
children attend k ; they go regu-
larly to their own clergyman."
" That sounds fair enough."
" Yes ; but you see all Catholic
board teachers must have a certain
amount of education, and general-i
ly pass an examination in the Dub-l
lin Training-School, which is a Pro-
testant institution. Few Catholic
parents like to send their daugh-
Front an Irish Country- House.
205
ters to be trained by the enemy,
yet it is a great temptation, and
one generally yielded to in spite of
the opposition of the clergy. I
suppose," continued Y , " no
question ever mooted had so much
of right and wrong on both sides
and was so difficult to settle justly.
At present many Protestants admit
the injustice of there being no Ca-
tholic university. Our country is
as thoroughly Catholic as Scotland
is Presbyterian, yet we cannot get
our claim properly recognized.
This must come by degrees, I sup-
pose; there has been a great im-
provement, however, within the last
twenty years."
" And are there no denomina-
tional schools ?"
" Oh ! yes ; the Protestants and
Catholics alike have many small
schools of their own. There, we
are coming now to one of them ;
this is a purely Protestant estab-
lishment."
It was a very pretty building, the
entrance by a garden blooming with
common flowers, the windows lat-
ticed, and the doorway picturesque
with hanging vines. A troop of
children were on their way back to
the school from their afternoon re-
cess, and there was a comfortable
air of well-being about them that
showed plainly how much care was
bestowed upon their physical as
well as mental wants by the school-
board directors.
"The Protestant part of the
community being the richer," said
Y , " they have more money to
give in charity to their own than
the Catholics ever have."
"And is there much feeling
among the lower classes ?"
" Even more than in the upper,"
our hostess said; "but what would
you expect? There is a deep, in-
dignant sense of wrong burning in
every Irishman's heart, and from
time immemorial the fact of his
Catholicism has been the great
cause of it. It is Protestant Eng-
land that has dealt the blows at
Catholic Ireland. Protestant Ireland,
only may hope to prosper; and
these poor people, many of whom
remember their fathers and grand-
fathers struggling against persecu-
tion, poverty, even starvation, re-
member also that the struggle came
because of the faith in which they
were born, and in which," she add-
ed, smiling, " every one of them
will die!"
" But we have drifted away from
the school-board question," said
Y after a moment, " and I
have just a few more words to say.
You know that when the first ef-
forts at school reform were made
Bible lessons and religious instruc-
tion formed a distinct part of the
system ; but now the teacher is at
liberty, at a fixed hour, to give re-
ligious instruction in accordance
with the need of the majority of
his pupils, and, the hour being
known, only those pupils who wish
to conform need remain within for
it."
"I have been thinking," broke
in our friend from India, who was
riding his white horse near the car-
riage, " that those school-houses
we saw between this and F
would be delightfully cool retreats;
did you notice the stone floors and
thatched roofs?"
"Yes," said our hostess; "but
those are rare. We have good
boarded floors in C , and, in-
deed, our children are in every way
comfortably off, with Jane and her
father to teach them."
In some way we let national and
political topics drift away dur-
ing the last part of our drive, for
suddenly all the air seemed to grow
206
From an Irish Country- House.
full of that curious golden light
which we have noticed on so many
afternoons in Ireland. The trees
caught it and transfigured all the
roadside, and the party on horse-
back, who rode on ahead, and who
drew rein for a few moments under
a clump of wide-spreading old
trees, were glorified in a strange,
uncertain way, the red lights of
the sunset filtering through the yel-
low and the shadows stretching
afar off, while the outlines in the
west grew more radiant, and every
blossom and bit of verdure border-
ing our path gained a new perfec-
tion in this wonderful still death of
day. Over all the land had come
this sudden benediction of color,
and the cool wind that blew had
that fragrance of sea-mosses in it
that makes one strain the eye for a
glimpse of the restless ocean, which
we seem to feel up here, though we
never see it. A girl and boy saun-
tering on the roadside had clam-
bered up a moss-grown wall, and
were evidently enjoying the ra-
diance of the hour, unconscious of
its aesthetic charm ; and had Birket
Foster and George Boughton but
seen them they would have recog-
nized perfect figures for their mag-
netic summer landscapes : the girl's
bare brown feet, dark cotton gown,
and striped shawl showing perfect-
ly against the hedge, her face col-
ored by the evening light, her hair
tossed and blown about her cheeks;
the boy in dingy corduroys, his
hands clasped behind his head as
he raised his face in childish, wait-
ing wonderment at the clouds of
amber and crimson that swept past
like a glorious, ineffable vision
across the sky.
TUESDAY.
To-day was rather bleak after
last night's unexpected glory, and,
as most of our company became
absorbed in books or letter-writing,
we missed some of our usual hours
of talk and gossip; but coming in
from a sharp ride about the mead-
ows, and looking a little wind-blown,
a certain member of the party said,
laughing :
" The winter is coming !"
" It is time to expect it," replied
Y , also laughing.
" Whatever do you mean by that?"
asked a downright American. " It
is only the beginning of August."
11 Oh !" said F , " I was only
giving Y the password to see
if he was a ' Ribbon-man.' Now I
see he is."
" Indeed, I am not" said Y ,
with a smile. " And do you know,"
he added, " you Americans view
certain things so oddly ! Now, if
you were asked suddenly, what'
would you say a * Ribbon-man '
was ?"
"A true Irishman!" exclaimed
F , with a little burst of enthu-
siasm.
Everybody laughed outright.
"I thought so," said Y , "for
which reason I put the question.
But really you are quite wrong ; a
Ribbon-man is only a member of a
secret society despised by all hon-
est-minded Irishmen certainly not
to be named in the same breath
with a Fenian."
F looked subdued but in-
terested ; so Y continued :
"I am not going to deny that
Ribbonism is the outgrowth of a
great deal of wrong-doing on the
part of land-owners and landlords,
but it is a society condemned by
the Catholic Church as base in pur- i
pose and result. Do you remem-
ber what Mr. Sullivan says about
it in his New Ireland?"
" Yes ; but what a fascination!
there is about all secret societies !
I enjoy the passwords, the signals,
From an Irish Country-House.
207
the hidden meetings. Why do not
women insist on membership, I
wonder ?"
The male portion of the com-
pany looked supercilious.
" I have heard that there was
once a lady Freemason in Ireland,
and there was a very romantic
story connected with her admis-
sion. Does anybody remember
it?"
" Oh ! yes, this is the hour for
such tales," said the young lady of
Keppoch. " A windy twilight that
is just the time ; do tell it, some-
body."
" But her story is strictly a
matter of history after all," said
R , " strange as it is. I have
often heard it from my grandfa-
ther's lips, and he heard it dis-
cussed, when he was a boy, by peo-
ple who actually knew the parties
and all the circumstances. The
young lady was the daughter of the
Hon. Arthur St. Leger, Lord Don-
eraile, and was born about 1713.
Her father was a famous Freema-
son, and was authorized to bold
lodge meetings at Doneraile House,
where from fifty to one hundred
and fifty members used to attend.
Elizabeth St. Leger was described
as a daring and vivacious girl, beau-
tiful and accomplished. She was
full of curiosity as to the duties of
Freemasonry which were performed
at Doneraile House, and resolved,
if possible, to catch a glimpse of
them from some hidden post of ob-
servation. It so happened that re-
pairs were being made to the room
adjoining that in which the lodge
was to be held on a certain even-
ing, and Miss St. Leger contrived in
advance to make a small hole in the
intervening partition, through which
she could see the interior of the
mysterious room. The night came,
and she placed herself tremblingly
at the little aperture and watched
the proceedings. But when she
had witnessed the first two steps in
Masonry a terror seized her, and
she discovered that she had no
means of escape except through
the very room where the conclud-
ing ceremonies were going on.
There was a door at the lower end,
and she seized a moment when the
Masons were absorbed in their
mystic rites to slip out, cross the
room swiftly, and open the door.
A wild shriek suddenly discovered
her to the Masons, for on reaching
the door she had encountered a
sentinel on guard, who flung her
back swooning into the room. A
terrible scene followed, for the
Freemasons were so enraged that
many of them forgot even humani-
ty and declared that Miss St. Le-
ger should suffer death. The un-
happy girl sat by, half-swooning,
while her father and brother plead-
ed for her life, and it was at last de-
cided that if she chose to undergo'
initiation into the society she should
be spared. To this she assented,
and no Freemason, it is said, ever
did more honor to his guild; she
interested herself in the charities
connected with the society, and
died revered by all who knew her
either in public or private life. A
There are many versions of the
story, and even her name is given
sometimes as Aldworth, but that
was her married name; at the time
of her initiation she was Miss Eli-
zabeth St. Leger."
We fell to telling old stories and
reminiscences to-night, and our host
had much to say of the famous Miss
O'Neill in the days of her prime.
" Was she at all like * The Foth-
eringay ' in Thackeray's Penden-
nis ?" inquired X . " It is said
he had her in mind when he wrote
the story."
208
From an Irish Country- House.
"Not in the least," exclaimed
our host energetically, "except in
her personal appearance. She was
a refined lady, both off and on the
stacre; not highly cultured, per-
haps, until after her marriage, but
by no means the vulgar creature
Thackeray describes at any time.
Her voice was simply delicious, and
her manners a combination of dig-
nity and girlish grace. Her Juliet
surpassed all others I have ever
seen."
" What a book might be written,
^ a ^ x ' , " about the Irishwo-
men who have been * queens of the
stage/ beginning with PegWoffing-
ton and coming down to Helen
Barry!"*
"But Ireland could furnish bet-
ter annals than those of the stage,"
said j . " Think, if the histo-
ries of all the brave, romantic, and
god-ly lives of her men and women
were written, what a volume it
would be ! pure and loyal, god-
fearing lives, yet full of a certain
poetry and romance ; it is this
glow of something higher than he-
roism that shines on the face of our
heroes like the light of the Ever-
lasting."
Nobody spoke for a Iktle while.
We were all busy with our individ-
ual trains of thought awakened
ky Y- 's quietly-uttered words.
One person present was looking
back to childish days, when Ireland
was the far-off country which made
the background of so much pure
Catholicism in a freer land ; when
Irish legends, Irish ballads, Irish
purposes seemed all to bear a touch
of inspiration with them; when
Ireland seemed to be the country
of hope and faith, tragedy and
that ineffable melancholy which
has tinged even her most exultant
* Something of the kind has been written, we
ielieve, by Mr. Owens Black
sayings ; and here, sitting by an
Irish fireside, listening to winds
that blew across Irish moors and
from the Irish lakes, old chords
were swept strangely and with
something in their tone that brought
a silence which was half a prayer.
E - was busy lighting candles
at the piano and drawing closer
the drapery of the windows.
" When you sing," said J -
quietly, " let it be something in
harmony with this calm twilight.
Have you Moore's Melodies there ?"
In some way all the vindictive
earnestness of the other night had
gone from A - 's voice and mind,
it seemed ; for what she sang had
only pathos and simplicity in it,
though it spoke of exile and that
passionate regret which came when
Robert Emmet laid down his life
for Ireland.
He had lived for his love, for his country he died ;
They were all that to life had entwined him ;
Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,
Nor long will his love stay behind him."
THURSDAY.
I wonder how many Irish and
English gentlemen and game-keep-
ers awoke this morning saying,
"The i2th of August!" with a
sense of the freedom and sport it
implied ? Our host came down to
an early breakfast in shooting cos-
tume, and was off while the dew
still lay on the hedges. The day
was clear and warm at the outset,
but a heavy rain set in before two
o'clock, and on some one's saying,
" How will * the master ' stand
this ?" the whole company laughed,
for never was storm so great that
the master could not climb or
cross field with his gun and dogs.
He came home about six o'clock,
drenched, of course, but in hearty
good spirits and with a fine bag of
game. Never have I tasted any-
From an Irish Country-House.
209
thing daintier than the grouse
roasted with a rich mushroom
sauce. Conversation at dinner
turned to sporting topics, on which
Americans are naturally ignorant.
In England we well remember the
bewilderment of a " hunting morn-
ing," and over here in Ireland per-
plexities deepened. We had to be
initiated into all the mysteries of
the " 1 2th," after which date shoot-
ing privileges begin and the game-
keepers breathe freely. There is
in England more antagonism be-
tween game-keepers and huntsmen
than there is in Ireland, since the
fox hunted in England is a more
dangerous foe to game than the
hare ; still, there is always a certain
amount of rivalry between the two.
Shooting in Ireland is less formally
conducted than in England chiefly,
I suppose, because the country is
so much wilder and the middle-
classes poorer; moreover, mightier
things are "traditions" in Ireland.
The English farmers we have seen
make more of a " good run " than
they do of a brave deed in their
history, and shooting seems to be
more pronouncedly an English
sport at the present day.
AUGUST 14.
Being the eve of the Assumption,
we went down to the little chapel
to superintend the simple decora-
tions for to-morrow. Some young
girls from the village had brought
up ferns and wild-flowers, and the
gardens of S contributed some
lovely blossoms. Here and there
along the shady road we stopped
the phaeton long enough to gather
more ferns, and rarely have I seen
such luxuriant green growth. Above
a bit of stream they lay in most
graceful abandon ; such rich green
stems, every leaf perfect, and the
tiny pale sprays clustering beneath.
VOL. xxix. 14
It seemed fair only to rob the bank
for Our Lady's sake; and is it not
beautiful, this rendering to our
Lord's homage his fairest gifts ?
The day was warm, still, and a
trifle hazy. Driving through the
little village, one remarked the list-
lessness of summer in open door,-
ways, tranquil attitudes, and a gen-
eral, lazy silence. But up at the
little chapel there was devotional
stir enough ; a crowd of people
were going to confession ; many
others kneeling in the churchyard ;
some busy with the schoolmistress
practising the hymns for to-mor-
row's Mass. What mattered it
that the voices rose and fell with a
rather shrill vibration ? The words
were sung with simple, youthful
fervor :
" I keep singing in my heart,
Immaculate ! immaculate !"
The singers were bright, bonny-
looking young people, who, when
their practice was at an end, came
out cheerfully to tie up ferns and
rich roses for Our Lady's altar. We
came away about sunset, leaving
that one corner of the little, chapel
green and beautiful to welcome
Our Mother on her festal day.
Strangely enough, as we drove away
we passed a party of people bent
on preparing for some Protestant
church festival. Comfortable and
well-to-do they looked, with well-
filled hampers and a general im-
pression of new ribbons and smart
gowns. Few things strike Ameri-
cans more forcibly, in both Eng-
land and Ireland, than the outward*
and inward air of prosperity and
luxury which affects all Protestant
church matters and people. Occa-
sionally we have been moved to
something like satire when in an
English cathedral town we have
remembered the never-ending flings
210
From an Irish Country-House.
at our Roman cardinals' dignity,
which is as much a part of Italian
tradition and temperament as of
church importance. In the party
we passed to-day going to their
church festival there was nothing,
of course, to complain of, and I
mention them only because they
afforded a sudden, sharp contrast to
the Catholics in the same neighbor-
hood, and made us remember we
were not in Limerick or Tipperary.
AUGUST 20.
These final days of our Irish
visit make us almost melancholy.
There is something in the very
atmosphere which is pathetic, still,
languorous, and golden : the last
days of summer harvesting ; the
last days of out-door activity, with
heads and shoulders free in the
sunshine, with a hot, fierce noon-
tide and cool breaths from the sea
coming softly ; cold winds steal up
towards evening ; our peat-fire burns
now at tea-time regularly, and,
though the verdure is untouched, a
look of autumn has crossed the
hills.
We drove out to-day, a long dis-
tance, to Lough , and on the
way passed several of those desert-
ed dwellings which in both Eng-
land and Ireland, but especially
the latter, strike Americans curi-
ously. One quite fine house stood
almost proudly going to decay.
Why was it left thus ? we asked.
" Oh !" Y answered, " the own-
ers couldn't live there ; the place
was damp, no one wanted to rent
it, and it was better to let out the
lands for pasture." We went in,
our footsteps echoing a little drear-
ily and our emotions touched slight-
ly, as is always the case on visiting
a deserted home. The rooms were
very fine, the walls thick, the door-
way and windows built in heavily,
and the wood-work handsome ; over
all hung the suggestions of " lang
syne " and the rnournfulness of
crumbling ceilings and slowly-de-
caying hearths. From every window
we could see the stretch of rich
country, but the near peat-bogs
gave up a certain dampness which
must have made it unhealthy.
On this drive to Lough we
passed a deserted church which
had in its look so strong a touch
of the mediaeval that it characteriz-
ed the whole surrounding country;
old tombs were scattered near it ;
the broken windows and moss-
grown arches looked as though it
might have been reared before the
days of William III. ; a beautiful
tree spread its branches near by,
and as a violent, sudden storm
came up we drew under the green
protection. The rain swept fierce-
ly past and about us, while the
outer branches of the dear old tree
dripped softly. The country look-
ed refreshed when the storm was
over ; it ended with a sudden, swift
clearing away of dense clouds and
a flush of dimpling, moving color,
out of which a majestic rainbow
seemed to form, arching in the
background, while hills and dales
and the silver lakes shone with a
wonderful new beauty. We drove
down quite to the shore of Lough
, stopping now and then to
ask our way of the good-humored
country-people, who had always
something quaint to say in answer.
The lake lies amidst pretty sloping
shores, on one of which Lord 's
stately residence showed clearlyj
To the left the country rises boldly ; ,
the road is tortuous and the shores
uneven, while here and there the
yellow gorse colors the hillsides
becomingly. We drove home past
the fragrant moors, meeting the
peasants and workmen and women
From an Irish Country-House.
211
with the rosy sunset on their faces ;
the old church and its grave-yard
full of solemn color, the big tree
shining a "good-evening." Every-
where we looked with tender fare-
well eyes. The beautiful country
is vanishing from our sight, and
with what fond memories do we
leave it !
AUGUST 29.
"And so it is good-by to Erin,"
says our friend from India, stand-
ing out in the sunshiny garden this
morning.
"Good-by to Erin," echo two
voices mournfully.
"What a wonderful summer-time
it has been ! Such weather ! Surely
it was a royal welcome of dear,
dear old Ireland's !"
"'We'll not see another like it for
many a day," says our host, walk-
ing up and down between the low
beds of rich flowers which lead
up to the garden wall. " Every-
where I go the people stop me
to say : ' Well, hasn't this been a
fine summer ? The Lord be prais-
ed !' Poor creatures ! they well
remember many a harvest that has
been different."
"But how fortunate," said X ,
" that our first and last glimpses
should be so radiant ! To me Ire-
land will always mean a rich green
country where the sun shines in a
glory ; where every one is hospita-
ble, generous, and friendly ; where
firesides are open and hands are
held out with a genuine grasp;
where smiles are bright and voices
kindly ; where " Was X' sub-
dued by his own eloquence ? He
looked down a moment, and then
turned his face to the hospitable,
open mansion from whose friendly
doorway we are passing.
" Ireland !" says our friend from
India slowly " ah ! what will not
Ireland mean to me this day three
months ? Think of the Indian
Christmas cheer I'm going to a
hot, fierce sun, perhaps, a longing
for a cool drink and a fresh breeze ;
and I must look back and remem-
ber //>/"
He waved his hand about de-
spairingly. And what is it Ireland
means to us all when the last day
has. come ; when we have watched
the last sunset fling its pathetic
glory over this dear land ; when we
have assembled for the final even-
ing about the fireside that has.made
us so generously welcome ? It
means so much that no one.- can
utter one word of it alL
212
The Reality of the Sufficient Reason and
THE REALITY OF THE SUFFICIENT REASON AND FIRST
CAUSE OF THE WORLD.
THAT sagacious and penetrating
thinker, Leibnitz, reasoninguponthe
necessary truths which are self-evi-
dent or demonstrable, inquires what
is their original source and ultimate
foundation.
" Some one may, however, inquire
where these ideas would be if no mind
existed, and what would be, in that case,
the real foundation of this certainty of
the eternal truths? This leads us at
last to the ultimate foundation of these
truths, namely, to that supreme and uni-
versal mind which cannot fail to exist,
whose understanding is in reality the
region of the eternal truths, as St. Au-
gustine held and most distinctly teaches.
Moreover, lest it might be thought un-
necessary to have recourse to this foun-
dation, it must be borne in mind that
these necessary truths contain the de-
termining reason and regulating princi-
ple of the really existing things them-
selves, and, in a word, the laws of the
universe. Therefore, these necessary
truths being anterior to the existence of
contingent beings, it is assuredly requi-
site that they should have their founda-
tion in the existence of a being who
subsists by necessity of nature." *
The idea of Leibnitz is a very
.clear one. Truths which do not
-depend on the existence of any
-contingent being, which are not
confined within any limits of time
or space, which are universal, un-
changeable, necessary, and eternal,
which impose a law upon our
minds and are the archetypes of
,all things existing in the visible and
invisible world, cannot be floating
about unsustained in a kind of in-
tellectual ether as self-subsistent,
abstract entities. This notion, as-
cribed to Plato by Aristotle, was
by him refuted with great copious-
-* Nouveaux Essats, liv. iv. c. it.
ness and subtlety of reasoning. Its
absurdity is so plain that the Pla-
tonists, following St. Augustine,
have maintained that Plato did not
hold it, but really intended to rep-
resent the eternal ideas as having
their foundation in the sovereign
mind. Aristotle, whatever may be
thought of Plato, sets forth in pre-
cise terms the sovereign intellect
as noesis noesios, the intelligence of
intelligence, absolute truth, or ade-
quation in terms of the infinite be-
tween the knower and the known.
We will now go back upon the
conclusions we have previously es-
tablished concerning the first truths
and principles of both rational and
experimental science, and show
how the idea of God is virtually
contained in them, educed from
them by analysis, and proved to
be really actuated in the existence
of God by a demonstration, pro-
ceeding from those things which
are naturally known to their suffi-
cient reason and first cause.
The regulating principle of thfe
argument is given by St. Paul :
"The invisible things of Him art
seen from the creation of the
world, being understood by the
things which were made."* The
way of understanding by these
made things or facts is clearly
expressed by St. Thomas : " Otn
natural cognition takes its begin-
ning from sense ; wherefore oui
natural cognition can extend itsel
just so far as it can be led by th<
hand by sensible things." W<
have already shown how we an
led by the hand to self-evident anc
First Cause of the World.
213
certain first truths, the principles
of science, " the inviolable truth."
"This inviolable truth, moreover,
we behold in the similitude of it-
self which is impressed on our
mind, inasmuch as we cognize
naturally some things which are
known in themselves, and by these
examine all other things, and ac-
cording to them judge of all things."
"The first thing which is under-
stood by us, according to the state
of the present life, is the essence
(quidditas) of the material thing." *
From this primary perception re-
sult the perceptions of first princi-
ples, from reflection upon the acts
of sense and intellect result the in-
tellectual perceptions of our own
existence and that of bodies dis-
tinct from us, and in these elements
we have the beginning of all philo-
sophy and the criterion of certitude.
It is by this road tha*t we must rise
to the cognition of God, the sum-
mit of philosophy.
It is plain, from what has been
proved in the exposition of previ-
ous topics of this essay, that the
essences perceived by the intel-
lect, in their abstract, universal ra-
tios, are necessary, immutable, eter-
nal, and potentially infinite. The
transcendental ratios of being, uni-
ty, truth, and goodness, are evi-
dently what they are by necessity,
and not by chance, or from the
capricious will of any being who
has made them. Call to mind the
principle of contradiction. Being
cannot possibly be not-being, unity
cannot be multiplicity, truth can-
not be falsehood, good cannot pos-
sibly be evil. The proposition that
they are made what they are, or
that the principle of contradiction
is made what it is, by chance, or
by a sovereign will acting without
* Summ. Theol., i. p. xii 12, Ixxxviii 3, Qq. De
Meute.
reason from arbitrary caprice, is a
mere set of words without sense.
Their necessity is self-evident from
the mere statement. What is ab-
solutely necessary cannot be chang-
ed, for the changeable is contin-
gent, and subject either to chance
or to the action of some cause, and
that which is not subject even to a
supreme will is not contingent, and
is therefore immutable. The nec-
essary and immutable is eternal,
for that which is confined to time
may have a beginning and an end-
ing and must have succession, and
is therefore both contingent and
changeable. That the transcen-
dental ratios are potentially infinite
is manifest from their universal ex-
tension to all that is intrinsically
possible. That the possible is in-
finite will be hereafter proved.
If we take, now, some determi-
nate essence, for instance humanity,
it is obvious that the same affirma-
tions are verified in the very no-
tion of essence. The individual
man is not, indeed, a necessary,
immutable, eternal, and infinite be-
ing. His really existing animal
and rational nature is contingent,
changeable, limited by beginning
and succession in time, and finite
on all sides. But his specific ratio
by which he is defined to be a ra-
tional animal is not limited to his
single and particular existence as
an individual. Humanity is some-
thing universal, which can be pre-
dicated of one and of many, of all
men in general, and of any number
of possible men without any limit.
The ideal essence, that which the
intellect understands as the idea
of what constitutes the species of
being called rational animal, pre-
scinds from the fact of one or many
men really existing, and only de-
notes what is a possible grade of
being, intrinsically capable of being
2I 4
The Reality of the Sufficient Reason and
actuated in any number of individ-
uals who can be made to exist by
a sufficient cause. In the language
of St. Thomas : " The knowledge
which we have of the soul [and by
parity of reason of the whole hu-
man essence] by virtue of an intui-
tion of the inviolable truth is such
that by it we define not what the
mind of each man actually is, but
as perfectly as we can what it
ought to be in the eternal reasons."*
The idea of animal nature, of
rational nature, and of the intrinsic
compatibility of the two as parts of
a composite essence, is something
in itself intelligible. We know that
rational animals really exist. Their
essence is therefore intrinsically
possible, and this is a necessary,
immutable, eternal truth. On the
other hand, intelligent matter, ex-
tended thought, volition gravitating
toward a corporeal mass, the bou-
quet of a vine tied up by a ribbon,
a sphere composed of moral obli-
gations revolving in an elliptical
orbit around the sun, are intrinsic
impossibles ; each one is a " triste
lupus " of incongruity. The possi-
bility of the human essence, though
known to us from its actuation in
individuals, is anterior to our
knowledge, and anterior to the ex-
istence of human beings. Ouridea
of humanity as a universal is a con-
cept of our mind, with its proxi-
mate foundation in real existences.
But what is its ultimate, neces-
sary, and eternal foundation, its
sufficient reason which precedes
all contingent beings and their
thoughts ? We have already given
the answer of Leibnitz to this ques-
tion ; but before we fix our atten-
tion directly upon it, we have yet
to bring forward another illustra-
.tion.
In the science of geometry at
* De Mente, viii.
least two postulates are assum*
viz., position and direction. From
these and whatever other elements
are necessary it is easy to con-
struct a sphere of any given dimen-
sions. A sphere, by its very es-
sence, is capable of indefinite in-
crease of geometrical magnitude.
Let it be equal to the known stel-
lar universe, it is still capable of
increase to infinity. Any point in
it can be taken as the centre of a
similar sphere. From its surface
lines can be produced of any given
length in any number of directions.
The extremities of these lines can
be taken as central points for the
construction of other spheres. Be-
yond these, the possibility of con-
tinuing the same process is indefi-
nite and illimitable. It is evident,
therefore, that the abstract ratio of
dimensive quantity or the possibil-
ity of extension is infinite. It is
obviously also necessary, immuta-
ble, and eternal.
Again, any number of spheres
can be supposed to revolve on their
own axes, and to be arranged in
planetary groups, revolving around
their suns. In any given number
of these revolutions, however great,
there must be a first one. Before
this first revolution another is con-
ceivable as equally possible with
the actually first revolution, and
before that another, and so back-
ward indefinitely and without any
necessary limit. So, also, in the
future, the possible revolutions are
infinite. All these measure pe-
riods of duration, and the measura-
bility of duration by periods of
successive change, or time, is con-
sequently infinite.
It must be perfectly evident to
every one who has not a " triste
lupus in stabulo " that the really
existing world has its actual exist-
ence projected upon a background
First Cause of the World.
215
of infinite potentiality, and that the
axioms, that every line is produci-
ble to infinity and every number
has an infinite multiplicability,
stand as signs of a universal pre-
dicate of being. The transcenden-
tal and universal ratios are eternal
and infinite. As soon as the in-
fant has abstracted his first univer-
sal from the rose or any other sen-
sible object, the invisible power
has seized his hand which will lead
him to the infinite. As soon as he
possesses the primary truths and
first principles, he has virtually the
ideas of the infinite and the eter-
nal of which he can never rid him-
self, even though he may foolishly
attempt to do so. When he can
make right and left exchange places
in his body, when he can under-
stand how the earth can revolve
on its axis from west to east and at
the same time from east to west,
remaining meanwhile stationary,
when he can put four angles into a
triangle, and shift the centre of a
circle into the middle of one of its
radii, he may rid himself of the
ideas of the infinite and the eter-
nal. Until then he will be forced
to see that there is a truth so true
that it cannot possibly be untruth,
so old that it can have no begin-
ning, so vast that it can have no
bounds. Though he should have
begun to exist with the world and
continue to exist until the end of
the world, he would never be able
to stir from one, indivisible present
instant in the middle of eternity ;
and though he should circumnavi-
gate the universe, he would never
be able to get away from the cen-
tral point of infinity. Nothing and
nowhere are not in the region of
ideas. The mind cannot utter the
"everlasting no," for its thoughts
art "a re-thinking of the thoughts
of God," * which are an " everlast-
ing yea," re-echoed in the crea-
tion and striking our ears from
every object in the universe. This
is what is intended by St. Augus-
tine and St. Thomas when they
say that the human mind thinks
" in rationibus seternis," in eternal
ratios, reasons, or ideal concep-
tions.
" Ideas are certain principal
forms or stable and unchangeable
reasons of things, because they
have not been formed, and are
therefore eternal and remain al-
ways after the same manner, and
they are contained in the divine intel-
ligence?^
" Inasmuch as any mind 'be-
holds whatever it knows with cer-
titude, in those principles accord-
ing to which judgments are elicited
concerning all things which are re-
solved into these first principles,
this mind is said to see all things
in the divine truth or in the eter-
nal reasons, and to judge of all
things according to these rea-
sons." \ This is precisely what
Leibnitz affirms. What is this ne-
cessity, eternity, and infinity of pos-
sible things, of abstract ratios, but
a shadow of real being which is
positively infinite and eternal in
act? What is abstract being,
unity, truth, goodness ? What are
abstract essences ? What are infi-
nite space and duration ? What
are the necessary principles of con-
tradiction and the sufficient rea-
son, the necessary mathematical
truths, the laws of the universe,
the ideal forms which are impressed
upon all things in nature, in their
purely ideal and intelligible atti-
tude, outside of the conceptions
*Leo.
tSt. Aug., De. Div., Qq. Ixxxiii. q. 46.
$St. Thorn., Con. Gent., lib. iii. c. 47.
2l6
The Reality of the Sufficient Reason and
of our mind and the contingent
things from which these concepts
are abstracted by our intellect ?
We must say with Leibnitz that
they have their region in the di-
vine intellect, which contains these
eternal reasons in itself, as ideas
and archetypes according to which
all possibles which have received
actual being are formed.
Our intellect receives its mea-
sure, its rule, its essential laws
from the sensible objects in nature
which are made intelligible by our
intellectual light. It is passive,
subject, and dependent. It can
read within, but only what is legible
in the great book of nature, written
without and within, all over, with
signs, hieroglyphics, picture writ-
ing, by which we are taught science,
in which we find poetry and music,
from which we learn to contem-
plate the true, the good, and the
beautiful. What is the measure of
that by which our intellect is mea-
sured ? What is the source of the
light in which all things are lu-
minous ? Only mind speaks to
mind, only the intelligent can illumi-
nateand instruct intelligence. The
work of art, be it a temple, a pic-
ture, or a poem, is the product of a
living idea, an exemplar, an ar-
chetype. The scientific work is
the product of a scientific mind.
There is a great Artist, a great
Author of science, whose intellect
is the measure of the intelligible
world, and contains the eternal
reasons, the universal laws, which
are impressed on the nature of
things, and from thence reflected
into our minds.
When we turn our mind upon
the actual world and the multitude
of beings contained in it, we per-
ceive that they are all contingent,
finite, existingin time, must have had
a beginning, and have emerged into
actual existence from an anterior
possibility. Intrinsic possibility in
itself has no tendency or power of
emerging into actual existence with-
out a sufficient reason. The being
whose intrinsic possibility or intel-
ligible essence contains in itself the
sufficient reason of existence is the
infinite, eternal being, subsisting by
necessity of nature, and containing,
as the ultimate foundation of truth,
all the necessary and universal ra-
tios of possible existences. The
ground of the possibility of contin-
gent and finite existences which
can receive a participated actual
being from the original fount of
being, must be eternal. But the
eternal reasons in the divine intel-
lect, the archetypal ideas, determine
only abstract, possible laws and
modes of being, which must or may
measure and regulate, actual exis-
tences, if they are made actual.
But their real actuation, by which
they emerge from pure potentiality
into act, has a physical possibility
only in the power of the infinite
being who contains the eternal rea-
sons in his intellect, to create them
by an act of volition. All bodies
which exist in space are in a defi-
nite number, quantity, and loca-
tion. In their essence they are in-
different in respect to existence or
non-existence, and in respect to all
possible numbers, quantities, places,
and modes of motion or rest. What-
ever substantial matter and form
may be, in whatever way extended
atoms may be ultimately constitut-
ed, an active power, exercised by
an efficient first cause, is the only
sufficient reason which can deter-
mine their actual state and rela-
tions. The genera, species, and
individuals of the vegetable world
and of animals, require the deter-
mination of an active force pro-
ceeding from a will which is sove-
First Cause of the World.
217
reign over nature, in order that
they should exist precisely as they
do, and not in some other possible
modes and numbers. ' Laws of na-
ture are a mere abstraction, as in-
competent to effect anything as a
geometrical ratio to produce a real,
solid sphere of ivory, or an artist's
plan on paper to build a cathedral
of marble ; unless they are the liv-
ing ideas of a living being, effect-
uated by a volition directing causa-
tive power upon its term. Human
beings subsist by a union between
a rational principle and matter,
which have no necessary affinity
with each other. The human mind
is passive and dependent, in re-
spect to its existence, its life, its
laws of intelligence, its union with
the sensitive organization, and all
that constitutes its specific and in-
dividual character. An intelli-
gent and creative first cause is nec-
essary in order to give existence
to the original first matter of the
universe, in its simplest and most
elementary form, even if we adopt
the nebular hypothesis and the new
theory of Mr. Lockyer; and also to
impart intelligence and reason to
contingent and finite beings. It is
only an expansion of the same ar-
gument, when we consider the ac-
tual order and countless multitude
of distinct beings existing in their
various grades in the universe.
Here let us be permitted to quote
a fine passage from Cicero, which
will perhaps be more welcome to
some of our readers from the fact
that he was no Christian theologian
but a pagan philosopher :
" Who would say that any individual
deserves the name of man who can be-
hold the exact movements of the celes-
tial sphere, the orderly courses of the
stars, and the mutual aptitudes connect-
ing all things in their common relations
with one another, and yet deny that there
is a reason presiding over this order,
asserting that the whole is the result of
chance ; whereas the wisdom regulating
all things is so great that it cannot be
adequately understood by our own ac-
quired science? If we cannot doubt
that whatever is moved by mechanism,
as, for instance, a sphere, clocks, or
any similar construction, is a product
of reason ; when we behold the heavens
moving and revolving with wonderful
celerity, and accomplishing with a per-
fect constancy of law all the annual
changes by which all things are pre-
served in their well-being, can \ve doubt
that these revolutions are regulated not
only by reason of some kind, but even
by an excellent and divine reason ? Put-
ting aside all subtle disputation, we can,
as it were, by the mere sight of our eyes
perceive the beauty of those things
which we say have been constituted by
divine providence. In the first place,
we behold the earth itself, a solid globe
held together in its spherical form by the
force of its own physical tendencies, and
placed in the midst of the universe ;
clothed with a vesture of flowers, herbs,
trees, and fruits, whose multitude is
countless and their variety inexhausti-
ble. Consider also the cool, perennial
fountains, the rivers with their clear
waters, the meadows by the river-banks
adorned with a charming verdure, the
deep, extensive caverns below the sur-
face of the ground, the rugged rocks,
the high, overhanging mountains, the
vast plains, the hidden veins of gold and
silver, the enormous masses of marble
in the quarries. How wonderful and
numerous are the various kinds of do-
mestic and wild animals ! Consider,
too, the flight and the song of birds, the
pastures filled with peacefully grazing
herds and flocks, and the forests teem-
ing with savage beasts. What shall I
say now of the race of men, the ap-
pointed cultivators of the earth, who
prevent the wild beasts from making it a
wilderness of animal savagery, and re-
press the overrunning growth of vegeta-
tion, and by continuous labor adorn the
plains, the coasts, and the islands with
dwellings and cities ? If all these things
could be made at once as visible to the
eye as they are to the mind, no one who
regarded the whole earth in one view
could possibly doubt that there is a di-
vine reason. Consider, moreover, the
grandeur of the ocean, the wonderful
constitution of the atmosphere and the
218
The Reality of the Sufficient Reason and
surrounding ether, the courses of the
sun and moon and planets. Nothing
can be more admirable and beautiful
than this spectacle, and there are also
beyond the region of the planets the im-
mense multitude of the fixed stars. What
sane man can imagine that all this splen-
did celestial array has sprung by hap-
hazard from a fortuitous concourse of
bodies, or that any nature devoid of in-
telligence and reason could have effect-
ed these things, which not only require
a reason from which they have originat-
ed, but also demand for their investiga-
tion the highest exercise of reason ?" *
This is only a short extract from
a much longer and more compre-
hensive enumeration, adorned with
many quotations from the poets,
and summarizing a great part of
the natural science of that age, in
which the eloquent Roman philo-
sopher sets forth the argument from
design for the existence of God.
It is needless to say that although
it could not be presented with
greater elegance of language, it
could be more scientifically devel-
oped and correctly illustrated by
the aid of modern discoveries.
The principle and the conclusive
force of the argument are, how-
ever, perfect and unassailable.
Greater and more original power
of intelligence is necessary to in-
vent and construct a wonderful
work of skill and art, than to un-
derstand and admire the same when
made. Therefore, if it requires
the highest efforts of intelligence
and reason to understand some part
of the order of the universe and of
the multitude of beings contained
in it, we are compelled to infer
that a being of original and most
perfect intelligence is its author
and sovereign ruler. Since the
reasons and ideal exemplars ac-
cording to which it has been made,
and which shine through it into
our minds, are necessary, infinite,
* De Naturd Deorum, lib. ii. c. 38, etc.
and eternal, they must have their
original foundation in the essence
of an infinite being, existing by ne-
cessity of nature, and be contained
in his intellect as the measure of
all things.
The ideal exemplar and arche-
type of the moral order of the uni-
verse, represented in the human
breast by the conscience, and the
argument from the moral laws by
which free and responsible beings
are regulated to a sovereign law-
giver, are in the same argumenta-
tive plane, and their exposition be-
longs to a complete synthesis of
ideas in this order. The reality of
the moral world, the reality of
moral judgments, the criterion of
right, the sufficient reason of the
moral laws, the foundation of all
ethical principles in the essence of
God, thewtllof God as the measure
of the law by which our conscience
is measured, all these topics might
be treated in a similar manner to
that with which we have been pro-
ceeding in this essay. It is not
because we undervalue this line
of argument that we abstain from
doing more than pointing out its
direction and scope. It may be
found presented with the consum-
mate ability and grace which be-
long to Dr. Newman's writings, in
several of these, especially in the
Grammar of Assent.
We have shown how sensible ob-
jects lead reason by the hand in
the way of cognition tip to the In-
finite Mind which is the origin and
source of truth. And here we will
pause for a time to contemplate
this intellectual Sun of the universe,
the primal light of whose radiance
all intelligence is but a faint and
languid ray.
Plato and Aristotle are the two
great philosophers of antiquity in
whose writings, taken together and
First Cause of the World.
219
compared with each other, the
most perfect natural theology which
has been constructed by the way
of rational demonstration without
ideas received from revelation, may
be found. In the analysis of infi-
nite, sovereign intelligence Aristo-
tle excels. We will, therefore, pre-
sent Aristotle's idea of God, follow-
ing an admirable summary of the
Aristotelian theology taken from
his own writings by that excellent
writer, Mgr. Laforet, the late Rector
Magnificus of the University of
Louvain.*
The reasoning of Aristotle is
based on the principle that the
actual is in nature prior to the pos-
sible, the immutable to the muta-
ble. Changeableness is a mark of
the relative and contingent which
depends on the absolute and the
necessary for its transition from the
state of pure possibility, or of dor-
mant potency, into actuality. The
absolute and necessary being is
above all possibility of change, free
from all mixture of dormant poten-
tiality, completely and immutably
actual in the most perfect manner,
eternal in his substance, which is
what it is by absolute necessity of
essence and cannot possibly be
otherwise. This most simple and
most perfect act in which the im-
mutable essence of the most per-
fect being consists, is the most ex-
cellent and supreme intelligence,
which is identical with supreme
blessedness and interminable life.
In the being who exists and enjoys
by instants which are evanescent,
the state of wakefulness, or fully
aroused activity of the faculties of
sense and intelligence, is that which
is most pleasurable ; and the plea-
sures of hope and memory are only
secondary and relative to this pre-
* Hist, de la Philos. Ancienne, torn. ii. See
also Aristotle's Met., book xi. ch. 7, 8, and 9.
sent, actual enjoyment. Intelli-
gence is by its nature turned to
some object which is good by its
essence, the most excellent or su-
preme intelligence faces the object
which is the most excellent or su-
preme good, for the supreme intel-
ligible and the supreme desirable,
or sovereign good, are identical in
essence. The supreme intelligence
is in itself this most excellent es-
sence, at once the intelligible and
the desirable in the most perfect
sense. It is in pure and perfect
actuation in God, and not at all in
the condition of a mere faculty,
for it is actual intelligence which
is the most excellent, and not the
mere power of exercising intellec-
tion. Moreover, God cannot be
dependent on any inferior object
of intelligence, or exercise intellec-
tion upon divers objects in a tran-
sitory way, for this would be to
deny that he has all perfection
within himself and is immutable.
He immutably possesses the most
excellent intelligible, which is iden-
tical with the most perfect good.
His happiness is therefore perfect
and eternal, consisting in the con-
templation of himself. His con-
templation is his life, since know-
ledge is a vital act, and the most
perfect life is the act of intelligence,
which exists in God most perfectly,
who is essential act and therefore
essentially, perfectly, and eternally
living. Therefore we name God
an eternal and perfect living being ;
meaning that life, in unceasing,
eternal duration, is possessed by
him and constitutes his very es-
sence.
Father Gratry sums up the doc-
trine of Aristotle in his own elo-
quent language as follows :
" To be in wakeful consciousness, to
think, to feel, to live, this is in short our
good, our enjoyment. We possess this
220
The Reality of the Sufficient Reason and
good but partially, but in God it must
subsist in absolute, infinite plenitude.
He is infinitely wakeful, because he is
all act ; there is nothing in him which
exists in an implicit, dormant state; noth-
ing which lies in the sleep of potential-
ity awaiting the future ; no quiescent
force which is preparing to act ; for all
is already in act. He thinks in the abso-
lute sense. His thought is the essential
thought ; he thinks that which is the
most excellent good ; and moreover he
is that which he thinks. As for our-
selves, when we think, we seek to see
and touch the intelligible, but he is him-
self the intelligible. His thought does
not approach more or less nearly to its
term, but is itself its own term. He
lives, absolutely and infinitely, because
his life is nothing else than this very act
itself, which is the mutual compenetra-
tion and identity of intelligence and the
intelligible. Not only does he possess
this sovereign and eternal life, but in an
admirable manner he is actually his own
life, his essence is perfect and eternal
life. ... In all things known to us we
perceive a mixture of potency and act,
of the possible and the actual ; every
living thing is continually becoming, de-
veloping itself, tending toward a higher
term, which is unattainable in the same
manner as an infinite number transcends
all possibility of completion by the per-
petual addition of units to units. There
must always remain in us something
which is in potency to a further develop-
ment, which awaits the future in order to
be reduced to actuality ; and this is the
necessary and impassable chasm which
divides the infinite from the finite. Yet,
O happy thought ! there is a Being who
is not becoming but who is ; who is abso-
lutely, who is that highest term toward
which everything is moving but without
the possibility of attaining ever, be-
cause the infinite must be infinite by es-
sence, and not by result. This being is
the infinite in absolute development of
the plenitude of boundless life."*
Aristotle's exposition of the na-
ture of God as a pure, intelligent
Spirit, self-sufficing in the infinite
beatitude of contemplation, is the
greatest triumph ever achieved by
pure human reason. What extra-
* De la Connaiss. de Dieu, t. i. 164-65.
ordinary light he may have receiv-
ed, unconsciously to himself, from
the divine intelligence, we cannot
know ; but we have no certain
proof that he borrowed, his ideas
from the Hebrews, who alone pos-
sessed a more perfect x and sub-
lime idea of God than that which
is contained in the philosophy of
the disciples of Socrates. There
are great defects in the theology
of Aristotle, and there are similar
defects in that of Plato, though
these defects are not precisely the
same in both. This is true of the
theology of all the great pagan
philosophers taken together. We
do not pretend to affirm that the
complete Theistic doctrine as taught
by the masters of Christian phi-
losophy, who drew their wisdom
from the Hebrew and Greek Scrip-
tures as well as from the pagan phi-
losophers, can be found 'explicitly
set forth in the writings of the sages
of Greece or those of their learn-
ed and eloquent Latin interpreter
and expositor, Cicero. It is a fact,
nevertheless, that the entire sub-
stratum of natural theology is
really contained in their best works,
taken together and co-ordinat-
ed in a fair, eclectic synthesis of
rational truths. We may go fur-
ther, and say that a complete Theo-
dicy is implicitly or at least virtu-
ally contained in their explicit and
formal statements. Where, in cer-
tain important respects, their ideas
are not clear, they are involved in
an obscure manner and implied in
those which are clear ; and even
their formal errors of statement can
be refuted by logical deductions
from their sound principles, and
shown to be contradictory to these
very principles. If the divine phi-
losophy of St. Thomas could have
been presented to Plato and Aris-
totle, they would have been obliged
First Cause of the World.
221
to recognize it as their own made
perfect, just as St. Thomas would
have been compelled by his ration-
al nature to admit the Coperni-
can system of physical astronomy,
if he had seen its evidence.
In regard to the one special and
fundamental doctrine of what we
may call the radical and specific
character of the divine essence, the
exposition we have given from
Aristotle is metaphysically perfect,
and nothing has ever been added
to it, or can be added to it by any
effort of the human reason. The
discoveries made by the spectro-
scope are marvellous. Certain
lines of light and shade indicate
witlf certainty the nature of sub-
stances in such distant bodies as
the sun and the other fixed stars. It
appears at present even probable
that one may ascertain, from the
constitution and condition of the
matter of very distant fixed stars,
what is the ultimatum into which
all matter is resolvable by physical
means. More wonderful is the
proof by which certain lines of in-
tellectual light manifest to the
human reason the nature of God,
showing what he is and what con-
stitutes that primal and infinite es-
sence. We cannot directly and im-
mediately perceive the fixed stars,
as they are in their physical be-
ing. We can merely catch and
refract their rays of light. But
in this way we discover indirect-
ly, by comparison with similar rays
passing through substances direct-
ly known to us as they exist on the
earth, and by similitude, the con-
stitution of these immensely dis-
tant, unapproachable bodies. In
a similar way, by means of the
similitude of created essences to
the uncreated and infinite essence
of God, we discover and under-
stand what is in that essence
infinitely distant from all that is
finite, to us unapproachable and
unknowable by any direct and im-
mediate intuition. It is true
that the similitude is only analogi-
cal, and conducts only to analogi-
cal conceptions, which are inade-
quate representations of the infi-
nite, invisible reality of the divine
essence. Yet they are just and cor-
rect conceptions with their ultimate
foundation in the eternal and nec-
essary being of God, in the su-
preme intelligible essence known
to the divine intelligence compre-
hensively and immediately. They
are manifested to us by the sove-
reign intelligence, of which our own
intellectual faculty is a diminuted
participation and resemblance, by
reflected and refracted rays com-
ing to us through created beings.
By the perfections of contingent
and created beings, we infer and
conclude with rational certitude
what is the supreme and absolute
perfection of the necessary and
self-existing Being. What is, in it-
self, formally and simply a perfec-
tion, we attribute to the most per-
fect Being formally, removing the
limits of the finite grade of essence,
and adding actual infinitude or per-
fect, boundless plenitude of the for-
mal perfection. Thus, from the in-
telligible in our finite intellect, we
conclude the absolute and infinite
intelligible in the divine intellect.
From the intelligence of the hu-
man mind, we infer the infinite
intelligence of the divine mind.
From our own consciousness of
partial and evanescent enjoyment
in waking, sensitive, and rational
activity, we infer the perfect and
eternal beatitude of God, in the
most pure and perfect act of in-
tellectual or spiritual life. This
is the contemplation and posses-
sion of the most excellent good,
222
The Reality of the Sufficient Reason and
the infinite object of knowledge
and complacency, which is none
other than himself. By those per-
fections which are not simply and
formally perfections, such as the
magnitude and motion of bodies in
space, organic structure, sensation,
and discursive reasoning, we infer
the virtual existence of the same,
not formally, but virtually and in a
more eminent mode, in the first
cause, and in the ideal archetypes
of the divine reason according to
which these perfections have been
made to exist in creatures. It is
impossible for human reason to
get any nearer than this to an appre-
hension of the intelligible essence
of God, that infinite object of his
eternal contemplation, and most
excellent good in which he posses-
ses sovereign beatitude. Reason
can go no higher than its fountain,
the perception of finite objects and
first truths, and must flow and aug-
ment itself according to its original
law of motion and direction. The
universe presents to the mind a
vast and by us immeasurable ob-
ject of contemplation and compla-
cency. It is a sign and a re-
semblance of something infinitely
greater and better, of which it is a
faint, miniature reflection, like that
of the sky in a dewdrop. The in-
finitely great and good essence is
God, but this essence is unseen
and invisible in respect to our
finite vision, as the sun is when it
is below the horizon. The light of
the hidden sun gilds the mountain-
tops, inflames the clouds which
hover around the eastern or west-
ern horizon, casts twilight on the
earth, and is reflected by the moon
and by the morning and evening
stars. In a similar way we see by
the light which comes from the
primal source of light, which is not
itself visible to the mind, and ad-
mire his reflected radiance which
illuminates the creation.
Oculos in altum tollite :
lllic licebit visere
Signum perennis glorise.
Illustre quiddam cernimus,
Quod nesciat finem pati,
Sublime, celsum, interminum,
Antiquius coelo et chao.
Lift up your eyes on high :
Behold the radiant sign
Of Him who from infinity
Fills space with rays divine.
Unfading glory glows
In that perennial light,
Whose source no orb that rose
At morn, or set at night.
Eternity's embrace
His being did enclose,
Ere time or crowded space
From night and chaos rose.
No night succeeds eternal light,
No bound arrests the infinite.
Plato's doctrine of the archetypal
ideas is not inconsistent with the
doctrine of Aristotle on the self-suf-
ficing intelligence of God, and his
sovereign beatitude in the contem-
plation of his own essence. It is
only requisite that we locate these
ideas in the divine intellect and re-
fer their ultimate foundation to the
divine essence, in order to remove
all Aristotle's objections against
Plato's ideal theory. The contem-
plation of God includes in its ob-
ject the eternal reasons according
to which he has created the uni-
verse. He sees them in his own
most perfect being, which is essen-
tially capable of imitation and par-
ticipation ; and in his infinite, in-
dependent power, by which he can
create finite beings without any
pre-existing material as a subject
to act upon. It is impossible that
God should be dependent on any-
thing extrinsic to himself for know-
ledge, perfection, or happiness.
He is himself his own intelligence,
life, and perfect beatitude, in act.
All other beings depend from him,
receive motion toward their end
from him, and revolve around him
as their centre. The same reasons
First Cause of the World.
223
which prove that he is their first
mover prove that he is their creator.
Existence, in finite, contingent
things, is a change from the mere
possibility which they have in their
eternal ratios and archetypes into
actual being. According to Aris-
totle's fundamental principle, all
possibility and potency is founded
in a prior and immutable act. The
possibilities are therefore all found-
ed in the being of God. Every
new act succeeding a dormant,
unactualized potentiality is origin-
ally moved into actuation, and into
a succession of new actuations, by
the first mover, the immutable.
The divine ideas are immutable,
but the contingent and finite terms,
recipient of the divine action,
which come into existence in finite
space and finite time, and are essen-
tially changeable, have no reason
of being except in their first cause
and creator. In a certain sense,
all these terms of the divine, crea-
tive wisdom must be in God.
When we say they are extrinsic or
external to him, we do not mean
that they are separated from him
by distance in space, but only that
they are substantially distinct in
an inferior grade of actual essence.
All their inferior grades of essence
and their finite perfections exist, in
a more eminent and sublime man-
ner, in the essence of God ; and
their being is a participation of the
infinite fount of being in him.
Nothing is added to or taken from
the essence, the being, the perfec-
tion, the beatitude of God, by the
new actuations which give distinct
substantiality and life to corporeal
and spiritual beings created from
nothing by the free-will of God.
Pure love calls into distinct, in-
dividual, conscious existence the
multitude of rational creatures, ca-
pable of knowledge and enjoyment,
and, for their sakes, the entire uni-
verse. The sovereign good dif-
fuses itself, but does not receive
augmentation.
The creative act is a mystery,
but God is full of mysteries and
incomprehensible. Creation, like-
wise, is full of mysteries and in-
comprehensible. The exercise of
causative force by physical and spi-
ritual causes, by attraction, repul-
sion, cogitation, volition ; the mod-
ifications effected, in pre-existing
bodies and minds, by all kinds of
natural agents, are mysterious. It
is a mystery that the mind can give
birth to conceptions, ideas, what
are called creations of genius and
art. Generation is a greater mys-
tery, and every new infant is as
great a marvel as if it were the
first and only specimen of its kind.
If a finite and dependent cause
can bring such wonders to pass, by
the help of material causes, effect-
ing so many modifications in sub-
stances already existing, it is rea-
sonable to think that the first, infi-
nite, independent cause should pro-
duce an effect infinitely transcend-
ing any effect of second causes. If
the term of a finite act be a mode
of substance, the term of an infi-
nite act should be substance.
The lack of any explicit concep-
tion and affirmation of the creation
of the subjacent terms of the di-
vine action on the universe, out of
nothing pre-existing as nature or
material, in the Greek philosophers,
seems strange. It makes their splen-
did theology seem like a superb
statue perfectly worked out in the
upper part, but terminating in an
unhewn marble block below the
breast. It maybe said, in explana-
tion of this fact, that pure human
reason cannot find the formula of
creation for itself, that it must be
given to it. We will not stop to
224
The Reality of the Sufficient Reason.
discuss this question. Be it as it
may, when the formula is once
obtained, it can be demonstrated.
There was another cause of confu-
sion and perplexity to the minds of
the pagan philosophers. The ac-
tual state of the earth and its in-
habitants did not seem to them to
be what it should be if God were
the absolute cause of the world.
Existing evils seemed to denote
some kind of duality in original
principles and causes of nature. It
was very easy to refer these evils
to an intrinsic defect in matter it-
self, and to represent this defect as
an obstacle to the power of God
in some way independent of him.
The sufficient reason for the union
of the human spirit with matter,
and the subjection of man to cor-
ruptibility and death, was not clear
to their minds. Indeed, it could
not be, for there is a secret, a mys-
tery in human nature and human
destiny, impervious to mere natural
reason. The relation of man to
God and to divine providence, and
all that aspect of the divine being
which faces human affairs, espe-
cially in regard to their moral or-
der and government, is a problem
beyond the power of human reason
to solve. Mere natural theology
must necessarily remain always
lacking and imperfect, metaphysics
and ethics must come short, unless
some key can be furnished, by an
intelligence which is superhuman,
to unlock a door through which
the human mind can pass into a
region of thought lying beyond its
natural limit.
The history of mankind shows
that although they have universally
been led by natural reason to recog-
nize in some way the evidence within
the bosom and on the surface of the
outer world, of a supreme and di-
vine ruling power, their general no-
tions have been vague, confused,
easily corruptible by superstition,
actually perverted by much folly
and absurdity. The history of
minds of th'e higher order, of phi-
losophers and their systems, shows
the same aspect. The grand sages
of antiquity, the great philosophers
of a rational and sublime Theism,
were few in number, and even
these came short of the truth which
reason is capable of apprehending
and demonstrating scientifically,
when it is once sufficiently pro-
posed. Their influence on the
masses of men, and even on the
cultured few, was comparatively
little. Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero
have been fully appreciated, and
their works made practically useful,
only among those who have inher-
ited another wisdom by the Chris-
tian and the ancient Semitic tradi-
tion, by which a more sublime and
complete idea of God was convey-
ed, together with the doctrine of
creation in an explicit formula, and
an account of the origin and origi-
nal state of mankind received and
preserved from the very beginning.
The lines of fracture and severed
links, in heathen philosophy and
history, correspond with the more'
ancient and more universal tra-
dition of wisdom and historical
knowledge which is fully possessed
by Christian science, and partially
by Jews and Mohammedans also,
who inherit from the same source
that Monotheism which makes them
superior to the heathen. The sa-
cred literature of the Hebrews, in
the choice and elegant phraseolo-
gy peculiar to himself which Mr.
Frothingham has recently employ-
ed, " is filled with sentences crowd-
ed with wisdom, sound in philoso-
phy, pure in morals, and aromatic
with the odor of the breath of
piety." This is most true and
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
225
beautiful, but not the whole of the
truth in the case. Their philoso-
phy and ethics are far more sub-
lime and perfect than are found in
any other ancient writings ; the
aroma of wisdom and piety with
which they are fragrant is wafted
down to us from some most ancient
Eden, some Academia and peripa-
tetic walk of a primeval grove, where
flourished the science, the morals,
the intellectual dignity and primi-
tive happiness of the first ancestors
of mankind. The rationalist may
explain this if he is able. It is an
undeniable fact that the principal
source of pure Theism, of pure piety
and religion, of pure morals, and of
the best civilization, is to be found
here; and that, without any formal
logic and metaphysics, it is as the
sunlight of truth and philanthropy,
compared with the beautiful but
cold moonlight of pagan philosophy.
We will not anticipate now what
we intend to prove hereafter, or
desert the path of pure rational ar-
gument upon which we have enter-
ed, to assert anything by an autho-
rity above reason. We have thus
far only given utterance to the mis-
giving and the presentiment which
reason finds arising at the end of
its utmost efforts ; which was sigh-
ed forth by Plato, and tacitly im-
plied by Cicero; that the human
mind longs for and dimly awaits,
when left alone with nature, some
higher light, and more consoling
voice, from the Author and the Lord
of nature, in answer to its ques-
tionings of the infinite and its anxie-
ties about its own eternity.
CENTENARY OF THOMAS MOORE.
TOWARDS the close of the third
year after the Declaration of Ame-
rican Independence, just as the
British forces attacked the city of
Charleston and the fleet of Paul
Jones was sweeping British waters,
Thomas Moore, the national poet
of Ireland, was born in a little gro-
cery-store, 12 Aungier Street, Dub-
lin, May 28, 1779.
The poet's father, John Moore,
was born in Kerry, the county that
gave birth to O'Connell, the sept
of the O'Moores being originally
from Leix, an ancient district
marked by the present Queen's
County, adjoining Kildare, in Lein-
ster, from which, no doubt, the
poet's ancestors were transplanted,
just as the O'Connells had been
from Limerick and Clare, in Tho-
VOL. xxix. 15
mond, or North Munster. The
O'Moores, princes of Leix, were a
gallant clan that for centuries kept
the Palesmen in terror, one of their
lastchiefs having been Rory, or Ro-
ger, O'Moore, the able and intrepid
patriot who planned the in surrection
and civil war of 1641, whose name
is still honored in the refrain of the
national hope in " God and our
Lady and Rory O'Moore." Roger
O'Moore's daughter was mother of
Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, the heroic
defender of Limerick. But, though
Moore sprang from a brave sept,
his father and family were extreme-
ly humble, so that Moore knew
nothing of them until he attained
some distinction, when not a few of
his Kerry relations claimed kindred
with him. John Moore was born
226
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
about 1741 in Kerry, and proceed-
ed early in life to Dublin, where
bis industry so prospered tbat be
became owner of a spirit- store in
Johnson Court. Having, married
Anastasia Codd daughter of Tho-
mas Codd, of Corn Market, in the
town of Wexford, who united the
craft of a hand-loom weaver to a
small provision trade with whom
he obtained some marriage portion,
John Moore, then thirty-eight years
of age, removed his establishment
from Johnson Court to Aungier
Street and extended his business.
To lessen their rent the thrifty
couple let the apartments over their
store to a convivial gentleman, whose
rooms were the resort of some of
the gifted spirits who at that period
were a distinctive feature in the
social life of the gay Irish metropo-
lis. One of those gatherings was in
?full fling of midnight enjoyment
when the servant entered the ban-
queting-room, and informed the
gleesome revellers that, as Mrs.
Moore had just given birth to a son,
the noisy proceedings were unsuited
to such an occasion, and would, it
was hoped, be closed without de-
lay. The gallant host at once ac-
ceded, and proposed that the guests
should adjourn to a tavern in the
vicinity, the famous Jerry Keller
seconding the proposition with the
exclamation : " It is right we Should
adjourn pro re nata.' 1 The infant
was Thomas Moore.
His parents being Catholics, he
was baptized, and his mother .be-
stowed great attention on his reli-
gious instruction and culture as he
grew up. In due course he was
sent to school, first in Aungier
Street to a teacher named Malone,
and afterwards to the famous aca-
demy of Samuel Whyte, Johnson
Court, where several of the leading
men of the period in Dublin had
been instructed, amongst others
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who had
been a pupil there in 1758, and was
pronounced by Mr. Whyte " an in-
corrigible dunce." Whyte himself
taught English only, but he was a
gifted, graceful, and accomplished
elocutionist, took part in the pri-
vate theatricals in the houses of
the nobility and gentry who at the
time resided in large numbers in
Dublin and the vicinity, and early
imparted to Moore, or rather de-
veloped in him, that love of music,
poetry, and the drama which form-
ed so prominent a feature in his
character. Donovan, the classical
usher in the school, taught Moore
Latin, and also Irish history and
rebellion two subjects not includ-
ed in the academic programme of
Mr. Whyte, a Protestant school-
master. Father Ennis, an old friar
from Great Stephen Street, an inti-
mate friend of the family, taught
Moore Italian, while La Fosse, an
emigre instructed him in French-
acquisitions, both learned at home,
to which Moore was deeply indebt-
ed in his subsequent career. His
taste for music being retarded in
its development by the antiquity of
the harpsichord a pledge left with
his father by a defaulting customer
a new piano was purchased for his
instruction and that of his eldest
sister, Ellen ; and a Mr. Warren, a
gifted master, nephew to the illus-
trious Dr. James Warren Doyle,
Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin,
was employed to give instruction in
music. Besides the active part
which Moore took in private theat-
ricals, he was encouraged by his
mother to give small family enter-
tainments in the little drawing-
room over the grocery-store. He
read papers at night in a domestic
<debating society, his audience, as
he relates, being his father's two
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
227
clerks, Ennis and Delany, who en-
livened their plaudits by the stimu-
lus of a little stiff whiskey-punch
after the duties of the day.
The passing of the Relief Act of
1793, admitting Catholics to the
civil and military service, to the
franchise, to the professions, and to
degrees in the University of Dub-
lin, seemed to open to Moore the
career which his family and him-
self had long desired namely, ad-
mission to the bar. With this view
Moore entered Trinity College late in
1794, under Rev. Robert Burrowes
as tutor, who obtained fellowship
in 1782, and, after subsequent ec-
clesiastical and scholastic promo-
tions, became Dean of Cork in 1819,
and died in 1841. Dean Burrowes
is chiefly remembered as the au-
thor of the well-known comic song,
" The Night before Larry was
Stretched." Moore passed a cre-
ditable entrance examination, and
obtained a few inferior prizes, one
for an English poem. To gratify
his family and prove his intellectual
prowess he presented himself for
examination for scholarship an
exhibition which would admit him
to corporate membership of the
university, free chambers and com-
mons, and a small salary, for about
five years and was declared en-
titled to it by his answering; but
no Catholic was then, nor until the
year 1873, eligible for such distinc-
tion in the Dublin University, un-
less he conformed to Anglican Pro-
testantism by receiving the sacra-
ment in the college chapel. Moore
joined the Debating Society, and
later the College Historical Society,
Robert Emmet and other leading
patriots taking the same side as
Moore in the exciting discussions
in both, and in 1799 Moore took
his degree as B.A. when twenty
years of age, and left the Univer-
sity of Dublin. One leading inci-
dent in his undergraduate life we
shall consider presently.
It would be almost impossible,
even by the closest and fullest re-
search, and endowed with the high-
est impartiality, for any one of the
present day to realize the social
and political condition of Ireland,
especially of Catholics in Ireland, a
century ago. The defeat in the
Williamite Avar following quickly
the defeat of the civil war of 1641,
penal law followed after penal law,
increasing in savage barbarity, un-
til the code had reached the climax
of fiendish atrocity about 1741,
when Moore's father was born. It
may be stated with literal truth
that history affords no other exam-
ple of any Christian nation in the
condition of the Catholics of Ire-
land at this period. In 1727, four-
teen years before the birth of
Moore's father, the Catholics, four-
fifths of the population, were de-
prived of the Parliamentary and
also the municipal franchise, as
they had been excluded in 1692
from seats in either House of Par-
liament. In 1737, four years be-
fore the birth of Moore's father, the
viceroy raised the premium, ^30,
under the act of Anne, for the
apostasy of a Catholic priest, to
40 a scheme ironically called
" Townsend's Golden Drops " from
the name of the lord-lieutenant.
It was only after the battle of Fon-
tenoy, 1745, when Moore's father
was four years of age, that the Earl
of Chesterfield, then viceroy, per-
mitted, by proclamation, the " Mass
houses " in the city of Dublin, as
the Catholic churches were official-
ly designated, to be opened for
public worship, on the alleged hu-
mane ground that several Catholics
had been killed in Back Lane by
the falling of a loft during the clan-
228
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
destine and illegal celebration of
Mass. In 1758 the lord-chancellor,
in the trial of Mr. Saul, a Catholic
merchant, stated from the bench
"that the laws did not presume a
Papist " (the legal designation of a
Catholic up to 1793) "to exist in
the kingdom, nor could they breathe
without the connivance of govern-
ment." From 1665 exercise of the
office of Catholic professor, school-
master, or tutor was declared pe-
nal ; and from 1695 the education
of Catholics abroad prohibited. In
1782 Catholics, thanks, mainly, to
the valor of the American patriots,
were permitted to open school, pro-
vided they obtained a license from
the Protestant bishop of the dio-
cese ; and only in 1792, under ter-
ror of revolutionary France Moore
being then thirteen years of age
were Catholic schools allowed to
be opened in Ireland. It is scarce-
ly necessary to advert to the re-
peated confiscations of the estates
of Catholics, to the laws which pre-
vented them from holding land on
lease, to their exclusion from cor-
porate and municipal bodies, to
their banishment from walled towns
and from trade-guilds, and to their
forfeiture of a horse if over $25 in
value, so that culture of mind and
skill of hand, every avenue and in-
strument of industry, were, in fact,
closed by statute against them.
This reference to the condition
of the Catholics of Ireland at the
period of Moore's birth is abso-
lutely necessary if we would fairly
estimate his courage, his patriot-
ism, and the political influence he
exercised on his age. It has been
too much the habit, for the last thir-
ty or forty years, to detach Moore's
character from the environment of
the time, and judge it by standards
that are an anachronism, histori-
cally and philosophically unsound
and unjust. As well consider
Washington apart from the War
of Independence, or O'Connell,
abstracting from Emancipation.
While the proud and glorious title
of " The Liberator " must ever belong
to O'Connell as the great cham-
pion who aroused, organized, and
led the mighty moral forces that
wrested Emancipation from a hos-
tile and powerful government, his
most ardent admirer must admit
that few political leaders of mod-
ern times ever received such sup-
port, not merely from the masses
but also from gifted and able men,
in various branches and stages of
the agitation; and amongst these
Thomas Moore holds beyond ques-
tion one of trie highest and most
honored places. Opinions may and
do differ as to Moore's claim to
the rank of a distinguished poet ;
but no controversy whatever can
arise regarding the marvellous in-
fluence which he exercised, by his
Irish Melodies and his various po-
litical writings in prose and verse,
on the Catholic claims, on Irish
nationality, and in favor of civil
and religious liberty. A main ob-
ject of this article is to determine
Moore's exceptional position in
these respects.
Moore's father was an ardent
patriot, and his son records his re-
collection of having been taken by
him to a banquet given to Napper
Tandy who took the boy on his
knee one of the toasts at which
was " May the breezes of France
blow our Irish oak into verdure."
The success of the American arms
produced an instantaneous and
deep effect on the spirit of the peo-
ple and the policy of the English
government. It was only six
months before Moore's birth that an
act was passed permitting Catholics
to hold land on lease for nine bun-
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
229
dred and ninety-nine years. In the
general rush to form volunteer
corps to defend the country against
the raids of Paul Jones and an ap-
prehended French invasion, Ca-
tholics took courage and began to
organize; and, as evidence of the
apprehension which this proceed-
ing excited, on the very day of
Moore's birth a letter was sent by
the Earl of Tyrone, one of the Ber-
esfords, directing that the move-
ment should be arrested and the
patriotic Catholics prevented from
arming. The tramp of the volun-
teers, the clank of their arms, and
the ringing huzzas in College Green,
as Grattan's declaration of the
legislative independence of Ireland
was carried, April 16, 1782, might
have reached Moore's ears in the lit-
tle grocery-store in Aungier Street,
and " flung round his cradle their
magic spell." The French Revo-
lution stimulated the Irish patriots,
whether Catholics clamoring for
Emancipation or all liberal men
demanding Parliamentary reform
and popular government. Moore's
private friends and companions in
Trinity College and outside shar-
ed those feelings, and he says of
himself: " From the first I was na-
turally destined to be of the line
of politics which I have ever since
pursued being, if I may say so,
born a rebel." In 1793 Moore,
when only fourteen years of age,
saw his first literary contribution
published in the Anthologia Hiber-
nica, in which he continued to
write. Arthur O'Connor and Tho-
mas Addis Emmet, whose remains
lie in our soil St. Paul's Church,
Broadway started The Press Sep-
tember 28, 1797, as the organ of the
United Irishmen. Moore, then a
memberof the Debating, and the fol-
lowing year of the College Histori-
cal, Society, published in The Press
December 2, 1797, an impassioned
address " To the Students of Trini-
ty College" and signed " A Sophis-
ter," one passage only of which
need be cited:
" Has not justice thrown away her
sword and exchanged it for the poniard
of the assassin ? Is not hatred to Catho*
lies the established religion of govern-
ment, and the oath of extermination
their only sacrament? Is not perjury
encouraged and murder legalized? Is
not the guiltiest outrage of the soldier
connived at, while the sigh or the groan
of the peasant is treason? What is the
trial by jury ? A mere sham, a farce,
where the jury is acted by drunkards ; a
villain personates the accuser, the doom
of the victim is hiccoughed out by a
Bacchanalian, or pronounced with true
stage effect amidst the tears of a dra-
matic judge."*
Passages from this address were
sent up with other papers to the
House of Commons as evidence of
the revolutionary spirit of the time,
and were referred to the Secret
Committee of 1798; while it also
appears that this address was one
of the grounds assigned for hold-
ing the visitation of Trinity Col-
lege that year by the vice-chan-
cellor, the Earl of Clare, Lord High
Chancellor of Ireland. Moore had
formed an intimate acquaintance in
college with Robert Emmet, and
also with Edward Hudson and
many other patriots, who, without
Moore's knowledge, were sworn
members of the United Irish So-
ciety. It was believed by the au-
* Referring to the legal butchery of William Orr,
a native of the parish of Antrim, arraigned for
having administered the United Irishman's oath
to a soldier ; tried, found guilty, by an admittedly
drunken jury, on the evidence of a perjured wit-
ness, and executed at Carrickfergus, October 14,
1797 less than two months before the publication
of Moore's address in his thirty-first year. The
inhabitants left the town the day of the execution
to mark their detestation of the deed ; and " Re-
member Orr" became the watchword at the open-
ing of the Rebellion. His sad fate inspired Dr.
Drennan's touching revolutionary lyric, %l The
Wake of William Orr."
230
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
thorities that one of the most dan-
gerous centres and seats of that
organization was the Dublin Uni-
versity. When the graduates and
undergraduates were summoned
before the vice-chancellor, some,
Robert Emmet among them, pe-
remptorily refused to attend and
asked that their names be removed
from the college roll ; others ab-
sented themselves without expla-
nation ; while, to their deep dis-
grace, not a few students attended
and gave evidence incriminating
their comrades and friends. When
Moore's turn came his family were
painfully alarmed, he being a Ca-
tholic, lest he should be expelled
like others and his hopes in life
blasted; but /they enjoined him
under no circiimstances to answer
any questions involving the safety
of his fellows. Fitzgibbon, Earl of
Clare, was the son of a pervert, and
himself a political apostate; while
Dr. Patrick Duigenan, vice-assessor,
at the visitation, professor of law
in the Dublin University, was an
apostate, having been intended for
the priesthood. Moore passed the
ordeal of examination, which he
fully records in his journal, with
singular credit, without compro-
. mising himself or any one else.
Before we close this notice of
Moore's early life when, at twenty
years of age, he had obtained his
degree and was about to proceed
to London, the terrible tragedy of
the Rebellion, with all its horrors,
being over we must notice the in-
fluence which life in Trinity Col-
lege exercised on his religious feel-
ings and practices. His mother
was an extremely ardent and de-
vout Catholic, and came from a
good stock in Wexford. She be-
stowed great care on her son's in-
struction, and had him prepared for
the sacraments, Penance and Holy
Communion, the solemnity of ap-
proaching which he records in his
journal. Both parents entertained
high hopes of the boy's abilities,
and were ambitious to send him
to the bar. Whyte's school was
a Protestant one, there being no
Catholic school in Dublin at the
period. Moore's father, who was
much older than his mother, al-
though intensely patriotic, was not
so devoted a Catholic as his wife.
Occasionally, but probably only
with a view to rouse her religious
sensibilities into opposition, he in-
dulged in sly sarcasm at some of
her strong devotional tendencies,
when, according to Moore's own
journal, she would indignantly ex-
claim : " I declare to God, Jack
Moore, you ought to be ashamed
of yourself." When their son was
about to enter Trinity College, the
father, on raising the question of
the religion in which he should be
registered, Protestant or Catholic,
the mother indignantly repudiat-
ed the proposition and had him
duly recorded a Catholic ; although
then, and even afterwards, it was
not uncommon for base and time-
serving Catholic parents to regis-
ter their sons Protestants, that they
might open to them the numerous
and lucrative emoluments of the
Dublin University. If they won
any of these the stigma of apostasy
in the college could not technically
apply to them ; while, if they failed,
they could return into the world
as Catholics. Nothing could bet-
ter illustrate the gigantic scheme
of apostasy by which Trinity
College, endowed from the confis-
cated estates of Catholics, large
ecclesiastical revenues alienat-
ed, and enormous Parliamentary
grants, lured the ambition of Cath-
olic young men in Ireland. Dur-
ing Moore's undergraduate course,
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
231
1795-99, when he had rooms in
Trinity College, it is doubtful if
there were twenty Catholics on the
books of that foundation. The
vast majority of the students were
of Orange principles in politics and
supported the arbitrary measures
of the government; while the most
brilliant intellects in the university
were, however, on the side of Irish
nationality, a large number of these
were deeply tinged with revolu-
tionary aims in politics and lax-
ity regarding religion. No person
could expect, humanly speaking,
that a Catholic would escape some
taint of principle, some laxity of
practice, in such an institution for
four years, and at a time of the
greatest excitement known in mo-
dern history. Moore relates that,
a year or two after he entered col-
lege, he appealed to his mother
not to compel him to go to confes-
sion. We thus close the educa-
tional life of Thomas Moore.
In 1799 Moore left Dublin and
proceeded to London with two ob-
jects to enter for the bar and to
publish a translation of the Odes of
Anacreon, with notes, by subscrip-
tion. His devoted mother stitch-
ed into the waistband of his trou-
sers the requisite guineas to cover
his expenses, and also a scapular
as a pious antidote against the dan-
gers of so perilous an enterprise.
On a second journey to London
he called on the Earl of Moira, at
Donington Park, Leicestershire, to
whom he had letters of introduc-
tion, who received him most kind-
ly, and through whose influence he
was permitted to dedicate the
Odes of Anacreon, published in 1800,
to his Royal Highness the Prince of
Wales. Lord Rawdon, born in Ire-
land, 1754, was son of the first Earl
of Moira, and one of the most
distinguished soldiers and states-
men of the age. He, with Lord
Edward Fitzgerald and others, al-
though friendly to the cause of the
colonists, volunteered as " armed
negotiators" to join the British
army, and distinguished himself at
Bunker Hill, 1775 ; Camden, 1786;
and Hobkirk's Hill, i78i> where
he defeated General Greene. He
supported the patriotic party in
Ireland, being always on the side
of Grattan and Charlemont ; pro-
moted the Catholic claims ; de-
nounced the cruelties of 1798 ; and
opposed the Union. His residence
in Dublin was Moira House, Usher's
Island (now the Mendicity Insti-
tution), in repairing to which to
see his wife, on the evening of
May 17, 1798, Lord Edward Fitz-
gerald was set upon, in Watling
Street, by the officers of the crown,
whom, after a brisk' encounter; he
defeated ; but the following day
he was captured after a terrific
conflict, in which he was badly
wounded, and died in prison. We
mention these facts to indicate the
political character of Lord Moira,
in order to show that the patron-
age of so liberal and distinguished
a man in no wise compromised
Moore's principles.
Although Moore frequently vis-
ited Ireland afterwards, he may be
said to have never again resided
for any length of time in his native
country. In 1803 he published
his Juvenile Poems under the nom
de plume of " Thomas Little, the
Younger," a work strongly con-
demned by moralists, but, as has
been observed, " very few poets
have sailed to Delphi without
touching at Cythera." In the sub-
sequent and latest editions of his
works Moore omits the more ob-
jectionable poems and apologizes
for the original publication of the
work. That same year, through
2 3 2 ^
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
the influence of Lord Moira, Moore,
who had been keeping his law
terms, was appointed registrar to
the Court of Admiralty, Bermuda.
He was only fourteen months ab-
sent from England, during which
he visited the United States twice,
and Canada, and wrote the " Poems
relating to America," published, in
a collected form, in 1806.
In the preface to the second vol-
ume of his Complete Poetical Works
he gives a full description of the
society into which he fell in the
United States, " composed entire-
ly of the Federalist or Anti-Demo-
cratic party," and adds, by way of
explanation and apology for his
strong opinions :
"Few and transient, too, as had been
my opportunities of judging for myself
of the political or social state of the
country, my mind was left open too
much to the influence of the feelings
and prejudices of those I chiefly consort-
ed with ; and certainly in no quarter
was I so sure to find decided hostility,
both as to the men and the principles
then dominant throughout the Union, as
among officers of the British navy and
in the ranks of a Federalist opposition.
For any bias, therefore, that under such
circumstances my opinions and feelings
may be thought to have received, full
allowance, of course, is to be made in
appraising the weight due to my author-
ity on the subject."
We are bound to admit that
these explanations soften consid-
erably some of the strong, if not
coarse, terms in which Moore de-
scribes his impressions of the
young republic, then little over a
quarter of a century in existence.
His expectations were cast too
high, and disappointment was only
natural. Moore's account of his
visit to Washington and presenta-
tion to President Jefferson is brief:
" At Washington I passed some days
with the English minister, Mr. Merry, and
was by him presented at the levee of the
President, Jefferson, whom I found sit-
ting with General Dearborn and one
or two other officers, and in the same
homely costume, comprising slippers and
Connemara stockings, in which Mr.
Merry had been received by him much
to that formal minister's horror when
waiting upon him, in full dress, to de-
liver his credentials. My single inter-
view with this remarkable personage
was of very short duration ; but to have
seen and spoken with the man who drew
up the Declaration of Independence was
an event not to be forgotten."
Moore's stay of a few months in
the United States was too brief
and his experience as a politi-
cian too slender to enable him to
form the decided opinions which
he records. As he acknowledges,
he was thrown, during his . slay,
almost exclusively amongst one
party, the Federalists, while the
British ambassadors and officers,
with whom he constantly mixed,
were prejudiced against American
freedom and republican institu-
tions. At a later period, in 1819,
** Tom Crib's Memorial to Con-
gress " betrayed similar feelings.
Little could Moore have anticipat-
ed, when writing thus disparaging-
ly of the prospects of the young
republic, that some years before
his own death the bounty of the
United States would supply food
for the starving millions of his
countrymen during the famine ;
that a large portion of them should
fly there for bread and work ; and
that when the centennial of his
birth came to be celebrated in
1879, nearly one-third of the popu-
lation of the United States would
be of Irish extraction. Still less ,
could he have supposed that his
own Melodies, not written for some
years afterwards, would yet be as
familiarly sung along the great
rivers of America, on her streets,
and over her prairies as they are
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
233
in Ireland, and by a far larger pop-
ulation.
Moore, having left a deputy,
with whom he entered into no
strict legal terms, to discharge
his official duties as registrar in
Bermuda, returned to England.
In 1806 he published a volume of
Epistles, Odes, and Poems, including
those relating to America, dedi-
cated to the Earl of Moira, gen-
eral in his majesty's forces and
master-general of the ordnance.
Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review,
severely criticised Moore's publica-
tions, and branded him with a de-
liberate attempt to corrupt public
morals. Moore challenged him,
when the ludicrous duel at Chalk
Farm, intercepted by Bow Street po-
lice officers, came off an incident
satirized by Byron in 1809 in his
" English Bards and Scotch Re-
viewers." Moore challenged By-
ron for the satire, when a con-
flict was again averted, which hap-
pily ended by Moore, Byron, and
Thomas Campbell meeting for the
first time at dinner at the house
of Samuel Rogers, when Byron and
Moore became the fastest friends
and continued so. The Earl of
Moira, in 1806, appointed Moore's
father to a respectable post in the
civil branch of the ordnance
barrack-master in Dublin, at ^300
a year, which he held until his
death. This appointment was a
great relief to Moore, who for some
time had been contributing, to the
extent of his means, towards the
support of his struggling family
father, mother, and two sisters to
whom he was devotedly attached.
In 1808 he published, without his
name, his satires, " Corruption "
and "Intolerance," and in 1809
" The Sceptic," which were not,
however, as successful as his other
works.
Moore returned to Ireland*
where, in 1808-9, he joined the
Private Theatrical Corps in the
city of Kilkenny, and took part
in varied plays, Miss Bessy Dyke,
a gifted Irish actress, being of the
ballet company. Her mother and
sister lived with her in lodgings
in Kilkenny, where Moore visited,
which led to his marriage with
Miss Dyke in London, March
25, 1811. She was a Protestant,
proved a most devoted wife, bore
Moore five children, three daugh-
ters and two sons, all of whom died
before their parents. She died on
September 4, 1865, having survived
her husband thirteen years. Her
remains were placed beside his in
Bromham churchyard, near Sloper-
ton Cottage, Wiltshire, where they
had resided from 1817.
We now approach the projection
of the publication of the greatest
work of Moore's life, the Irish Mel-
odies. If every other production
of his genius were destroyed or
forgotten, this alone would immor-
talize his memory and establish a
claim to the enduring gratitude of
liis country. The Irish Melodies
were published in ten numbers, about
twelve lyrics. or songs in each, and
issued at irregular periods from
1807 to 1834, an interval of twen'ty-
seven years. Moore's early taste
for music, elocution, and the drama
has already been noticed. The
publication of Bunting's Ancient
Music of Ireland, a copy of which
was placed in Moore's hands in
1797 by the accomplished and pa-
triotic Edward Hudson, first made
known to him, as he says, "this
rich mine of our country's melo-
dies." We shall leave Moore him-
self to open the interesting story :
" There elapsed no very long time
before I was myself the happy proprie-
tor of a copy of the work [Bunting's"!,
234
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
and, though never regularly instructed
in music, could play over the airs with
tolerable facility on the piano-forte.
Robert Emmet used sometimes to sit
by me when I was thus engaged. And
I remember one day his starting up, as
from a reverie, when I had just finished
playing that spirited tune called ' The
Red Fox,'* and exclaiming, ' Oh ! that
I were at the head of twenty thousand
men marching to that air/ How little did
I then think that, in one of the most
touching of the sweet airs I used to play
to him, his own dying words would find
an interpreter so worthy of their sad but
proud feeling, f or that another of those
mournful strains \. would long be asso-
ciated in the hearts of his countrymen
with the memory of her who shared
with Ireland his last blessing and
prayer !"
The tragic events of 1798, the
despotic proceedings of 1800, by
which the legislative independence
of Ireland was stamped out, and
the sanguinary period of 1803 all
contributed to develop and mature
in Moore the desire to depict or
crystallize the sorrows, the glories,
and the hopes of his country in
popular melodies associated with
the exquisite ancient music of Ire-
land. The Powers, spirited musi-
cal publishers in London, invited
Moore to lend his poetical genius
to such a work, in which he would
be seconded by the musical ability
of Sir John Armstrong Stevenson,
whose intimate connection with
the Irish Melodies and singular his-
tory claim brief notice. Steven-
son, born in Dublin in 1762, was
son of a poor coachmaker, and was
left without father or mother when
only nine years of age. A musical-
instrument maker named Gibson
adopted him, and the lad display-
ing remarkable musical genius, he
obtained a place in the choirs of
* " Let Erin remember the days of old."
t " Oh ! breathe not his name ; let it sleep in the
shade."
J " She [Sarah Curran] is far from the land where
her young hero sleeps."
St. Patrick's and also Christ Church
Cathedral. The Dublin Univer-
sity conferred on him the degree of
doctor of music in 1800, and in
1803 he was knighted. Sir John
A. Stevenson left a daughter, who
married Mr. Dalton, a country
gentleman of the County Meath,
to whom he dedicated his Sacred
So7igs, and, on being left a widow
with some children, she married
the Marquis of Headfort, at whose
seat, beside Kells, County Meath,
Sir John A. Stevenson died. The
present Marquis of Headfort and
his brothers and sisters are thus
grandchildren of the poor coach-
maker's orphan. Adelaide, one
of Mrs. Dalton's children, married
Mr., afterwards Sir John Young,
Bart., subsequently Lord Lisgar,
Governor-General of Canada. Sir
John A. Stevenson's share in, and
his execution of the arrangement
of, the Melodies have frequently
been adversely criticised. Yet nev-
er did two gifted men evince a
kindlier or a more generous spirit
of co-operation than Moore and
Stevenson. It is commonly charg-
ed to Stevenson that he spoiled
the original airs by his modern
accompaniments a charge which
Moore generously answers as fol-
lows :
"Whatever changes of this kind may
have been ventured upon (and they are
few and slight), the responsibility for
them rests solely with me, as, leaving the
harmonist's department to my friend
Stevenson, I reserved to myself the se-
lection and arrangement of the airs."
On the other hand, Stevenson
had such an exalted idea of the
poetry of the "Melodies, and of the
admirable selection of the airs by
Moore himself, that he deemed his
own symphonies and arrangement
altogether inferior. To the late Dr.
Petrie, one of the most gifted Irish
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
235
musicians of modern times, Ste-
venson said : " I would recommend
any person who means to sing the
Melodies to purchase a piano about
the value of ^5, for it will be then
likely that one may have a fair
chance of hearing very little of the
instrument and something of the
melody and the poetry." Moore's
touching monody on the death of
Stevenson fitly closes the Melodies :
" Silence is in our festal halls
Sweet son of song thy course is o'er!
In vain on thee sad Erin calls :
Her minstrel's voice responds no more.
" But where is now the cheerful day,
The social night, when, by thy side,
He who now weaves this parting lay
H is skilless voice with thine allied,
And sung those songs whose every tone,
When bard and minstrel long have past,
Shall still, in sweetness all their own,
Embalm'd by Fame, undying last ?"
The terms offered by Power for
the Irish Melodies were $2,500 a
year, paid to Moore, for seven
years, or as long further as he
chose. Their publication extend-
ed over twenty-seven years, and
included (last edition) one hundred
and twenty-four songs in ten num-
bers ; so that if that agreement was
carried out, which there is no rea-
son to doubt, Moore must have re-
ceived $67,500 for the Irish Melo-
dies, being at the rate of $540 for
each song and about $25 a line a
sum without parallel in the history
of literature. This, of course, is
exclusive of the publisher's terms
with Sir John Stevenson for the
musical accompaniment and ar-
rangement ; while Maclise, R.A.,
the artist, born in Cork, 1811, died
in London, 1870, who executed
several of the historical frescoes in
the new Houses of Parliament for
one of which, "Meeting of Welling-
ton and Blucher after Waterloo,"
he received $17,500 illustrated
the Irish Melodies. This great
national work may favorably com-
pare with any kindred production
ever issued from the press. Its
subjects are Irish, the bard is Irish,
the minstrel is Irish, the artistic il-
lustrations are Irish, and the pub-
lisher is Irish ; and while the Irish
race exists the Melodies and their
author will never die.
Closely examined in comparison
with the national lyrics of any
other people or age, the Irish Melo-
dies are entirely unique. Pagan,
Jew or Christian, Oriental or
European, Greek or Roman, an-
cient or modern, can produce no
such collection. Not that ballads,
songs, lays, odes, and historiettes
in abundance may not be gathered
in all lands, in all tongues, and at
all periods, differing in form and
culture. But no attempt has ever
been made before (or, if so, the
tradition of it is lost) to embody so
many -characteristics of a nation
its social life, scenery, manners,
and customs ; legends, traditions,
victories, and defeats ; its dark
history and bright hopes in lyric
form, wedded to music familiar by
its antiquity and its winning pathos
to the whole peasantry ; strains that
stimulated their ancestors in bat-
tle ages before, that inspirited their
dances and athletic games, and
that proclaimed their triumphs and
softened their defeats. When we
analyze the lyric poetry, the lays
or the odes, of any country, ancient
or modern, we find that they cover
a comparatively small portion only
of the life and history of the peo-
ple ; whereas the subjects of the
Irish Melodies range .over nearly
the entire scope of Irish life, past
and present. We would here re-
mind our readers that while the
earliest numbers of the Melodies
were issued in 1807, the struggle for
Catholic emancipation continued
until carried in 1829 ; and from
236
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
that date to the close of their pub-
lication, in 1834, popular educa-
tion, Parliamentary reform, the tithe
question, and the church establish-
ment were being agitated. The
very first number of the Melodies
produced a profound sensation.
Its historic revivals brought the
Irish mind, through " The harp that
once through Tara's halls," back
for more than twelve centuries a
national dirge embodied in one of
the most plaintive airs (Gramachree)
of the country. The war-song,
" Remember the glories of Brian
the Brave," reminded the masses
that while Canute, the Dane, ruled
the English the Northmen were
utterly defeated at Clontarf in 1014,
more than fifty years before Wil-
liam theConqueror defeated Harold
at Hastings. And following that
historic incident is the practical
admonition to unity in the next
lyric, " Erin ! the tear and the
smile in thine eyes," to the ex-
quisite air Eibhlin a rtiin, by which
in 1807, as seven centuries before,
Irish Catholics could by union and
bravery repeat the victory of Clon-
tarf, as they did at the Clare elec-
tion in 1828, by which Emancipation
was won. In the same number
the high social condition and chiv-
alry of Ireland in the time of King
Brian Boroimhe is allegorically and
effectively pictured in the beauti-
ful melody, " Rich and rare were
the gems she wore." The war of
extirpation declared in the Statute
of Kilkenny, 1367, by the Anglo-
Norman settlers against the na-
tives, proscribing Irish minstrelsy
and music, and the wearing of the
beard and the hair after native
fashion, is feelingly lamented in
the touching appeal of an Irish
maiden to her lover to fly from the
Palesmen with her " Coulin," the
moustache giving name to the
charming air, "Though the last
glimpse of Erin with sorrow I see ":
"And I'll gaze on thy gold hair as graceful it
wreathes,
And hang o'er thy soft harp as wildly it breathes ;
Nor dread that the cold-hearted Saxon will tear
One chord from that harp or one lock from that
hair."
But amongst the political lyrics
that inspired warmest popular ap-
probation in the first number of
the Melodies an approbation that
has increased over a period of
seventy years were the two relat-
ing to Robert Emmet and Sarah
Curran. Emmet, a^year older, had
been Moore's fellow-student in col-
lege, where they stood side by side
in the Historical Society in defence
of Irish nationality and popular
rights, and his attached friend.
Emmet's sad fate in 1803 must
have been a source of terrible af-
fliction to Moore, notwithstanding
the many friends who fell on the
scaffold or were banished as exiles
in that dark period. Moore, de-
scribing his recollection of Emmet's
oratory in the Historical Society,
says :
' I have heard little since that appear-
ed to me of a loftier, or, what is a far
more rare quality in Irish eloquence,
purer character ; and the effects it pro-
duced, as well from its own exciting
power as from the susceptibility with
which his audience caught up every allu-
sion to passing events, was such as to
attract at last the serious attention of
the fellows ; and, by their desire, one of
the scholars, a man of advanced standing
and reputation for oratory, came to at-
tend our debates expressly for the pur-
pose of answering Emmet and endeavor-
ing to neutralize the impressions of his
fervid eloquence."
Catching the inspiration from
the passage in Emmet's celebrated
speech, " Let rny memory be left
in oblivion, and my tomb remain
uninscribed, until other times and
other men can do justice to my
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
237
character," Moore burst forth, four
years after Emmet's death, into the
strain :
" Oh ! breathe not his name ; let it sleep in the shade
Where, cold and unhonored, his relics are laid ;
Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed
As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his
head !"
While following this in the open-
ing number of the Melodies we find
Emmet's address to Miss Curran,
to the tune, " The Red Fox," he
so loved to hear Moore play :
" When he who adores thee has left but the name
Of his fault and his sorrows behind,
Oh! say, wilt thou weep when they Darken the
fame
Of a life that for thee was resigned ?"
Nor was this or any subsequent
number of the Melodies confined to
historical or political lyrics.* The
scenic beauties of the country, fol-
lowed up in subsequent parts, are
opened with the charming song,
" There is not in this wide world
a valley so sweet," describing the
" Meeting of the Waters " and
" Vale of Avoca," below Rathdrum,
County Wicklow ; while social and
domestic life is well represented
in " Go where glory waits thee " ;
" Fly not yet," " Oh ! think not my
spirits are always as light," and
" As a beam o'er the face of the
waters may glow." There are thus
strung together throughout the
Melodies the most felicitous com-
bination of elements, highly diverse
in character, yet all truly national.
No other country on earth can ad-
duce such touching appeals to its
native minstrelsy as we find in the
Melodies : " Dear harp of my coun-
try, in darkness I found thee," " Oh !
blame not the bard," " 'Tis believ-
ed Wiat this harp " (inspired by a
charcoal sketch which Moore saw
in Edward Hudson's cell in Kil-
mainham Jail) ; " The minstrel boy
to the war is gone," " When through
life unblest we roam," " My gentle
harp once more I waken," and
" Sing, sing ; music was given."
Legendary lore finds embodiment
in the exquisite melody, " Silent, O
Moyle! be the roar of thy waters "
and " How oft has the banshee
cried," " By that lake whose
gloomy shore," " Oh ! haste and
leave this sacred isle," " Oh ! the
shamrock," " O'Donoghue's Mis-
tress." The historical lyrics are, of
course, the most exciting strains in
the Melodies : " Let Erin remember
the days of old," one of the most
magnificent songs in existence;
"Avenging and bright fall the
swift sword of Erin," "The valley
lay smiling before me," " Like the
bright lamp that shone in Kildare's
holy fane," " Sublime was the warn-
ing that Liberty spoke," " She is far
from the land where her young
hero sleeps," " Though dark are
our sorrows," " Forget not the field
where they perished," " Where is
the slave so lowly," " Before the
battle," " After the battle," " Oh !
the sight entrancing," l - When first
I met thee," and " Yes, sad one
of Sion." Amongst the Melodies
there is one of surpassing tender-
ness, in which the sufferings of the
Irish Church during the penal laws
is depicted under the allegory of
"The Irish peasant to his mis-
tress." It appeared in the third
number of the Melodies, in 1810:
" Through grief and through danger thy smile hath
cheered my way,
Till hope seemed to bud from each thorn that round
me lay ;
The darker our fortune, the brighter our pure love
burned,
Till shame into glory, till fear into love, was turned.
Oh ! slave as I was, in thy arms my spirit felt free,
And bless'd even the sorrows that made me more
dear to thee.
" Thy rival was honored, while thou wert wronged
and scorned \
Thy crown was of briers, while gold her brows
adorned ;
She wooed me to temples, while thou layest hid in
caves ;
Her friends were all masters, while thine, alas ! were
slaves ;
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
Yet, cold in the earth at thy feet I would rather be
Than wed what I loved not, or turn one thought
from thee.
" They slander thee sorely who say thy vows are
frail ;
Hadst thou been a false one, thy cheek had looked
less pale !
They say, too, so long thou hast worn those linger-
ing chains
That deep in thy heart they have printed their ser-
vile stains ;
Oh ! do not believe them : no chain could that soul
subdue
Where shineth thy spirit, there liberty shineth
too!"
We have thus entered into a
critical and classified analysis of
the Irish Melodies, Moore's greatest
work, as the readiest and most com-
plete refutation of one of the
charges frequently brought against
them namely, that they contain no
distinctively Irish or national sen-
timent, the patriotism in them being
only that vague and general devo-
tion to liberty which would equally
suit the songs of the Pole, the Hin-
doo, the Kaffir, the Red Indian, or
the Maori. If that appeal of the
Irish peasant to his church -fail
which it cannot to refute such an
unfounded imputation, the follow-
ing one to his country, a stanza
from which graced many a speech
and letter of O'Connell, would alone
suffice :
"Remember thee ? Yes,while there's life in this heart
It shall never forget thee, all lorn as thou art
More dear in thy sorrow, thy gloom, and thy show-
ers
Than the rest of the world in their sunniest hours.
" Wert thou all that I wish thee great, glorious,and
free,
First flower of the earth and first gem of the sea
I might hail thee with prouder, with happier brow,
But, oh ! could I love thee more dearly than now ?
" No ; thy chains as they rankle, thy blood as it runs,
But make thee more painfully dear to thy sons,
Whose hearts, like the young of the desert-bird's
nest,
Drink love in each' life-drop that flows from thy
breast.
And so with the scenery and so-
cial life in the Melodies all are
distinctively Irish. " Sweet Innis-
fallen," " Glendalough," and Kil-
larney and Glengariffe in " 'Twas
one of those dreams " and " Fair-
est, put on awhile," are matchless
gems of scenic faithfulness. If
Moore pandered in his youth to
voluptuousness by his translation
of the Odes of Anacreon and his
Juvenile (Little's) Poems, he aton-
ed, to some extent, for the error by
the elevated morality and the Irish
purity which pervade all his songs
of the affections, as "Believe me, if
all those endearing young charms,"
" Come rest in this bosom," " We
may roam through this world,"
" Oh ! -the days are gone when
beauty bright," " Drink to her who
long," " I'd mourn the hopes that
leave me," " I saw thy form in
youthful prime," " The young May
moon*" and " Lesbia hath a beam-
ing eye"; while the sentimental
melodies, more or less kindred to
these, are inimitable, as " Tis the
last rose of summer, left blooming
alone," " Has sorrow thy young
days shaded ?" " I saw from the
beach," and "As slow our ship."
The social lyrics are, like the his-
torical, the legendary, and the
scenic, entirely "racy of the soil,"
some of them being among the finest
efforts of Moore's genius, such as
"And doth not a meeting like this
make amends?" "One bumper at
parting," "Farewell! but whenever
you welcome the hour," " They
may rail at this life," "Quick! we
have but a second," " Fill the bum-
per fair," "Wreathe the bowl," and
" Drink of this cup [potteen], 'tisn't
less potent for being unlawful."
Moore avowed those patriotic
and national objects when project-
ing the Irish Melodies, as " a work
which, from the spirit of nationality
it breathes, will do more towards
liberalizing the feelings of society,
and producing that brotherhood of
sentiment which it is so much our
interest to cherish, than could ever
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
239
be effected by the mere arguments
of well-intentioned but uninterest-
ing politicians." Nor did he shirk
identification with his fellow-Ca-
tholics in some of the darkest hours
of their struggles. In the preface
to the third number of the Melodies,
Moore, in 1810, writes to the Mar-
chioness Dowager of Donegal :
" It has been often remarked, and still
oftener felt, that in our music is found
the truest of all comments on our his-
tory. . . . The plaintive melodies of Ca-
rolan take us back to the times (1670-
1738) in which he lived, when our poor
countrymen were driven to worship their
God in caves, or to quit for ever the land
of their birth like the bird that abandons
the nest which human touch has violated.
In many of these mournful songs we
seem to hear the last farewell of the ex-
ile, mingling regret for the ties he leaves
at home with sanguine hopes of the
high honors that await him abroad such
honors as were won on the field of Fon-
tenoy, where the valor of Irish Catholics
turned the fortune of the day, and ex-
torted from George II. that memorable
exclamation, 'Cursed be the laws that
deprive me of such subjects !' "
The Melodies were gradually
translated into almost every written
language on earth, so that Moore's
prophecy was amply fulfilled :
" The stranger shall hear thy lament on his plains,
The sigh of thy harp shall be sent o'er the deep,
Till thy masters themselves, as they rivet thy
chains,
Shall pause at the song of their captive and
weep."
Save the Psalms of David or
some of the chants of the church,
no poetic or lyric composition has
had such circulation as the Irish
Melodies, promoted, no doubt, by
the dispersion of the Irish race
through the emigration that fol-
lowed the famine. The whole
world of letters rose in unanimous
approbation of the Irish Melodies.
Thierry, the historian, lauded them
in France, and Washington Irving
and Willis in America. Byron,
Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Jeffrey,
Macaulay, Sydney Smith, Wilson,
Curran, Sheridan, Grattan, Mack-
intosh, O'Connell, Sheil, hailed
them with unbounded delight. By-
ron, in his triangular " Gradus ad
Parnassum," arranging as early as
1 8 1 3 wh enfewofthe Melodies we re
written the order in sections, from
vertex to base, of the hierarchy of
poets, places Scott at the apex,
Rogers next below, and Moore and
Campbell in the next section; but
he adds : " I have ranked the names
upon my triangle more upon what
I believe popular opinion than any
decided opinion of my own. For,
to me, some of Moore's last Erin
sparks : ' As a beam o'er the face
of the waters,' ' When he who
adores thee,' * Oh ! blame not,' and
'Oh! breathe not his name,' are
worth all the epics that ever were
composed." Besides the special
translations into nearly all the lan-
guages of Europe, Rev. Francis
Mahony (born in Cork, 1805, died
in Paris, 1866), author of the Re~
liques of Father Prout, in a series
of articles, " Moore's Plagiarisms,"
pretends to give the Greek, Latin,
French, and Italian originals of
some of the most popular of the
Melodies a charming Polyglot, sin-
gular in conception and unrivalled in
execution"; while another eminent
Irishman, happily still living, the il-
lustrious Dr. MacHale, Archbishop
of Tuam,now ninety years of age
the oldest .bishop in Christendom,
having received the mitre in 1825
has translated and published mostof
the Melodies in Irish, as also the Iliad
of Homer and the Pentateuch of
Moses.* When Moore was only ten
years of age John MacHale was
* The writer of this article had the great plea-
sure of hearing the patriotic and gifted archbishop,
when his guest at St. Jarlath's, sing several of the
Melodies in Irish, accompanying himself on the
harp.
240
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
born in the village of Tubberna-
vine, on the shores of Lough Conn,
under the shadow of Nephin, the
world being unconscious that the
Mayo peasant's child would, for
over half a century, be one of the
most distinguished prelates in the
church, and Jack Moore the gro-
cer's boy, of Aungier Street, the
national bard ; that the mitre and
the minstrel would be united in the
translation of the Melodies into
Irish ; and that at the centenary of
the poet's birth, celebrated in his
native city, the venerated Archbi-
shop of Tuam would be a member
of the committee.
While the publication of the
Irish Melodies proceeded Moore
brought out a number of other
works of the most diverse char-
acter. His National Airs, in* which
the music of every country in
Europe is laid under contribution,
and his Sacred Songs, both arrang-
ed by Sir John Stevenson, include
several fine lyrics. His greatest
poem, Lalla Rookh, dedicated to
Rogers, was completed in 1816, but
not published till the following
year. As far back as 1811 he had
formed some such intention, but,
after many attempts at its plot and
the abandonment of various abor-
tions, he found his inspiration in
the history of Ireland, as the four
Oriental poems, " The Veiled Pro-
phet," " Paradise and the Peri,"
" The Fire-Worshippers," and " The
Light of the Harem," are only
lengthened melodies in which the
political and religious struggles of
his own country are dramatized in
Asia. Messrs. Longman, the pub-
lishers, had agreed to give Moore
$15,600 for a poem the same length
as Scott's " Rokeby," the same sum
that they had paid Byron for
" Childe Harold," leaving Moore
the choice of subject. In the Ghe-
bers, or Fire- Worshippers of Per-
sia, the best of the four poems, he
saw the Catholics of Ireland, and
in their ruthless Moslem tyrants
their alien Protestant oppressors.
Moore himself tells us in the pre-
face to the sixth volume of his
works : " From that moment a
ixew and deep interest in my whole
task took possession of me. The
cause of tolerance was again my
inspiring theme, and the spirit that
had spoken in The Melodies of Ire-
land soon found itself at home in
the East " ; while Jeffrey in the
Edinburgh Review, November, 1817,
said of Lalla Rookh :
" There is a great deal of our present
poetry derived from the East, but this is
the finest Orientalism we have yet. The
Land of the Sun has never shone out so
brightly on the children of the North,
nor the sweets of Asia been poured
forth, nor her gorgeousness been dis- :
played so profusely to the delighted
senses of Europe. The beauteous forms,
the dazzling splendor, the breathing
odors of the East seem at last to have
found a kindred poet in the ' Green
Isle' of the west."
Seven editions of Lalla Rookh
went off the first year ; it was
translated into most of the lan-
guages of Europe and some of
those of the East, and even drama-
tized, while before Moore's death
some thirty editions had been pub-
lished. Oriental travellers of the
highest reputation testified to the
fidelity of the charming descrip-
tions of Eastern scenery and local
manners and customs in Lalla
Rookh; so Mr. Luttrell wrote to
Moore :
" I'm told, dear Moore, your lays are sung
(Can it be true, you lucky man ?)
By moonlight in the Persian tongue
Along the streets of Ispahan."
The spirited publishers were
amply rewarded for their enter-
prise, and Moore came to the front
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
241
beside Byron and Scott as one of
the first poets of the day, Ireland
and her history having inspired his
muse.
While the conception of Lalla
Rookh occupied Moore's brain for
two or three winters (1813-16) of
his secluded life in a lone cottage
(Mayfield, near Ashbourne) in Der-
byshire, where he wrote some of
the best of his Melodies and of his
other lyrics, and the greater part of
that magnificent poem, he turned
his versatile genius to the current
events of political life a field in
which, next to the Irish Melodies,
he rendered some of the most
sterling services to his country.
The Two-Penny Post-Bag, or In-
tercepted Letters, published in 1813,
and his Satirical and Humorous
Poems, of about the same time, led
to much agitation in political cir-
cles. The work was rapturously
welcomed, fifteen editions having
gone off in one year. The Morn-
ing Chronicle, then the leading
Liberal organ, was edited by Mr.
Perry, an intimate friend of Moore's,
the Times, the great Tory oracle,
being edited by Barnes, also an
attached personal friend of the
Irish bard; so that Moore had the
| command of both journals, and
through contributions to which of
political squibs, satires, and letters
he derived an income of $2,500.
'. About the same period, also, he
contributed, on the urgent invita-
i' tion of Lord Jeffrey, to the Edin-
burgh Review when the first intel-
lects in the British Empire were on
its staff Brougham, Macaulay, Syd-
ney Smith, and others. One of
his articles in the Edinburgh was
" The Fathers," replete with patris-
tic erudition, theological research,
and ecclesiastical history, upon the
perusal of which Byron exclaimed
with an oath, " Moore can do any-
VOL. xxix. 16 *
thing !" Another of his contribu-
tions was on " Private Theatricals,"
in which he gives a graphic account
of those in Dublin in his boyhood,
and in Kilkenny in his manhood.
As early as 1813 Murray, the pub-
lisher, desired to start a review
and offered, through Lord Byron,
the editorship to Moore. When
Jeffrey's powers were failing Moore
was tendered the editorship of the
Edinburgh at a salary of $4,000,
with power "to draw $14,000 to pay
contributors of his own selection ;
while, on the occasion of his friend
Mr. Barnes' illness, Moore, an in-
flexible Liberal, was asked to edit
the Times on very generous terms.
Moore visited Paris for the first
time with Samuel Rogers in the
spring of 1818, and, though their
stay was brief, the publication of
The Fudge Family in Paris con-
vulsed society with its severe po-
litical banter, so that five editions
were demanded in a fortnight, and
on his return his publisher handed
him $1,750 as his share of the
profits of something like a month's
incidental squibs while on his
visit. In June, 1818, Moore visit-
ed Dublin after his return from
Paris. In 1815 he and his wife
had gone there to see his father
and mother and sisters. A public
banquet was given him at Morris-
son's Hotel, at which two hundred
and twenty of the leading Liberal
noblemen and gentlemen of Ire-
land were present, the Earl of
Charlemont, son of " The man
who led the van of the Irish Volun-
teers" of 1782, being in the chain
Amongst the guests were Lord Clon-
curry, Lord Allen, Sir Charles Moly-
neux, Sir Charles Morgan (husband
of Lady Morgan, Miss Owenson),
O'Connell, Sheil, Peter Burrowes,
William Conyngham, afterwards
Lord Plunket (lord high chan-
242
Centenary oj Thomas Moore.
cellor 1830-41), and W. H. Curran,
son and biographer of his illus-
trious father, who died the year
before, having got the fatal attack
at Moore's table. After the usual
toasts, and two speeches from
Moore, he sang and played for the
first time :
" And doth not a meeting like this make amends
For all the long years I've been wand'ring away,
To see thus around me my youth's early friends
As smiling and kind as in that happy day ?
Though, haply, o'er some of your brows, as o'er
mine,
The snow-fall of time maybe stealing what then ?
Like Alps in the sunset, thus lighted by wine,
We'll wear the gay tinge of youth's roses again.
" What soften'd remembrance comes o'er the heart
In gazing on those we've been lost to so long !
The sorrows, the joys, of which once they were part
Still round them like visions of yesterday throng.
As letters some hand hath invisibly traced
When held to the flames will steal out on the
sight,
So many a feeling that long seem'd effac'd
The warmth of a moment like this brings to
light."
This touching lyric, composed
for the occasion, and rendered with
all his charming effectiveness by
Moore himself, after such an ab-
sence and so brilliant a success,
produced intense gratification. It
was followed by another, composed
for the occasion and sung for the
first time : " They may rail at this
life." Sam Lover made his de'but
at this banquet and sang his first
song in public. This was Ireland's
public tribute to the genius and
the personal character of Moore
in the fortieth year of his age.
The deepest political significance
was justly attached to the banquet
to Moore, struggling as Catholics
then were for emancipation, and
ardent as were his writings in that
dark hour in favor of his faith, his
forefathers, and his country. By-
ron, writing from Ravenna to the
elder Disraeli, author of the Curi-
osities of Literature and father of
the present prime minister of Eng-
land, said, in reference to the ban-
quet :
" The times have preserved a respect
for political consistency, and, even
though changeable, honor the unchang-
ed. Look at Moore ; it will be long ere
Southey meets with such a triumph in
London as Moore met with in Dublin,
even if the government subscribe for it
and set the money down to secret ser-
vice. It was not less to the man than to
the poet to the tempted but unshaken
patriot, to the not opulent but incorrup-
tible fellow-citizen that the warm-heart-
ed Irish paid the proudest of tributes."
Moore having determined to
visit Lord Byron, then residing in
Venice, and Lord John Russell
being engaged on a new edition
of his Life of Lord Russell, which
obliged him to proceed to Paris
and Genoa, both went in the au-
tumn of 1819 to Italy. Fables for
the Holy Alliance appeared, in the
same sarcastic vein as The Fudge
Family ; while Rhymes on the Road
embodied Moore's impressions of
his tour in Italy. He visited Turin,
Milan, Venice, Florence, Bologna,
Modena, Parma, and Rome, and in
Rome he met Canova, Turner,
Chantrey, Lawrence, and Eastlake.
When taking leave of Byron the
latter handed Moore a white bag
containing the manuscript of his
life and adventures. On his re-
turn to Paris from Italy Moore
was informed of the defalcation for
$30,000, to American merchants,
of his deputy in Bermuda, and of
legal execution having been ob-
tained against him for the amount.
This prevented his return to Eng-
land, and, having refused numer-
ous and generous offers of pecuni--
ary help to meet the demand, he
determined to settle with his fami-
ly in Paris for a time, and by his
own literary labors satisfy the
claim. The Loves of the Angels, an
Eastern allegory, was the outcome
of this pressure, in the preparation
of which he was assisted with books,
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
243
drawings, and information by the
leading men in Paris Humboldt,
Denon, Fourier, and others. The
Bermuda claim having been com-
promised for $5,200 instead of
$30,000, towards which the uncle
of the defaulting deputy agreed to
contribute $1,500, Moore was en-
abled to return to London towards
the end of October, 1822. The
Loves of the Angels was published
in December, and by June, 1823,
Moore had to his credit for it
$5,000, and $2,500 for the Fables of
the Holy Alliance, so that he was
enabled to meet his responsibilities
connected with Bermuda.
In 1823 Moore visited Ireland
with the Marquis of Lansdowne,
and spent a month in the south,
passing through Carlow, Kilken-
ny, Clonmel, Youghal, Cork, and
Killarney, returning to Dublin
by Limerick, Maryborough, and
Naas. Everywhere he was wait-
ed on by the leading Liberal Pro-
testant gentry and by all the Ca-
tholics. In Killarney he was the
guest of the Catholic Earl of Ken-
mare, where he enjoyed the mag-
nificent scenery of the Lakes and
of Glengariffe, a visit to which in-
spired at least three of his most
finished scenic sketches. O'Con-
nell and his brother waited on him
and dined with him at Lord Ken-
mare's ; Moore's record of the po-
litical conversation, after dinner,
with Judge Day being one of the
best vindications ever published of
the sincerity of O'Connell, twen-
ty-four years before his death, re-
garding Emancipation, absentee-
ism, church disestablishment, and
Repeal of the Union.
The Memoirs of Captain Rock,
the celebrated Irish chieftain, with
some account of his ancestors, was
also published in 1824, and pro-
duced a marked sensation. It is an
explanation of, and apology for, all
the secret societies and the agrarian
and other crimes arising out of
oppression and unjust treatment,
pointing out their causes and their
remedies. Sydney Smith, in the
Edinburgh Review, writes thus of
Moore's Captain Rock:
" He has here borrowed the name of a
celebrated Irish leader to typify that
spirit of violence and insurrection which
is necessarily generated by systematic
oppression and rudely avenges its
crimes ; and the picture he has drawn
of its prevalence in that unhappy coun-
try is at once piteous and frightful. Its
effect in exciting our horror and indig-
nation is, in the long run, increased, we
think though at first it may seem
counteracted by the tone of levity, and
even jocularity, under which he has
chosen to veil the deep sarcasm and
substantial terrors of his story. We
smile at first, and are amused, and won-
der as we proceed that the humorous
narrative should produce conviction and
pity, shame, abhorrence, and despair."
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, born
12 Dorset Street, Dublin, Septem-
ber, 1751? and for some time un-
der Samuel Whyte, Moore's school-
master, died in London July 7,
1816. Solicited to write the bi-
ography of that wondrous child
of genius, Moore could not refuse.
Byron and Moore had contributed,
at the time of his lamented death,
to familiarize the world with his
rare abilities and his vile treat-
in en t. Moore's Biography of Sheri-
dan, published in 1825, is a further
contribution to the national lite-
rature of Ireland. He ever sup-
ported the cause of Ireland and
the Catholics. Fox said of his im-
peachment of Warren Hastings :
" All that he had ever heard, all
that he had ever read, when com-
pared with it, dwindled into no-
thing and vanished like vapor
before the sun." Burke said it
was " the most astonishing effort of
244
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
eloquence, argument, and wit unit-
ed of which there was any record
or tradition." Pitt said it " surpass-
ed all the eloquence of ancient or
modern times, and possessed every-
thing that genius or art could fur-
nish to agitate or control the hu-
man mind." Byron said: "What-
ever Sheridan has done, or chosen
to do, has been,/#r excellence, al-
ways the best of its kind. He has
written the best comedy (School
for Scandal], the best drama (The
Duenna], the best farce (The Critic),
and, to crown all, the very best
oration (the "Begum" speech) ever
conceived or heard in this coun-
try " ; while his able biographer,
friend, and fellow-citizen, Moore,
says : ,
" Whose eloquence, bright'ning whatever it tried,
Whether reason or fancy, the gay or the grave,
Was as rapid, as deep, and as brilliant a tide
As ever bore Freedom aloft on its wave !"
Moore's visit to Scotland in the
autumn of 1825, where he spent a
pleasant time with Sir Walter Scott,
Lord Jeffrey, and the leading spirits
in the north, elicited a further
burst of popularity towards the na-
tional bard of Ireland.
The Epicurean, commenced in
Paris in 1820, was not published
until 1827, and proved a great suc-
cess, financially and literary.
We have -said that when Moore
visited Byron in Venice the latter
gave him the manuscript of his
journals and autobiography, with
the conditions that, while it should
not be published during his life-
time, Moore was at liberty to show
the manuscript to any friend. By-
ron subsequently wrote to Moore,
suggesting that he should raise
funds from Murray on the credit
of the publication, which Moore did
to the extent of $10,400. On the
death of Lord Byron the publisher
considered that the work should be
issued. Moore felt, however, that
it was due to Lady Byron and
others to submit the work to them,
when, objections having been taken
to its publication, he cancelled the
agreement with Murray and burn-
ed the manuscript. But, with the
aid of letters and other available
documents, Moore brought out in
1830, in three volumes, Letters a?id
Journals of Lord Byron, with notes
of his life, one of the most impor-
tant of Moore's works. The whole
proceeding regarding Moore's ac-
tion in the matter has been the
subject of bitter criticism, but
sober opinion favors the course
taken by Byron's biographer and
friend.
The Life of Lord Edward Fitz\
gerald (two volumes) was publish-
ed in 1831, one of the most popu-
lar of Moore's works. Within a
few days a second edition of it was
sold. The preface is bold and
fearless, treating with contempt the
imputations of seditious motives
alleged against such a publication.
Reviewing it, the Times said : u The
love of justice, humanity, and lib-
erty breaks out through every
apostrophe of the author, however
he may affect to veil his emotions
under sarcasm, levity, or scorn."
One of the most remarkable of
all Moore's works is his Travels
of an Irish Gentleman in search of
a Religion, inscribed to the people
of Ireland in defence of their na-
tional faith, by the editor of Cap-
tain Rock's Memoirs, which was
published in 1833. Being intense-
ly polemical and political, it under-
went severe criticism in the press,
and was the subject of numerous
attacks. The illustrious Dr. Doyle,
Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin,
the foremost prelate of his day in
Ireland, said of it: "If St. 'Au-
gustine were more orthodox and
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
245
Scratchinbach less plausible, it is
a book of which any of us might
be proud." At the time of its pub-
lication it was largely used as a
popular manual of polemical con-
troversy, and even in Catholic pul-
pits, some of the rancorous spirit
of the proselytizing societies still
remaining, and the Anti-Tithe agi-
tation, which finally led to the dis-
establishment and disendowment
of the Protestant Church, just then
opening.
Moore again visited Ireland,
August, 1835, when the British
Association held its first meet-
ing in Dublin. He was well
and warmly received everywhere.
The Marquis of Normanby was
lord-lieutenant, Lord Morpeth was
chief secretary, and Drummond
was under-secretary. He shared
the viceregal hospitality. The
gentle and beloved Catholic Arch-
bishop of Dublin, Most Rev. Dr.
Murray, met Moore at dinner at
the parochial house attached to
the pro-cathedral, Marlborough
Street. The provost and fellows of
Trinity College, rebel though he
had been and Catholic as he was,
welcomed their old alumnus and
entertained him at dinner. But it
was at the Theatre Royal he re-
ceived his greatest popular ova-
tion. Between two of the* acts he
was forced, in compliance with the
unanimous demand of the audi-
ence, to rise and address the house
in a speech of matchless felicity
and spirit, acknowledging that he
accepted from the people the proud
title of the " national bard."
One of the first and most popu-
lar acts of the Liberal ministry of
1835 was to confer a pension of
$1,500 on Moore, in consideration
of the services rendered by him to
literature a favor which he could
not accept from any government
save one in conformity with the
political principles of his life.
This grant was increased to $2,-
ooo a few years before his death,
in consideration of the delicacy of
his health and the cessation of his
literary labors.
Moore now entered on his last
work, a History of Ireland, un-
suited to his years, and which he
was not qualified to write. In
Lardner's Cyclopedia Scott had
written a history of Scotland in
two volumes, and Sir James Mack-
intosh a history of England in
three volumes, and Moore was
urged to write for the same work-
a history of Ireland, intended -to
be confined to a single volume.
In pursuit of material for this
work Moore paid his last visits to
Dublin in 1838-39, the first vol-
ume of his history (which was ex-
panded to four volumes) having
been published in ^35, and the
fourth, or last, not until 1846. He
had issued the first volume before
he came to Ireland to study the
subject, so that, when too late, he
frankly declared to Dr. Petrie in
the Royal Irish Academy, on learn-
ing from Eugene O 'Curry the na-
ture of the manuscript materials
of Irish history then before him :
"Petrie, these huge tomes could
not have been written by fools or
for any foolish purpose. I never
kne.w anything about them before,
and I had no right to have un-
dertaken the history of Ireland "
(O'Curry's Lectures on the MS.
Materials of Irish History, pp.
153-4, 441). The history, which
is beautifully written as to style,
closes with the Confederate War
of 1641, and is wholly unreliable
as to the ancient and earlier pe-
riods.
Towards his declining years
Moore, like most literary veterans,
246
Centenary of Thomas Moore.
addressed himself to the revision
of a complete edition of all his po-
etical works, which was brought
out in ten volumes. From about
the year 1846 he showed increasing
signs of decay of mental power, and,
as with Swift, Scott, Southey, and
O'Connell, softening of the brain
steadily set in. In 1849 his intel-
lect became quite clouded, and,
though removed to Bath for a short
time, no improvement took place,
and he sank at Sloperton Cottage,
February 26, 1852, in his seven-
ty-second year. He was buried
privately, only his physician and
three or four other friends attend-
ing, in Bromham churchyard, with-
in sight of his cottage, with his sec-
ond daughter and his second son,
while his devoted wife, Bessy, was
laid with them September, 1865.
She presented all Moore's books,
his portrait, and his harp to the
Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, to
which a special room is devoted.
It is said that although he com-
menced life as a patriot, as is prov-
ed by his conduct in Trinity Col-
lege and subsequently, he sank in
after-years into the condition of a
mere Whig, or Liberal, all senti-
ment of Irish nationality having
died out in him. A ready answer
is afforded to this charge by the
proceedings at the time of the offer
to him, in 1832, of the representa-
tion of the city of Limerick, with
a small estate of fifteen hundred dol-
lars tendered therewith. Gerald
Griffin and his brother Daniel were
deputed by the citizens of Limer-
ick to tender the terms just stated.
Moore declined, entirely owing to
prudence as regards his circum-
stances, but records that, were he
to go into Parliament, he would ac-
cept the Repeal pledge, though he
was confident it would lead to sep-
aration from England. O'Connell
was bitterly disappointed at Moore's
refusal to accept the representa-
tion of Limerick.
Moore is charged with being an
absentee living out of Ireland.
Literature was his profession, and
he had no market for it in Dublin.
The only offer he ever had of
employment was an intimation
from the Royal Dublin Society
that if he applied for the office of
librarian, at one thousand dollars
a year, it was believed that his elec-
tion could be secured.
It was said that not alone was he
buried with Protestant service, but
that he conformed to Protestantism
before his death. His wife was a
Protestant, and it is feared that
Protestant service was read at his
burial; but the Catholic journals,
such as the London Tablet, of the
time condemned the proceeding as
an outrage to her Catholic husband
and an insult to Catholic Ireland.
There were no Catholics and no
Catholic church near Moore's resi-
dence in Wiltshire for fifty or
sixty years, but he was a regular
attendant at Mass in Warwick
Street Chapel, London, when there,
as also his eldest son, although an
extremely lax young man as re-
gards morals. Lord John Russell,
Moore's biographer, attests that he
lived and died a Catholic. He en- ;
joyed the confidence of Archbishop
Murray, Archbishop MacHale, who
still lives, Dr. Doyle, O'Connell,
and all the leaders of Catholic
opinion in Ireland. While in
England he similarly enjoyed the
confidence of Cardinal (then Dr.)
Wiseman and Dr. Lingard,and was
invited by the former to contribute
articles on delicate ecclesiastical
subjects to the Dublin Review. All
friends of Ireland must pray and
hope that the celebration of flie \
centennial of Moore may be worthy
Thomas Moore. 247
of the Irish race, upon whose name great cause, in which they mutually
and fame their poet has shed undying assisted each other. May the cen-
lustre. O'Connell and Moore were tennial of Moore be, according to
separated in life and in death by only his relative claims, as great a suc-
a few years, battling for the same cess as that of the Liberator !
THOMAS MOORE.
MAY 28, 1879.
The stranger shall hear thy lament on his plains,
The sigh of thy harp shall be sent o'er the deep,
Till thy masters themselves, as they rivet thy chains,
Shall pause at the song of their captive and weep.
T. MOORE.
MUTE hung the harp on Tara's walls,
No touch its music waking,
Only the hope-fraught western wind
The mournful silence breaking.
In vain men died to give it voice,
Vainly in silence suffered ;
Truly to set the broken strings
No aid the Saxon proffered.
Murmured sad Erin, from the harp
One sacred chord unstringing,
Perchance the hearts that heed not tears
Will list a poet's singing;
The broad, deep stream that calmly flows
Doth mutely mirror heaven :
Unto the bird that warbles near
Is wider message given."
Softly she raised her poet's lyre,
The tears her bright eyes blinding,
Amid its chords of bravest song
The string from Tara binding ;
Glittered the sorrow-tarnished thread,
The fairest of the seven
Unblessed the lyre that hath no chord
For country and for Heaven !
248 Thomas Moore.
The poet bore his gift afar,
His island's sorrow singing
Sweet pity's tear of sympathy
In alien hearts- upspringing
Singing her true-eyed maidens' faith,
Her king's old battle glory
Ere fair-haired Saxon wrought the wrong
That darkens Ireland's story.
Men turned from Cashmere's rose-strewn plains
To hear of truer loving,
Left Eden's opened gates to list
A nation's sad reproving.
Echoed across the narrow seas
The lyre's melodious sighing,
Unto the string that Erin loosed
Mute Tara's harp replying.
Still echoing over broader seas,
Salt waves the music bearing,
The true notes rested in fond hearts,
A people's sorrow sharing.
To-day unto the poet's song
Is world-wide tribute given;
The olden echoes wake again
Beneath a brighter heaven ;
They rise from Ireland's saint-pressed sod,
From leagues of prairie grasses ;
Low sound from far-off golden waves
Drifts through Sierra passes.
See ! 'mid the bays the English rose
With holy shamrock blending,
Acacia from wide southern seas
Its yellow sunshine lending.
While Erin lifts brave Brian's harp,
Her poet's birthday keeping,
Quick blood from fiery Irish hearts
Through countless veins is leaping
Dim were the poet's brightest verse
Lacking his country's blessing,
False sweetest song of Irish harp
If Tara's chord were missing.
A Reply to C. C. Tiffany s Attack on the Catholic Church. 249
A REPLY TO C. C. TIFFANY'S ATTACK ON THE CATHO-
LIC CHURCH IN SCRIBNERS MONTHLY*
THERE are commonly two diffi-
culties in answering an attack on
the Catholic Church. The one is
the lack of correct information on
the part of the opponent concern-
ing the points against which he
makes his charges, and the other
is the absence of any authority
acknowledged by both sides of the
controversy as adequate to settle
the matters in dispute.
There is no excuse for the first
defect. A' writer who ventures to
speak in public or put in print his
essay is bound to know his subject.
In regard to the second, as the
question now in hand is not that of
authority, all that a Catholic writer
can hope to do is to be useful to
those of the household of faith, and
to readers who, if they do not ac-
cept the authority of the Catholic
Church, are at least sufficiently
free from prejudice to see the logi-
cal cogency and appreciate the
consistency and completeness of
the Catholic statement.
In the April number of Scribner's
Monthly there is an attack on the
Catholic Church by the Rev. C. C.
Tiffany, who commences by saying :
" Romanism and rationalism are
both of them large subjects. One
might better attempt to write a
volume on each of them than a
brief paper on the two." The dif-
ficulty, we fear, with the author is
not the want of room, but, so far as
the Catholic Church is in question,
the want of knowledge of his sub-
ject. The article, in this respect,
11 The Tendency of Modern Thought as seen in
Romanism and Rationalism," by C. C. Tiffany,
Scribner's Monthly for April, 1879.
is a tissue of erroneous assertions,
incorrect interpretations, and con-
fused statements. Some of these
we proceed to point out.
The writer, in speaking of the
Catholic Church, says that she " is
still building costly cathedrals for
the worship of those who deny rea-
son and rest solely in authority."
That the Catholic Church is build-
ing, and that she will continue to
build, cathedrals, and costly ones,
until the end of time, in which her
children may offer to Almighty
God that worship which is pleasing
to him, is true and beyond reason-
able doubt. It is very natural that
Catholics should build costly ca-
thedrals, for it is an expression of
their zeal for the honor of God, it
is an evidence of love for their
holy faith, and exhibits to the
world, however slightly, the hidden
and incomprehensible majesty and
power and beauty of their religion.
All things considered, the example
of Catholics on this point is to
their credit. New York may be
congratulated on the new and grand
cathedral which its Catholic citi-
zens have raised by their free of-
ferings in a prominent locality of
the city. There is no reason, either,
for any New-Yorker, who is proud
of his native city and not a bigot,
feeling spiteful about it. The new
cathedral, in its size, in the costliness
of its material and the correctness
of its style, is one among the most
conspicuous architectural orna-
ments of the city, and indeed of the
whole country. Strangers from all
parts of the Union will come to see
it, and admire the symmetry of its
250 A Reply to C. C. Tiff any s Attack on the Catholic Church.
proportions, the chasteness of its
ornamentation, and its purely re-
ligious character. It is a monu-
ment which does great honor to
the Catholics of the diocese of
New York, and is worthy of the
metropolis of the Union. Mr. Tif-
fany was prudent in not alluding to
the ground on which the cathe-
dral is built while the castigation
which Clarence Cook received for
his false charges in the Atlantic
Monthly was fresh in the memory
of the public. But that method
was evidently not in our writer's
line ; he beats the " drum ecclesi-
astic."
That the Catholic Church "de-
nies reason " is an assertion made
with such a matter-of-course air
that it simply strikes one as stun-
ning, and you_r_ub your eyes and
ask yourself, Are we indeed living
in the enlightened nineteenth cen-
tury ? If this be the fact, what are
we to say of its boasted intelligence
and knowledge, when such an utter
falsity as this is put in print and
offered as the proper pabulum of
an enlightened reading public ?
The Catholic Church "deny rea-
son " ! No man of ordinary ca-
pacity who had ever opened and
read a volume of Catholic philoso-
phy or a treatise of Catholic the-
ology, or who was even slightly
acquainted with the history of the
controversy of the Catholic Church
with the so-called Reformers, or
with the repeated decisions of the
church against those who would
enhance the value of faith by the
disparagement of the authority of
reason, would have penned that
sentence. And yet the acquisition
of this knowledge would be noth-
ing more than a scanty preparation
for one who ventures in print to
treat an important point of this
kind. Certainly it is no more than
any ordinary theological student is
supposed to have acquired. In
what seminary did the reverend
author of this article (if the writer
be not the Rev. C. C. Tiffany we
beg his pardon) make his studies
for the ministry ? Who were his
professors? There is an inexcu-
sable deficiency here.
The Catholic Church " deny rea-
son " ! Why, the whole fabric of
the science of Catholic theology is
based on the certitude and unerr-
ing authority of human reason ; and
yet we are told by one who, in the
year of our Lord eighteen hun-
dred and seventy-nine, would in-
struct the public in a widely-read
American magazine, that the Ca-
tholic Church denies reason ! This
is too preposterous. He might as
well announce to the world that
astronomers deny the existence of
the sun !
Catholics, he tells us, " rest solely
in authority." How can one who
has reached the age of reason come
to authority, except by the exami-
nation of the proofs of its claim
upon his obedience ? How can
these proofs be tested save by the
use of reason ? This investigation,
then, supposes that the claims on
which authority is based are ad-
dressed to reason, and, therefore, it
is proper to submit them to its de-
cision.
But if reason be not unerring in
what falls within its jurisdiction,
what possible value can the exami-
nation of the proofs of authority
possess? Is it not plain, then, that
the Catholic Church, to be consis-
tent, must of necessity affirm, as she
has never failed to affirm, the value
of human reason as a logical pre-
requisite in order to justify the
claims of her authority upon the
obedience of intelligent minds?
The assertion, therefore, that Ca-
A Reply to- C. C. Tiffany s Attack on the Catholic Church. 251
tholics " rest solely in authority "
is evidently false. That we do not
misrepresent the writer is clear, for
he brings forward the conversion of
Dr. Newman as an illustration of
his meaning, and attempts to make
his readers believe that " submis-
sion is the only appropriate atti-
tude of fallible man toward infalli-
ble power." "Through this gate,"
he continues, " the Oxford scholar
passed within the cloisters of
Rome." Dr. Newman whom we
hope before these words reach the
public we may have the singular
consolation of addressing as His
Eminence Cardinal Newman has
no need of our defence ; he knows
how to take care of himself and
defend his course. But, as a piece
of gratuitous advice to our coun-
tryman, we would warn him to be
on his guard against this English
intellectual mastiff, lest he should
incur a shaking that would leave
nothing to mark his career upon
this earth, unless to be preserved,
like a dead fly in amber, in the re-
nown of his great antagonist.
If we seize the case as the writer
of this article aims at presenting it,
his idea of the value of human rea-
son is as poor as his notion of the
nature of authority is wretched.
He says : " Submission is the only
appropriate attitude of fallible man
toward infallible power." This
representation of the relation be-
tween reason and authority is an
idea for which there is no dan-
ger that any one will dispute the
author's claim to originality. It
may be his own individual concep-
tion, it may be one he holds in
common with his fellow-Protes-
tants, but it is demonstratively
certain that it is not at all the one
which Catholics maintain. The
Catholic conception supposes man
capable of exercising his reason with-
out error, and that he yields obedi-
ence not to an " infallible power "
but to an infallible authority, and
that only after the proofs of its di-
vine character have been examined,
verified, and found perfectly satis-
factory, and the evidence sufficient
to convince a reasonable mind.
Thus the obedience which Catho-
lics pay to the authority of the
Catholic Church rests on the va-
lidity of the acts of reason, and it
is this the apostle commends when
he exhorts the faithful to offer to
God " a reasonable service." This
is why Catholics are so firm and
cheerful in their faith, for they
know that it rests on a sound, im-
movable, rational basis, and they
are, when well instructed, " ready,"
according to the advice of Peter,
the Prince of the Apostles, " always
to satisfy every one that asketh them
a reason of that hope which is in
them." It is the privilege of Ca-
tholics to present to God " a rea-
sonable service " in the obedience
which they pay to the church ; for
while reason is fully competent to
test the proofs of the claims of the
divine authority of the church,
reason also acknowledges that the
sphere of the exercise of this au-
thority is above and beyond its
competency. Hence, while Catho-
lics maintain that their obedience
to the authority of the church is a
" reasonable service," they insist
with equal force that they pay
this obedience solely because her
authority is divine, and, being di-
vine, is unerring.
Catholics are high-spirited, and
obey in religion none but the au-
thority of God. They consider it
an intolerable insult to the intelli-
gence and the dignity of man for
any other than an unerring and di-
vine authority to claim his obedi-
ence in guiding him to his divine
252 A Reply to C. C. Tiffany s Attack on the Catholic Church.
destiny. It was the attempt to in-
troduce human authority into re-
ligion, by the claim of the suprema-
cy of the private judgment of indi-
viduals and the will of the state
over the divinely-instituted author-
ity of the church of Christ, which
was the radical motive that made
Catholics resist Protestantism in its
commencement, and is still the
source of their unrelaxed opposi-
tion to the claim of Protestantism to
be Christianity. Reason is unerring
in its own sphere, and, above and be-
yond reason, God alone is man's
teacher; and hence Catholics be-
lieve only what God has revealed as
proposed to them by the authority
which he himself has for this very
purpose specially authorized. Now,
he who allows himself to entertain
the idea that a divinely-authorized
teacher can propose to his belief
any error, or what contradicts the
clear dictates of reason, has given
up the foundation of all truth, his
conviction of the veracity of God.
Hence it is that Catholics are able
to say without .hesitation with St.
Augustine : ** O Lord ! if I am de-
ceived, it 1s thou who hast deceiv-
ed me."
This is the true position of Catho-
lics, and this is well known to all
who have made a sufficient study
of the subject. Not among Catho-
lics will be found the boast of
being guessers at God's reveal-
ed truth or its choosers. For one
who has gained this position, to
call in question, or to doubt, or to
deny what the church in her divine
office proposes as revealed by God
for his belief, is a plain contradic-
tion in terms.
This is what the writer in Scrib-
ners Monthly does not see, or, if he
sees it, cannot or will not under-
stand ; or if he does, then has the
heat of his endeavor to make his
point against the Catholic Church
made him forget himself and led
him into misrepresentations. Not
only in this, but also notably in his
mutilated citation of the Catechism
of the Council of Trent.
The Catholic Church, lie says,
" follows the method and acts on
the principle so prevalent in the
scientific world to-day, that, name-
ly, of substituting the visible for the
invisible. The Sacrament of the
Eucharist is not with her the visible
sign of an invisible reality, but the
reality itself, though disguised. It
is no more bread and wine, a sym-
bol of a heavenly truth, but flesh
and blood, a verity for the senses."
It is probable that C. C. Tiffany has
seen and likely read some of the
pages of the Catechism of the Coun-
cil of Trent; and had he but taken
the slight pains to refer to its pages
concerning the Holy Eucharist, he
would have found a point-blank
contradiction to the assertion con-
tained in his last sentence. It
says : " Whilst we, with unwavering
faith, offer the tribute of our hom-
age to the Divine Majesty present
with us, not, it is true, in a manner
visible to mortal eye, but hidden, by
a miracle of power, under the veil
of the sacred mysteries."
But does the writer not know that
his statements are contradictory
.to the teachings of the Catholic
Church ? If he does, why attempt
to impose upon his readers ? If he
does not, why does he meddle with
matters for which he is not fitted
by proper studies ? Was it to af-
ford the public an example of the
truth of the poet who says :
" Fools rush in where angels fear to tread " ?
Mr. Tiffany gives no proofs of
this statement of his of any value,
except it be a report of a conversa-
A Reply to C. C. Tiffany's Attack on the Catholic Church. 253
tion he held with a priest : " In
Jerusalem, a few years ago, at the
door of the Holy Sepulchre, a Ro-
man priest said to me, in reply to
an expression of mine as to my be-
lief in God's presence here as every-
where : ' Yes, he is present every-
where as a general power, but not
as a Saviour. We have him there
locked up in the tabernacle of the
altar ; he cannot escape us.' ' We
have our reasons for doubting the
correctness of the report of the
words put into the priest's mouth,
but let that pass ; it would be of
some interest to know what Mr.
Tiffany said in reply, for the mode
of God's presence everywhere is
not the same as God's presence in
the rational soul, and this differs
from God's presence in the soul re-
generated by divine grace, and this"
again differs from God's presence
in the Holy Eucharist. Mr. Tiffany
appears to have felt himself safe
only when he affirmed God's pres-
ence in its lowest form ; and we can
easily imagine a Catholic priest
feeling indignant at hearing this
from the lips of one who claimed
the dignity of a rational creature,
and professed, perhaps, to be also
a Christian.
Commend us to the author of
the article in Scribners Monthly for
the capacity of condensing the
greatest amount of nonsense in the
fewest words ! Here is another
specimen of his genius : " The in-
fallible church, being omniscient in
relation to men's lives through the
confessional, and omnipotent in re-
gard to salvation by the power of
the keys, must be omnipresent, al-
ways ready for any emergency, by
the constant presence of the in-
fallible pontiff." The Sacrament
of Penance was instituted for the
forgiveness of deadly sins commit-
ted after baptism. This the writer
appears not to know ; and if a Cath-
olic keeps from mortal sin and
there is no reason why he should
not the priest may never reach him
" through the confessional." What
then becomes of the omniscience
of the infallible church through
the confessional ? But suppose a
member of the church approaches
the Sacrament of Penance with his
conscience burdened with deadly
sins ; then he first of all must have a
hearty sorrow for his past sins, with
a firm purpose to offend God no
more. This implies, if the penitent
has injured any man in his goods,
the obligation to make restitution ;
or if he has been guilty of slanders
by charging in public print upon a
large body of his fellow-Christians
false doctrines, he is equally bound
to make a restitution in a man-
ner as public as he has made the
charges. Now, if the penitent be
unwilling to comply witn these just
conditions, then his sorrow is not
real but feigned, and the priest is
powerless to absolve him, and,
should he do so, his absolution is
worthless. What then becomes of
the omnipotence of the infallible
church by the power of the keys ?
The same reasoning is applicable
to what is said of the constant pre-
sence of the infallible pontiff. Is
it not plain that the staple of this
writer is wild and reckless asser-
tions ? His teeming imagination
creates a monster which he fancies
is the Catholic Church, and he char-
ges it as Don Quixote did the wind-
mill, thinking he is hurting some-
body, when he himself is the only
victim.
Scribners Monthly has been de-
servedly on the increase in popu-
larity, and an article of this charac-
ter is a new and strange feature
in its pages, which in our opinion is
worthy the pen of Eugene Law-
254 A Reply to C. C. Tiffany s Attack on the Catholic Church.
rence and fit only for the columns
of Harper 's Weekly.
" If, then," he says, " the tendency of
modern thought, as seen in Romanism
and rationalism, is a tendency to dwell
on the outward appearance, its correct-
ive must be found in putting emphasis
on inward realities. Spirituality is the
cure for materialistic ecclesiasticism or
the positive philosophy. We must fol-
low the larger method which both these
systems miss, ,and grasp the greater
truth of which both fail. We must hold
to the unseen both in theology and sci-
ence as the eternal, and be too catholic
to be Roman Catholic, and too rational
to be rationalists."
There is a truth in the paragraph
which closes the article, as there is
truth in every error. Its error con-
sists in the writer seeing the Ca-
tholic Church only on the human
side, with all its imperfections and
abuses, and this, too, through a
distorted medium, and out of all
this put together he fabricates a
caricature which he calls " Roman-
ism." Seeing things thus falsely,
his errors and exaggerations, we
are willing to believe, are to be
attributed rather to his unfortunate
position than to malice. The truth
which the paragraph contains seems
to be this : There appears to be
hovering before the vision of this
writer the ideal Christian Church,
which he would name "the Church"
or the " Catholic " Church. What
would happen to him, most likely,
is what has happened to many who
have been in his position, if he fol-
lowed their good example. As they
advanced in their inquiries and so-
lid studies in ecclesiastical history
and the true doctrines of Chris-
tianity, the scales of prejudice and
ignorance, by the powerful aid of
divine grace, dropped from their
eyes, and they beheld their ideal
church approach nearer and nearer
to the Roman Catholic Church, and
finally become identical with it.
Their ultimate conviction might be
thus expressed : The Roman Ca-
tholic Church is the ideal Christian
Church, or the true Church of
Christ, so far as this is possible
upon earth, acting, as she does,
through the instrumentality of men,
human nature being what it is.
With these words we part with our
clerical friend of Scribner's maga-
zine, at least in accord with him in
the truth of one of his statements,
and that is, " Rome is wiser than
her opponents," and in our friend-
ly leave-taking we bid \\\vt\ proficiat)
Private Charities and Public Money.
255
PRIVATE CHARITIES AND PUBLIC MONEY.
WE examined last month* the
record of grants and leases of land
by the city authorities of New York
for the benefit of charitable insti-
tutions, and we saw that it has long
been the settled policy of our pub-
lic authorities to make liberal do-
nations in aid of the humane en-
terprises of benevolent persons,
whether under the control of reli-
gious societies or of purely secular
associations. We saw, moreover,
that, contrary to the belief of a
great many Protestants, the grants
and leases to Catholic charities
have been far below our fair pro-
portion both in number and value.
Out of nineteen institutions which
have received portions of the city
land, only three are Catholic ; and
of the other sixteen all, except,
perhaps, two, are more or less dis-
tinctly "sectarian," while several
are connected with particular re-
ligious denominations. We have
now something to say about grants
of money to charitable institutions,
and in this branch of the subject
we shall consider the benefactions
of the State as well as the city.
To the best of our belief there
have been no grants of land by the
State to any charity within the me-
tropolis.
The general question of the jus-
tice and policy of voting money
from the public treasury to chari-
table institutions managed by pri-
vate corporations or individuals was
discussed in the New York Consti-
tutional Convention of 1867-8, and
the principle for which we Catho-
lics contend was sustained there
* " Private Charities and Public Lands," THE
CATHOLIC WORLD, April, 1879.
with great ability by gentlemen
who are known as uncompromising
Protestants. When the Conven-
tion assembled in the summer of
1867 an anonymous document,
headed Shall the State support the
Churches'! was laid on the desks
of the members. It was circu-
lated, evidently by preconcert, all
over the State. It asserted that
the money of the taxpayers was
used to build up the Roman Ca-
tholic Church. It represented that
the Legislature of 1866 had appro-
priated $129,025 for sectarian pur-
poses, of which amount the Catho-
lics obtained no less than $124,174 !
As a natural consequence petitions
were addressed to the Convention
from various quarters, asking for a
constitutional prohibition of all
"sectarian appropriations." The
dishonesty of this sensational do-
cument was promptly exposed by
Mr. Ellis H. Roberts, editor of
the Utica Herald, and a member
of the Committee of Ways and
Means in the Legislature of 1866.
It was also taken up in the Con-
vention. " I do not hesitate to
say," remarked Mr. Cassidy, editor
of the Albany Atlas and Argus,
" that it is false from beginning to
end. It has all the characteristics
of a forgery. It has been exposed
as a deliberate and well-contrived
falsehood. Nobody disputes it."
" I have the memorial to which my
friend has alluded," added Mr.
Erastus Brooks (the same gentle-
man who held the famous contro-
versy with Archbishop Hughes on
the subject of church property in
l8 55)> "and although it may not
go to the extent of falsehood men-
256
Private Charities and Public Money.
tioned by the gentleman from Al-
bany, that it is an entire falsehood,
it comes under one of those defini-
tions laid down by Lord Paley [?]
where he says that a man may
state ninety-nine facts and every
one of them be a falsehood, be-
cause when the hundredth fact is
given it overthrows all that has
been stated before. This is pre-
cisely one of those cases. It has
just enough truth in it to make a
pretension ; but, in point of fact
and result, it is no true statement
at all." Mr. Alvord, the present
Speaker of the Assembly, declared
that the anonymous communica-
tion was " from the beginning to
the end a falsehood," and he add-
ed : " In all my legislative expe-
rience, in all these cases where
State aid has been given to institu-
tions of this character it has been
based, not upon the question wheth-
er the institution belonged to this
or that religious denomination, but
upon the numbers who are taken care
of by the charity, and only upon that."
Mr. Develin exposed the "evident
and intentional suppression of the
truth " in the statements of the
same anonymous paper relative to
the legislative appropriations of
1867, and showed that, in order
to pick out the Catholic charities
mentioned in the tax-levy, the com-
piler must necessarily have gone
through a multitude of similar
grants to Protestant charities, of
which he suppressed all mention.
The list was made up, in short, by
the double fraud of charging to
Catholics what they had not re-
ceived, and omitting what had
been given to non-Catholics.
This fraudulent list, notwith-
standing the complete exposure of
its character in the Constitutional
Convention, seems to have been
used nevertheless by Dr. ^Leonard
Bacon in the preparation of two ar-
ticles against the Catholics publish-
ed nearly two years later in Put-
nanis Magazine (and answered in
THE CATHOLIC WORLD, August,
1869, and January, 18/0) at all
events, Dr. Bacon adopted the same
figures and now, ten years after-
ward, we find Mr. Cook referring
with approval to Dr. Bacon's
" fierce, but not too fierce, denunci-
ation of the spoliation the city was
then undergoing." All which is
only another illustration of the dif-
ficulty of stopping the circulation
of a lie.
A small minority in the Conven-
tion wished to insert in the consti-
tution a prohibition of any appro-
priation whatever for " sectarian "
or private charitable institutions.
The Committee on Charities, at the
head of which was Mr. Erastus
Brooks, recommended the creation
of a State Board of Chanties, and
was unwilling to limit the power
of the Legislature to give what it
deemed proper. Neither scheme
prevailed, and the proposed new
constitution left the matter as be-
fore. We do not purpose follow-
ing the debate ; but now that a
fresh attempt has been made to ac-
complish by constitutional amend-
ments the object which failed in
the Convention, it will be especially
useful to note how thoroughly the
fallacies of the anti-Catholic party
were laid bare by some of the fore-
most Protestants in the assemblage,
and how indignantly principles
were then scouted as " barbarian "
which are now growing into fashion.
Tli ere were several Catholics in the
Convention who took a distinguish-
ed part in the discussion ; but we
shall here quote chiefly from Pro-
testants
Mr. Brooks, beginning with a
severe rebuke of the "sectarian
Private Charities and Public Money.
257
hate '' which had displayed itself in
the memorials against appropria-
tions for religious charities, laid
down the plain rule that while " the
State ought not to support the
churches, and ought not to make
donations for purely sectarian pur-
poses," on the other hand " it is
also unworthy of a State to deny to
any class of needy people the State's
aid because the recipients of its
bounty perchance belong to any
one sect or to no sect. And I may
also add," he continued, "that it is
also unworthy of ' taxpayers ' and
all others to incite the fury of the
State against any sect or party on
account of its religious faith." Mr.
Brooks reminded the Convention
that " there can be no true charity
where all religion is excluded";
and to those who cherish the ab-
surd idea that there can be an ab-
stract religion distinct from any
particular creed or form of worship
lie addressed the following sensible
remarks :
" Sectarianism cannot be, must not be,
supported by the State, nor must it, if
presented in the form of a true charity, be
disowned by the State, If you strike at
one mode of religious worship you strike
at all. Your blows fall everywhere, and
prostrate all whom they may reach.
You must not suppose that asylums in
New York, Westchester, Rochester, or
Buffalo can be assailed upon the score
of sectarianism, or Romanism if you
please, and Protestant institutions like
the two State Houses of Refuge, the insti-
tutions for the deaf and dumb, the blind,
the Children's Aid Societies, Five Points
Missions, hospitals for those of mature
years and infant dependants, escape un-
scathed. All are so far Protestant as
to have Protestant officers, Protestant
boards of trustees and directors, and a
general Protestant management and su-
perintendence. This is true of all our
main institutions, either criminal or for
the maintenance of the poor. I have no
fault to find with any of them ; but be
careful where you strike, or, like Samson,
you may bring the whole temple at your
VOL. XXIX. 17
feet, and destroy all in your zeal to pros-
trate those you dislike."
Mr. George William Curtis, the
editor of Harper's Weekly, follow-
ed Mr. Brooks.
"Unquestionably," said he, "if the
State, as we have determined, is to aid
charities, it cannot avoid, at least pro-
portionately, helping those institutions
which are under the care of the Roman
Church. It is impossible not to recog-
nize the fact that the charitable founda-
tions of the Roman Church are the most
comprehensive, the most vigorous, and
the most efficient known in history. It
is still further true, as the chairman of
the committee (Mr. Brooks) has told us,
that the great majority of those who
must be relieved by State charities in
certain sections of the State are mem-
bers of that church, and will naturally
fall to the care of that church. I can-
not stop to speak of the various forms
of the charity of that church, but it is to
one of its saints that civilization owes
the institution of the Sisters of Charity,
whose benign service is known even in
the hospitals of other denominations,
and any system which this State should
adopt which should strike at the very
root qf such institutions would neces-
sarily bring the State to this question :
* Are you willing to do, absolutely and
to the utmost, what is now done by the
institutions already in existence ?' I do
not believe that the State is willing to do
it. I believe the experience of this State
to be that of Massachusetts. Massachu-
setts in the year 1863 established a board
of charity. In the very first report which
that board made, after looking over the
whole ground, they announced that in
their judgment the true policy of the
State was to give assistance to the pri-
vate foundations, of whatever sect, that
already existed, rather than to establish
new public institutions."
" I am not a Catholic/' said Mr. Martin
I. Townsend, recently member of Con-
gress from the Troy district ; " I am the
farthest from it, perhaps, that a man can
well be and have respect for the God that
they worship. But my Protestantism has
not taught me, when I see a naked, bare-
footed child in the month of January
tracking its little feet in the snow, to
ask, before I relieve its necessities, what
is the faith in which it is being brought
Private Charities and Pitbhc Money.
up ; and notwithstanding the multitude
of petitions that have come here, I do
not believe that that is the sentiment of
the State. I believe the sentiment of the
State would be to relieve Catholic or-
phans as well as Protestant orphans."
" I am aware," said Mr. Alvord, " that
there are numerous petitions coming up
from all parts of the State against giving
State aid for sectarian purposes ; but I
am not aware that this cry which has
been raised throughout the State is en-
titled to any consideration, because so
far as regards the foundations of these
charities, in the very nature of the case,
in almost all of these institutions of
charity throughout our land, so far as
regards their administration, they fall
into some sectarian hands. They are the
creation of benevolent people people
who have organized them because they
have an abundance of means and there
are very many instances, both under Pro-
testant and Romanish auspices, where
the institutions have been the emana-
tions of the piety of individuals. Such
persons consider it a part of their reli-
gion that they should perform these acts
of charity and kindness to their fellow-
beings, and they must of necessity, under
the circumstances, gather themselves
together animated by the religious feel-
ing in order to establish their work of
benevolence."
And after showing how essen-
tial it is to the public welfare that
orphans and other helpless and
destitute persons should be pro-
perly cared for, Mr. Alvord con-
tinued :
" It is right and proper for the great
body politic to put their hands into the
coffers of the State from time to time, as
may be required, and give forth of the
means of the people for the purpose of
benefiting directly the people themselves
by seeing to it that this great mass of
human beings, orphans as they are, shall
not come up to be a terror to the people
of the State."
Upon the question of the justice
of giving State aid to institutions
under religious influence or con-
trol, the sentiment of the Conven-
tion seemed, indeed, to be nearly
all one way. The policy of that
course, as a mere matter of expedi-
ency and economy, was also de-
monstrated. The point was well
made that a large proportion of
charitable institutions which origi-
nate in private beneficence and are
partly sustained by private contri-
butions must inevitably go down
if State aid is withheld. "If pri-
vate liberal-minded individuals,"
said one member, " will from their
private means defray nineteen-twen-
tieths of this expense and leave but
one-twentieth for the State to sup-
ply, it seems to me wise to accept
of such a donation, and not by]
constitutional restrictions deny our-
selves the benefit of such liberality."
Private beneficence already bears
about as heavy a tax as it is able
to sustain. If the state and city
should withdraw their help, indi-
viduals would not supply the defi-
ciency, but a large proportion of
the charitable institutions would
have to close their doors. Thou-
sands of destitute persons would
be thrown into the streets and
become a burden upon the public.;
The number of municipal hospi-
tals, almshouses, asylums, etc , etc.,
would have to be quadrupled; and
where taxation now contributes
only a small part of the cost of
supporting the poor and disabled,
it would then have to pay the
whole.
Probably the voluntary contribtH
tions of churches and private per-
sons defray not less than three-
quarters of the current expenses of
the hundred and fifty charitable
institutions of this city, and have
borne an equally large proportion
of the first cost of the buildings.;
Does anybody imagine that these
donations would ever have been
made to municipal hospitals and
almshouses ? It has been calcu-
lated that public charities of a
Private Charities and Public Money.
259
secular character consume in sala-
ries on an average about thirty per
cent, of their income. The income
of the House of Refuge last year,
exclusive of a special gift from the
State of $20,000, was $114,962, and
salaries and wages amounted to
$37,454. But in the best class of
religious charities the services of
managers, officers, and attendants
are in large part gratuitous. To
show the economy of public aid to
religious charities we have a strik-
ing illustration in the case of the
Catholic Protectory. That insti-
tution does for children of Catho-
lic parents what the House of Re-
fuge and the Juvenile Asylum do
for Protestants. All three receive
per-capita allowances from the pub-
lic funds. The House of Refuge
and the Juvenile Asylum are sup-
ported wholly by the city and State.
The House of Refuge, moreover, re-
ceived its land from the city, and
very nearly the entire expense of
its buildings was paid by the tax-
payers. According to its fiftieth
annual report, issued in 1875, the
cost of its real estate and buildings
up to that date was $745,740, and
the total amount received from
private subscriptions and donations
during its whole history was only
$38,702. Now look at the record
of the Catholic Protectory. That
establishment contained at the date
of its last report 2,034 children, the
House of Refuge having 903 and
the Juvenile Asylum 781. Up to
1875 (the same date we have taken
for the review of the expenditures
of the House of Refuge) the out-
lay on real estate and buildings
amounted to $933,968, of which the
public authorities had contributed
$193,502 in money and nothing at
all in land, leaving a balance of
about $740,000 supplied by the
liberality of Catholics. Nor is this
all. During the first three years of
its existence the Protectory receiv-
ed no allowances from the public
treasury. It obtained at last from
the Legislature a per-capita grant
of $50 (less than half the actual
cost of maintenance). It now re-
ceives $no for each child, the
House of Refuge drawing about
the same amount, while the Juve-
nile Asylum got last year $122 50
for each child. The deficit of the
Protectory on current expenses up
to 1875 reached the sum of $250,-
ooo, and it is now regularly from
$40,000 to $50,000 a. year; so that
this Catholic charity has expended
in the care of the children commit-
ted to it considerably more than a
million of dollars over and above
all sums received from any public
source. If Catholic religious zeal
had not undertaken this noble
work the taxpayers must have
borne the entire burden. They
must have put up buildings for the
army of children whom the Chris-
tian Brothers and Sisters of Char-
ity have taken care of (the House
of Refuge can accommodate only
1,000, and now contains over 900) ;
they must have made per-capita
grants for their support considera-
bly larger than they have made to
the Protectory ; or else the children
must have been left in the streets
to grow up vagrants, drunkards,
thieves, and worse. Besides doing
the public an incalculable service
by reforming and caring for these
boys and girls, the Protectory has
therefore saved the taxpayers more*
than a million dollars in cash.
We can imagine no more dread-
ful condition of society than one
in which the flow of private charity
is checked by illiberal laws, and a
host of orphans and paupers are
maintained out of the taxes in
establishments from which religion
260
Private Charities and Public Money.
is excluded. Such a system is a
curse both to the community that
gives such aid and to the poor who
receive it. It discountenances the
exercise of a virtue which has been
universally recognized as one of
the brightest ornaments of the
Christian life ; it deprives the un-
fortunate of the chief solace of
their misery, the weak and erring
of the chief help to a new career.
It would not take long under such
a system to produce a population
hard, selfish, immoral, monstrous
beyond all example in Christian
countries. But Protestants will
tell us that although charity ought
to be religious, it must nevertheless
be " unsectarian." There is no
cant more absurd than this. Why
must charity be "unsectarian?" Un-
sectarian is a fetich word to which
Protestants are prone to pay an
unreasoning worship. If there is
any difference between truth and er-
.ror, " sectarian " disagreements are
.founded upon important principles.
Jf a man has any faith he is bound
to stand by it and bring up his
.children in it. To say that the
State ought to withhold its aid
from every charity dispensed in an
asylum where a positive religious
belief is professed, and to open its
purse to asylums where indifferent-
ism is cultivated, is to require the
.State to discriminate against all
creeds and in favoj of free-thinking.
This is not impartiality; it is the
most offensive form of sectarianism.
It makes the State the active enemy
, of all creeds.
And in point of fact a general
system of undenominational char-
ity has never been established in
any civilized country. We can un*
-derstand an unsectarian soup-house
or dispensary. But an unsectarian
orphan asylum is an impossibility.
All institutions which undertake
the care and education of children,
all which assume the ordinary
duties of parents and attempt to
supply the influences proper to the
home, must give either a distinctly
religious training or a distinctly
infidel training. If they . accept
the latter alternative their managers
are guilty of the most fearful crime
against the children, and a crime,
too, against the state. If they
choose the former they are driven
to decide between rival creeds,
Christian or Jewish, Catholic or
Protestant. There is no getting
around this difficulty. There is no
devising a composite religion, suita-
ble for the use of asylums. How
shall we please the Jew with a
faith that teaches Christ crucified ?
Or if we yield to the Jew, shall we
have a Christianity that ignores
our Lord ? Or if perchance we can
satisfy Jew and Protestant, are we
to rob Catholics of the sacraments?
Nearly all denominations which re-
tain any love for their own creed
and any respect for spiritual things
understand the essential vice of
unsectarian asylums as clearly as
we do, and hence the multitude of
church institutions of various sorts
which have sprung up all over the
city.
An unsectarian reformatory is, if
possible, a still greater outrage
upon justice and common sense
than an unsectarian infant asylum,
since it undertakes to cultivate vir-
tue by the exclusion of religion,
and to conquer sin without the help
of grace. Homes and refuges for
adults are worse than useless if
religion is shut out of them. Hos-
pitals are places of danger if the
soul is not watched in them as
carefully as the body. Indeed, if
our Protestant friends adhered in
practice to the principles of man-
agement which they profess so
Private Charities and Public Money.
261
freely in the annual reports of be-
nevolent institutions, their chari-
ties would be cold enough. But in
point of fact nearly all these es-
tablishments do teach religion. It
may not be distinguishable as Epis-
copalianism, Methodism, or Pres-
byterianism, but at all events it
is surely Protestantism. The one
point upon which they all agree is
hostility to the Catholic Church.
" Ours is a strictly unsectarian
home," said the matron of one of
these institutions to a visitor; "we
open our doors to all, without dis-
tinction of race or creed." " Do
you receive Catholics too ?" " Oh !
yes, certainly we do ; but " confi-
dentially " we make sure that they
are not Catholics any more when
they leave us." If Protestant de-
nominations care so little about
fundamental doctrines, so little
about modes of worship, so little
about positive religious duties, that
they are content to mix their chil-
dren in these great combination
asylums where a Ritualist will
preach to them to-day and a Unita-
rian to-morrow, where nobody can
determine whether it is even pro-
per to baptize the little ones, and
where they must inevitably be edu-
cated to have no respect for any
denomination whatever that is
their affair ; let those support the
system who like it. But in the
eyes of Catholics who cling to the
sacraments and the divinely-insti-
tuted priesthood, and who know
that our Lord enjoins upon us not
merely a vague religious sentiment
but certain religious practices, all
such pretended compromises be-
tween faith and infidelity are in the
last degree odious. He who is not
for me is against me. We take the
ground that we have an absolute
right to the free exercise of our re-
ligious duties and observances, and
our children an absolute right to
a Catholic education. When the
State places our poor, our sick, our
criminals, our orphans and des-
titute children in establishments
where these rights are in any way
abridged, it commits the most griev-
ous tyranny of which a government
can be guilty. When it declares
that it will aid none who cling to
their faith and their religious privi-
leges, but will give its money liber-
ally to all who consent to abandon
their church, it is guilty of enor-
mous injustice and makes itself the
strongest support of practical infi-
delity.
No, the so-called non-sectarian
institutions are either really secta-
rian in disguise or they are schools
of indifferentism, materialism, athe-
ism. In either case they are vio-
lently hostile to the Catholic Church,
and we can have no part or lot
with them. There is only one
just and rational method of solv-
ing the problem of State aid to the
poor, only one method that treats
all alike. That is to encourage
every religious denomination or
society of charitable persons to
found and manage asylums, etc.,
for those of their own creed, and,
when private benevolence has done
its utmost, for the State to lend its
assistance to all impartially in pro-
portion to the numbers they re-
lieve, asking of none, "Are you
Methodists? Are you Catholics?
Do you believe in the Trinity ?
Do you approve of infant baptism ?"
but only requiring proof that the
recipients of public money are hon-
estly engaged in work for the pub-
lic good, and that the funds com-
mitted to them in. trust will be
honestly and wisely expended.
This is " unsectarian charity." 1
This is the only fair and economi-
cal method of taking care of the
262
Private CJiarities and Public Money.
poor. And this, as we shall see,
in spite of occasional outbreaks of
fanatical opposition, is the method
to which our State has long given
at least a formal approval. " The
very complainants who remonstrate
against sectarian charities," said
Mr. Erastus Brooks, in speaking of
the anonymous paper referred to
in the first part of this article, "are
themselves all of some sect and
party, and the complaint, I think,
is not so much that money is ex-
pended as that, perhaps, those not
of the sect of the signers get more
than their share of this money."
At the request of the Constitu-
tional Convention in 1867 tabular re-
ports were prepared by State Comp-
troller Hillhouseand City Comptrol-
ler Connolly of all sums of money
paid by the State and City of New
York to religious, charitable, and
educational institutions during the
previous twenty years, specifying
the amounts received by each in-
stitution in each year. In these
reports were included asylums, re-
formatories, hospitals, dispensaries,
benevolent societies, colleges, cor-
porate free schools and academies
of various denominations, etc., etc.
everything, in short, of a charitable
nature except municipal institutions
like those under the care of the
Commissioners of Charities and Cor-
rection on Blackwell's Island, and
the public schools, which are main-
tained by a special fund and tax.
The State report covered the period
from January i, 1847, to December
31, 1866 ; the city report compris-
ed also a part of the expenditures
of 1867 ; and both were published
with the official proceedings of the
Convention.* We have supplement-
ed these statements by obtaining
from the official records an account
i * See Documents of the Convention of the State
of New York, vol. iii. Nos. 54 and 55.
of all sums paid by the State and
city to the same or similar institu-
tions from the date of the Conven-
tion reports down to the ist of
January, 1878, so that the record is
now complete fora period of thirty-
one years. No statement covering
the past ten years has ever been
compiled until now, and the pre-
paration of the table has involved
great labor. The charitable ap-
propriations of the city alone, which
were less than $2oo,'ooo in 1867,
amounted to $967,000 in 1877, and
the number of institutions benefit-
ed has doubled in the same time,
although corporate schools, former-
ly included, have been dropped
from the listsince 1872. The figures
include payments from whatever
source, and fall under no fewer than
eight separate heads : i. Special ap-
propriations by the Legislature; 2.
Per-capita allowances made by the
Legislature in the annual charity
bill, and divided first among the
counties in the ratio of their taxa-
tion, the share of each county being
then divided among its charitable
institutions in proportion to the
number of their inmates; 3. Per-
capita allowances from the school
fund to charitable institutions (such
as orphan asylums and reforma-
tories) which are partly engaged in
the work of education ; 4. Special
appropriations by the city or county;
5. Per-capita allowances from the
city or county, under general laws ;
6. The excise funds distributed
among charitable associations; 7.
License fees from theatres (paid to
the House of Refuge) ; 8. Board of
inmates of certain institutions paid
from the appropriations of the
Commissioners of Charities and
Correction.*
* During the seven years 1867 to 1873 these last-
enumerated items were paid by the commissioners
and not by the comptroller, and the confusion in the
Private Charities and Public Money.
263
The State appropriations are
taken from the State comptroller's
annual reports. The city and coun-
ty appropriations, up to the close
of 1869, are copied from the an-
nual reports of the city comptroller.
But since December, 1869, that
officer has never made a detailed
report -from which it is possible to
discover the payments to any one
institution, and the figures have
only been obtained by considera-
ble research. It has been necessary
to examine the ledgers in the comp-
troller's office for a series of years,
and often to consolidate a great
number of entries, in order to as-
certain the amount paid to a single
society in a single year. Since the
distinction between city and coun-
ty expenditures was abolished in
1874, an inspection of the comptrol-
ler's warrants has given the de-
sired information. The work has
been complicated by obscurities
and inaccuracies in the titles by
which institutions are occasionally
entered on the books of the city,
and in several cases it has been
difficult to ascertain which of two
establishments having somewhat
similar names was the one intend-
ed. It is possible that this confu-
sion lias led to a few errors in our
table ; but we have taken great
pains to avoid such mistakes, and
in many instances have had re-
course to the books of the institu-
tions themselves. It is proper to
say that the comptroller and his de-
puties and clerks have cheerfully
given us every possible facility for
the examination of the city re-
cords.
Schools and colleges are not in-
cluded in the statements that fol-
books is such that we have failed to obtain the
figures. The only institutions which received any-
thing from that source during the period mentioned
were the Colored Orphan Asylum and the Colored
Home.
low first, because the question of
public education has been held to
be distinct from that of public cha-
rity, and cannot be discussed here
without swelling the dimensions of
this article far beyond all reason-
able bounds; and, secondly, because
no grants have been made in aid
of corporate or private schools
since 1872, and none can be made
under the amended constitution as
it now stands. Dispensaries are
omitted, because they are a pecu-
liar kind of charity which all par-
ties approve of aiding from the
public funds, and " sectarianism "
has nothing to do with them. Hos-
pitals, however, are included, be-
cause religious influences are na-
turally concerned with them. So-
cieties for general charitable relief
are also included, because a very
large proportion of them combine
missionary work with alms-giving ;
as it is impossible always to speci-
fy those which confine themselves
to a single function, we have enter-
ed them all. For convenience of
comparison we group the institu-
tions under several heads accord-
ing to their chief objects. Some
operate in two or more spheres ;
the Sisters of Mercy, for instance,
and the Hebrew Benevolent Socie-
ty, besides maintaining asylums for
children, distribute a great deal of
out-door relief to adults ; but as we
have no means of distinguishing
the revenues and expenditures of
each branch, the total grants to the
society or institution are set down
under the head which represents
its principal work.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES
Among the Catholic institutions
of New York there are three "great
charities" namely,the Orphan Asv-
lum, Foundling Asylum, and Protec-
Pr irate Charities and Public Money.
tory each of which far surpasses
in the extent of its operations any
t:vo non-Catholic establishments in
the city, and each receives allow-
ances strictly proportioned to the
11 umber of its inmates.
I. ASYLUMS FOR CHILDREN.
i. The Roman Catholic Orphan
Asylum embraces four important
institutions namely, an establish-
ment for girls at the corner of
Prince and Mott Streets, which
contained, according to the Catho-
lic Almanac of 1879, 2I children ;
another for girls on Madison Ave-
nue and Fifty-second Street, with
5 10 children ; one for boys on Fifth
Avenue, with 520 children (these
three being under the care of the
Sisters of Charity); and a farm at
Peekskill, where 120 of the older
boys are cared for by the Christian
Brothers. Whole number of chil-
dren, 1,360, or nearly as many as
all the seven Protestant and He-
brew orphan asylums put together.
The society was founded in 1817 ;
consolidated with it are the Ro-
man Catholic Half-Orphan Society
and the Society for the Relief of
Children of Poor Widows and Wid-
owers, grants to both which are
included in the figures given be-
low. After the society had been
in active operation for thirty years,
sustaining all the poor children the
Prince Street building could ac-
commodate, and pressed to make
room for more, it obtained from the
city a grant and lease of the land for
the erection of the new asylums on
Fifth and Madison Avenues. The
annual report for 1877 (the latest
at hand) shows that the society re-
ceived during the previous year
from the Board of Excise $15,000;
from the Board of Education, $13,-
658 43; from the State, nothing;
from legacies, 14,861 ; from the
voluntary offerings of Catholics,
$34,830 28. The collections taken
up in the churches on Christmas
and Easter days are given to this
charity, and in prosperous years
they have generally amounted to
about $50,000 annually. No sala-
ries are paid to the sisters or th
Christian Brothers, but a small su
is allowed for their actual expenses,
amounting in the total to $4,400
for the sisters and $1,895 59 f r
the brothers. During the thirty-
one years covered by our reports
these four asylums have received
from the city and State $298,-
196 54.
2. St. Josephs Orphan Asylum,
on Eighty-ninth Street and Ave-
nue A, was founded in 1858, chiefly
for German children, and is under
the charge of the School Sisters of
Notre Dame. At the last report it
had 1 80 children. Its annual ex-
penses are about $14,000. It re-
ceived of the public money in 1877,
from all sources, $1,100, and its
gross receipts from the city and
State since its foundation (twenty
years) have been $61,498 55.
3. St. Vincent de Paul's Orphan
Asylum, in West Thirty-ninth Street,
was founded in 1858, and gives
preference to children of French
descent. It has 87 inmates, who
are supported chiefly by the contri-
butions of French Catholics and
cared for by the Marianite sisters
of the Holy Cross. Its expendi-
tures amount to about $10,000 a
year, and it has a mortgage debt of
$54,000. Its receipts of public
money last year were $1,500 from
the excise fund. Its gross receipts
of public money since its founda-
tion (twenty years) have been $19,-
174 04.
4. St. Stephen s Home, under the
Sisters of Charity, in East Twenty-
I
Private Cliaritics and Public Money.
26$
eighth Street, was founded in 1868
for the relief of destitute boys and
girls between the ages of two and
thirteen. It had 141 inmates at
the date of the last report. Its an-
nual expenses are between $7,500
and $8,000. In 1877 it received
$3,220 from the public funds, and
its gross receipts from city and
State since the commencement have
been $14,202 89.
5. The Foundling Asylum of the
Sisters of Charity, established in
1869, is one of the noblest of
our Catholic benefactions. Institu-
tions of this kind do a double ser-
vice to the community, for they not
only relieve a class of destitute
children who have peculiar claims
upon our compassion, but they ac-
complish untold good in the pre-
vention of the crimes of infanticide
and abandonment. Mr. Brooks
paid a high tribute to the useful-
ness of foundling asylums in the
course of the debate in the Consti-
tutional Convention from which we
have already quoted. A beginning
had then been made towards the
establishment of such an asylum in
connection with the (Protestant)
Nursery and Child's Hospital; but
the reception of foundlings has al-
ways been a small and subordinate
part of the operations of that insti-
tution, while the sisters' asylum
attained from the first the most
extensive proportions. Begun in
East Twelfth Street, "almost im-
mediately its many cribs were filled
by babies of well-nigh every race,
and presenting different conditions
of health and suffering some with
marks of violence upon their little
bodies, others evidently under the
influence of drugs to such an ex-
tent that but the merest semblance
of life remained in them, and others
bearing with them contagion of va-
rious kinds." Before the Sisters of
Charity undertook this work the
foundlings of New York were con-
signed to the care of the pauper
women in the Blackwell's Island
Almshouse, most of whom were
old, infirm, filthy in their habits, and
broken down by a long life of hard-
ships or vice. A visiting physician
appointed to that institution was
shocked at learning from these wo-
men that "only one foundling had
lived in many months." The sis-
ters had great difficulties to con-
tend with, and at one time their
funds were reduced to fifty-two
cents ; but the Legislature came to
their aid by granting them the
same allowances made to Protes-
tant institutions of the same class ;
a society of ladies was formed to
raise money for them by subscrip-
tion, and the city gave them land
for the present asylum on Sixty-
eighth Street, which was opened in
1863. The buildings as they now
stand cost over $300,000 ; others
are to be put up whenever the sis-
ters obtain the necessary funds.
The society of ladies already men-
tioned devotes itself especially to
collections for this object. The
asylum not only takes care of
abandoned children, but it em-
braces a refuge and reformatory
for unfortunate mothers, receiving
from 250 to 300 wretched women
every year. Besides the infants in
the asylum proper, there are many
others whom the sisters are obliged
to place out at nurse for want of
room ; in the supervision of the
nurses the sisters are aided by the
visitors of the Society of St. Vin-
cent de Paul. The number of
foundlings in the institution at the
date of the last report was 1,783.
By the act of 1872 the supervi-
sors of the city and county of New
York are required to pay to the
managers of the Foundling Asy-
266
Private Charities and Public Money.
lum, for each infant maintained by
them, the same sum granted by the
act of 1865 to the (Protestant) In-
fants' Asylum for the same service.
This sum is not to exceed the ave-
rage cost of the maintenance of
children of like ages in the muni-
cipal Nursery and Infants' Hospital
under the charge of the Commis-
sioners of Charities and Correction.
The grants to the Catholic and
the Protestant institution are made
in identical terms and with the
same conditions, the payments in
both cases being strictly propor-
tioned to the number of inmates,
and made to correspond with the
lowest cost of keeping children in
the public institutions. Under the
law the Foundling Asylum received
$242,776 54 in 1877, and its gross
receipts from city and State since
the beginning have been $1,252,-
713 71-
6. St. Vincent* s Home for Boys,
in Warren Street, was founded in
1870, and somewhat resembles in
its general plan the Newsboys'
Lodging-Houses conducted by our
Protestant friends. It gives food
and shelter, besides a careful mo-
ral training, to homeless lads, and
extends charity to a great num-
ber of out-door applicants besides.
There are about 220 inmates.
Those who are able pay five cents
for a meal and a night's lodging ;
the destitute are received free.
The annual expenses are about
$10,000 ; the institution received
$1,600 from the city in 1877. Gross
receipts of public money from the
beginning, $5,375-
7. St. Vincent de Paul's Indus-
trial School for girls, in West For-
ty-second Street, was founded in
1856. It is under the direction of
the Sisters of Charity, and compri-
ses not only a school where girls
over twelve years of age are taught
trades, etc., but also a home for
the destitute. It has about 160
inmates, and in 1877 received $i,-
200 from the city. Gross receipts
of public money from the begin-
ning (twenty-two years), $8,860, or
about five cents a week for each
girl in the Home.
8. Asylum and Schools of the Sis-
ters of St. Dominic. The Sisters
of St. Dominic have parochial
schools attached to three of the
German churches, and maintain
besides, in Second Street, an asy-
lum with about seventy-five in-
mates, and an Industrial School
where three hundred and twenty-
five children are clothed, fed, and
taught trades. They moreover
feed about fifty poor persons daily.
They received in 1877 from the
excise funds $5,787 28, and no
other public money. The grants
to these sisters previous to 1872
were made in such form that the
per-capita allowances from the edu-
cation fund, on account of their
various free day-schools, are not
distinguishable from the grants to
the asylum and Industrial School.
Gross receipts of public money for
all purposes since the foundation
(1860), $64,75 1 94- Of this amount
$17,030 37 came from the school
fund.
9. St. Joseph's Industrial Home,
on Madison Avenue and Eighty-
first Street, is the only Catholic
institution except the Orphan Asy-
lum and the Foundling Asylum
which obtained its land from the
city. It was founded in 1869 for the
protection of destitute young girls
(the daughters of deceased or dis-
abled soldiers having a preference),
and for the reception of homeless
little children committed to it by
the police courts. It is under the
charge of the Sisters of Mercy.
The number of inmates in October,
Private Charities and Public Money.
267
1878, was 596. During the previ-
ous year nearly 1,000 destitute
children were sent to the asylum
by the magistrates, not for petty
crimes but because they had no
home. These committed children,
including some transferred from
Randall's Island, were paid for out
of the excise fund, the amount for
the year being $39,052 43; other
allowances from the public trea-
sury, $9,946 51. The State made
three appropriations towards the
cost of the building, viz. : $30,000
in 1867, $25,000 in 1868 on condi-
tion that an equal amount should
be raised by private contributions,
and $50,000 in 1869 with the same
proviso. Gross receipts of public
money from the beginning includ-
ing these three donations, $161,-
502 81.
II. REFORMATORIES.
i o . The Catholic Protectory. T h i s
is the third of the " great chanties,"
and the most extensive of any class,
Catholic or non- Catholic, within the
limits of this review. It was found-
ed in 1863 for the purpose of re-
forming juvenile delinquents and
educating vagrant children, the
statutes conferring upon it the
same powers and responsibilities
that belong by law to the House
of Refuge, Juvenile Asylum, and
Female Guardian Society. We
have already seen that Catholic
charity has contributed over a mil-
lion of dollars to the cost of this
institution, and that the voluntary
offerings of benevolent persons pay
annually a large proportion of its
running expenses. The following
courteous letter was addressed to
the rector of the Protectory by
the superintendent of the Five
Points House of Industry :
FIVE POINTS HOUSE OF INDUSTRY,
May 28, 1878.
DEAR SIR : I desire again in this for-
mal manner to tender my sincere thanks
for your courtesy shown to Mr. Camp
and myself on our visit to your institu-
tion yesterday. The visit, as we said,
was one wholly for information which
might be useful to us in our work. I
was both surprised and delighted with
what I saw, and you are certainly doing
a most excellent work in an admirable
manner. You have the right ideas
in regard to fitting these children for
usefulness, and are fortunate in being
able to put them in such a practical
shape. I think no candid person can
take in such a knowledge of your gene-
ral work as we did without commending
it. I shall always be glad to say 'a word
of commendation whenever an opportu-
nity offers for the thoroughly good work
you are doing for the poor Catholic
children.
Sincerely yours,
WILLIAM F. BARNARD.
To REV. BROTHER ADRIAN,
New York Protectory.
The number of inmates at the
date of the last report was 2,034.
The allowance from the public
treasury for the support of the
children is $110 each per annum,
that to the House of Refuge being
the same, while the Juvenile Asy-
lum received last year $122 50.
The Protectory obtained thus from
the city in the year 1877-8, $227,-
853 93, and from the Commission-
ers of Charities and Correction $8,-
125 98, besides a special donation
of $50,000 from the Legislature.
Gross receipts of public money
from the beginning, including do-
nations to the building fund (there
have been no grants of land), $2,-
030,454 47.
ii. The House of the Good Shep-
herd, at the foot of Eighty-ninth
Street, East River, was founded in
1857, by the religious order whose
name it bears, for the relief and
reformation of fallen women. In
1878 it had 464 inmates, including
penitent women, and young girls
and children entrusted to the in-
stitution as a measure of precau-
268
Private Charities and Public Money.
lion, these classes being kept sepa-
rate. Its annual expenditures are
about $80,000. In 1877 it received
from the city $8,946 47, and its
gross receipts of public money from
the commencement have been
$406,552 60.
1 2 . The Association for Befriend-
ing Children and Young Girls is a
society of benevolent ladies who
sustain the House of the Holy
Family, in Second Avenue, for the
shelter and reformation of unfor-
tunate children who are either vi-
cious or exposed to bad influences.
It was founded in 1869; expends
about $j 2,000 a year, mostly ob-
tained by voluntary offerings; sup-
ports and educates about 100 girls;
and received from the public trea-
sury in 1877 $1,750. Gross re-
ceipts of public money from the
beginning, $16,450.
III. ASYLUMS FOR ADULTS.
13. The Institution of Mercy, in
Houston Street, under the charge
of the Sisters of Mercy, was found-
ed in 1846. It comprises a House
of Protection for poor women out
of employment, and an asylum and
school for young girls, and the
sisters are also extensively engaged
in the visitation of the* sick and the
distribution of general out-door
relief. It has about 250 inmates,
and expends nearly $20,000 a year.
In 1878 it received $1,000 of the
public money, and its gross receipts
from the city and State from the
beginning (thirty-one years), for all
branches of its work, have been $66,-
625 46.
14. St. Joseph's Home for the
Aged is an asylum for poor women,
conducted by the Sisters of Char-
ity, in West Fifteenth Street. It
was founded in 1868 and has 230
inmates, the destitute being receiv-
ed free. Its annual expenses are
about $30,000. It received $6,930
from the excise funds in 1877, and
its gross receipts of public money
from the beginning have been $27,-
305-
15. The 'Home for the Aged of
the Little Sisters of the Poor, in
East Seventieth Street, is an asy-
lum of a similar character, founded
in 1870. It is entirely free, and
receives only those who are over
sixty years of age and quite desti-
tute. It has 158 inmates, for
whose support the sisters in person
go begging from door to door ; its
annual expenditures are about $13,-
ooo a year ; it received $3,040 from
the excise funds in 1877 ; and its
gross receipts of public money
from the beginning have been $14,-
671 02.
IV. HOSPITALS.
1 6. St. Vincent's Hospital, in
Eleventh Street, was founded by
the Sisters of Charity in 1849, and
was the first institution of the kind
in this city depending on voluntary
contributions. The money for its
first outlay was advanced by the
late Vicar-General Starrs. In 1860
it raised a fund of $45,000 by means
of a fair, and this enabled it to
purchase land and put up a part of
its present buildings. It receives
persons of any creed, and allows
ministers of all denominations free
access to patients who wish to see
them. Inmates who are not Cath-
olics are not expected to attend
the religious services. There were
about eighty patients at the last re-
port. Those who have means pay
something for board and attend-
ance ; the indigent are received
free. The annual expenditures are
about $40,000. The hospital re-
ceived $4,500 from the city in 1877.
Gross receipts of public money
from the beginning, $69,166 59.
Private Cliaritics and Public Money.
269
17. St. Francis' Hospital, in Fifth
Street, is a free German institution
under the care of the Sisters of the
Poor of St. Francis, who add to
their duties in the hospital an ex-
tensive work of out-door relief. It
was founded in 1865; had 173 pa-
tients at the last report; received
$4,243 50 from the city in 1877,
and has had of public money from
the beginning $92,033 73.
1 8. St. Elizabeth's Hospital, in
West Thirty-first Street, was found-
ed in 1870 under the Sisters of the
Third Order of St. Francis, has
room for about fifty patients, spends
<6,ooo a year, and obtained $1,000
from the city in 1877. Gross re-
ceipts of public money from the
beginning, $4,700.
V. SPECIAL INSTITUTIONS.
19. St. Joseph 's Ins tit ii tefor Deaf
Mutes, at Ford ham, is an establish-
ment under lay management, found-
ed in 1869. It has received alto-
gether $10,554 03 from the public
funds.
VI. GENERAL RELIEF.
20. The Society of St. Vincent de
Paul, an association of laymen or-
ganized in nearly all the parishes
for the visitation and relief of the
poor, distributes $50,000 or $60,000
a year. It has been in operation
here since 1856, and has received
$43,172 50 from the public funds.
These are the only gifts and al-
lowances to Catholic charities of
which we find record.
PROTESTANT AND JEWISH CHAR-
ITIES.
I. ASYLUMS FOR CHILDREN.
i. The New York Orphan Asy-
lum, on Eleventh Avenue near
Seventy-third Street, was founded
in 1806. It has been liberally en-
dowed by the benefactions of pri-
vate individuals, and has prosper-
ed by the increase in the value of
real estate. It is strictly Protes-
tant, and orphans are only inden-
tured to persons who are " regular
attendants of a Protestant place
of worship and recommended by
their pastor." Its expenditures are
about $40,000 a year. It has ac-
commodation for 225 children. In
1877 it received $1,933 9 1 from
the city. Gross receipts of public
money since 1847, $5 2 > 20 4 51.
2. The Leake and Watts Orphan
House, at Bloomingdale, was found-
ed in 1831 under the will of Mr.
John G. Leake, and derives an
ample income from its endowment.
It is free to destitute full orphans,
of whom it has about 150. Ac-
cording to the language of the act
of incorporation, the children are
to be admitted without regard to
*' the country or religious persua-
sion of their deceased parents."
They attend the Protestant Epis-
copal Church service, however ;
the religious instruction is of course
Protestant; and the rector of Trin-
ity Church has been president of
the "institution from its foundation.
It received from the city in 1877
$1,442 24. Gross receipts of pub-
lic money since 1847, $22,975 49.
3. The Colored Orphan Asylum,
One Hundred and Forty-third
Street, was founded in 1836. The
city gave it in 1842 twenty lots of
ground on Fifth Avenue, between
Forty-third and Forty-fourth Streets,
and with the proceeds of the sale
of this property, after the destruc-
tion of the asylum by a mob in
1863, the present site was purchas-
ed. Religious instruction is fur-
nished by ministers of various
Protestant denominations in turn.
The number of children at the last
report was 307. In 1877 tn ^ asy-
270
Private Charities and Public Money.
him received $11,287 82 from the
city. Receipts of public money
since 1847, $176,157 24, not in-
cluding amounts paid by the Com-
missioners of Charities and Correc-
tion during the seven years ending
with 1873. (See note on a preced-
ing page.)
4. The Hebrew Orphan Asylum,
founded in 1859, is one of several
charities under the management of
the Hebrew Benevolent Society.
The land which it occupies on Sev-
enty-seventh Street and Third
Avenue was a gift from the corpora-
tion, and the city also contributed
$30,000 to the building fund. Be-
sides the main building, used for
boys, it has an industrial school
adjoining, and an asylum for girls
in Eighty-sixth Street. The num-
ber of children in the three estab-
lishments in 1878 was 301. The
charity is exclusively for Jews, and
the inmates receive a strictly Jew-
ish education. The funds of the
society are derived in large part
from the annual contributions of
its two thousand patrons and mem-
bers, but it also receives liberal aid
from the city, the payments from
this source in 1877 amounting to
$21,729 66. The expenditures for
the current year have been dis-
tributed by the managers of the
association as follows : Orphan Asy-
lum, $45,000 ; Industrial School,
$3,000; charity and relief, $15,-
ooo. Gross receipts of public
money (eighteen years), $155,-
147 37-
5. The Protestant Half-Orphan
Asylum, in West Tenth Street,
founded in 1835, is intended ex-
plicitly for the education of desti-
tute children in Protestantism. It
is not wholly free; board must be
paid in advance at the rate of 75
cents a week. At the last report
the asylum had 200 children. It
received from the city in 1878
$2,157 86. Gross receipts of pub-
lic money since 1847, $62,389 94.
6. The Orphans' Home and Asy-
lum of the Protestant Episcopal
Church, Forty-ninth Street and Lex-
ington Avenue, founded in 1851,
has 158 inmates. It obtained from
the city in 1861 a twenty years'
lease of the land it occupies, at the
yearly rent of one dollar, and its
gross receipts of public money from
the beginning have been $28,047 61.
In this total are included a pay-
ment of $1,000 in 1865 to the " Or-
phans' Home," and another of $i,-
395 79 to tne "Orphans' Home
and Asylum," by which titles we
suppose this institution to be
meant.
7. The Union Home and School,
on the Boulevard near One Hun-
dred and Fiftieth Street, was found-
ed in 1861 for the education and
support of the destitute children of
soldiers and sailors from this city.
It professes to permit u no secta-
rianism in the institution," but to
allow the visits of clergymen of all
denominations. The infants are
probably encouraged to judge for
themselves on disputed points of
theology. It is unnecessary to say
that the spirit of such an asylum
must be radically anti-Catholic, and
its influence highly favorable to in-
differentism and infidelity. By act
of the Legislature, passed in 1873
the managers are to receive $i5c
per annum for every child main-
tained in the Home, this being i
much larger per-capita allowance
than is made, so far as we know
to any other establishment. The
institution is supported entirely
from the public funds. At the las!
report it contained 187 children
It received from the city in 187;
$26,528 44. Gross receipts fron
the city and State since 1861
Private CJiarities and Public Money.
271
$252,371 54, not including amounts
paid by Westchester, Kings, and
other counties for children from
those parts of the State.
8. The Society for the Relief of
Destitute Children of Seamen is an
adjunct of the Sailors' Snug Har-
bor on Staten Island, but under
independent management. It re-
ceived $1,000 from the city in 1877.
Gross receipts of public money
since 1847, $36,655 76.
9. The Children's Aid Society is
the most extensive of the Protes-
tant organizations for the care of
children, and also one of the most
bitterly sectarian. It began oper-
ations in 1853, and now has twenty
industrial schools, twelve night-
schools, six lodging-houses, and a
summer home on Long Island. The
daily average attendance at the
schools last year was 3,477. The
most important part of the work of
the society is collecting poor and
vagrant children and sending them
to " carefully-selected homes " in
the West. Nearly 50,000 boys and
girls have thus been disposed of.
About 3,500 were shipped last year.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD has hereto-
fore shown how this society operates
in destroying the faith of Catholic
children who are taken into its
schools, and removing the HttleWest-
ern emigrants from all Catholic influ-
ences. Force is used in this process
of conversion ; the last annual report
speaks with approval of the effect
of " the action of the truant agents,
and the existence of the compul-
sory law (though mainly unexecut-
ed) in forcing street children into
our own night-schools, and into
half-sessions of our day industrial
schools." In the same report the
secretary, Mr. Charles L. Brace,
congratulates the friends of the so-
ciety on the failure of the propos-
ed amendments to the constitution
which threatened the existence of
the industrial schools, and he add-
ed the following sentence, which
well illustrates the spirit of his en-
terprise : "It was seen that the
previous amendments of the con-
stitution sufficiently protected our
public schools from priestly or sec-
tarian interference." Now, the
amendments to which Mr. Brace
refers were two. The first prohi-
bits grants by the State, the second
prohibits grants by counties, cities,
towns, and villages, to any associa-
tion, corporation, or private under-
taking, except that provision may
be made for juvenile delinquents,
the blind, the deaf and dumb, and
the poor. Under these amend-
ments ail allowances to Catholic
free schools have been cut off, but
the school money is paid freely to
Mr. Brace's schools, on the plea
that they are for the "support of
the poor." And when he says that
"priestly, interference " with the
schools has been prevented, he
means that measures have been
adopted to hinder Catholics from
conducting schools of their own.
What more open avowal could be
made of the character of his "un-
sectarian " establishments ? Not-
withstanding the constitutional
amendments, the Children's Aid
Society received from the Board of
Education in 1878 $34,599 28, and
from the city $70,000. Gross re-
ceipts of public money from 1853
to 1877, $979,499 69.
10. The American Female Guar-
dian Society, founded in 1835, 1S an
institution somewhat similar in its
character to tlje Children's Aid So-
ciety. It has a House of Industry
and Home for the Friendless ~in
East Thirtieth Street, where desti-
tute women and children are re-
ceived ; it conducts twelve industrial
schools ; it finds Protestant homes
Private Cliaritics and Public Money.
for children on the plan of the Chil-
dren's Aid Society ; and it does vari-
ous out-door missionary work. "Per-
sons applying for children must be
regular attendants at a Protestant
place of worship and recommend-
ed by their pastor." In 1878 there
were 118 children in the Home
and 35 adults. The report for
that year says that " 1,945 children
have been in regular attendance "
in the twelve industrial schools,
but the average or the number at
any one time is not given. The
number adopted out during the
year was 151. In 1877 the'society
received $165072 23 from the'Board
of Education and 25,000 from the
State. Gross receipts of public
money since 1847, $359,542 06.
1 1 . The Five Points House of In-
dustry, in Worth Street, founded in
1850, embraces a home and school
for destitute children and an asy-
lum for poor women. An impor-
tant part of its work is religious,
services being held twice a day
in the institution. The managers
make no secret of their efforts to
convert Catholic children to Pro-
testantism. A large proporcion of
the boys and girls are of Catholic
parentage, but none are ever placed
in Catholic homes. In 1878 the
whole number of inmates was 286
and the average attendance at the
school 354. The institution re-
ceived from the city in 1877 $6,-
876 14. Gross receipts of public
money from the beginning, $124,-
472 14.
12. The Five Points Mission, in
Park Street, founded in 1850, is an
enterprise of the Ladies' Home
Missionary Society of the Metho-
dist Episcopal Church, and is en-
tirely under the influence and con-
trol of the Methodist denomina-
tion. It maintains missionaries at
the Five Points, keeps up religious
services, finds situations for adults
and children, gives away food and
clothing, and lias a school with an
average attendance of 430. In
nearly all associations of this class
the distribution of material relief is
only auxiliary to the spiritual work.
In 1877 the mission obtained $2,100
from the city. Gross receipts of
public money from the beginning,
$45,059 36. (See also Ladies' Home
Missionary Society, No. 84.)
13. The Howard Mission and
Home for Little Wanderers, in the
New Bowery, was founded in 1861
professedly for the purpose of giv-
ing shelter and material aid and
" imparting intellectual, moral, and
religious instruction " to children
and others. It also provides homes
4pr children, and in ho case places
them with Catholic families. The
perversion of Catholic children to
Protestantism is one of its chief
objects. It obtained $2,265 2 5
from the city in 1877, and its gross
receipts of public money from the
beginning have been $22,490 50.
14. The Wilson Industrial School
and Mission, in St. Mark's Place, was
organized in 1853, and comprises a
school and night- refuge for poor
girls, and a " mission church " with
its pastor and Bible-reader, Sun-
day-school, prayer-meetings, etc.,
its operations being largely of a
religious character. The average
number of girls in the school last
year was 184. Gross receipts of
public money from the beginning,
$4,839 ii-
15. The Shepherd's Fold, in East
Sixteenth Street, and(i6) The Chil-
dren s Fold t Boulevard and Ninety-
fourth Street, are Protestant Episco-
pal institutions which have had a
curious history. In 1869 the superin-
tendent of the Shepherd's Fold was
the Rev. Edward Cowley. The
trustees having dispensed with his
Private Charities and Public Money.
273
services, he organized, with the aid
of seceders from the original insti-
tution, an opposition house, which
he called the Children's Fold, both
asylums having the same object
namely, the care and education of
destitute and orphan children. In
1874 a mortgage on the real estate
of the Shepherd's Fold was fore-
closed, the children were trans-
ferred to other institutions, and
the charity was abandoned. In
1877 the trustees of the Children's
Fold in their turn resolved to get
rid of Mr. Cowley. He was accus-
ed of cruelty and mismanagement.
The State Board of Charities took
the matter up ; there was an in-
vestigation and a public scandal ;
both parties went to law to secure
possession of the asylum, and mean-
while the managers of the Shelter-
ing Arms were requested to take
care of the children. By a law of
1874 the city was required to pay
$2 a week for every child maintain-
ed by the Children's Fold. But by
a law of 1871 the Shepherd's Fold
was entitled to draw from the pub-
lic treasury $5,000 a year, even if it
supported no children at all. Mr.
Cowley and his friends, ejected
from the Children's Fold, now re-
vived this profitable institution
(March, 1877), and suits and coun-
ter suits followed to test the legality
of their action. At their Annual
meeting held last March Mr. Cow-
ley stated that they had received
fifty children in two years, and ex-
pended $7,000, and he claims $5,000
from the city on account of the
operations of 1878. This amount
has not so far been paid ; but while
the two Folds were at open warfare
they both drew from the public
treasury at the same time. The
original Shepherd's Fold from 1869
to 1873 obtained $21,280, and v 'the
VOL. xxix. 18
Children's Fold from 1869 to 1877
received $34,175 06.
17. The Sheltering Arms, One
Hundred and Twenty-ninth Street
and Tenth Avenue, is a Protestant
Episcopal institution, founded in
1864 for the relief and education of
poor children, not orphans, who
are not provided for by other insti-
tutions. It is conducted by the
Protestant sisterhood of St. Mary.
It has about 135 children, and re-
ceived from the city in 1877 $2,520.
Gross receipts of public money
from the beginning, $21,972 95.
1 8. St. Barnabas House, in Mul-
berry Street, is a Protestant Epis-
copal institution, founded in 1865,
and comprising a temporary home
for women and children, a perma-
nent home for sixteen poor chil-
dren, and a day nursery. It is un-
der the management of a Protes-
tant sisterhood. All the inmates
are obliged to attend the Protes-
tant Episcopal service every day.
Gross receipts of public money
from the beginning, $9,355 21.
19. The Nursery and Child's
Hospital, Lexington Avenue and
Fifty-first Street, founded in 1854,
is the largest of the Protestant
charities for children, next to the
Children's Aid Society. It em-
braces a Lying-in Asylum and a
home for children ; payment being
expected for both classes of in-
mates, unless they are quite desti-
tute. At the last report there
were 586 children and 262 women
in the institution, including the
country branch on Staten Island.
During the year ending March i,
1878, the institution received $108,-
007 10. Gross receipts of public
money from the beginning, $668,-
334 10. The land which the nur-
sery occupies was a grant from
the city.
274
Private Charities and Public Money.
20. The Neiu York Infant Asy-
lum, Sixty-first Street and Tenth
Avenue, founded in 1865, is an in-
stitution somewhat like the pre-
ceding. It comprises a home for
foundlings and other destitute chil-
dren, and a lying-in hospital. A
law of 1865 requires the city to pay
for every child maintained by the
asylum a sum not greater than the
average cost of each child in the
municipal asylums. This is the
same provision afterwards extend-
ed to the Foundling Asylum of the
Sisters of Charity. The number of
children and women is about 400.
Receipts from the city in 1877,
$44,16543. Gross receipts of pub-
lic money from the beginning,
$160,208 86, nearly all of which
was paid during the past five years.
2 1 . The Juvenile Guardian Society,
in St. Mark's Place, a sort of mis-
sion and industrial school, was the
subject^of an investigation under-
taken by the State Board of Chan-
ties in 1877, resulting in a most
damaging report and an applica-
tion to the courts for a forfeiture
of its charter, on account of misuse
of funds and general worthlessness.
From 1866 to 1873 it received $59,-
435 1 8 of the public money.
2 2 . The Bowery Juvenile Guardian
Society is debited with one grant of
$264 89.
23. The Wayside Industrial
Home, incorporated in 1869 ' for
the care, support, and proper train-
ing and education of destitute chil-
dren," received $13,998 of the pub-
lic money during the four years
ending with 1872.
24. The Children's Educational
Relief Association, in East Broad-
way, was organized " to co-operate
with the Board of Public Instruc-
tion in advancing the cause of edu-
cation on a broad and unsectarian
basis," and its particular business
is to aid truant officers and others
in getting poor children into the
irreligious common schools. It re-
ceived $1,164 from the city in
1876.
25. The Ladies' Educational Union,
which appears to be no longer in
existence, had received of the pub-
lic money, from 1865 to 1871, $41,-
873 98.
26. The Industrial School of the
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church
received $5,000 from the city in
1868.
27. The Fourth Ward Society for
the Relief of Poor Children is de-
bited with a gift of $980.
II. REFORMATORIES.
28. The House of Refuge, under
the management of the Society for
the Reformation of Juvenile Delin-
quents, is the chief Protestant re-
formatory, corresponding to the
Catholic Protectory and the West-
ern House of Refuge at Rochester. '
Juvenile delinquents under sixteen
years of age are received on com-
mitment by a magistrate. There
has been an understanding, and
for a short time there was a law,
that the children of Catholic pa-
rents should be sent to the Protec-
tory, but this is not faithfully ob-
served ; for example, out of 625
committed to the House of Refuge
in 1878 no fewer than 317 were of
Irish parentage, and it is probable
that half the inmates of the asylum
are of Catholic birth. The reli-
gious instruction and worship, how-
ever, are exclusively Protestant.
Priests are not allowed to visit the
Catholic children, unless they are
specially asked for in case of sick-
ness. A formal application, made
by the Catholic Union in 1875, for
the admission of a priest to act as
chaplain to the Catholic children
and to say Mass for them, etc., was
Private Charities and Public Money.
275
refused. A majority of the inmates
are not criminals, but idle and
neglected children. Of the com-
mitments in 1878, only 49 per cent,
were for crimes of all sorts, great
and small, and the rest were for
vagrancy, truancy, and disorderly
conduct. The number of children
in the institution January i, 1879,
Avas 903. The House of Refuge
was built almost wholly at the pub-
lic expense, and all its expenses are
paid from the public treasury. It
received from the city the land
which it now occupies on Randall's
Island, and lands which it formerly
occupied on Madison Square and
on Twenty-third Street. Its reve-
nues, apart from proceeds of the
labor of the inmates, are derived
from the State comptroller, the Board
of Education, and the license tax
on theatres, and amount in the ag-
gregate to $110 per annum for each
child, or the same sum allowed to
the Catholic Protectory. It re-
ceives nothing from private chari-
ty. It obtained last year $68,500
from the State, $11,843 48 from
the Board of Education, and $22,-
457 56 from theatre licenses ; total,
$102,801 04. Gross receipts of
public money since 1847, $1,552,-
196 58.
29. The Juvenile Asylum, found-
ed in 1853, takes charge of children
committed by police magistrates
for vagrancy and petty offences,
and children of bad habits placed
in the asylum by their parents or
friends. Those who have no homes
it sends to the West. It is of course
strictly Protestant, although a large
proportion of its wards are of Ca-
tholic parentage. The institution
comprises the asylum proper near
High Bridge, a House of Recep-
tion in Thirteenth Street, and a
Western Agency at Bloomington,
Illinois. In January, 1879, there
were 781 children in the Asylum
and House of Reception, and dur-
ing the previous year 141 had been
sent to Illinois. The receipts from
the city and Board of Education in
1878 were $95,146 92; daily aver-
age number of inmates, 775 ; per-
capita allowance, $122 50. Gross
receipts of public money from the
beginning to 1877 (twenty-five
years), $1,442,292 87.
30. The (Protestant] House of
Mercy, at Bloomingdale, founded in
1854, is a Protestant Episcopal re-
formatory for fallen women and
wayward girls. It is under the
management of the Protestant sis-
terhood of St. Mary, and its reli-
gious instruction and services are
those of the denomination under
whose auspices it is conducted. In
1877 it had 70 inmates. The city
and State have made several lib-
eral grants in its aid $15,000 in
1863, $25,000 in 1867, $10,000 in
1872. It received $2,253 93 from
the city in 1877. Gross receipts of
public money (twenty-four years),
$91,893 10.
3 1 . The New York Magdalen Be-
nevolent Society, founded in 1851,
has an asylum for fallen women
in Eighty-eighth Street, and does
some out- door missionary work, em-
ploying "a competent and respec-
table agent, who shall be an autho-
rized minister of some Evangelical
church." The number of inmates
of the asylum in May, 1878, was 57.
Allowances from the city during
the previous year, $2,620. Gross
receipts of public money (twenty-
seven years), $42,406 17.
32. The Home for Fallen and
Friendless Girls, in Fourth Street,
had 26 inmates in 1877, and re-
ceived that year $2,977 49 from the
city. Gross receipts from the city
and State between 1870 and 1877,,
$15,446 83.
276
Private Charities and Public Money.
r : 33. The Midnight Mission, in
Greene Street, a Protestant Epis-
copal charity, offers a temporary
shelter to fallen women, and sends
them to homes, friends, or public
institutions. It received from the
city in 1874, 1876, and 1877 a total
of $2,404 60.
34. The Women's Prison Associa-
tion conducts the " Isaac T. Hop-
per Home," in Second Avenue, for
the help and reformation of dis-
charged female prisoners. Gross
receipts of public money (1859 to
1877), $11,121.
35. The Home for Discharged
Prisoners (possibly the same as the
institution mentioned above) re-
ceived from the city $500 in 1847
and $i,obo in 1854.
36. The Gilbert Library and Aid
Fund for prisoners received $1,000
from the city in 1877.
37. The ' National Temperance
Society obtained $2,000 from the
State in 1871 for the establishment
of an Industrial Temperance Home
in this city.
38. The Inebriate Reform Socie-
ty received allowances from the
city in 1860-1-2 ; total, $1,250.
HI. ASYLUMS FOR ADULTS.
39. The Colored Home, in East
Sixty-fifth Street, founded in 1839,
embraces an almshouse and a hos-
-pital. In the former department
it had last year 59 inmates and in
-the latter 127. The prevailing re-
ligious influence is that of the Me-
thodist denomination. The city
makes it an allowance of $91 25
,per annum for each person sup-
ported, and the society has little
other income. It received from
the city in 1877 $21,729 66. The
gross receipts of public money
since 1847, not including seven
years' per-capita payments by the
Commissioners of Charities and
Correction (see note on a preced-
ing page), have been $121,342 20.
40. The Ladies' Union Aid So-
ciety of the Methodist Episcopal
Church has a home in Forty-sec-
ond Street for aged and infirm
members of that denomination.
Applicants for admission must have
been members of the Methodist
Episcopal Church in good stand-
ing for ten years, and nominated
by the congregation to which they
belong. The annual report for
1878 does not mention the number
of inmates; but the Hand-Book
of the Board of United Charities
for 1877 gives the average num-
ber as 95. The society received
$ 2 5 375 from the city in 1877.
Gross receipts of public money
since its foundation in 1850, $38,-
032 28.
41. The Chapin Home, in East
Sixty-sixth Street, is an asylum
founded in 1869 for aged and in-
firm Universalists, only members
of the Universalist Church being
eligible as trustees. An admission
fee of $300 is required. Num-
ber of inmates in 1878, 44. The
city gave a perpetual lease of the
ground which the institution occu-
pies (fourteen lots), and both city
and State have made liberal dona-
tions in money. Gross receipts
from the public funds (nine years),
$38,036 16.
42. St. Luke's Home for Indi-
gent Christian Females, Madison
Avenue and Eighty-ninth Street,
founded in 1852, is a Protestant
Episcopal institution, and is only
open to communicants of that de-
nomination. An entrance fee of
$200 is required. Number of in-
mates in 1877, 62. Allowance
from the city that year, $1,260.
Gross receipts of public money
since the foundation, $21,820.
43. The Home for Old Men and
Private Charities and Public Money.
277
Aged Couples, in Hudson Street, is
a Protestant Episcopal institution
founded in 1872, and only open to
members of the Episcopal Church.
An admission fee of $250 is requir-
ed. The average number of in-
mates is about 20. Gross receipts
of public money, $2,040.
44. The Samaritan Home for the
Aged, in West Twenty-second Street,
was founded in 1866 as an asylum
for indigent women. One of its
circulars announces that it is to be
11 absolutely free from all sectarian
bias, and open in its direction and
its objects to persons of all Protes-
tant denominations," and that its
Board of Managers " shall repre-
sent indiscriminately our common
Protestant Christianity in all its
forms." An admission fee of $250
is required. Number of inmates,
about 40. Gross receipts of pub-
lic money, $7,350.
45. The Association for the Re-
lief of Respectable Aged Indigent
Females, founded in 1814, has a
home in East Twentieth Street.
Admission fee, $80. The mana-
gers are required by the rules to
see that " the asylum is duly sup-
plied with the preaching of the
Gospel, and any minister properly
authorized as a preacher of the
Gospel by any Evangelical deno-
mination of Christians shall be
cordially received. ... No inmate
in the asylum to be permitted to
introduce any preacher of the Gos-
pel, or to invite their friends to give
religious instruction, without the
consent of the church committee."
Gross receipts of public money
since 1847, $10,647 36.
46. The Home for Aged and
Infirm Hebreivs, Eighty-seventh
Street and Avenue A, founded in
1848, has about seventy inmates.
Gross receipts of public money,
$4,403-
47. The Nig ht- Refuge Associa-
tion, Avenue D and Tenth Street,
opened in 1877 a temporary shel-
ter where it can furnish lodging to
400 men and 100 women. It re-
ceived $10,000 from the city in
1876 and $5,000 in 1877.
48. The Ladies' Christian Union
maintains a Young Women's Home
in Washington Square, where work-
ing-girls and others can obtain
cheap board and improving soci-
ety. Religious influences are set
forth among the chief advanta-
ges of the institution ; there are
morning and evening devotions,
Bible-classes, etc. The society re-
ceived $3,000 from the city in 1870
and $3,000 in 1871.
49. The Young Woman's Aid As-
sociation, in Bond Street, a board-
ing-house for the same class of per-
sons, obtained $1,895 from the
city in 1876-7.
50. The Female Christian Home,
in East Fifteenth Street, is an es-
tablishment where from thirty to
forty working-women obtain board
at rather low rates. It received
$1,700 from the city during the
years 1876-7.
51. The Peabody Home for aged
and indigent women, Thirty-third
Street and Lexington Avenue, with
accommodations for fifteen per-
sons, received $375 from the city
in 1876 and the same amount in
1877.
52. The Mariners' Family Asy-
lum and Industrial Society, on Sta-
ten Island, is an institution found-
ed for the support, shelter, and re-
ligious (Protestant) instruction of
the female relatives of seamen,
missionary work entering largely
into its plan of operations. It ob-
tained $16,000 from the Legisla-
ture at the start (1848-9), and its
gross receipts of public money have
been $27,966 13.
278 Private Charities and Public Money.
IV. HOSPITALS.
The religious influence at the
non-Catholic hospitals varies ac-
cording to the rules of each insti-
tution. In some the visits of priests
and sisters, if not forbidden, are
obstructed and discountenanced.
In others the management is indif-
ferent to all religion.
53. The New York Hospital, in
Fifteenth Street, with a limited
number of charity patients, and the
Insane Asylum at Bloom in gdale, at
which the amount received for
board of inmates nearly, or perhaps
quite, meets the current expendi-
tures, are under the management
of the same corporation. The hos-
pital cases are chiefly surgical. The
society has received from the city
and State since 1847, $331,750.
54. The Society for the Relief of
the Ruptured and Crippled, founded
in 1863, has an institution on For-
ty-second Street and Lexington
Avenue, where a small number of
patients are treated, but its principal
work is among the out-door poor.
It received $27,607 10 from the
city in 1877. Gross receipts of
public money (eighteen years),
$199,087 06.
55. The Woman s Hospital, in
Forty-ninth Street, was founded
in 1858 for the treatment of dis-
eases peculiar to women. In No-
vember, 1878, it had 98 patients.
There are 24 free beds. Protes-
tant service is held in the hospital
every Sunday, and religious visits
are paid by a regular missionary,
and by three clergymen in turn,
one Methodist, one Presbyterian,
and one Episcopalian. Patients,
however, are allowed to see any
clergyman they desire "in extreme
cases." The city gave the land
for the institution (a whole block
between Fourth and Lexington
Avenues), and the city and State
have paid to the hospital (twenty
years) $i47>3 2 5 4-
56. The Lying-in Asylum for des-
titute married women, in Marion
Street, founded in 1823, has accom-
modations for twenty patients, but
the ladies connected with it extend
their aid to the out-door poor also.
It has received of the public money
since 1847 $23,437 49.
57. The New York Infirmary for
Women and Children, in Livingston
Place, founded in 1853, has accom-
modations for thirty-four inmates,
and attends also to dispensary and
out-door patients. Gross receipts
of public money from the begin-
ning, $54,5 26 27.
58. The Women s Infirmary, for-
merly at Washington Heights, a
small homoeopathic institution, re-
ceived $3,500 from the State in
1866, and $5^500 from the city in
1865-6 ; total, $9,000.
5 9. The Medical College and Hos-
pital for Women, Thirty-seventh
Street and Lexington Avenue, has
received $61,894 47.
60. The Hahnemann Hospital,
Sixty-seventh Street and Fourth
Avenue, obtained from the city a
perpetual lease of the ten lots of
land it occupies, and has received
of the public money since its foun-
dation in 1871 $39,000.
6 1 . The Bond Street Homoeopathic
Hospital received $9,615 30.
62. The Homoeopathic Surgical
Hospital received $1,500.
63. St. Lukes Hospital, Fifty-
fourth Street, is a Protestant Epis-
copal institution, served by the Sis-
ters of St. Mary. Patients are re-
ceived without regard to religious
belief, but St. Luke's Hospital, like
most of the other charities of the
P^piscopal Church, honestly avows
the denominational character of its
management an example of frank-
Private Charities and Public Money.
2/9
ness and common sense which many
professedly " unsectarian " estab-
lishments might profitably imitate.
The last annual report says : " Cor-
pus sanare, animam salvare 'to cure
the body, to save the soul ' crystal-
lizes in words the founder's thought.
The very building embodies his
idea. Its chapel stands, not in a
remote corner, but as the centre
from which the wards radiate."
The superintendent is always a
clergyman of the Episcopal Church.
The average number of patients in
1878 was 139. We have already
told the circumstances under which
the hospital obtained its land. It
received $7,602 from the city in
1877, and its gross receipts of pub-
lic money from the beginning have
been $30,020 73.
64. The Mount Sinai Hospital, a
Jewish institution, on Lexington
Avenue and Sixty-sixth Street,
founded in 1852, received a per-
petual lease of its land from the
city at a nominal rent. The num-
ber of patients in November (1877)
was 109. The institution received
$4,248 from the city in 1877.
Gross receipts of public money
from the beginning, $46,229 60.
65. The German Hospital, found-
ed in 1 86 1, obtained from the city
a fifty years' lease, at a dollar a
year, of the greater part of the block
which it occupies on Lexington
and Fourth Avenues, Seventy-sixth
and Seventy-seventh Streets. It
has accommodation for about fifty
free patients, and maintains also a
dispensary in St. Mark's Place.
It obtained $2,567 85 from the city
in 1877. Gross .receipts of public
money from the beginning, not in-
cluding allowances to the dispen-
sary before the two institutions
were consolidated, $16,890 37.
66. St. Marys Hospital for Chil-
dren, a Protestant Episcopal char-
ity in West Thirty-fourth Street,
under the Sisters of St. Mary,
founded in 1870, and having twen-
ty-six inmates in November, 1878,
received $1,500 -from the city in
1866-7.
67. The Home for Incurables,
Fordham, founded in 1866, is a
Protestant Episcopal charity, in
which, as usual with this denomina-
tion, the ministrations of the Episco-
pal Church have an important part.
One-third of the beds are free.
Number of inmates in 1877, 58.
Gross receipts of public money,
fo ? 446 45.
68. The House of Rest for Con-
sumptives, at Tremont, founded in
1869, is likewise a Protestant Epis-
copal institution. Number of in-
mates in 1877, 20. Gross receipts
of public money, $5,317 5 6 -
Donations and allowances have
been made to a number of hos-
pitals for the treatment of particu-
cal forms of disease. We presume
that most of them exert no re-
ligious influence ; but we give their
titles and the gross amount of pub-
lic money they have received up to
and including 1877 :
69. Ophthalmic Hospital, $83,942 06.
70. Eye and Ear Infirmary, $47,575 ^5-
71. Ophthalmic and Aural Institute,
$16,315 01.
. 72. Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital,
$2,560.
73. New York Stats Hospital for Dis-
eases of the Nervous System, $8,000.
74. Orthopedic Hospital, $5,000.
75. Cancer Hospital, $1,287 24.
76. Infirmary of the New York College
of Dentistry, $3,500.
77. Metropolitan Throat Hospital, $i,-
736 60.
78. West Side Throat Infirmary, $i,-
103 80.
V. SPECIAL INSTITUTIONS.
In the education of the deaf and
dumb and the blind it is of course
280
Private Charities and Public Money.
necessary that religion should have
as prominent a part as in the train-
ing of children who are in posses-
sion of all their faculties. Religion
is an essential element, also, in the
teaching of the insane and idiotic,
a large proportion of those afflict-
ed with mental disorders being
quite capable of receiving instruc-
tion in spiritual things. For all
these classes of unfortunate per-
sons there is only one small Catho-
lic institution. (See No. 19.)
79. The Institution for the Deaf
and Dumb, Washington Heights, re-
ceives free pupils from all parts of
the State, and takes pay-pupils at
the charge of $300 a year. It is
entitled to draw from the public
treasury $300 a year for each child
committed to it by the State or
county authorities. The city grant-
ed the land which it formerly oc-
cupied on Fiftieth Street and Fifth
Avenue. The course of study, ac-
cording to the last annual report
(1878), does "not omit that religious
instruction which, while entirely un-
sectarian in its character, is yet ne-
cessary to fit our pupils to embrace
intelligently the various forms of
faith which, however they may differ
in details, unite in enjoining love
and obedience to a common Father,
and in most instances in fostering
reliance upon a common Saviour."
In November, 1878, the number of
pupils was 485 ; only five were sup-
ported at the cost of their friends.
The institution received during
the previous year $90,035 01 from
the State comptroller, $20,384 70
from the city of New York, $21,-
216 98 from the other counties of
this State, and $18,343 67 from the
State of New Jersey ; total, $149,-
980 36. Gross receipts from the
city and State of New York (not
including the counties) from 1847
to 1877, $2,210,054 96.
So. The Institution for the Im-
proved Instruction of Deaf Mutes,
founded in 1867, obtained from the
city a grant of twelve lots of ground
on Lexington Avenue, Sixty-sev-
enth and Sixty-eighth Streets. It
takes State and county pupils on
the same terms as the preceding
asylum. It has about 100 inmates.
Gross receipts of money from the
State and city, $139,180 71.
8 1. The Church Mission to Deaf
Mutes has a Home for Aged and In-
firm persons of that class in East
Thirteenth Street, with eight in-
mates. It is a Protestant Episco-
pal institution, of which Bishop
Potter is president. Gross receipts
of public money (1860-77), $3r
340 28.
82. The New York Institution for
the' Blind, in Ninth Avenue, re-
ceives both State and private pupils,
and at the date of the last report
"(1878) the number of inmates was
200. No information is given
about the character of the religious
instruction. During the previous
year the institution received $52,-
643 49 from the State of New York,
$7,283 82 from the State of New
Jersey, $5.078 25 from the city of
New York, and $1,921 50 from
Kings and Queens counties ; total,
$66,927 06. Gross receipts from
the city and State of New York
(1847-77), $1,052,798 06. Dona-
tions to the amount of $8,250 have
also been made by the city to grad-
uates of this institution.
The insane and idiotic poor sup-
ported by the city are sent either
to the municipal institutions on
Randall's, Ward's, and Blackvvell's
Islands, or the State institutions
at Syracuse and Utica. Large
sums have been appropriated to
these asylums, but they do not
come within the scope of this ar-
ticle.
Private Charities and Public Money.
281
VI. GENERAL RELIEF.
83. The Ladies' Union Relief As-
sociation, founded in 1848, has of
late years paid particular attention
to the visitation of soldiers' fami-
lies. Gross receipts of public
money, $80,807 06.
84. The Ladies 1 Home Missionary
Society of the Methodist Episcopal
Church was organized " to sup-
port one or more missionaries for
this city, who shall be appointed in
accordance with the requirements
of the discipline of the Methodist
Episcopal Church." After paying
the allowance of the missionaries
" the surplus funds are reserved for
objects of benevolence," etc. The
society supports the Five Points
Mission-house, for children and
others. Besides the allowances of
$45,059 36 made to the Mission-
house specifically, the society has
received $42,856 14 ; total, $87,-
915 50. (See Five Points Mission,
No. 12.)
85. The New York Prison Asso-
ciation extends its operations over
the whole State. It occupies itself
with the reform of prison discipline
and the support and encourage-
ment of reformed convicts after
their discharge. It has received
from the city since 1847, besides
the allowances from the State,
$36,581 37-
86. The United Hebrew Charities
comprise a partnership of most of
the principal Jewish benevolent as-
sociations for co-operation in the
relief of the poor of their own
creed. They have received $24,-
421.
87. The Hebrew Benevolent Pud
Association received $1,000 from
the city in 1877.
88. The Down-town Hebrew La-
dies' Benevolent Society received
$1,000 90 from the city in 1877.
89. The Young Mens Christian
Association received $5,000 from
the city in 1867.
90, 91, 92, 93. Relief for the
Blind. The Blind Mechanics' As-
sociation has received from the
city and State $55,000 ; the Society
for the Relief of the Indigent and
Crippled Blind, $19,600; the So-
ciety for the Relief of the Desti-
tute Blind, $5,475 37; and the city
has made donations to the blind
amounting to $32,581 98. Total,
$112,657 35.
94. The Association for Improv-
ing the Condition of the Poor, which
aims at the moral instruction of the
needy as well as their material wel-
fare, has received $19,300. This
organization founded the Chil-
dren's Aid Society and the Juvenile
Asylum, which are described else-
where.
95. St. Johns Guild, an associa-
tion begun in 1866 under Protes-
tant Episcopal auspices for the
general relief of the poor, received
$1,000 from the city in 1874, $21,-
367 in 1876, and $15,000 in 1877 ;
total, $37,367. The Society of St.
Vincent de Paul, which is engaged
in a similar work, and, according to
the last report (1877), distributed
nearly twice as much money to the
poor as St. John's Guild did, re-
ceived $1,000 in 1874, and has had
nothing since then.
96. The Female Assistance Society v
an association for the relief of the
sick poor, which meets in the lec-
ture-room of the Reformed Church
on Fifth Avenue and Twenty-ninth
Street, has received $34,625.
97. The American Seamen's
friend Society, instituted "for the
spiritual and temporal welfare of
seamen," has received $6,007 21.
98. The New York Seamen's So-
ciety received $30,000 from the
State in 1870, and $10,000 in 1872.
282
Private Charities and Public Money.
99. The New York City Mission,
in the Bible House, supports Pro-
testant missionaries among the poor
of the city, and -distributes money,
food, and clothing incidentally to
its religious work. It received
$10,000 from the city in 1876.
100. The German Mission receiv-
ed $5,000 from the city in 1870 and
$5,000 in 1871. There is a Ger-
man Mission House in Pearl Street,
and there is also a German Mis-
sion connected with the Protestant
Episcopal City Mission Society.
101. The Dorcas Society, a Pro-
testant Episcopal association for
the relief of the poor, has received
$5.500-
102. The Protestant Episcopal
Sisterhood of St. Mary received
$8,500 from the city between 1869
and 1874.
103. The German Ladies' Aid So-
ciety devotes itself to the relief of
widows, orphans, and destitute siclc
women of the German nationality.
It received $5,000 from the State
in 1871, and $8,334 from the city
in 1876-7 ; total, $13,334.
104. The Ladies' Society for the
Support of Widows and Orphans (?)
received $500 from the city in
1874 and $3,272 90 in 1876; total,
$3.772 90.
In the list of societies which
follow there are several which ap-
parently are concerned only in the
relief of material wants, and there
are several concerning which we
have little information. The fig-
ures represent the gross receipts of
public money up to the close of
1877:
105. Working-women's Protective Union,
$300.
106. Ladies' Protective Union, $200.
107. Women's Educational and Indus-
trial Society, $300.
108. Ladies' Depository, $3,000.
109. Ladies' Mission Society (?), f 1,000.
no. Society for the Relief of Poor Wi-
dows and Children (?), $500.
in. New York Volunteer Association,
$500.
112. Free Training- School, $500.
113. Woman's Aid Society for Training
Young Girls, $5,250.
114. Diet Kitchen, for supplying food
to the sick poor at their own homes,
$7,011 60.
115. Colored Mission, "for the reli-
gious, moral, and social elevation of the
colored people," $1,132.
116. Seventy-ninth Street Mission, $6co.
117. The Harlem Missionary Associa-
tion, $650.
118. Guild of St. Ignatius (Protestant
Episcopal), $400.
119. Ladies Association of St. PauVs
Evangelical Lutheran Church, $400.
1 20. Seventeenth Ward Ragged Mission,
$750.
121. West Side Relief Association, $5,-
550.
122. Twelfth Ward West Side Relief
Association, $1,000.
123. Twenty-fourth Ward West Side
Relief Association, $500.
124. Rose Hill Ladies' Relief Associa-
tion, $3,000.
125. West Farms Ladies' Employment
and Benevolent Association, $270.
126. The Bread-and-Bcef Hotise, $2,-
538.
127. Free Dormitory for Women, $1,300.
To this list may be added dona-
tions to a number of charitable
funds, like that for the widows and
orphans of firemen, and also the
following gifts to National Benevo-
lent Associations, viz. : German So-
ciety, $14,787 ; French Benevolent
Society, $1,988; Swiss Benevolent
Association, $900 ; Irish Aid Soci-
ety, $300.
And now for the lesson of this
survey. It will be evident from
the statistics and explanations giv-
en in the preceding pages
i. That the twenty Catholic in-
stitutions aided by the city and
State are devoted, without a single
exception, to the relief of destitute
persons who would be a burden
Private Charities and Public Money.
283
upon the taxpayers or a danger to
the community if private charity
did not take care of them.
2. That these Catholic institu-
tions are vastly more extensive in
their operations than any other es-
tablishments of the* kind in the
metropolis.
3. That the allowances to these
charities from the public treasury
have not been proportionate to the
allowances to Protestant institu-
tions for an equivalent service.
4. That all the large grants to Ca-
tholiccharities the orphan asylums,
Protectory, Foundling Asylum, etc.
are made under a general system
of law in the benefit of which Ca-
tholic, Protestant, and Hebrew now
share on exactly the same terms.
Formerly there were discrimina-
tions against the Catholics.
5. That Catholic individual char-
ity has borne by far the greater
part of the burden of supporting
these homes and asylums, so that
the policy of the State in aiding
and stimulating private benefac-
tions has resulted in the saving of
millions of dollars to the taxpayers.
6. That the Catholic charities
which ask help from the public
treasury are occupied wholly in the
care of the Catholic poor, and not
at all in converting Protestants.
On the other hand, it is evident
7. That the majority of the one
hundred and twenty-seven Protes-
tant and other charities have receiv-
ed payments from the public trea-
sury far in excess of their proper
share.
8. That large sums have been
granted to Protestant institutions
which have no claim at all upon
the taxpayers.
9. That some of the Protestant
charities under private management
derive their entire revenue from
the public treasury, whereas no
Catholic institution has been thus
favored.
10. That all the institutions in
which religious or moral influences
can be exercised at all are " secta-
rian " in the true sense of that
word, many of them excluding Ca-
tholicism by their rules, and near-
ly all of them working against it in
practice.
1 1. That all denominations which
maintain asylums, etc., for those of
their own church are freely aided
by the State and city, Methodists,
'Episcopalians, etc., etc., getting at
least as much consideration as
Catholics.
12. Finally, that a large number of
the Protestant institutions are active-
ly and primarily engaged in making
wa.r upon the Catholic Church, using
charity as an auxiliary to the work of
proselytism, and especially stealing
thousands of our Catholic children
every year, so that the public
money is used in their case to build
up one creed at the expense of an-
other. This is a charge which can
be brought against no Catholic so-
ciety.
284 Holy Week in Rome.
HOLY WEEK IN ROME.
CHURCH OF TRINITA DEI MONTJ.
I.
HOLD thy deep breath, grand organ, here,
While the roof darkens like a sky 9
Black with the brooding thunder ! Near
The altar let the glimmer die
Of wavering candles, one by one;
And leave one faithful lamp alone,
Half hidden in the gloom profound
A lamp of love unweary !
n.
Bid time and space be cancelled here !
From Judah's ancient place of tombs
The voice of her sublimest seer
In hoary lamentation comes :
In prophet-woes of Jeremiah,
The after-wail for a Messiah
The agony intoning clear
And all the world is dreary.
in.
Christ's Passion Nature's horror see !
Yet faint not thou, O cordial spark !
Which on deserted Calvary
Shows loving women, drenched in dark
And drowned in tears. How black the sky !
And how that long, lone anguish-cry
Blinds like the lightning ! Thrillingly
Begins the Miserere.
IV.
Dies the lament into a moan,
Half soars the chant, then quavers low ;
Subdued to mournful monotone,
Now music's mellowest surges flow,
Where woman's facile sympathy
Flow.s mingling. So the Marys by
The cross wept and sepulchral stone
O plaintive Miserere!
Holy Week in Rome. 285
v.
Precious your grief, sweet chorister,
Anointing thus the feet of Christ !
Weep amber, like the bird ; weep myrrh,
Like dropping trees imparadised
In Eastern air ; weep frankincense
Thou couldst no balmier redolence
Than those true tears to Heaven prefer !
Weep, moaning, Miserere !
VI.
Moan no more Miserere lorn,
Though the Lord Jes.us lieth cold,
For he is man of woman born,
And at his tomb the stone is rolled.
Moan no more : he is God : the light
Is dawning on the second night,
Inaugural with the Easter morn
Moan no more, Miserere !
9
VII.
Red lights on Roman armor play,
Where, drenched in sleep, grim soldiers lie,
Torch-fires affronting, as they sway,
The one Star in the morning sky.
Come women thither in the dawn,
And, lo ! an angel throned thereon,
The tomb's great stone is rolled away !
Moan no more, Miserere !
VIII.
Whom here ye seek with weep and wail,
Lo ! rent His shroud and void the prison.
Unquenched from death, doth Love prevail
Divinely, like yon Star arisen
All-beautiful, and meek as brave.
Last at the cross, first at the grave,
The Saviour greets you with All Hail I
Thrice Ave, Ave Mary !
IX.
'Tis Easter Sabbath morning spring,
And man's great hope is born in balm.
Hosanna in the Highest ! sing;
Sing, Hallelujah to the Lamb !
Falls on the shrine a beam divine
From that far morn in Palestine,
And whispers, 'mid all pomps of psalm.
The Lord's own Ave Mary.
286
Neiv Publications.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
LECTURES ON THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH
OF RELIGION AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE
RELIGIONS OF INDIA. Delivered in
the chapel house, Westminster Abbey,
in April, May, and June, 1878. By
F. Max Miifler, M.A. New York :
Charles Scribner's Sons. 1879.
From the store-house of his branch of
erudition Max Mttller has enriched the
public with a new volume under the
above title. The investigations of scho-
lars in the Sanskrit, and their explana-
tions of the religion contained in the books
written in this language> are read with
increasing interest by a large class of
readers. This last volume from the pen
of Max Miiller is broader in its scope
and of more general interest than his
Chips, and is valuable as a contribution
towards what is much written about in
our day, and is called " the science of
religion."
' Every scientific student in this de-
partment of knowledge starts with a
more or less explicit theory of religion,
and if he could but keep his private
opinions and speculations out of his
scientific studies, science would be the
gainer, and his readers also. Our au-
thor keeps his theory considerably in
the background, and allows it only here
and there to be perceptible ; still it per-
vades all his writings to such an extent
that it seriously vitiates their scientific
value. We are glad to note in these lec-
tures a considerable improvement over
some of the professor's former volumes.
There is less of narrowness of view and
bitterness of expression when matters
are touched upon in connection with the
historical Church of Christianity. Were
Max Miiller to show as much fairness
and appreciation of the Catholic Church
and Catholics as he does of the Brah-
manistic religion and the Brahmans,
there would be on this point little ground
for criticism or just complaint. Perhaps
he would, if he were as well acquainted
with the former as he is with the latter.
The theory with which Max Miiller
starts is, that religion springs from the
apprehension of the infinite in the visi-
ble creation. From a careful analysis
of the development of this apprehension
of the infinite as the origin of religion,
he traces its historical development
among the early Aryan settlers of India
whose religion is contained in the Vedic
literature, which antedates the advent of
Christianity over one thousand years.
The author at the outset discards the
idea of a primitive revelation, and con-
fines himself to the task of the natural
genesis of religion from the psycholo-
gical formula as above stated. In this
consists the value of these lectures. As
to the question of a primitive revelation,
or as to Christianity as a supernaturally
revealed religion, he is silent. But this
silence is significant, for where he speaks
of Christianity he evidently holds it, as
all other religions, of a purely natural
growth. Between Christianity and other
religions it is not a question with the
author of these lectures of difference in
kind, but only one of degree. "It was
exactly," he says, "because the doctrine
of Christ, more than that of the founders
of any other religion, offered in the be-
ginning an expression of the highest
truths in which Jewish carpenters, Ro-
man publicans, and Greek philosophers
could join without dishonesty, that it
has conquered the best part of^the
world " (pp. 358-9)
This volume of lectures has a special
interest and great value as a refutation
of agnosticism, a species of intellectual
know-nothingism, and Chauvinism, a
cognate system, by showing the value of
human nature as to the origin and devel-
opment of natural religion. But it con-
tains a deadly poison also, for its author
professes " to say all he has to say with-
out fear, without favor," while his whole
argument conceals a premise which no-
where is expressed in his volume, and
this premise is one which leads to pure
and simple rationalism. That latent
premise expressed is as follows : the
natural relations existing between the
infinite and the finite are all-sufficient
for man to attain the end for which he
exists. If this be so, the rationalistic
conclusion must follow that the Incar-
nation with all the doctrines which flow
from it are fictions, the Christian faith a
superstition, and, the worship of Christ a
form of idolatry.
M. Le Page Renouf will follow Profes-
New Publications.
28 7
sor Max Miilier in this course of lectures
on "the various historical religions of
the world," and his subject will be " The
Religions of Egypt." The reputation of
M. Renouf as an Egyptologist leads us
to anticipate a volume of great interest.
MONTH OF MAY ; or, A Series of Medita-
tions on the Mysteries of the Life of
the Blessed Virgin, and the Principal
Truths of Salvation, for each day of the
Month of Mary. From the French of
Father Debussi, S.J. Translated by
Miss Ella McMahon, and revised by
a member of the Society of Jesus.
New York : The Catholic Publication
Society Co. 1879;
The plan of this little book is arranged
so as to give for ea'ch day of the month a
short spiritual reading on some point
connected with the privileges and of-
fices of the Blessed Virgin, followed by
a meditation on one of a series of topics
belonging to the order followed in a
spiritual retreat, concluding with an in-
teresting and appropriate example of
the narrative kind. It is thus made very
practical, and also presents an agreeable
variety. There is a great deal of so-
lid instruction in the readings, giving
wholesome and pleasant nutriment to
the mind, soundly theological and pre-
pared with care and thought, yet in a
simple and easy style. We recommend
the little book as a most suitable com-
panion for any devout client of Our Bless-
ed Lady who wishes to devote a short
time every day during her month to pro-
fitable spiritual exercises.
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND VIRTUES CON-
SIDERED IN THE RELIGIOUS STATE. By
Mgr. Charles Gay, Coadjutor to the
Bishop of Poictiers. Translated from
the sixth French edition by the Right
Rev. Abbot Burder. Vols. I. II. Lon-
don: Burns & Gates. 1878.
The title of this work points out its
subject. It treats of the Christian life
and virtues. The Christian life is that
excellent life which, having God for its
model and principle, becomes in Jesus
Christ and by Jesus Christ the rule of
human life. The virtues cannot be sepa-
rated from this life ; they are its natural
outcome and the indispensable mark of
its existence. The Christian life and
virtues are, briefly, what the Gospel calls
" the one thing necessary" There is no
subject more worthy than this of the at-
tention of mankind. They are consid-
ered by the author in their most perfect
ideal, the religious state. But the work
is not intended exclusively for religious ;
it is of wider usefulness. It should be
useful to priests, not only for their own
sanctification, but also to assist them in
the study of the religious life and in the
direction of souls. Moreover, it will do
good to every person who has the habit
of, and relish for, piety ; to everyone who
is attracted to the interior life ; to all
who wish to know and seriously prac-
tise the Christian virtues. It is a sort of
"itinerary of the soul to God" fitted to
our age. In the words of Mgr. Mer-
millod, Vicar-Apostolic of Geneva, " It
takes its place among those works which
are the tradition, the life, and the glory
of the church, and contains doctrinam
sanam, scientiam veram, consilium rec-
tum"
Dogmatic theology is throughout the
foundation of the work. In many spiri-
tual works of the French school espe-
cially dogmatic theology has been too
much separated from mystical theology.
This is a detriment both to the book
and to the student. Mystical theology
is only the fruit, and can be nothing
else ; dogmatic theology is the natural
and indispensable sap. After the Sacred
Scripture, St. Thomas Aquinas and other
masters of the sacred science are also mas-
ters of the spiritual life. This work is
founded on dogmatic theology, especial-
ly on the treatise De Incarnatione. Jesus
Christ is the Alpha and the Omega of
all the relations of the creature to the
Creator ; he is that " light that enlight-
eneth every man that ccmeth into this
world." Every moral truth, every lesson
of asceticism, every counsel of perfection
explained in this work is pictured as a
gleam of that Light and relieved by its
radiance.
To enter into a fuller appreciation
would be to write an article. We must
recommend our readers to the work it-
self. Approbations are not wanting.
Mgr. Gay's work has been honored
by a brief from Pius IX. "We con-
gratulate you," says the Holy Father,
" on having the secret of expounding
Catholic doctrines, even of the most ex-
alted kind, with so much clearness and
in such a pleasing style that they be-
come a powerful attraction and a true
focus of piety.' ; Over twelve bishops of
288
New Publications.
the hierarchy of France join the Holy
Father in praise of the book. Mgr. Gay
has the talent of saying things, if not
" nova" at least " nove." His thoughts
are always fresh, his diction vigorous,
at times reaching the heights of elo-
quence. Best of all in a modern spiri-
tual writer, he is not commonplace. He
has that holy horror which made Lacor-
daire exclaim in the pulpit of Notre
Dame : " Par la grace de Dieu je ha'is les
lieux commtins" So many modern wri-
ters on spiritualit}*- give us merely na-
tural ethics with a thin varnish of senti-
mental devotion. Nothing of this kind
will be found in Mgr. Gay's Christian
Life and Virtues. The translation is
well done ; the clearness and elegance
of the original seem to have been pre-
served. The style is English. The first
volume has already been noticed in THE
CATHOLIC WORLD. We believe that a
third volume is yet to appear.
ST. PAUL AT ATHENS : Spiritual Chris-
tianity in relation to some Aspects
of Modern Thought. Nine sermons
preached in St. Stephen's Church,
Westbourne Park, by Charles Shak-
speare, B.A., Assistant Curate. With
a preface by the Rev. Canon Farrar,
D.D. New York : Charles Scribner's
Sons.
The author of these sermons has set
out to "-show that the Socratic and Pla-
tonic, as well as the Hebrew and Chris-
tian, faith requires another and a higher
view of the world and of man, and that
the idea of a living God would be found
to harmonize, when allowance is made
for the necessary limits of our faculties,
witlr the teaching of experience, if ex-
perience be understood to include spirit-
ual experience." Again, he says in his
introduction: "The fundamental idea of
the sermons is, that the very existence
of the spiritual faculty in man, so persis-
tent and so vigorous, is ground of faith
in asupersensuous reality corresponding
to this faculty and creating it."
It is gratifying to see Protestant
clergymen making an effort to meet and
counteract the prevalent modes of agnos-
tic thought which perplex half-educated
minds. Mr. Shakspeare has made this
effort, and in his fundamental idea laid
down the principles for removing these
perplexities and refuting agnosticism.
It is, therefore, with no little interest we
read his volume of sermons, hoping to
see displayed in them a masterly grasp
as well as a logical application of his
fundamental idea to the subject in hand.
If it be a law. of all thought, as he af-
firms, and we concur in his assertion,
that there is a reality which corresponds
to the exercise of every faculty, he no-
where makes this plain, and nowhere
drives home the argument to be deriv-
ed from it in refutation of the Agnos-
tics. He repeats the statement, and
contents himself with its repetition,
where one looks for logical exposition
and demonstration. . It is no; improba-
ble that Mr. Shakspeare was not aware of
the value and power of the great truth
which he affirms ; for in the very state-
ment of it he makes what appears to us
a palpable blunder. How can a reality
corresponding to a faculty create the
faculty? Knowledge is born of the
knower, the thing known, and their re-
lation. This is elementary, and the uni-
versal law of all thought and of all life.
His error is as great in exaggerating the
side of the objectivity of knowledge as
that of the German philosophers, who err
on the other side, of its subjectivity. They
are both equally as far as east is from
west asunder from the real synthesis of
real thought, of truth.
The author of these sermons seems not
to be aware of the value of his own wea-
pons. He skirmishes when he should
join battle, and rests in the encounter
when there is an opportunity of giving a
deadly thrust to error.
Canon Farrar says in his introduc-
tion : " The subjects with which the au-
thor of the sermons is dealing are far too
solemn to admit of their being made
turbid by the wretched pettiness of party
controversy." This is wisely said, and
the author would have acted wisely had
he kept altogether free from displaying
the spirit of a partisan. There are seve-
ral passages, however, of this character
which we have noted.
Mr. Shakspeare's reading in theology is
extensive on one side ; his effort in these
sermons is in the right direction, and
they are creditable, and show more than
common eloquence.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD
VOL. XXIX., No. 171. JUNE, 1879.
DANTE'S PURGATORIO.
TRANSLATED BY T. W PARSONS.
[NOTE. This Tenth Canto was translated in London several years ago, and left in
the hands of a few scholars for the benefit of their criticism. Owing to some delay in
the transmission of the copy to this country, a break occurred, and the Eleventh
Canto was published instead of this. To atone for many letters of acknowledg-
ment still due to his friends, the translator would here express his thanks. Some
private persons he may not be permitted to name ; but of that circle who have
taken a genuine interest in his work, and to whom he feels especially indebted, he
will venture to speak of Sir Frederick Pollock, himself a very successful translator
of Dante ; also, of Aubrey de Vere, of Mr. Gladstone, of Lord Vernon, of Mr.
Hazelfoot, and Sir James Lacaita ; and in Italy, Prof. Maggi, of Milan, and Mi-
chelangelo Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta. He cannot forbear to add to these the be-
loved name of Sister Clare Austin, who, in the stillness of her Priory, may never
know of this mention. T. W. P.]
CANTO TENTH.
WHEN we had crossed the threshold of the gate
Which from the bad love sets the spirits free,
Bad for it makes the crooked way seem straight,
I heard it closed : had I turned round to see,
What fit excuse had been for fault so great ?
We climbed up thro' the cloven rock whose face
Went in and out like waves that come and go :
" Here must a little art direct our pace,"
My Guide began, " in winding onward so
-^ As where the crag recedeth to find place."
This made our footsteps few and passage slow,
And ere that needle's eye we had passed through
The waning moon had sunk again to rest;
But when free forth we had an open view
Up where no fissure mars the mountain's breast,
I wearied out, both doubtful of our path,
We stopped upon the level of a ledge
COPYRIGHT : REV. I. T. HF.CKER. 1879. .
290 Dante s Purgatorio.
Lonelier than roads through deserts. This plain hath
From the steep hillside to its outer edge,
That borders on void space, a breadth as wide
As thrice the measure of a human frame :
Right hand and left, far as mine eye descried,
Tin's cornice in its breadth appeared the same.
Thereon our feet along the mountain-side
Had not advanced a step before I found
Ascent impossible : it was a shelf
Walled with white marble and so sculptured round
That Polycrete, yea, nature's very self,
Had there been shamed.
There lighted on the ground
The Angel stood who brought down the decree
Of that dear peace which men had wept for long,
And heaven from its old interdict set free,
So truly cut that it had seemed a wrong
To think that sweet look but a silent stone.
One would have sworn that it said " Ave !" She
Was also imaged there, the blessed one,
Who to the Love Divine did turn the key.
And in her act distinctly was revealed
This word : " Behold the handmaid of the Lord !"
Plain as a figure that in wax is sealed.
Let not thy mind one only place record,"
Said my sweet Master, who upon that side
Where men their heart have still was keeping me,
Therefore I turned my visage and espied
Behind the Mary, and beyond where He
Was standing at whose word I turned mine eye,
Another story carved upon the stone ;
So I came near it, passing Virgil by,
To where the figure might be plainly shown.
In the same marble there was graved the car
And oxen carrying the sacred ark,
Whence men should of offlcioiisness beware !
In front the people all, as I could mark,
Ranged in seven choirs. While one sense told me No,
The other said Yes, I perceive they sing.
And in like manner at the imaged flow
Of curling incense did a discord spring
Betwixt my sight and smell of yes and no.
Before that blessed vessel, there, was seen
The Psalmist dancing, humbled of his state,
And more than king seemed less than king in mien.
Over against him, gazing from the grate
Of a proud palace, like a woman vext
Looking disdainful, Michal's figure shone.
Dante s Pur gator io.. 291
I moved my place to mark what story next
Gleamed behind Michal whitely from the stone.
Here grav'n the lofty glory I admired
Of that high Roman prince whose virtues meek
To his great victory Gregory inspired;
Trajan, the emperor, of him I speak ;
And a poor widow full of grief, all tears,
Trembled beside him at his bridle's head.
The place looked trampled, thronged with cavaliers ;
The golden eagles over him outspread
Moved in the wind : and she amid the train,
That wretched woman, looked as though she said,
4< My lord! revenge my grief my sweet son slain !"
He seemed as answering, " My return abide."
4 My lord," like one whose wrong brooks no delay,
" If thou return not ?" seemed as she replied.
And he, " The one succeeding to my throne
Will do thee right." " What profit unto thee
His doing well, if thou forget thine own ?"
Whereto in this form seemed as answering he :
< Now comfort thee ! this duty I will end
Ere I go hence. Pity doth plead with me
To stay, and Justice wills that I attend."
He unto whom naught can be new or strange
Made visible this language I have penned,
Novel to us, because beyond our range.
While on these figures with delight I pored,
Which of such lowliness the story told,
And for their Sculptor's sake the more adored,
The Poet murmured in mine ear, " Behold !
This way a crowd seems creeping : they might guide
Our footsteps to the cornices above."
iMine eyes, that had been wholly satisfied
With those new things to look on which they love,
At these words were not slow to turn aside.
Reader, I would not have thee shrink dismayed
From thy good purpose, hearing of the doom
By which God wills our penance must be paid.
Heed not its form : think on what is to come !
At worst, consider, it could not endure
Beyond the judgment. " Master," I began,
" My sight so fails me that I am not sure
What shapes are coming; they seem unlike man."
"Their torments' heaviness doth crush them down,"
He answered me, " that even to my sight
Their shape at first was indistinctly shown.
292 Some Specimen Educators.
But fix thy gaze, to disentangle quite
What creatures come, under those loads of stone
Now mayst thou mark the pangs of every wight."
O ye proud Christians ! weary, wo-begone !
Who with a mental vision most infirm
Go confident with steps that go not on !
Perceive ye not that man is but a worm,
Born to produce the angelic butterfly
That with no screening shall to Justice fleet ?
For what should human spirit mount so high ?
Ye are as winged creatures, incomplete,
Even as the worm is, not formed perfectly.
As in the bracket's place one often sees
Figures by which the ceiling is sustained,
Crouching, with bosom doubled to the knees,
Whence unfeigned pity for a posture feigned
Moves the beholder's mind, so bending, these
Figures appeared as I perused them o'er.
They came, in truth, contracted more and less
According to the burden each one bore :
And he whose face most patience did express
Seemed to say, weeping : " I can bear no more !"
SOME SPECIMEN EDUCATORS.
WHILE sojourning in England I can, a nondescript, and two Non-
had occasion to be brought into conformists, one of whom was in
personal contact, in some instan- favor of religious instruction, while
ces into intimate relations, with the other had a somewhat strong
statesmen and clergymen deeply leaning toward secularism. Dur-
interested in the subject of edu- ing the period to which I refer the
cation primary, secondary, and whole controversy concerning the
university education. Among reconstruction of the system of
these were Monsignor Capel, the primary education in England was
Right Hon. Robert Lowe, Arch- fought out, and the present plan
deacon Denison, Mr. Fawcett, was incorporated in the legislation
M.P., Mr. Forster, M.P., and of the kingdom. The instigators
Mr. George Potter, member of of the agitation which led to this
the School Board of London, end were the Nonconformists that
who is not yet an M.P., but is, the various Protestant sects out-
who has very faithfully and per- side of the Established Church
sistently tried to be one. The and the secularists. The first
reader will see that this list com- wished that the primary education
prises a representative Catholic, a of the children should be taken
secularist, a High-Church Angli- out of the hands of the clergy of
Some Specimen Educators.
2 93
the Establishment, and that they
should receive what is spmetimes
called " undenominational educa-
tion" and sometimes ll evangelical
instruction"; the latter desired
that primary as well as secondary
and university education should
be wholly secular. So strong, how-
ever, was the foothold which the
Established Church had acquired
in the educational field, especially
in the rural districts, that for a
while the Nonconformists and secu-
larists joined their forces and
made common cause against the
Establishment. The basis of this
agreement was one that will ever
remain as an indelible stigma up-
on the Nonconformists; for so anx-
ious were they that the chil-
dren of the kingdom should not
receive such religious instruction
as the Church of England would
give them that they were willing
and anxious they should receive
no religious instruction at all. As
it was once forcibly said by a
spectator of the contest, " Rather
than a child should be taught
about God as the Established
Church understands him, they pre-
fer he should not be taught about
him at all ; rather than a child
should read the Bible under the
direction and with the explana-
tions of a teacher belonging to the
Establishment, they prefer that he
should not read the Bible at all."
This surrender of the Nonconform-
ists to the secularists would have
been complete had it not been for
the bold and manly stand taken by
Mr. Forster, who, although a Non-
conformist, is a Christian, and who,
despite the fervid denunciations of
nearly all the Baptist, Methodist,
Presbyterian, Congregational, Uni-
tarian, Wesleyan, Quaker, and
other sectarian preachers and pa-
pers in the country, insisted on
incorporating into the new edu-
cation act provisions which make
it at least possible that even in the
board schools the children may
learn something about God, and
which enable the denominational
schools to continue their existence
and their work under not wholly
unfavorable conditions. During
the struggle the position of the
Catholics in England was a some-
what peculiar and difficult one.
The denominational schools of the
Establishment were anti-Catholic
in the sense that they taught Pro-
testantism ; the proposed secular
schools were anti-Catholic in the
sense that they would be whol-
ly godless. The whole system of
"conscience-clauses" separate
hours or half-hours when the name
of God might be mentioned, and
other hours when his very exist-
ence must be ignored was abhor-
rent to the Catholic mind. But
any form of Christian education is
better than atheism and secular-
ism, and the Catholics, in and out
of Parliament, supported the mea-
sures which tended most to the re-
tention and extension of religious
education in the primary schools.
Under the new law they have a
tolerably fair field. The principle
of payment by results is recogniz-
ed. The Catholic schools, like the
others, are visited by government
inspectors, and, in proportion to the
number of their scholars and their
proficiency in the studies fixed by
the law, they receive their share of
the money voted for educational
purposes by Parliament. It is sat-
isfactory to know that the inspec-
tors, who are often by no means
prejudiced in favor of these schools,
give good accounts of their effi-
ciency and management.
Mgr. Capel has devoted a large .
share of his life to the promotion^
294
Some Specimen Educators.
of Catholic education in England.
It was his incessant and engrossing
labors in the training-school at
Hammersmith many years ago
that broke down his health and
caused him to be sent away to Pau
to die. He agreeably disappointed
every one by living. He not only
recovered his former health, but
acquired a robust vigor which en-
abled him to undertake and carry
out extraordinary labors. It is now
reported that the scheme for the
establishment of a great Catholic
university in London, of which he
was the originator and which was
very near his heart, has not been
successful. Its miscarriage if it
has miscarried could not have
been due to any lack of zeal on
Mgr. Capel's part. It is now
almost exactly five years since he
first unfolded to me his plans con-
cerning this great work. How
vividly the recollection of our con-
versations concerning it come back
tome! Mgr. Capel lived at this
time in the house which had been
purchased for him in Wright's
Lane, Kensington. It had former-
ly belonged to, or had been occu-
pied by, Mr. Sothern, the actor;
and the rooms which not long be-
fore had rung with the boisterous
merriment of Lord Dundreary and
his comrades now echoed with very
different sounds. Not that there
was any lack of mirth and good
company. On the contrary, Mgr.
Capel's house was one of the most
pleasant in all London. At the re-
pasts which, by reason of the early
hour at which they were given, he
called " luncheons," but which in
fact were his dinners, one was quite
certain to find some of the most
brilliant and distinguished people.
His private means were sufficient
to enable him to maintain an es-
tablishment which was worthy of
his rank without being at all osten-
tatious. The house is spacious \
what wa's the billiard-room has
been converted into an exquisite
little chapel ; the general reception-
room, the dining-room, and the
library and working-room all "nave
windows looking out upon a beauti-
ful miniature park, about an acre
in extent, belonging to the house.
The house is full of fine paintings,
and the library is exceptionally rich
in works of value and rarity. I re-
member with a certain sense of
mixed mortification and amusement
an incident which occurred at one
of the " luncheons." I had obtain-
ed permission to present two
Americans, both of them journalists*
and one of them a very widely
known and highly esteemed editor.
All went well during the dinner;
and when the coffee came monsig-
nor arose and took from a cabinet
a box of cigars, which he placed
upon the table. " I do not smoke,"
said he, " and I can say nothing as
to the merits of these cigars from
personal knowledge. But they
were brought to me by Sefior ,
of Cuba, and he said I might offer
them without fear to my friends.
Pray try them." The cigars were
most excellent. They were of a
peculiarly rare and costly brand,
and their fragrance soon filled the
room with delicious perfume. But
what was my horror when, as we
were about to rise from the table,
one of my American friends drew
from his pocket an immense but
empty cigar-case, and reached out
his large hand for the box. " Mon-
signor," said he, " these are the
best cigars I have ever smoked ;
with your leave I'll take some of
'em home to America to show my
friends and to keep as mementoes
of my visit to Mgr. Capel." With
these words he filled his capacious
Some Specimen Educators.
295
case, while monsignor, after casting
a comical glance at me, assisted
him in his task, and urged him,
when the case was filled, to stuff
one or two more into his pocket
an invitation that was not disre-
garded.
This was all comical enough, al-
though extremely mortifying to me.
But the work in Mgr. Capel's house
was anything but comical. Some
of it was most serious. I remem-
ber the morning when he told me
that he thought he should have to
give his house a new name, and
call it "The Convert's Home."
For many years past there has pro-
bably not been a week certainly
not a month in which one or more
clergymen of the Established Church
have not become Catholics. In the
rare cases where these converts
were widowers, or men who had
never married, their path was open
before them. They could enter as
novices one of the religious or-
ders, or otherwise prepare them-
selves for admission to the priest-
hood. But the majority of them
were married men ; and their con-
version not only compelled them to
resign the comfortable livings which
they enjoyed as ministers of the
Establishment, but barred them out
from almost every occupation save
that. of teaching in Catholic schools
or as private tutors in Catholic
families. Many of] these cases
were attended with peculiarly dis-
tressing surroundings ; and Mgr.
Capel has a tender heart. In his
house many a convert whose con-
version had cost him all he pos-
sessed on earth found at least a
temporary home. Here were Ox-
ford men, Cambridge men, splen-
didly educated, quite capable of
teaching, and having nothing to do.
The idea of founding in London
the nucleus of what in time should
become a great Catholic universi-
ty had long been cherished by
Mgr. Capel, and his constant asso-
ciation with these men urged him
on to what may have been precipi-
tate action. But his plans seemed
to be feasible, and even wise. The
university was to begin with one
modest college, and this was to be
planted upon grounds adjacent to
other properties which were held
on such terms that as the leases of
the individual owners fell in the fee
simple of the property could be ac-
quired by the university corpora-
tion, and room for additional col-
leges thus acquired. I am by no
means satisfied that the idea was
not a thoroughly sound and practi-
cal one. It may yet be carried out;
and if it is London will have much
for which to thank Mgr. Capel.
But he intended to move slowly.
As I turn over the papers relat-
ing to this matter which I have
preserved, the whole memory of its
history is revived. On the pth of
May, 1874, Archbishop Manning
issued a circular letter in his own
name and in that of the bishops of
England, giving the result of their
deliberations upon this subject. It
set forth that the Fourth Provin-
cial Council of Westminster had
already made known " that the
growth of the middle and upper
classes of our laity, and the open-
ing of the career of professional
and public service, render it neces-
sary to lay at least the foundation
of a system of higher studies";
and it added that " the develop-
ment of such a system will, they
trust, under God, be gradually
made hereafter as the growing
needs of our Catholic laity de-
mand." The Pope had not merely
encouraged but had directed the
bishops to begin the work, and
had assured them that the powers
296
Some Specimen Educators.
necessary for its guidance and ac-
complishment would be granted.
They therefore formed an Academi-
cal Senate, composed of clergy and
laity selected from the whole of
England. The senate was com-
posed of seventeen ecclesiastics
and thirty-six laymen. Among the
former were Mgr. Capel, the pres-
ident-general of the Benedictines,
the provincials of the Jesuits and
Dominicans, the provincial of the
Order of Charity, and the presi-
dents of the Catholic colleges at
Ushaw, Ware, Oscott, Prior Park,
and Stonyhurst. The lay mem-
bers of the senate were a brilliant
company' the Duke of Norfolk
leading the list, and the names of
Bute, Denbigh, Stourton, Petre,
Arundell, Clifford, Howard, Gerard,
Bowyer, and De Trafford following,
while untitled but eminent and dis-
tinguished men made up the tale.
There were representatives of the
army, the navy, the law, medicine,
and the sciences. I find among
my papers a manuscript copy of the
" Propositions to be submitted to
the senate of the College for High-
er Studies, convoked May 21, 1874,
at the Archbishop's House, West-
minster." Mgr. Capel gave it me
some days before the senate met.
It is prefaced by a pen-and-ink
sketch of the first building for the
college, and of the little chapel
that was to be attached to it. The
following extracts show the scope
of the propositions '
The object of this foundation being to
complete the education of our Catholic
young men and to fit them for certain
professions, it is proposed
1. That the usual age of admission
shall be seventeen, and that the college
course shall extend over a period of four
years.
2. That an entrance examination shall
be passed by every student prior to his
admission. (Candidates for admission
may live or read with a private tutor,
but will not be regarded as students of
the college till they have passed the en-
trance examination.)
3. That the teaching staff shall be of
such nature, and the curriculum of studies
so ordered, as to allow of young men be-
ing efficiently prepared for the law, army,
and civil service.
I. Studies. While giving special care
and attention to science and mathema-
tics, yet the study of literature will hold
the prominent place.
It is proposed to establish at once the
following chairs :
1. Religious knowledge : (a) of popu-
lar dogmatic theology ; (V) of natural
theology; (c) of Scripture and church his-
tory.
2. Philosophy.
3. Literature : (a) Greek, () Latin, (c)
English, (d) French, (e) German.
4. History : (a) ancient, (b) modern,
and geography.
5. Philosophy of History.
6. Law : (a) Roman, (b) constitutional
history.
7. Mathematics.
8. Science : (a) geology, (b~) astrono-
my, (i) chemistry, (d) natural philoso-
phy.
9. Fine Arts.
II. The Teaching Staff. It is propos-
ed to have
1. Professors who will give courses of
lectures. '
2. Tutors on whom will devolve the
daily teaching.
3. Private tu ors to give individual
care to those who are backward or who
are preparing for special examinations.
Discipline. As the candidates must
produce certificates of good conduct both
from their former masters and from their
parish priests, and will already have re-
ceived steady religious training, it may
be confidently expected that by regularity
in receiving the sacraments and by the
practice of religious exercises they will
grow up worthy Catholics. Yet, in or-
der to give every reasonable assistance
in a matter of such grave importance, it
is proposed
1. That the houses of residence
shall as much as possible be small
homes, with not more than twelve stu-
dents in each, and that a resident tutor,
clerical or lay, shall be at the head of
every house.
2. That all freshmen shall spend the
Some Specimen Educators.
297
first two years of their course in one of
these houses of residence ; that after the
expiration of that time they may, if their
conduct has been satisfactory, go to one
of the lodging houses approved by the
college authorities.
3. That during college terms no stu-
dent shall be permitted to go to theatres,
concerts, balls, etc., which involve ab-
sence from the houses of re-idence dur-
ing the evening.
The property adjacent to Mgr.
Capel's own residence in Kensing-
ton, which was designed for the
nucleus of the new university, was
purchased, and the only building
upon it was converted into an edi-
fice which, without being imposing
in appearance, was spacious enough
and convenient enough for the be-
ginning of the work.
The announcement of the inten-
tion to begin in the metropolis the
work of building up a great Catho-
lic university excited at first the
ridicule and then the denunciation
of a certain portion of the non-Ca-
tholic and Protestant press. Ere
long the columns of the Times were
freighted with letters respecting
the proposed institution, some of
which were written by men promi-
nent in non-Catholic scientific
and Protestant theological circles.
These writers asked how it would
be possible for an institution found-
ed by the direct authority of the
Pope acting through his servants,
the bishops of England, and bound
by " all the limitations of the Syl-
labus " and of " the cast-iron dog-
matism " of Roman Catholic theo-
logy, to keep abreast with the science
of the day as taught in Oxford and
Cambridge, or in the other non-
Catholic institutions of England
and the Continent? The replies
made by Mgr. Capel and by some
of the professors of the new college
were prompt and bold. St. George
Mivart, in his letter to the Times
upon this subject, remarked that
he would never condescend to keep
any post in which he was not able
to teach all the scientific truth he
knew. " My lectures," he added,
" will be absolutely the same in
Kensington as if I gave them in
Govver Street, but in no institution
would they be made the vehicle of
insinuating a realistic or idealistic
philosophy which I do not accept
and which would be foreign to my
subject. I am aware of no theolo-
gical problem which I am not pre-
pared to represent, when occasion
requires, with all the just impartial-
ity in my power. My personal
knowledge of the authorities of the
new institution causes me to smile
at the idea that any such scientific
suppression or mutilation as the
article in the Times suggests could
be required of me." In due time
the staff of the college was filled up,
and the institution was opened by
a solemn religious service, in which
Cardinal Manning bore a conspicu-
ous part. When I last visited it, it
was in what I took to be the full
tide of success, and I well remem-
ber the enthusiasm with which Mgr.
Capel pointed out to me the suc-
cessive steps through which, as he
believed, the college would come
to be a great university. There
are vague newspaper reports at
present to the effect that the new
college has not prospered, and that
its affairs are in financial disorder.
Of the truth of these reports I know
nothing; but of the hard efforts for
its success on the part of Mgr. Ca-
pel, and of his full belief in the ne-
cessity and final success of the uni-
versity, I know much. And he
certainly had been able to convince
the archbishop and the suffragans
that it was incumbent upon them
to aid in the work. Pius IX. sent
a special brief authorizing the work
298
Some Specimen Educators.
and commending it to the prayers
and the aid of the hierarchy, the
priests, and the people.
Let me no\v turn to my typical
rnan of the High Anglican school
high, very high, but anything but
dry the Very Rev. Archdeacon
Denison. I have never been quite
able to make up my mind why Mr.
Denison had not long ago become
a Roman Catholic priest. Perhaps
he was influenced by family ties ;
perhaps by pride of place, for in
East Brent, his parish, he rules
with an autocratic and undisputed
sway. Perhaps it is because he is
more fond of ruling than of obey-
ing that he has not submitted to
the authority of the church whose
credo is his own, even, I think, so
far as to the official infallibility of
the pope and the immaculate con-
ception of the Blessed Virgin. I
am, however, not wholly satisfied
of this. It is quite certain that
there is not a Catholic bishop in
the world who would endure for a
single day the insolent insubordi-
nation with which Archdeacon
Denison habitually and ostenta-
tiously treats the authorities of his
church. I ventured to remark to
him one day when visiting him at
East Brent that probably if he
could be pope he would become a
Catholic. The suggestion did not
displease him. I have rarely met
a man who was so confident of his
own personal infallibility, and so
well assured of his entire capability
of managing any and every thing.
It is scarcely doubtful whether,
like Lord John Russell, he would
hesitate to take command of the
English fleet in the British Chan-
nel at twenty-four hours' notice.
But the utter scorn and contempt
with which he regards his own bi-
shops, and the coolness wherewith
he defies their injunctions and ridi-
cules their half-hearted and double-
faced opinions, is almost amusing.
It was pleasant to visit him at his
delightful home in East Brent,
where, as I have said, he ruled as
temporal and spiritual autocrat,
and where all feared and many
loved and revered him. " What
are the duties of an archdeacon ?"
some one asked of Dean Swift.
" To discharge archdiaconical func-
tions," replied the dean. But
Archdeacon Denison has for many
years given proof that archdiaconi-
cal functions in his case were some-
thing more than a mere name. He
attends to everything in his parish;
and just as a certain doorkeeper in
the House of Representatives once
wrote to his friends at home that
he war, "a biger man than old
Grant," so does Archdeacon Den-
ison believe himself, in his own
parish at least, to be a " biger
man " than the amiable but weak
old gentleman who is called the
Archbishop of Canterbury. A very
good idea of the man will be given
by the following extracts from a
letter which he wrote me more
than three years ago, in response
to a note in which I had called his
attention to the curious speech of
President Grant at Des Moines,
and to certain other phases of the
educational question in the United
States :
" I have during the last thirty years
written, published, and spoken so much
upon the 'education' question that I
find it hard to know where to end. But
I may say in sum that my judgment
upon all the substance of the question
being the same now as it was thirty years
ago, and with what I first made public
in a letter to Mr. Gladstone in 1847, 1
have lived to see every one of my antici-'
pations verified. The year 1870 added to
my anticipations what, certainly, I had
not predicted, but what is the natural
and necessary outcome of the educa-
Some Specimen Educators.
299
tional policy of the last forty years. It
added the absolutely irreligious element
in the school-board school, and the
quasi-religious but really irreligious
element in the denominational school
under a time-table conscience clause.
"From the moment when the bill be-
came law, and especially when I saw it
not only accepted but welcomed by
bishops and clergy, I finally lost all
trust in the position of the Establishment,
and was compelled to believe that it did
not only not assist, but it damaged, the
reception of the truth of God as reveal-
ed by the church. The nineteenth cen-
tury is weary of Christ's religion, and of
the church as his instrument in promot-
ing it, and proposes to make men good
that is, followers and servants of God by
cultivating their intellect at the expense
of their faith in the revealed Word.
Out of this proposal has come all the
miserable folly which is talked about
'education' in England, and which is
at the bottom of the proposals which
your letter specifies as laid before the
authorities of the United States. Citi-
zens do not agree about religion ; there-
fore let us put it aside in our schemes
for human improvement, and, rather than
not have children of all religions and of
none in the same school, let us say we
will have no Bible, no prayers, nothing
in the shape of ' religion ' in the school.
If the children are minded to go to the
devil, their own way each, then let us
not so much as think of interposing any-
thing in the shape of a religious obliga-
tion and a religious hope.
"This has become the normal course
of things in England. It seems to be
about to become the normal course of
things in the United States.
"The devil has broken loose, and is
frightening one man, and cajoling an-
other with smoothing his way among so-
called Christian people.
" The ' National Society for the Educa-
tion of the Poor in the Principles of the
Established Church ' supplies a memor-
able example of what never fails to come
out of a faithless policy. It was found-
ed to promote ' religious education.' It
has fallen down to contending for ' re-
ligious teaching.' What it means by
'religious teaching' is not at all 'reli-
gious education,' but teaching upon re-
ligion*'.*., the hour, so-called, reli-
gious lesson in a school enjoying a gov-
ernment grant. From nine to ten the
name of God may be named in" the
school ; all the rest of the day it may not.
This is Christian England in the nine-
teenth century. Children are to be
taught to serve God by being forbidden
to name the name of God ; for an hour
there is a ' religious ' lesson, and so there
is a grammar or an arithmetic, or a geo-
graphy, or a music, or a dancing lesson;
and this is what is nicknamed ' reli-
gious teaching.' Observe, no man dares
to call it ' religious education.' The day
of this is gone by, and I have no belief
that a people who have sinned in this
matter as this people has are ever going
to find a ' place of repentance,' how-
ever they may seek it carefully and
with tears. Just now there is a move-
ment on foot to get Parliament to re-
lieve those who support, not schools of
religious education, but semi-religious
schools, in which there is a religious
lessen every day, from being burdened
also with paying rates for the openly-
proclaimed irreligious schools the
school-board schools. What has set
this movement a-going ? Not love for
principles, but love for money. It is a
small matter nowadays to sell your
principles, but when you have done it
you want your money, the price of your
principles, for yourself; and so thou-
sands who swallowed greedily the 1870
act because they liked the money find
it very hard to digest, because what
money it gives with the one hand it
robs with the other."
In one of his conversations with
me Archdeacon Denison laid great
stress on the fallacy of the assump-
tion that the denominational schools
were inferior in teaching quality to
the board schools. He believed
the fact to be the reverse of this,
and in illustration of his position
proceeded to quote some statistics
from a return just presented to
Parliament, and which would be
embodied in the then forthcoming
blue-book, relating to the year
ending August 31, 1873. He found
that in the Church of England Na-
tional schools there were 1,451,666
children taught ; in the British,
Wesleyan, Presbyterian, and other
sectarian schools, 435,426 ; in the
300
Some Specimen Educators.
Catholic schools, 125,697; and in
the board schools, 111,286. The
percentage of average attendance
upon the total number of scholars
was as follows : church schools,
70.1 per cent. ; British schools, 70.5 ;
Catholic schools, 70.6 ; and board
schools, 62.8, The numbers pre-
sented for examination were:
from church schools, 35.2 percent. ;
British and other schools, 38.9 ;
Catholic schools, 33.3 ; and board
schools, 26.8. He found that the
percentage of those who passed
completely in the different stand-
ards, of those presented for exam-
ination, was : in the church schools,
60. i ; British, etc., schools, 61.04;
Catholic schools, 61.27 I an d board
schools, 57.28. The amount of
grants paid for examinations alone
in which each child who passed
could earn i2s. if properly taught,
showed that the average paid to
church schools was 45-. nfyd. j
British schools, $s. 6^d. ; Catholic
schools, 4^. 1%.d. ; and board
schools, only $s. 8%V. The same
averages, taken not upon the total
number of scholars in the schools,
but upon the numbers presented
for examination, showed the follow-
ing result : church schools, gs. nd. ;
British, etc., schools, JQS. ifyd. ;
Catholic schools, gs. iofyd. ; and
board schools, 8s. 4^.d. Then, tak-
ing the results both upon examina-
tions and attendance, he found that
the general average of the church
schools was 12^. 2}4d. ; British and
Wesleyan schools, i2s. 3d.; Catho-
lic schools, us. \\Y^.d.; and board
schools, gs. nd. These figures
showed that, both with regard to
management and education, there
was a decided inferiority in every
case on the part of the board
schools.
Taking next the payments under
the twenty-fifth clause, he found
that while in the case of the church
schools the payment amounted to
y 2 d. per head, in British and Wes-
leyan schools to %d. per head, and
in Catholic schools to ^d. per
head, there was paid for 54,000
children attending board schools
^57,000, or at the rate of i os.
gd. per head. "But," added he,
" you cannot get the people to look
at these figures or to understand
them. The utter unfaithfulness of
our bishops to their duty has led
to deplorable apathy and careless-
ness on the part of the clergy and
the laity. The latter would be all
right if they had the proper lead-
ers. But when they see their own
clergymen going in for these god-
less board schools they lose heart
and let the thing go by default."
My conversations with Mr. Lowe
upon the education question were
frequent. His great hobby was not
merely the secularization of educa-
tion, but its technicalization if I
may coin that word. A thorough
classical scholar himself, taking as
much delight in Homer, Cicero,
Sallust, Horace, Virgil, and the
rest of them as Mr. Gladstone or
the late Earl Derby did, M.r. Lowe
was continually declaring that the
study of classical and scholastic
literature did far more harm than
good, and that the model grammar-
school, college, and university would
be one from which these useless
studies should be excluded, and
the whole energies of the pupil be
directed toward the attainment of
"practical knowledge " such know-
ledge, for instance, as would en-
able him to distinguish between "a
fissure-vein " and " a pocket " in a
gold-mine, or to determine wheth-
er an uncultivated region would be
susceptible of profitable farming.
If man lived by bread alone, such
instruction might be sufficient for
Some Specimen Educators.
301
all his wants; but it scarcely suf-
fices for the gratification of the as-
pirations of man as he is. Mr.
Lowe in conversation is sometimes
extremely pleasing, and again has
the faculty of rendering himself
quite as disagreeable. In the
House of Commons his matter is
much better than his manner, and
he is liable to be disconcerted at
trifling mishaps, and to break down
in the middle of an argument, as
he did on a recent occasion when
assailing the government for its
mismanagement of the Zulu war.
Mr. Lowe is a very forcible writer;
and when he is in the humor for it
his conversation is richly worth the
attention of every one. His per-
sonal appearance is not at all fasci-
nating ; but that he possesses very
exceptional ability as an observer
and a thinker cannot be doubted.
From a Catholic point of view he
is altogether wrong on the educa-
tion question. He was the son of
a clergyman of the Establishment,
and was of course brought up in
the Protestant religion. But I have
reason to believe that he has long
since parted with what faith he
had, and that he is now a thorough
rationalist.
Mr. Lowe's career in Australia was
an eventful one, and his political
vagaries have been neither few nor
far between. But he has been stead-
fast to one purpose. There should
be no Catholic university education
in Ireland if he could help it; and
although he has never stooped to
such means as those employed by
the more rabid Protestants to de-
feat every measure looking to that
end, he has often proved to be the
most efficient and powerful auxil-
iary of the zealous non-Catholics in
the House. I once asked him why
he was so set upon depriving Ca-
tholics of what seemed to be their
natural rights in this matter, re-
marking that I felt sure he cared
little or nothing for the merely
theological or dogmatic side of the
question. "Well," replied Mr.
Lowe, " if I had my way I should
completely secularize all our uni-
versities, and give the control of
the primary and secondary schools
wholly to the state. Not that I
care a penny what religious opin-
ions a man may hold ; but the ele-
ment of religion introduced into
education makes it to a certain ex-
tent sentimental, and to that ex-
tent robs it of the thoroughly prac-
tical character which it should
possess. This is a hard world, and
it will be as much as all of us can
do to make a good living in it, and
to get the best possible results out
of it, by giving all the energies
of our minds and bodies to the
practical and letting the sentimen-
tal alone. The Catholic religion is
of all others the most sentimental,
and is the best calculated to induce
men to put up with mundane evils
and refrain from attempts at the
improvement of the material world,
in the belief that they will lead
soft and easy lives in another ex-
istence. That is the principal rea-
son why I always oppose the ex-
tension of Catholic education, al-
though there are others."
Mr. Fawcett, the blind member
of Parliament, is like Mr. Lowe in
his animosity to Catholic educa-
tion, and is in favor of secularizing
education, with certain limitations.
Mr. George Potter is one of the
ex-working-men who are anxious
to represent the real working-men
in Parliament, but whose merits
are not appreciated by their wish ed-
for constituents. As editor of the
so-called workman's newspaper,
the Beehive, and as member of the
London School Board, Mr. Potter
3 02
Some Specimen Educators.
has done all in his power to lead
public opinion to accept the belief
that while religious instruction in
itself is a good thing, it should be
kept wholly separate from secular
instruction, unless, indeed, a little
Bible-reading without note or com-
ment might perhaps be permitted.
Mr. Potter is a good Presbyterian
on Sundays, but almost, if not
quite, a secularist on week-days.
But the man who, outside the
ranks of the Catholics in England,
has devoted most attention to the
subject of primary education, and
accomplished most to place it upon
a footing which, without being al-
together satisfactory, is so much
better than either the system before
in force or that which the united
Dissenters and secularists sought
to substitute for it that in compari-
son it appears almost faultless, is
the Right Hon. William Edward
Forster, who entered Parliament
as member for Bradford in 1861,
and who has ever since retained
his seat. To his admirable tact,
ability, and adherence to principle
is chiefly due the passage of the
education bills of 1870 and of
1876, and the failure of all the sub-
sequent attempts that have been
made in Parliament to obliterate
the provisions of those measures
which secure to all denominational
schools that keep up to the requir-
ed standard their due share of the
money voted for educational pur-
poses. Mr. Forster, by his course
on this question, for a while incur-
red the bitter enmity and opposi-
tion of his Nonconformist associates
and friends and of the secularist
party. But, as he said to me one
day, he never doubted that the
ordinary sense of common justice
and fair play in the breasts of the
English people would bear him
safely through the struggle. Under
the education law which he suc-
ceeded in passing, Roman Catholic
schools, the schools of the Estab-
lishment, and the schools of the
various dissenting sects are treated
with equal fairness. They must
bring up their pupils to a certain
standard of attendance and of pro-
ficiency in their studies ; and, this
accomplished to the satisfaction of
the government inspector, they
have their school fees paid for them
out of the government Education
Fund. It may .be well here to
give an accurate synopsis of the
provisions of the present law regu-
lating public primary education in
England :
The Elementary Education Act
of 1876, which took effect January
i, 1877, makes it the duty of every
parent, under specified penalties
for neglect, to cause all his (or her)
children between the ages of five
and fourteen years to receive effi-
cient elementary instruction in
reading, writing, and arithmetic.
No child under the age of ten or
over that age without a certificate
of proficiency, or previous due at-
tendance at a certified efficient
school can be employed in a fac-
tory, unless in accordance with the
Factory Acts or by by-law under
the Education Acts. Any parent,
not being a pauper, who is still
unable to pay the fees for his chil-
dren at a public elementary school,
may apply to the guardians having
jurisdiction in the parish where
he resides, who pay it for him if
satisfied of his disability ; and the
parent so assisted is entitled to se-
lect the school precisely as though
he bore the expense himself. Any
child who obtains before the age
of eleven a certificate of proficien-
cy and due attendance, as provid-
ed by law, is entitled to receive his
fees for the next three years from
Some Specimen Educators.
303
the Education Department, such
fees to be counted as school-pence.
Special Parliamentary grants may
be made to places in which the
population is small, provided they
are applied for by schools conduct-
ed in accordance with the condi-
tions of the act of 1870 relating to
that subject.
Mr. Forster was born of Quaker
parents, and is now in his sixty-
first year. He acquired a hand-
some fortune as a manufacturer of
worsted goods at Bradford, which
business, I believe, he still carries
on. Among all my English ac-
quaintances there is not one who
has a clearer head, a kinder heart,
or a more ardent desire to love
mercy and to do justice than this
non-Catholic statesman, who under-
stands that Catholics, even in nom-
inally Protestant countries, have
rights which the majority are bound
to respect, and the denial of which
leads only to discontent, evil, and
revolt. In manner Mr. Forster
is quiet, self-possessed, rather slow
of speech, but never hesitating or
confused. With no love for the
Roman Catholic Church, he is free
from the foolish animosity against
her which sways such men as New-
degate and Oranmore. After I
had told him I was a Catholic his
manner to me was even kinder than
before perhaps he felt a tender
pity for me ; but he did not try to
convince me of the error of my
ways. To him, I repeat, the Catho-
lics of England are largely indebt-
ed for two of the best educational
^measures which have ever been
l^dftpted by the English Parliament.
Jpe entered the House of Commons
as member for Bradford in 1861 ;
he was under-secretary for the colo-
nies in Lord Russell's administra-
tion in 1865-66, and was vice-presi-
dent of the Committee of Council
on Education in 1868. In my opin-
ion it would be a happy thing for
the United States if our system
of common-school education were
made to assimilate more closely to
that which Mr. Forster lias suc-
ceeded in giving to England. The
blot in it is that the state is made
the schoolmaster of those children
who do not attend the denomina-
tional schools, and that it taxes
every one for the support of these
state schools. This, however, is to
a certain extent remedied by the
repayments which are made out of
the fund thus raised to the denomi-
national schools. And in this as in
other respects the English system
is greatly superior to our own.
The question of education is,
and is likely to continue for a
long time to be, one of the leading
questions. It is of universal im-
portance, and it is greatly to be
regretted that men of all parties
should not approach it with the
calm spirit and even temper that
tend so much to smooth away dif-
ficulties and cause misunderstand-
ings to disappear. The Catholic
Church is assailed by the more
foolish and noisy of her opponents
as being the great enemy of the
education of the people. Such a
charge should not and could not
be made by honest-minded and in-
telligent men. It is accepted on
all hands that to the Catholic
Church Christendom originally
owes the literary and scientific
fruits of the past. She was the
mother of learning, as she still is.
She has certainly not lost her
character or deteriorated from the
past. No men have gone farther
in the pursuit of knowledge than
the saints, the great Catholic doc-
tors and scientists; as no artists
have surpassed or reached to the
level of those inspired by faith.
304
Some Specimen Educators.
The only illumining light in the
darkness of ignorant ages was the
Catholic Church. All this is ad-
mitted by men who reflect ; yet
the absurd charge that the Catho-
lic Church is the enemy of the
education of the people is made
the pretext in some non-Catholic
communities and powers for oust-
ing Catholics altogether from the
chairs of universities, of colleges,
and even of primary schools. It is
surely a sufficient refutation of the
charge to find the government, as
in France to-day, compelled by
way of justifying it to drive Catho-
lic teachers from all the seats of
learning, high and low, throughout
the country, thus altogether upset-
ting the present educational system
in France. Protestants even, the
secular journals of England and
our own country, have cried out
against so unjust, unnecessary,
foolish, and wicked a measure.
The very men in France who
malignantly stamp the Catholic
Church as the mother of ignorance
now withdraw that healthy freedom
of the universities which was sol-
emnly proclaimed in 1875. In
like manner England, which in her
organs of opinion, such as the
London Times, protests against the
action of the French government,
herself refuses an adequate means
of higher education to the Irisii
Catholics ; not, as is conceded,
because the argument is not on the
side of the Catholics, but because
Protestant sentiment is against it.
So Catholic funds must continue
to sustain a Protestant university.
Nor is our own country a whit
less unjust in the matter of the
public schools. In a free country
of different confessions of faith
there is only one fair solution of
this question : each denomination
should be free in every way free
to educate its children as it is to
follow its own form of worship ;
and no more taxed for the support
of a certain system of education
than it is for the support of a cer-
tain system of religious belief. The
state has a right to demand that
its children become competent citi-
zens, but not citizens of a cer-
tain stripe of belief or unbelief.
That matter by its constitution it
leaves open, and yet practically di-
rects and controls. The Catholic
Church will go as far in the pursuit
of knowledge as can be wished ;
nothing holds her back. She re-
fuses, however, to have those bap-
tized in her bosom brought up
either in practical or theoretical
disbelief in God, or even careless-
ness about God. And to witness
her zeal in such matters needs
but to look around us. Poor as
Catholics are, they raise up schools
of their own means, where their
children, while obtaining an educa-
tion equal in all points to that
given at the public schools, may
not have God banished from
amongst them and a knowledge of
their religion proscribed. And
this they do while compelled to
support by tax the schools of which
they cannot avail themselves. Not
only this, but the church devotes
whole orders of men and women
to the one purpose of education.
What other church can show such
sacrifices and such zeal ? Even
secular writers as well as secular
rulers complain on every side that
the spirit of faith and obedience
is dying out among the people to-
day, just in proportion as the
spirit of turbulence and demorali-
zation is making alarming headway.
And why ? Chiefly because of the
legal proscription of an education
under the influence of faith in Al-
mighty God, reverence for his
Some Specimens of Modern Swedish Poetry.
305
name and authority. It is for this
the Catholic Church contends, al-
ways has contended, and always
will contend. And it is 'such an
education alone that can leave a
lasting impress for good and pro-
duce worthy citizens of the state
and members of society. If preju-
dice did not shorten their vision,
sincere Protestants who have a
regard for morality, freedom, and
the welfare of their country should
do all in their power to assist, in-
stead of striving to retard, the
cause of Christian education.
SOME SPECIMENS OF MODERN SWEDISH POETRY.
WHILE the old national literature,
the heroic mythology and allegori-
cal history, of the Norsemen are
being revived and made known to
the world by full-text translations,
as also by music, none the less ap-
propriate because it is not national,
the modern growth of Swedish
poetry in this and the last century is
less known. Except in its simpli-
city, it seems to have inherited little
from the ancient style of poetry,
and much of this simplicity itself
sounds occasionally like mannerism,
and suggests the French pastoral
style fashionable for fifty years be-
fore the Revolution. The plea-
santest and most characteristic
pieces have, to an ear familiar-
ized with northern literature only
through the novels of Andersen and
Miss Bremer, a family likeness to
the style of these authors, while
here and there in the more roman-
tic themes one catches an echo of
what is known to us as Ossian.
The specimens we have chosen are
from a miscellaneous collection by
a French writer,* the translator of
the Eddas, as also of Tegner,
Fryxell, Miss Bremer, and other
* Flo-bers of Scandinavia. By Mile. R. du
Puget.
VOL. XXIX. 20
Swedish authors, and may be call-
ed fair average representatives of
the best class of poetry. The few
by living authors * show a whole-
some, natural tone, far removed
from the morbid style of transcen-
dentalism and metaphysical ana-
tomy prevalent in recent English
poetry, and not unknown to some
French, German, and even Italian
poets of note within this century.
Isaiah Tegner is perhaps the best
known of modern Swedish poets,
and his " First Communion," a
Whitsunday idyl, was translated in-
to most European languages ; but
as Mile, du Puget's selections from
his works seem to appeal less to
the sympathy of English-speaking
readers than do those of some of the
minor poets, we feel no hesitation
in passing over them. The follow-
ing scene, from the pen of a wo-
man, Mme. Anna Maria Lenngren,f
has a kindly yet shrewd, not to say
sarcastic, tone which expresses a
mood not unknown to most thought-
ful persons who have lived amid
the influences, good and otherwise,
of an old country imbued with
* " Christmas Eve," " The Hero's Grave,"
k 'The Sentry's Betrothed," and " A Story Low-
er."
t Born at Upsal, 1754 ; died 1817.
306
Some Specimens of Modern Swedish Poetry.
old customs, old prejudices, and old
forms of outward politeness. The
incident has a more serious side,
and suggests an anomaly between
the official status of a clergy repre-
senting the state church, and the
practically low social estimate at
which this clergy is held by its
landed patrons. Mine. Lenngren
had a natural turn for satire, or
rather she could not help seeing
the weak side of an estimable char-
acter or of a praiseworthy institu-
tion. Her French translator says
of her that
" The originality, the naturalness, the
good taste, and the simplicity of her ex-
pressions, the truth of her pictures, and
the smooth harmony of her verses, are
the prominent qualities of her poetry.
To these she adds a knowledge of the
world and of the heart of man which
would be surprising in a woman leading
so retired a life, did we not know that
for genius the teaching of experience is
quick and unerring. Mme. Lenngren's
writings are less satires than rapid and
exhaustive sketches of character. She
does not lash vice and extravagance
with the ponderous weapons of premed-
itation, but, deftly availing herself of
laughter and jokes, she turns these into
teachers and makes her readers fall in
love with goodness. Neither the envy
nor the weariness that often follow in
the train of praise bestowed on a writer
assailed her renown. Every class of so-
ciety loved and appreciated her."
Her domestic life was peaceful
and happy, as that of all literary
women might be if they chose to
take the trouble to make it so.
"The Countess' Visit" bears wit-
ness to the domestic appreciative-
ness of its writer:
" THE COUNTESS' VISIT.
" What disorder within and without ! What a
hubbub and disturbance in the pastor's house ! A
message has just come to say that her grace the
countess would dine at the manse that day.
' The pastor's wife holds counsel with her daugh-
ter Louisa on the marshalling of the dishes on the
table ; she is anxious to honor her guest and show
off her housekeeping by a marvellous banquet.
" The hall is dusted and the old poitraits fur
bished, specially the family ones the women in
loose draperies or in tight stays, the men holding
Bibles in their hands.
" The pastor's wife dons her long silken gown,
her husband his best ivig, and Louisa the dress for
many years sacred to the yearly festival.
" The countess and her daughter are nearing the
fence, and the pastor hastens forward, each fold of
his robe and his ample collar studiously arranged.
'' His wife, exulting, stands in the glaring sun-
shine on the stoop, curtsying deeply and often, and
both mother and daught r fall forward to kisg the
hem of the countess' garments.
l> The high and mighty lady steps into the hall.
The pastor, overflowing with bows and formalities,
tells her of the hearty joy and the pride her visit
gives the inmates of his house.
' The countess and her daughter are led to the
table, where God's gifts are not lacking. The
countess deigns to speak and blandly remarks:
1 How much trouble you have given yourselves !'
"She praises her hostess' housekeeping, pro-
nounces the meat with herb sauce tender and de-
licious, sings the praises of the cheese-cake, and
rallies Louisa about the learned young curate of
the parish.
' The noble damsel with snow-white fingers
breaks a chicken-wing to feed the fair Belinda.* and
herself eats but little of what is set before her.
" The noble guests secretly exchange glances at
the sight of the pastor carving the joint, the sweat
standing on his brow, his movements awkward
and his bows profuse.
" His wife serves up a bowl heaped with straw-
berries, and presses them heartily on her guests.
Each plate is heaped like a new-made grave.
u The cakes, the red wine from France, the
homely ' toasts ' take up much time, and the noble
ladies are on thorns ; at last the meal is over.
" The olive-branches appear, sturdy and sun-
burnt, introduced by their fond parents ; courteous
questions as to the children's names answers shy
and clumsy.
kt The pastor's wife, worthy matron ! crosses her
closed fists, and in clear tones praises Louisa's
housekeeping, her sewing and weaving. Thank
God ! the girl is deft and clever.
" Louisa stares open-mouthed at the trimming of
the young countess' dress, and resolves to copy it to
spite her neighbors.
'* She brings in coffee in a silver pot of antique
shape, and the pastor takes occasion to praise the
gracious count, whose gift it had been in days gone
by.
" He tells of the count's great prowess, but, with
growing bashfulness, covers his own retreat with
manifold holy texts.
" The countess draws out her handkerchief with
a sigh, appropriate to the memory of the departed,
and. with a few words about the trouble she has
given, takes up her cloak and goes forth.
" The pastor escorts the high and mighty lady as
far as the linden-tree, while his wife and his daugh-
ter well-bred women curtsy at the door, on the
stoop, at the fence, and are no doubt curtsying
still"
A pleasant contrast to this stiff
"duty-visit" is afforded by John
Gabriel Carlen's " Christmas Eve
in the Country," which he intro-
4
* Her lap-dog.
Some Specimens of Modern Swedish Poetry.
307
duces by an apt quotation from
Mme. Lenngren :
" Nowhere the stiffness of conventional restraint;
all is joy and pleasure, merriment and romping.
" Ah ! what a noise and a confusion. All have their
hands full ; everything is upside down within and
without. The hall, the parlor, the kitchen are all
swept and dusted, and in the midst of all a bare-
legged servant-girl is busy at the floor of each
apartment.
"The house-father can scarcely find a corner to
smoke his pipe in peace ; the mistress drives him
from refuge to refuge. How can any one give him-
self such trouble !
" The children are pushed hither and thither,
and bribed by plentiful bread and butter to get out
of the way.
" The meats are ready, the bread baked ; the
candles and the beer are made, the wash is over.
The mother, proud and upright, makes her rounds.
She is proud of the tidiness which her well-drilled
"eye finds everywhere. She runs forward with short,
airy steps ; she is rejoicing that the pastry has turn-
ed out well.
" The governess detaches from its frame the
worsted work which has occupied her nights, and
among roses, lambs, and shepherds appears a Cupid
a few inches long.
" The kitchen shines with an array of dazzling
pots. By the hearth gathers a merry band ; a well-
filled pot makes quick rounds, and all praise the
good, strong beer.
" Look at the table of the ' hands ' in that corner ;
see how it is heaped. Round the beef and bacon
are a circle of fish, bread, and pies. God's gifts
will not run short ; they will last out the feast, and
may be longer.
" Erik is coming from the city ; the sleigh-bells
are heard ; the children rush to meet him at the
heels of old dog Pan. Eagerly they ask for news ;
each had given Erik his own commission.
" Paper, string, and sealing-wax are given to old
and young for their preparations, and mysterious
whispers denote consultations. Meanwhile the
father, in his wolf-skin cloak, steals out to try the
new sleigh.
" Now all is ready ; nothing lacks. How good the
meal will taste ! Not the least thought is for the
poor, where candles, fuel, and cakes are to be de-
spatched, and then old Lisa ties a sheaf of oats to
the door, that the sparrows may not go away
hungry.
"The cuckoo-clock sounds half-past six, and the
children are ordered off. Their mother joyfully
heaps cakes and sugar-plums on a side-table, and
the tree is beautiful, each candle on its branches
alight.
" The door opens ; the children rush into the
blaze of light, where stand their parents with full
'hearts. O what life ! O what joy, what heavenly
joy ! I cannot describe the scene.
"Rejoice, merry children, still on the road to-
wards the uphills of life ; when joy is given you,
taste it freely. The day will come, all too soon,
when you will think sadly, as I do now, of Christ-
mas eve."
By the same author is the longer
poem of the " Sentry's Betrothed,"
a pathetic domestic tale, very sim-
ply told, the naive details cropping
up everywhere and bringing their
sentiment home to every heart.
But for the repetitions, which con-
siderably increase the length while
they do not add to the pith of the
story, we should give it whole.
The following portions, however,
with a few connecting words here
and there, will give a clear idea of
its subject :
''Yes, I must have been bereft of my senses
when I enlisted. What a fool I was to believe that
Hanna could deceive me !
" ' She is mine in joy or in sorrow ; I know it
now ! And I, who might have been so happy, am a
slave here.'
"Such were John's sad thoughts as he stood on
guard in Stockholm, and missed the rest and the
joys which used to make his days so happy.
" Thirty miles away, parted from John, his
faithful betrothed sent him, during sleepless nights,
many a sigh from the bottom of her heart.
" In the cottage beyond the wood and near the
church Hanna spent heavy hours with her poor
blind mother.
"But her thoughts grew lighter as she gazed on
the beloved ring that John had given her. . . .
" She had heard her father say that the morning
has gold in its mouth, but, to her delight, she found
that night had no less."
As she worked at her spinning-
wheel Hanna resolved to earn the
necessary sum, a hundred rix-dol-
lars, to buy John's discharge. But
it was very hard, for she had her
own and her mother's bread to.
earn, and it took two years' steady
work, with average luck in selling
the thread in the neighboring town,
to make up seventy-five dollars.
When she had sold her thread . . .
" She took her little box, bordered with blue and
yellow, which John had given her for a ' fairing '
before he enlisted.
" For many an evening she had reckoned up the
treasure contained in the box, each cent of which
was to go to redeem John. . . .
lt Hanna would forget the hunger she had often
felt when she had left her dinner to have more time
to increase her hoard.
" For the pastor's post-bag had once brought her
a letter from John, telling of his hardships since he
had joined the guard. . . .
" One day Hanna came home by a burning noon-
day sun, and the road, that had seemed so long be-
fore, she tripped over quickly and merrily.
" She ran a race with the pig to reach the low
room of her cottage, where her mother with trem-
bling hands sat disentangling a skein."
Then she tells how the innkeeper
had sent her to a kind lady, who
bought all her thread, and, noticing
308
Some Specimens of Modern Swedish Poetry.
her pallor, asked her if she could
be of service to her, which resulted
in the sum being at once complet-
ed, with something left over. A
fortnight's journey would do what
she needed, and that night she
went to sleep " with the peace
which the dove enjoys on the
branch whereon she roosts."
" When the red gold of the east gilded the lake
and the meadow, Hanna was already far on the
road to Stockholm
i4 She rode the first mile on Per's wagon, that was
bound for the mill, and just as she left it she met a
gentleman.
" ' Where are you going, my pretty maid ? We
might be company for each other?' And Hanna,
who saw no reason for secrecy now, told him all.
"'But your money, take care of it ; it may be
stolen. There are so many rogues ! Is it well
hidden?'
" k You may fancy how well, sir ! 'Tis sewn in
the hem of my petticoat here. But who would ever
dream I was so rich ?"
At midday the girl's companion
proposes a halt, and they rest
awhile.
" The wind whispered softly in the crown of the
trees, and the tinkling of the waterfall answered
from the mountain grotto.
" The lizard wound his way along the edge of the
ditch by the roadside, and the jay sat in silence un-
der the shade of the burning and rocky slope.
" Hanna was so hot and tired that she soon slept,
but her dreams did not bind her senses long.
" Her bright eyes opened ! . . . the gentleman
was gone, and, O Heaven ! so was her money ; not
a trace remained.
"No words can tell her grief. What a monster !
Be he accurse'd wherever he goes ! Let all Sweden
curse his treachery !"
And the poor girl, comforting
herself with the thought that John,
at least, will not be disappointed,
since she had prudently refrained
from telling him of her design,
goes home to her mother and her
work.
" Into the little box fell now and then a tear, but
the wheel went round and the spindle flew for two
years more. Hanna spun till her hand and foot were
weary, and even the wheel was half worn through
with work.
''But the third year O happiness! the sum
was once more full ; Hanna had often been hungry,
and had given up everything for her purpose.
"This time she reached Stockholm in safety.
At the gates she took out her gala handkerchief and
pinned it to her bridal comb.
" The dawn gilded the towers and spires. Han-
na's heart beat quick ; her senses all but forsook
her.
" But what means this crowd ? A dark procession
from the gates was winding down the road.
" It was a young soldier, a deserter, going to
meet his death.
If John . . .' And a horrible thought flashed
through Hanna's mind.
" No, the ways of the Lord are wonderful. Han-
na's anguish is over : between the soldiers steps the
man who stole her hoard."
The sequel is short and easily
guessed, and the following year,
says the poem, when Hanna's friend,
" the good lady," came to inquire
after her, she found her the mother
of a " naughty little soldier."
" A Story Lower," by Frederick
Sander, is the quaint meditation,
half-complaining, half-arrogant, of
a poor scholar whose present abode
is a certainty, while the intermedi-
ate ones of which he dreams are
yet "castles in the air."
"I live next the roof; a family of swallows are
my nearest neighbors, and a narrow clay room is
their merry summer dwelling.
" The mother's twittering wakes me at break of
day ; she is off to seek food for her little ones, but
for me, poor prisoner. I stay where I am, cheating
my wretchedness by the study of Greek.
" Still, I have learnt to mix a freshening draught
of grape-juiee ; but after all life is the same, wheth-
er or no one has tasted its best pleasures. Autumn
is near and will drive away the swallows ; I shall miss
my pleasant neighbors. Wait a bit, however ; I
shall become a professor and go down a story lower.
" I shall live in light and pretty rooms, and shall
sleep in a bed with silken curtains, where the silence
of night will whisper riddles to me, and the spirits
of dreams will pass without touching me. All day
long I shall work for the good of the country ; I
shall have a decoration given me, and perhaps I may
find a wife. When an old friend comes to see me,
he will wonder and exclaim : ' Thou too /'
11 But if for who knows where the serpent will
treacherously aim ? if (I say it once more) the ar-
rows of gout should reach me and bad temper be-
come the burden of my songs ; if gout should weight
my feet with lead and make my eyes seek my crutch-
es ; if the head of the tree should wither before its
roots, then I will go down a story lower.
"I will live on the ground-floor, where 'tis no
trouble to come in. Stairs are stumbling-blocks to
good health, and who is more anxious for health
than an old man ? He loves to smoke his evening
pipe when his other flames have gone out in smoke *
and trying to lengthen out each of his poor plea-
sures, he pours out a drop in a glass but, alas ! 'tis
but a vain effort.
"Any lamp, however well filled, will go out when
the wick is exhausted. When I have taken my last
steps I will ask, ' Is all over?' When I am weary
of life's treacherous moods, and see no friendly star
shine for me, I will go in peace towards the tomb,
and with a smile go down a story lower."
Among Swedish poets Amadeus
Some Specimens of Modern Swedish Poetry.
309
Atterbom * may be called their
Wordsworth for the moral tone of
his poetry and his deep love of
nature. Mile, du Puget says
of him : " Sweet dreamer ! he is
like a nightingale astray in the
dark pine forests of the North,
shivering in a winter which he can
neither bear nor yet fly from. . . .
When he describes flowers he gives
them each a character and a spe-
cial symbolic life. His great poem,
* The Isle of Happiness,' is bor-
rowed from the old legend of this
name. In it are to be found the
flashes of lyrical inspiration which
in Swedish literature belong exclu-
sively to Atterbom; but one is sor-
ry to find side by side with them
tedious periods and traces of pe-
dantic subtleties which spoil the
simple charm of the tale. Atter-
bom is also the author of a stand-
ard history of Swedish literature."
The following short poem reveals
his melancholy and tender nature:
" PATIENCE.
"Which of all the virtues deserves to be called
the hardest to practise? That which shines not
"" in strength but in calmness. All the rest have
their reward, either in the joy that comes of sac-
rifice or in the thrill and excitement of inspiration
and action.
" Patience, silent daughter of unselfishness, feeds
only on privations ; the Eternal only can reward
her. She gives up all things, and shines the most
when no one sees the spot on which, kneeling ia
prayer, she clasps and kisses the cross.
" Patience is woman's virtue. Riveted to earth
as a plant, she looks gently up towards the light
and bows down at each blast of wind ; she is still
fair when trodden under foot, still fragrant when
withered by time.
" To the lord of creation she opposes only the
pliancy of a flower, and to the hand that crushes
her only the secret dew of tears. Man is taught
suffering by the world, but woman by man. He it
is who frames her lot, and, like fate, is often her ty-
rant.
''The flower is the heart of the plant, and the
flower of nature is woman; the flower forgets self,
and woman lives for others. Gentle sex which
binds man to earth, thou hast kept for thy share
only the holy virtue of the flower."
Though best known by his im-
passioned poem on the " Death of
the Countess Spastara" the beau-
* Born 1796 ; died at Upsal 1855.
tiful French wife of a Sicilian, who
at the age of twenty-two died with
her infant son during a fire caused
at Messina by an earthquake, she
being unable to rescue him and
unwilling to live without him
Bengt Lidner must be judged by
our readers through a humorous
and shorter poem, the former being
too long for this article. Lidner's
history, sadly like that of Edgar
Poe, is as checkered and romantic
as any poem. Born in 1759 at
Gothenburg (a city now known as
the headquarters of a new tempe-
rance scheme, practical and hitherto
very successful), he went to Lund
University to study, but led such a
dissipated life while there that he
was dbliged to go to Rostock to
take his degree in philosophy. His
life was so notoriously bad that his
relations got rid of him later on by
making him go as foremast-man on
board a ship bound for the East
Indies ; but he ran away when the
ship touched the Cape, and thence
made his way home, where his
genius soon drew upon him the
notice of the king, Gustavus III.,
who lavished both money and real
friendship upon him. Stijl, his pas-
sion for drink was too great to be
controlled, and the king finally gave
him up. He died in penury and
obscurity in 1793- His poems are
often gloomy and despairing, yet
teeming with rich fancies and deli-
cate expressions. The following is
one of his " Fables " :
"'A cock fell in love.' . . . 'How now! do
cocks fall in love?' 'Why, yes, Iris, they are
proud to be like you in some things. Well, this
cock fell in love.' . . . l With a hen, no doubt ?'
1 No, better than that with a goose. They lived
for a few minutes in peace and content, but the cock
began to crow. l Have done !' cried the goose. ' You
ought to be ashamed of yourself; do /ever make
such a noise ? In a word, do just as I do, and noth-
ing more.' The cock held his peace and deferred
to his better half. I should have behaved other-
wise. When I see a fair woman in a bad temper I
run away without daring to look behind. By and
by the cock picked up a grain of corn at his feet.
Some Specimens of Modern Swedish Poetry.
' Listen,' said the goose : l am I not your wife, and
should you not learn to eat as I do? Your race, in
these enlightened times, ought to follow our pat-
tern in all things. You ought to be ashamed of
having forgotten it.' 'What does this scolding
mean ?' asked the cock. ' Do you dare,' said the
goose, ' cross my wishes ? Go, then, wretched fool,
and become the prey of the cruel hawk !'
" Pluck up thy spirit, O cock ! and let every
honest burgher who marries above him be a com-
fort and a warning to thee."
Another class of poems are those
treating of historical or legendary
subjects ; but among these we have
included neither the adaptations of
the ancient poems nor portions of
the later epics and poems of chiv-
alry as, for instance, Tegner's
" Fridthiof," his " Axel," or Ling's
historico-dramatic " Song of the
Asae," or Odin's Companions. Mi-
nor topics of the heroic kind, how-
ever, are not wanting throughout
the field of Swedish poetry, and
among them Geijer's " Pirate " is
one of the shortest and the most
characteristically treated. This poet
is one of the most popular in Swe-
den, though his prose works
chiefly scientific criticisms on the
national history far outnumber his
poetical ones. Born in the pro-
vince of Wermeland in 1783, he
drank in the love of learning, chiefly
of literature and music, with his
earliest recollections, although his
father's position was only that of a
master-blacksmith. At sixteen he
was already a composer of some
merit, but his genius finally turned
to history as its most appropriate
field. After a brilliant university
career at Upsal and a long journey
through Europe, his Alma Mater
received him back as professor of
history, and the Swedish Academy,
a choice body containing but eigh-
teen members, elected him to fill
the first vacancy that occurred
after his return. His historical
works are full of acumen and. calm,
philosophical judgment, and show
signs of immense and laborious re-
search. His name was a household
word far away among places and
populations as proud of their na-
tional associations as if they them-
selves had been centres of learning
and competitors in its race ; for the
people of Sweden, as a rule, though
individually comparatively igno-
rant of things beyond practical life,
have a keen instinct of indepen-
dence arid self-respect which makes
them look on all national excel-
lence as part of themselves, and
claim a share in it by sympathy,
appreciation, and encouragement,
as of a patrimony belonging of
right to the nation at large. Gus-
tavus Erik Geijer died, universally
lamented, in 1847.
"THE PIRATE.
" 'When I was fifteen my mother's hut began to
grow too narrow for me. I found the long days
tedious which I spent herding the goats. My j
temper and my tastes became wilful and my moods
many ; I dreamt of things I could not define, and
the merry days of old in the forest were fled.
"'My mind rudely shaken, I ran towards the \
rocks and my glance fell on the boundless sea. j
The roaring of the foam-whitened waves sounded
in my ears like a stately song; the billows come
from a measureless distance, and nothing binds
them, nothing bars their freedom on the ocean.
" ' One morning, as I stood on the shore, I saw a
ship come into the bay quick and straight as an
arrow. My bosom swelled, my brain took fire, and
I knew what it was that had haunted me. I for-
sook my goats and my mother, and the pirate took
me aboard his ship, out on the ocean.
" ' The wind swelled the sails ; we skimmed the
watery plain as lightly as a bird. The crests of the
rocks dissolved in the blue distance. I was happy
and at peace. I took my father's rusty sword, and
swore to conquer a kingdom and broad lands on
the ocean. At sixteen I killed the pirate : he had
taunted me for a boy and a coward ! I was king of
the sea ; I made raids and attacks, took castles and
forts, and the booty I shared by lot with my war-
riors on the ocean.
" ' Spite of storms and waves, we emptied draughts '
of hydromel out of our cups of horn. Our ship
gave laws to the coasts all around. I carried off a
maiden of Gaul. She wept three days and then
was comforted, and we held a wedding-feast on the
ocean.
" ' Once I was master of a kingdom and many
forts ; I drank wine in a house, I gave laws to a
people, I slept within walls and behind bolts and
bars. It lasted a whole winter. The winter was
long and weary, and, king though I was, earth
seemed narrow to me compared with the ocean.
" ' I did nothing, but I was for ever pestered to
help fools whom it was useless to help. There v.~ere
those who would fain see me fence in the huts of
peasants and give the beggar a stout stick for his
Some Specimens of Modern Swedish Poetry.
bundle. It wearied me to hear of money-fines,
oaths administered, robbers and robberies. Oh !
that I were far away on the ocean.
" ' Such was my prayer. The long winter broke
at last, and the anemones grew once more on the
shores. The waves awoke and called to me ; the
birds played on hill and dale, and the streams, roll-
ing free again, rushed blithely towards ocean.
'' ' Then once more the unknown thrill came o'er
me ; the swelling waves bewitched me. I sowed
my gold in the cities and the country ; I ground my
crown into dust. Poor as of old, with naught but
ship and sword, unknowing of my fate, once more
I coursed the ocean.
" l Free as the wind, we floated on seas remote
and stormy. We saw man on foreign shores live
and die, in each place alike, and foes for ever tak-
ing root on his hearth ; but sorrow misses the track
of the pirate on the ocean.
" ' Once more I watched amid my warriors the
distant ship on the blue horizon. Was she a pi-
rate ? then blood would flow ; or a trading sail ? we
let her pass. The hero's triumph is one of blood,
and a pirate's bond is bought with the sword on
the ocean.
" ' If I stood on the prow by day a glowing future
stretched before me. Carried on the moaning
wave, I was calm as the swan that sways on river
reeds. All the treasures in my track fell into my
hands, and nothing vexed my hopes on the bound-
less ocean.
" ' But if I stood on the prow at night, and the
lonely waves roared at my feet, I thought I heard
the Nornse * weaving their web. There is uncer-
tainty on the sea, as there is in man's fate. Better
be ready for evil as well as good on the bosom of
the ocean.
"' ' I am twenty years old. Misfortune came to me
swiftly. The waves demand my blood ; they
know it of old, and have seen it flow hot in battle.
My heart burns and beats so high, yet it will soon
be still in some icy cave of ocean.
" ' I mourn not my short days ; they were few but
happy. Many roads lead to the halls of the gods,
and the shortest is the best. The waves sing my
dirge ; I have lived my life with them. I shall find
a resting-place in ihe ocean.'
"So sings the shipwrecked pirate on a rock amid
the reefs. The sea drags him down to her depths.
The waves sing once more, and the winds take
their wayward course, but the fame of the hero
clings to the ocean."
All northern mythologies or ra-
ther folk-lore are concerned with
those imaginary beings, interme-
diate between gods and men, whom
we lump together under the name
of fairies. Their moonlight pranks,
their "rings" on the grass, their
supposed trickiness and power over
the elements, are all familiar to us
from childhood. It is natural Jhat
they should suggest themes to
northern poets, as the' more stately
sylvan deities of Greece did to the
classic poets. John Erik Stagne-
* The Parcse of Scandinavian mythology.
lius (born in 1769, died 1823), al-
though fond of melancholy and
hopeless subjects he was himself
an incurable invalid, which ac-
counts for much of his sad poetry
has spent upon his poem of " The
Elves " a good deal of delicate
imagery and sprightly fancy. For-
tunately for him, he had a deeply
religious nature and a never-failing
trust in the divine mercy, so that
his estimate of sorrow as the neces-
sary lot of mankind was redeemed
from becoming the expression of
mere cynical pessimism by being
qualified and explained according
to his belief in an active and com-
passionate Providence. A scholar
of Lund and Upsal, he was not
seldom also a genial and humorous
companion, full of pleasantry, yet
never going beyond the bounds of
a good taste that was natural to
him, and young people especially
enjoyed his conversation, fed as it
was from tHe stores of a wonderful
memory.
"THE ELVES.
" Think not. O men ! that the earth was made for
you alone, ephemeral beings whom the foot of Time
crushes as easily as the flowers of spring ;
" That the sun comes forth from the gates of the
dawn solely for your sakes, deluded, men, to ripen
your grapes and your corn, to shine on your errors
and sins ;
k * That the torch of the moon, when the gold of
evening has faded and the stars smile in the sky,
shines specially for the lover or the murderer, each
stealing silently towards his goal ;
" That the dark greenwood hospitably shelters
none but wayfarers ; that the silver brooklet, so
fresh and lovely, murmurs for none but you and
your cattle ?
" Where the ice of the poles forbids further travel,
where the sand-fields dip beneath the waves of the
sea, where no sun-ray has ever lighted a human
footstep, there is life and there is joy.
" In the wilderness of the forest and in the foam
of the waves, in the peaceful, smiling valleys, in the
rocks, in the clouds, live wondrous beings.
u Speak ! Knowest thou the merry band of
elves ? They build on the banks of streams ; they
weave their festive robes of moonlight tissue with
sportive fingers lily-white.
" They gather for their banquets in the shade of
fir-groves or greenest grass, and quaff pearly dew-
drops out of golden flower-cups in spring.
"They gather for their pranks, for their dances
and their games, when the sun has fled and the
stars twinkle in the saddened sky of midnight.
" In meadows silvered by the moonlight they
3 I2
Some Specimens of Modern Swedish Poetry.
form rolling rings in elfin manoeuvres. Necken, the
green-bearded, plays the harp in his river-cavtrn,and
its strains are magical and compelling.
" But if he lifts his voice in song the valleys and
the hills rejoice. The elves suspend their thunder-
sounding courses, and the wings of the night hurri-
cane are folded.
" The wayfarer's heart beats with a strange de-
light, and the lily dissolves in silver tears, at the
sweet spell of the night-song."
A more serious theme, whose
treatment seems to us the most
appropriate and praiseworthy of
all that have been noticed by the
writer, is " The Hero's Grave," by
John Nyborn, one of the living
poets of Sweden. Though its
shortness is no doubt a merit, the
reader would wish this poem to be
longer :
" Make ready a grave for the soldier on the shore
of the moaning sea ; a hero in life as in death, he
has fallen for his country's sake.
"He has fallen, like a pine-tree felled, stretched
on the rock where erst he stood so haughtily. The
hero has fallen, and here where the earth has
drunk his blood shall he rest.
" Close his eyes, they will flash lightning no more ;
and the arm that was raised against wrong shall be
hidden beneath the earth.
u Clear the hair, clotted with blood, from the
snow-white pallor of his brow, ^n death let him
still be free, he who died for freedom.
" He shall go down into the grave in the garment
of a conqueror. Thou art stretched on blood-red
roses ; how beautiful is thy bed, O my brother !
" No laurel binds thy brow, but a hero's fame is
thine, and the thunder of battle sings thy dirge 'mid
the mountains and the forests.
" No maiden will water thy grave with the river
of her tears, but the blossom of memory will spring
from thy fruitful blood.
" Fresh sods are over thee, the last gift our love
can offer thee ; but we shall speak of them with
pride, for they mark the grave of a hero.
" His bed of death is made ; soon, perhaps, our own
will be ready. Let us give prayers and farewell
tears to the soldier's dust.
" And thou, God of Hosts, hear my prayer: I ask
from thee no crown of victory, but grant, when my
hour comes, that my death may be even as his !"
The next two specimens are of a
different order of poetry, one which
in our days has risen to an import-
ance hitherto unheard of, and de-
rived rather from the researches of
science than from the sanction of
art. Popular songs are history,
and bear a directer stamp of na-
tional feeling and character than
the more complex poetry which fol-
lows, to a certain degree, the fash-
ion of each age, and even that as
this fashion changes, not in the fa-
therland, but in some foreign coun-
try acknowledged arbitrarily at the
time to be the standard model.
The following pieces have a bold
outspokenness which is eminently
national, while the popular super-
stitions on which the stories are
founded have their moral side, and
are picturesque and realistic ex-
pressions of spiritual truths. The
first is called
"THE YOUNG LORD PEDER'S SEA-VOYAGE.
" 'Tis the young Lord Peder who seeks his nurse-
mother to ask by what death he shall die.
' ' Thou shalt not die in thy bed ; thou shall not
be slain in war ; but see to it that the blue waves
do not shorten thy life.'
" ' If I die not in my bed, if I be not slain in war,
I shall not fear the blue waves that may shorten my
life.'
u 'Tis the young Lord Peder. He goes to the
shore and builds him a ship, the best of all ships.
" Made all of whalebone, and likewise the masts,
but the flame at their end is of the reddest gold.
a 'Tis the young Lord Peder. He launches the
ship, but forgets God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Ghost.
' ' To-night we will drink, since we have strong
beer ; to-morrow we will sail, if the wind favors
us.'
"They sailed for two days, they sailed for three
days, but on reaching the open sea the ship stood
still.
" They threw dice on the widest table ; the lot fell
to the Lord Peder, who was verily a great sinner.
' ' You say too true : I am a great sinner. Let
me kneel before God the Lord to make my confes-
sion.
k "I have made many widows and orphans; I
have betrayed and ruined many an honest woman.
" ' If any of you reach land, and my nurse-mo-
ther asks after me, tell her I am with the king and
have a good office.
"If any of you reach land, and my betrothed
asks after me, tell her I am at the bottom of the sea
and I beg of her to marry.'
" They seized the young Lord Peder and threw
him into the sea over the larboard side. And the
ship resumed her natural course, though she had
lost one man."
Another equally pithy ballid is
that of " The Stepmother." The
refrain seems unconnected with
most of the facts related, but is, of
course, an integral part of the song
as a representative of popular po-
etry :
" A king went to travel in the south, and while
Some Specimens of Modern Swedish Poetry.
3^3
there he married Dame Silfra. Thou art the fair-
est, and thou art mine.*
u He travelled with her on land and sea until he
came home to his own country.
" They lived together for seven years ; Silfra
bore the king three children.
" Then death entered into their house. Dame
Silfra was laid on a black bier.
u And the king went to travel in the south, and
while there he married Dame Frcedenborg.
11 He travelled with her on land and sea until he
came home to his own country.
u Froedenborg had been home only two days, yet
the children all fled from her, each into his own
corner.
" She hated one, and beat the other, and the
third she seized by the hair of his head and dragged
him along.
"The children went to their father, and asked
leave to go to their mother's grave.
" ' Go to your mother's grave, but that will do
you no good.'
" The children did as they wished, and went to
their mother's grave.
" The first wept ; the second shed tears of blood ;
the tears of the third drew his mother forth from
the earth.
" Dame Silfra went to God the Father and be-
sought him to let her return to earth only for a sin-
gle day.
" 1 1 grant thee leave to return to earth this day,
but at one hour past noon thou must be in thy
grave again
" And Dame Silfra goes to the king's dwelling.
She stands upright before Froedenborg.
"'What mean these complaints? What is this
cry? The sighs of my children reach up to God.'
' k ' I hear their groans ; I hear them weep on my
grave ; I heard lamentable cries.
" ' I left behind me fields and farms, and my
children rise hungry from table.
" k I left behind me fields and farms, and my chil-
dren go to sleep hungry.
11 ' I left behind me good beds of blue feathers,
and my children sleep on straw and branches.
" ' If thou wilt be a good mother to my children,
I will cause a chair to be set for thee in heaven.
' ' But if thou art not a good mother to my chil-
dren, I will have a chair set for thee in hell.'
"Dame Froedenborg fell on her bare knees.
' Dear Dame Silfra, forgive me !
' ' Thy children shall never want for anything ;
I promise it, and I will keep my word till I die.
' l May serpents gnaw my heart within my
bosom if I ever give thee cause of complaint
lkl Never will I be harsh to thine, but come not
again in this garb.'
* This refrain is repeated at the end of each
verse.
" And there was a great change in the house of
Dame Frcedenborg ; she lit torches and candles for
the children.
'' She clasps them all in her motherly arms and
calls them loving names.
" She warms two between her motherly arms ;
she carries the third on her snow- white arm.
a And there was great rejoicing in the king's
dwelling ; Froedenborg was never again cruel as
she had been. Thou art the fairest, and thou
art mine"
There seems little of French
vivacity in any of these poems,
whether popular or otherwise un-
less sometimes in the mock-Ar-
cadian treatment of conventional
themes with semi-classical subjects,
such as the tragic " Camilla " of
Mme. Nordenflycht, or some of
the fables of Count Gyllenborg
yet the %vede has been called
the Frenchman of the North. The
Swedish is a many-sided character,
an4 the improvidence and dash
that balance its spurts of tremen-
dous energy) and even dogged per-
severance, or rather endurance, are
the qualities which have suggested
this comparison. This endurance
is one of the grandest national
characteristics, and the frugality it
engenders is almost always to the
Swede a pledge of success. Con-
ceive an Irish imagination grafted
on a New England will, and you
will have some idea of a high type
of this poetical people: yet the
gleams of tender melancholy, the
repose, and the silent self-sufficiency
of the race would be unreprese.nt-
ed, if you did not add a cross of
the highest type of German say
Schiller.
Pearl.
PEARL.
BY KATdL^EN o'.MEARA, AUTHOR OF " IZA 1 S STORY," u A SALON IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE EMPIRE,'
''ARE YOU MY WIFE?" ETC.
CHAPTER XV.
"AU REVOIR, DARVALLON" U AU REVOIR, LEOPOLD."
" THAT woman is snubbing you,"
said Mrs. Monteagle. "You must
come away. What ! that would
be behaving ill to Mme. Mere ?
Nonsense ! She can easily hire
another pair of lungs ; don't you
be a fool, my dear. Come away.
I will take the blame of it on my-
self."
"I don't want to leave her," re-
plied Pearl, "but I do wish we
were out of Paris. I can see Mme.
Leopold is dying to get me out of
the way."
"She has been rude to you?
Don't deny it ! I guessed as much
when she came to me with that
ridiculous story about having
caught you laughing with the black
stick at the piano. I asked her if
she would rather have caught you
both crying. What a fool that wo-
man is! I devoutly hope he may
marry a Hottentot ; only the poor
thing would have a hard time of it
with her mother-in-law."
" I wish I had the courage to
have it out with Mme. Leopold my-
self," said Pearl. " I feel I behav-
ed like a guilty sneak that day ;
but she looked so furious I lost all
my presence of mind. And he was
taken aback, too, though he put
such a bold face on it. I think I
will speak to her ; I did nothing to
be ashamed of, and I will just tell
her that I know that."
" Whatever you say, try and say it
with a smiling countenance," said
Mrs. Monteagle, smoothing away
the anxious frown from Pearl's
forehead with one long finger ; " if
you go to her with a face like that
you will quarrel. It is not what
people say to each other that makes
them quarrel ; it is their faces when
they are saying it. Look at me!
I say things to people that would
make them murder any one else ;
but I laugh while I am snubbing
them, and they set it down to ec-
centricity and put up with it."
"I can't smile when I am angry
or hurt," said Pearl.
" Of course you can't ; but you
mustn't be angry and you mustn't
be hurt. Nothing is worth it; it
makes bad blood and it helps
nothing. Laugh at people when
they are rude, or stupid, or ill-na-
tured ; laugh at them and give
them your mind."
But it was easier for Mrs. Mont-
eagle than Pearl to follow this the-
ory. The worried look came back,
puckering up her forehead in long
wrinkles.
"Child, you are worried; you j
had better- give notice and come
away. You will get into trouble if
you don't," said Mrs. Monteagle.
The trouble had come already,
though not in the way or of the
kind she meant.
Pearl had not said a word about
that coup de theatre of the other
morning between Leon and Cap-
tain Darvallon ; but this was what
Pearl.
31$
gathered the cloud on her brow,
and not Mme. Leopold's anger.
It was three days ago that the
scene had taken place, and Raoul
had never come near the house
since. Leon, on the contrary, had
been every day and stayed two
hours at a time. He had never
alluded to the scene, but something
in his manner told Pearl that he
thought a great deal about it. His
manner puzzled and distressed her
altogether. Their easy, pleasant
intercourse was at an end. He
had become deferential, anxious
to please her; he had ceased to
be simple and brother-like. She
happened to mention quite inci-
dentally her fondness for yellow
roses, and the next morning he
arrived with an enormous bouquet
of Gloire de Dijons and Marshal
Niels, and presented them to his
grandmother.
"You extravagant boy!" cried
the old lady, horror-stricken at the
princely offering. " I wanted a tiny
bunch of these yesterday, and they
asked me ten francs for it !"
" I knew you were wishing for
them," said Leon, who had never
heard her mention roses in his life.
" Mon petit! But what a sum
they have cost you !" And she look-
ed at the lovely flowers and then
at him.
"Anything is cheap that gives a
moment's pleasure to those we
love," said Leon in a voice that
could not possibly have reached his
grandmother, though he was osten-
sibly addressing her.
" You ought to go to the opera,
bonne maman," he said when
Pearl had left the room to put the
roses in water. "Why don't you
take Mile. Perle to see the Trova-
tore ? She will die of ennui if you
don't give her a little distraction."
" I am afraid she finds it dull
here," assented the old lady ; "but
you know I never go to the theatre,
mon petit."
"The theatre no; but the opera
you would enjoy. Let me take a
box for you at the Italiens on
Tuesday ?"
"I will think about it. But per-
haps la petite would rather see a
good comedy. I will ask her."
** No, no ; don't ask her," said
Leon. " She is sure to say that she
does not care ; but she would care.
She is young, and she will fall ill
if she has not some amusement.
Bonne maman, you will be very
dull when I am gone."
" Ah ! mon Dieu, aquile dis-tu ?"
exclaimed Mme. Mere, heaving a
terrible sigh. "Ma petite, what is
to become of us when he is gone ? >r
she said, as Pearl came back, car-
rying the roses in a large glass bowl,
" He is really going, then ?" said
Pearl, conscious of more regret at
the announcement than she would
have felt a few days ago.
" Yes," said Leon, " I believe it
is quite settled."
He fixed his black eyes on her
to see if the mobile face would tell
any tales. Pearl felt he was watch-
ing her, and she suspected why and
grew scarlet. She looked very
graceful and picturesque, the pale
gold of the roses shining like a
vestal flame against her black dress
as she held up the crystal bowl
and placed it on the littered table.
She appeared to Leon like a new
creature. He guessed now that it
was she who had stolen his friend's
heart away from him. Was it a
theft or an exchange ? Did she
love Raoul ? How could she help
it ? How could any woman help
loving that strong, proud nature, if
once it bent itself to sue for love ?'
Strange that it had never before
struck Leon how lovely this Eng-
3 i6
Pearl.
lish girl was ! No wonder she had
brought his soldier brother to her
feet. And what business had he
now, that brother's friend, to come
here day after day, gazing at her,
talking to her, trying to win a smile
from her ? He was not deliberately
bent on supplanting Raoul he was
incapable of that but since he
had discovered that Raoul loved
Pearl his own eyes had been open-
ed, and all the grace and sweetness
which had hitherto escaped him
became visible. The spell had
been gradually working on him,
too, and he now gave himself up to
the delicious intoxication, calculat-
ing nothing beyond the delight of
the passing hour.
Why had not Raoul trusted him
instead of making a mystery of his
love, as if he were ashamed of it ?
Or was he afraid to tell Leon, lest
he should come and steal away his
treasure ? Well, since he could so
misjudge his friend, let him pay the
penalty. Where there had been
no trust there could be no betray-
al. Leon had as good a right as
Darvallon to enter the lists for the
prize. He was not sufficiently in
earnest to ask himself, " If I win it,
what shall I do with it?"
It had been planned that Mine.
Mere and Pearl were to join the
Leopolds in the ministerial box at
the Odeon on whatever evening
Blanche and her fiance were placed
on view for one another's approba-.
tion ; but since this had been ar-
ranged the situation had become a
little strained between Mme. Mere
and her daughter-in-law, and the
invitation had not been renewed,
so that when the eventful evening
came Blanche and her parents
were the sole occupants of the
large avant-scene box. The piece
was a harrowing drama, and every-
body, the gentlemen included,
came prepared to soak their pock-
et-handkerchiefs. Blanche was not
very emotional, and, as a rule, she
never cried unless she could not
possibly help it : it was bad for the
eyes and extremely unbecoming.
To-night she was less likely than
usual to yield to the weakness, for
the gaze of her future lord would
be upon her, and she was not go-
ing to blur her complexion for the
finest sentiments that ever drew
tears from an audience.
They entered their loge d'avant-
scene with a certain pomp ; every
eye was turned on the group the
minister big and self-important,
Mme. la Baronne portly, beaming,
magnificently dressed, and her
handsome daughter in white drift-
ing in behind her. They seated
themselves in the hot velvet fau-
teuils, and the ladies adjusted their
glasses to take a view of the house.
"Is he here, mamma?" said
Blanche; and laying down her
mother-of-pearl lorgnette, she open-
ed her fan and began to play with it.
" I don't see him. Yes, there
he is, right opposite."
"In a box?"
"No, in a fauteuil de balcon.
He is looking at us."
Mme. Leopold turned carelessly
towards her husband, who wanted
to take a look at the house, but
was told he must wait ; it would
not do to seem over-anxious.
" Is he alone ?" inquired Blanche,
still flirting her fan and looking
steadily away to the right.
"Yes, I think so; he leans for-
ward, speaking to no one."
The orchestra tuned its violins,
the curtain rose, and the play be-
gan. It was fully equal to its re-
putation, M. Leopold thought ; he
listened with an interest that grew
to intensity as the piece went on.
Blanche at first was too much oc-
Pearl.
317
cupied with her own little comedy
to care at all about the mimic woes
and passions of the actors; but
by degrees her wandering will was
taken captive, and she was com-
pelled to look and listen, until
gradually her interest became tho-
roughly absorbed, and even her
flinty heart was not proof against
the power and pathos of the story.
The tears rose, and after struggling
to swallow them for a while she
gave it up and let them course/
freely down her cheeks, sobbing,
blowing her nose, and wiping her
eyes, to the utter detriment of her
creamy complexion and composed
countenance. Mme. Leopold was
weeping abundantly, the minister
also; the house from pit to gallery
was flowing like a fountain, and the
fall of the curtain was the signal for a
general display of pocket-handker-
chiefs, which, acting in chorus,
sounded like the blast of a fog-
horn.
" Mon Dieu ! que je m'amuse
bien !" sobbed Blanche, falling back
in her chair and letting her arms
drop.
" It is fine acting; I myself have
not been unmoved," observed the
baron, belaboring his face with his
crimson foulard.
" May we come in ?" called out
a voice from the door, and, without
waiting for an answer, M. de Ker-
bec entered, followed by Captain
Darvallon.
"What strong emotions we are
experiencing!" said M. de Kerbec.
" That does one good. I am sorry
my wife is not here ; she would
have enjoyed it."
" It is almost too much," said
Mme. Leopold; " and you, captain,
have you been able to refrain from
tears ?"
" I have only just come," said
M. Darvallon. " I suppose I have
had a great loss, but my supply of
tears will be fresh for the fifth act,
when all of yours will be exhaust-
ed."
" Ah ! you mock us because your
eyes are dry ; but our turn to mock
will come. We shall see your pride
brought low ; shall we not, ma
Blanche?"
" Mile. Blanche has given proof
of a charming sensibility," observ-
ed M. de Kerbec ; " she has been
the object of a profound admir-
ation during the emotions of the
last act. Nothing >s so touch-
ing in the young as this sensitive-
ness of the heart."
Blanche looked modestly con-
scious, while her mother and M.
de Kerbec exchanged significant
glances.
" He is a lost man!" whispered
the count : " I have been speaking
to him; he came and seized me in
my box to confide to me his im-
pressions. He is impatient to
hear." And by a sign he asked
what Blanche thought of the vi-
comte.
Some little conversation ensued
sotto voce between the mother and
M. de Kerbec, while Blanche en-
gaged the attention of her father
and M. Darvallon.
<l De Cholcourt has been begging
me to commend him to you for a
nomination to Vienna," said M.
Darvallon ; "he seems to be taking
. the diplomatic career an serieux.
I thought it was merely a caprice,
and that he would throw it up at
the end of six months; but I was
mistaken. He is bent on distinguish-
ing himself. He certainly has every
qualification for making a good am-
bassador; it is a pity he should not
succeed."
" What is to hinder his succeed-
ing?" inquired the baron.
" He is mal vu by the emperor,
Pearl.
and still more by the empress ; his
mother refused the post of Dame
du Palais, which was offered to her
at the time of the marriage, and she
has nearly quarrelled with her son for
going to dance at the Tuileries."
" Vieille bigote !" said the impe-
rial minister, with a contemptuous
shrug. " It would be serving her
right if we made the young mar-
quis our ambassador to Vienna ;
it would be good fun to send the
son to represent Napoleon III. at
the same court where his father
and grandfather represented a
Bourbon."
" Play the old lady that trick,
papa," said Blanche, who had been
listening with deep interest to the
conversation; "tell the emperor,
and he is sure to fall in with the
joke."
"Well done, Mile. Blanche!"
said Darvallon. " I notice that la-
dies, especially young ladies, are
always for bold measures ; and, in
politics as in war, it generally
proves successful."
" I hate those old bigotes of the
Faubourg," said Blanche.
" Is DeCholcourt in town at pre-
sent ?" inquired M. Leopold.
"He was in this house five min-
utes ago. I wanted him to come
and speak to you on the spot;, but
he was afraid of seeming indiscreet
on account of the presence of ces
dames."
" Tell him to come and see me
to-morrow morning. I will help
him as far as I can. It is abomi-
nable that intelligent men should be
shut out from public life through
the silly prejudices of old women."
" The Faubourg is so unpa-
triotic !" remarked Blanche. " It
cares for nothing but its own im-
portance. Perisse la France, pour-
vu que mon parti vive ! that is its
motto. It is so stupid and selfish !"
" What treason do I hear Mile.
Blanche talking ?" cried M. de
Kerbec, turning round with a pre-
tence of horror. " If my wife were
here she would have a fit."
" You must tell no tales, De Ker-
bec," said the baron. But Blanche,
with a little toss of her head, said
she did not care who heard her.
" That is right. Have the cour-
age of your opinions, mademoi-
selle," said M. Darvallon, amused
at her spirited attack on the old
Faubourg. He had never heard
Blanche express any opinion so
freely or with so much aplomb.
Her mother was rather alarmed.
M. de Kerbec was a real friend,
and eager for the vicomte's suit,
or else he might make mischief;
for the vicomte was a cheval sur
son Faubourg, and the Bonapar-
tist stain on Blanche had to be
covered over with a vast amount
of influence and promise of exer-
tion for a young brother, on the
part of the minister, before the can-
didate could be brought to enter-
tain the idea of this marriage at
all.
" What have you done with
Leon ?" inquired Mine. Leopold,
turning off the conversation to
safer ground.
" I have not seen him to-day,"
said M. Darvallon ; he might have
said, for several days.
" You may see him now, if you
choose," said M. de Kerbec ; " he
is within half a dozen boxes of
this."
"Who is he making himself
agreeable to ?" said M. Leopold,
stooping forward to see if his son
were visible from their box.
" To Mme. Monteagle or per-
haps I should say to Mile. Red-
acre; they are both there."
Mme. Leopold gave a little start,
as if a popgun had been let off
Pearl.
319
under her chair. Darvallon made
no sign, but his face grew dark
and he bit his moustache,
" He is betraying me," thought
Leon's friend.
" He is braving me," thought
Leon's mother.
" I will go and pay my respects
to those ladies," said the minister,
glad to make a tour out of the
heated box.
" Tell Leon to come and pay his
respects to us," said Mine. Leopold
in a playful tone.
" Will you come, Darvallon ?"
" No, if I may remain here a
little longer?"
Mme. Leopold nodded a friend-
ly assent ; she longed to pour out
her angry terrors in the ear of her
son's friend, but De Kerbec's pre-
sence made this impossible. Still,
she would keep Darvallon ; the op-
portunity might occur presently.
Leon did not precipitate himself
to answer his mother's summons ;
he stayed on talking to Pearl,
while his father was occupied with
her chaperon. It was he who had
given this box to Mrs. Monteagle,
and suggested her taking Pearl to
see the play that all Paris was cry-
ing over. Mrs. Monteagle enjoyed
fine acting more than music, and
she was glad to give Pearl the out-
ing, so she accepted the box and
said nothing about where it came
from.
"Are you amused?" said Leon,
as the two sat close together in the
back seats of the dark box.
" I'm not amused," said Pearl.
"" I am too intensely interested to
be amused ; I am rather vexed. I
hate crying over plays and stories."
" You prefer shedding your tears
over real sorrows ?"
" I prefer not shedding them at
all; but if I must cry it is better
worth while crying over the woes
of people who exist than over the
sorrows of people I don't know and
care for."
" Those people are much to be
envied, whatever their misfortunes
may be, if you shed tears over
them; it would console me for be-
ing shot, if I knew beforehand you
would weep over me."
" What nonsense you can talk,
to be sure !" said Pearl, laughing ;
but she wished he spoke more as if
he knew he was talking nonsense.
"I am not laughing; I swear to
you I mean it !" said Leon in a
low tone that made her move un-
easily in her chair.
" How hot it is ! I wish you
would open the door," she said,
fanning herself at arm's length.
"You don't believe a word I
say," said Leon; "you don't care
what becomes of me. If I get shot
down by the Arabs one of these
days, you will say, ' Poor devil !'
and come to the theatre the next
minute as if nothing had hap-
pened."
" I never call any one a devil,
and I don't believe there is such a
glorious death in store for you.
Do oblige me and open the door !
One suffocates here."
But he took no notice of the re-
iterated request, only bent nearer,
resting his hand on the back of her
chair.
" Pearl, i love you !" he said
suddenly, his face so close to hers
that they almost touched.
She started and would have stood
up, but that was impossible with-
out at once drawing M. Leopold's
attention on them both. Why did
not Mrs. Monteagle see what was
going on and come to her assist-
ance ? But if Mrs. Monteagle
noticed anything she kept never
minding and continued her animat-
ed conversation with the minister,
320
Pearl.
whose face was turned full on the
house.
" Pearl, I love you !" repeated
Leon in the same hurried under-
tone. " I have never loved any
woman as I love you."
" This is cruel, this is cowardly
of you," said Pearl, dreadfully agi-
tated, and in her excitement speak-
ing so loud that it was a miracle
the others did not hear her ; but
Mrs. Monteagle was now talking
at the top of her voice.
" It is you who are cruel. You
will not believe me ; you think I am
mocking you. I swear to you I am
not ! I was never more in earnest
in my life. I will throw up my
sword, I will brave my mother, I
will cut my throat to prove it ! If
only you could love me a little in
return !"
" I wish you would go away !
Can't you see that you are annoy-
ing me ?" said Pearl, looking him
full in the face and flashing her
fan angrily between them ; but the
flame in her eyes made them more
beautiful than ever.
" Ah ! is it so ? You don't care
a straw for me ; you scorn my love ;
and yet I think I could have made
you love me if if " He looked
at her fixedly, and then sinking his
voice to a deeper whisper, " Do you
know," he said, " that Raoul Dar-
vallon is within a few doors of us ?
He is in my mother's box."
He could see the shock that the
announcement gave her. But she
raised her head and looked at
him coldly; all the pride of her
nature rallied to the rescue. How
dare he attempt to raise the veil
from her heart and pry insolently
into its secrets? And yet the
name, flung thus rudely at her, act-
ed like a 'charm upon Pearl and
soothed and reassured her. She
had been frightened and annoyed
by Leon's passionate sortie, but
Raoul's name allayed her irritation
as by a spell. It was not that it
calmed her; she was conscious, on
the contrary, of a new and strong
emotion, but one of an altogether
different kind joyous, timid, full
of thrilling expectation. He was
close to her ? Why did he not come
nearer and speak to her ? Was it
that he did not care ? The cur-
rent of her feelings, checked in their
angry flow, fell back and set softly
in another direction. She knew
that he cared ; then why did he
keep aloof? Was he angry ? Did
he resent Leon's presence near her ?
Pearl could not have asserted posi-
tively ten minutes ago that she
loved Raoul Darvallon with her
whole heart ; she knew that he had
more power over her than any other
human being, and a special kind of
power ; that her thoughts turned
constantly to him as the needle to
the magnet ; that it was in her to
love him if she dared. She knew
now that she had dared. Her
heart had revealed itself and con-
fessed the secret it had been trying
to hide. She saw that she loved
him, that her heart was his with a
jealous and entire devotion which
would tolerate no approach from any
other worshipper. From him she
had first heard the voice of love, of
real love, speaking in restrained, in-
articulate utterances, it is true, but
with a penetrating sweetness that
left no doubt of its reality. Beside
these timid whisperings, full of the
strength of true, manly passion,'
Captain Leopold's ardent declara-.'
tion showed like the flaring of a
candle compared to the strong,
glorious light of the sun.
Leon was watching her as these
thoughts passed through her mind t
and something of that electric cur-
rent which flows like a voice from
Pearl.
321
one soul to another was quickening
his perception of facts which had
for some time been matter of sus-
picion. Pearl's quivering, tell-tale
features, moreover, were complet-
ing the discovery his own instincts
had begun ; and she felt this, and at
last she could bear it no longer.
The audience was flowing back to
the empty boxes ; the curtain was
about to rise ; but she was not going
to sit out the rest of the piece with
Captain Leopold close to her,
whispering his love in her ear.
" M. le Baron," she said, stoop-
ing forward, and touching the min-
ister with her fan, " I should like
so much to get a little air ! Would
you take me for a turn before the
curtain rises ?"
" Certainly, my dear young lady.
Ha ! there is the signal. It is
too late. But we can open the
door for a moment. Only be care-
ful ; the current of cold air is treach-
erous. Come, Leon, we must go
now ; your mother expects you to
pay her a visit in her box."
They went out, and Pearl moved
forward into M. Leopold's vacant
seat. Mrs. Monteagle noticed how
flushed she was ; but the heat she
complained of would have account-
ed for this, even without that tete-
&-tete which her friend had been at
such pains to cover and prevent
M. Leopold from interrupting.
There was no mistaking the de-
votedness of Leon's manner and
attitude, both of which this unprin-
cipled Englishwoman had observ-
ed with great satisfaction ; but she
was surprised not to see a more
radiant look on Pearl's face. Pearl,
in truth, was very far from feeling
radiant. She was listening to every
step that approached the door of
their box, wondering that it did not
open and admit Raoul Darvallon.
He must know now, if by an unlike-
VOL. xxix. 21
ly possibility he had not known it
before, that she was here, and his
not coming near her was significant.
Pearl felt certain it was not indif-
ference that kept him away. M.
de Kerbec came in presently and
sat down behind Mrs. Monteagle's
chair, making a copious display
with his pocket-handkerchief when
the opportunity occurred. But
Pearl had no more tears to spare
on the interesting hero and heroine ;
there was a hand at her heart that
had shut up the spring of all sur-
face sensibilities, oppressing her
with a sense of suffocation. When
the curtain fell on the fourth act
she complained of being overcome
by the heat, and begged Mrs. Mont-
eagle to let M. de Kerbec call the
fly and send her home.
" Adolphe will see me safe to the
Rue du Bac, and then come back
for you," she said. But Mrs.
Monteagle protested that she was
glad to go herself; she knew how
the piece ended, and the heat and
the crying were beginning to be
too much for her.
M. de Kerbec gave her his arm,
and they left the box. Pearl had
a soft white hood tlfrown over her
head, and she drew it close round
her face as the cold air met them
near the staircase.
"Why are you going so soon?
Take my arm," said a man's voice;
and Captain Leopold was at her side.
They were on the landing above
the hall, where M. de Kerbec had
placed Mrs. Monteagle in a corner
out of the draughts while he hur-
ried off to look for Adolphe. Pearl
started and drew her hood a little
closer.
"Thank you; I prefer going
alone," she replied.
" It can't hurt you to take my
arm," he said in a deprecating tone
and holding it out to her.
322
Pearl.
But Pearl was in no mood to be
propitiated. Drawing herself up
haughtily, she let the swansdown
snood fall back and show her face,
angry and severe.
" I will not take your arm, mon-
sieur. It is unmanly of you to pur-
sue me in this way. Go back to
the theatre, and let me go on
alone."
"I 'will go, since you command
me; but you are cruel," he said,
though making no attempt to
move.
Some one was coming up from
the hall.
" Mademoiselle, may I conduct
you to your carriage ?" said Cap-
tain Darvallon, standing bare-head-
ed a step below her, and looking
steadily away from Leon.
With a quick, impulsive move-
ment Pearl turned to him, and put
out her hand to take his arm.
" Au revoir, Darvallon /"
** Au revoir, Leopold /"
Pearl heard the ring of clashing
steel in the voices of the two men
as they exchanged the salutation,
confronting one another for a mo-
ment on the stairs. She felt sick,
as if she were'going to faint.
Darvallon felt her trembling on
his arm, and he tightened his grasp
to support her as she clung to him
while they descended to the hall.
Mrs. Monteagle was in the car-
riage already.
" I expect to leave Paris to-mor-
row," said Raoul in a low, hurried
voice, and Pearl nearly exclaimed,
" Thank heaven !" "I must see you
before I go. I want to speak to
you alone for a moment. Can you
come to Mrs. Monteagle's to-mor-
row morning ? I will be there be-
fore one o'clock."
" I will come if I can," said Pearl.
He assisted her into the carriage,
and they drove away.
"Well," said Mrs. Monteagle
" what is the matter ?"
"Oh! I am so sorry that you
should have lost the end of the
piece on my account," said Pearl.
"I am not talking about the
piece. I want to know what is the
matter. Have you and Captain
Leopold had a quarrel, or what is
it?"
" We are not on quarrelling
terms."
" Humph ! one would not have
supposed that to see you together
this evening."
Pearl made no answer. She was
in no mood to be joked about
Leon. She wanted to speak out to
Mrs. Monteagle, and she had not
the courage to begin at once.
" My dear, people say many dis-
agreeable things about me, but I
never heard that anybody ever call-
ed me a fool," said Mrs. Montea-
gle, seeing that Pearl volunteered
no explanation. " That young man ]
is in love with you. I would not
have given him credit for so much
pluck; but he has actually fallen in
love with you without the family
lawyer's advice, and you know it.
The thing for you to do now is to \
leave his grandmother's house at
once and come to mine, and wait
till your father can come over and
take you home."
"There is no need for me to
leave Mme. Mere."
"You have not refused him?"
" He has not given me the
chance."
" Tush ! Nonsense ! He may
not have .asked you in so many
words he is a Frenchman, and I
suppose he could not bring himself
to do that but he has made you
understand that he wants to marry
you."
" He talked great stuff this even-
ing, and I begged him to hold his
Pearl.
323
tongue and leave me alone ; and I
think he will for the future."
" Pearl, I am very fond of you ;
I have always found you truthful
and straightforward; but I can't
make you out now. You as much
as owned to me that you were at-
tached to some one, and of course
it can be no one but Captain Leo-
pold."
"Oh !" cried Pearl.
" And I now know that he is in
love with you."
"Did he tell you so?"
" He did. And I took you to
the theatre to-night that he might
have an opportunity of telling you,
though of course it could be no
news to you."
Pearl uttered another inarticu-
late exclamation.
" I never could make out what
you saw in a black stick like him
to care about," continued Mrs.
Monteagle ; " but, as you did, I was
anxious to make you happy, and I
have done my best to bring matters
to a crisis between you."
"Dear Mrs. Monteagle! how
could you suppose I cared for him?
Don't you remember how, long
ago before we left Paris you
asked me, and I laughed at the
bare notion of the thing ? Do you
forget ?"
."No, I don't. But, as you say,
that is a long time ago several
months; you have had time to
think it over. But even then I
did not believe you when you de-
nied it."
" You thought I was telling you
a lie!"
"Lie is a big word; but lies, I
believe, are considered fair in love
and electioneering. However, that
is nothing to the purpose. Do you
mean to tell me now that you don't
care for him, and that you won't
marry him ?"
" He has not asked me."
"Don't be silly; he means to
ask you."
" Then I shall refuse him."
" You positively mean it ?"
<; I would rather go to the block
than marry him !"
" Poh ! Don't fly off into hero-
ics ; there is no need for you to go
to the block, whether you marry or
whether you don't. Only it is a
pity I did not know your feeling
about it sooner. I have moved
heaven and earth to bring about
this marriage. Now I have only
to tell Leopold that he must bind
up his wounds and be on with the
new love as soon as he can. Poor
wretch ! I am sorry for him."
" I don't believe lie needs your
pity. I don't believe he can ever
have seriously meant it. He would
no more dare tell his mother that
he was going to marry me than he
would walk up to his colonel on
parade and slap him across the
face; his mother is the only human
being he is afraid of."
"He was prepared to brave her
for all that."
"Arid marr/ a girl without a
penny !"
" He has pennies enough for two.
But that is neither here nor there
now. You don't like him, so there
is an end of it. I will tell him to-
morrow that the sooner he sails for"
Algiers the better."
" You will see him to-morrow ?"
"Yes; he is coming to break-
fast with me."
*' Good heavens !"
Pearl started forward on the seat,
clasping her hands.
"Well, what's the matter now?"
"He must not come! Dear
Mrs. Monteagle, you must not let
him come ! Something awful will
happen if they meet !"
"If who meet ?"
324
Pearl.
But Pearl could not answer; the
carriage had turned upside down ;
the stars were under her feet; the gay
lamps were spinning in and out of
the windows ; her breath came and
went.
" What is it all about ?" said
Mrs. Monteagle, who began to be
alarmed by the girl's excited man-
ner, her scared face and rigid atti-
tude. "Tell me the truth, Pearl.
Child, can't you trust me ?" And
she laid her hand on Pearl's, that
were locked together like a vise.
" Captain Darvallon is to be at
your house to-morrow immediately
after breakfast/'
"Well?" said Mrs. Monteagle,
more and more mystified by the
solemnity with which Pearl, made
the irrelevant announcement.
" They must not meet."
" Darvallon and Leopold? Why,
they are brothers ! They never
have a secret from one another."
" They have now. He Iwes me /"
"Who? Darvallon ?"
Pearl made no answer.
" And you do you love him ?"
"Yes!" It came in a whisper
so faint that, if Mrs.%Monteagle had
not read it on the timid, parting
lips, the word would not have
reached her. Pearl burst into
tears and let her head drop on
Mrs. Monteagle's shoulder. The
discomfited matchmaker was so
utterly confounded that it was
some minutes before she recover-
ed herself sufficiently to offer a
word of sympathy or condolence,
or to ask how it had all come
about. Pearl had her cry out, and
then she told her story, everything,
from the absurd incident, as she
thought it, of Leon's being caught
on his knees before her to that
terrible " au revoir /" which the two
men had just exchanged at the
head of the stair.
" It sounded like a challenge to
a duel," she said, shuddering.
" It was a challenge," said Mrs.
Monteagle.
" You think they will fight ? But
he told me that he expected to
leave Paris to-morrow night."
** That was very likely to throw
dust in your eyes and prevent your
giving the alarm."
" O my God !"
" Don't be frightened, dear. We
won't let them fight. I will pre-
vent it. Trust me to manage it.
Here we are at No. 25. Now
good-night. Don't let this worry
you. I promise you no harm shall
come to them."
Pearl was crying bitterly. Mrs.
Monteagle put her arms round her
and rocked her like a baby.
" Are you sure you can stop it
in time ?" said Pearl, lifting her
head as they drew up at Mme.
Mere's door. " Suppose they meet
to-morrow morning before we are
out of our beds?"
Mrs. Monteagle laughed.
"A duel is not despatched in
such a hurry as all that. They
must choose their seconds, and the
seconds must meet and make ar-
rangements, and so on ; and all
that takes time. They couldn't
possibly manage it before the day
after to-morrow, and I shall take
care that the affair is settled for
them before then. Promise me to
sleep on that and be good."
Pearl kissed her fondly.
" Shall I say anything to Mme.
Mere?"
" Not for your life ! She would
fly off to old Leopold, and the story
would get wind at once ; and that
would make no end of mischief,
and they would fight ten times
more certainly. Don't say a word
about it to any one. There is no-
thing men resent like being inter-
The Protestant War against Christianity.
325
fered with in an affair of this kind.
Captain Darvallon would never
forgive us."
This was a random shot, but it
took effect, though Pearl did not
need that threat to do as her old
friend advised.
" Don't come to my house to-
morrow morning. I will call here,
or else send you a line to say that
it is all made right," said Mrs.
Monteagle.
They kissed again. Pearl got
out. Mrs. Monteagle waited till
Adolphe had seen the young lady
safe inside Mme. Mere's door,
then she drove away not home,
but to Mme. de Kerbec's. She
waited for the count's return, and
then they went out together. It
was past two in the morning when
he left Mrs. Monteagle at her own
door.
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE PROTESTANT WAR AGAINST CHRISTIANITY.
IN their pulpits some of the Pro-
testant preachers still proclaim
thefr adherence to the essential
dogmas of the Christian religion.
They still profess their belief in
one God, the Father Almighty, and
in Jesus Christ, his Son and our
Lord. They say they believe in
his miraculous conception ; in his
birth, crucifixion, death, burial,
and ascension ; in the church
which he founded, but which, in
their opinion, he has not been able
to maintain in unity; in the Holy
Ghost,, in the resurrection of the
dead, and in life eternal. But
many other Protestant and non-
Catholic preachers and writers be-
lieve none, or not all, of these
things, and they are by no means
backward in expressing their dis.-
belief and in seeking to spread
abroad their heresies. In October
last* we presented in these pages
a review of the anti-Catholic and
anti-Christian literature of that
* " The New Protestant Criticism of Christian-
ity." See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for October, 1878.
year. Some of the books of which
we then gave a synopsis had been
written with the avowed, or at least
undisguised, purpose of destroy-
ing faith and inculcating atheism;
a larger number of them had the
same object, but concealed it more
or less skilfully. It may surprise
our readers that another similar re-
view can be profitably made so
soon ; but no previous century,
generation, or decade has been so
prolific as this of books discussing
that tremendous problem the des-
tiny of the human soul. The busy
press literally rains books upon the
world, and a very large proportion
of them are devoted to the consid-
eration of questions which lie at the
foundation of the Christian faith,
and which, indeed, involve the
existence of the Creator himself.
Even a casual glance at the new
books of any year will convince
the observer that the Protestant
sects are day by day breaking into
smaller and smaller factions, and
that the basis of a creed which
326
The Protestant War against Christianity.
they once fancied they held in
common is disintegrating, and will
soon be discarded altogether.
Chaos has set in, and even the de-
voutness which served as a cable
to hold Protestant? at least with
their faces in the right direction
is growing more and more tenuous
and filmy, and most of the sects
are gratifying their curiosity by un-
ravelling it to see of what it is
made. Protestantism is weakening
every day, and what it loses is gain-
ed by the Catholic Church on the
one hand and by the army of atheism
on the other.
It is noticeable, also, that the
avowed foes of Christianity are
somewhat changing front, or at
least are adopting new names.
Materialists no longer call them-
selves atheists but " agnostics " ;
they no longer say, " There is no
God," but they timidly exclaim,
."I don't know whether there is or
not." They speak of all that realm
that lies beyond the physical sen-
ses as "the unknowable"; they
say, " We know and can know
only matter and force, only cause
and effect, only an unbroken se-
quence of physical phenomena."
.This is specious, but it is a retreat
of the forces of Satan to an unten-
able fortress. This, in turn, will be
besieged, compelling another re-
treat or capitulation.
From the scores of books of
an anti-Catholic and anti-Christian
character that have been issued in
Great Britain since last fall, we
have selected a few of the most
striking for analysis and comment.
The effort which the Protestants
are making to get a new Bible
from the convocation of scholars
at Westminster is only one of the
signs of the theological anarchy
that prevails outside of the Catho-
lic Church. Another sign, quite as
important, is the diversity of read-
ings in which educated Protestant
clergymen indulge upon their own
personal responsibility clinging to
the King James version, to which
they have become accustomed, and
for which, as Dr. Schaff acknow-
ledges, congregations " have a pre-
judice" and yet reading between
the lines whatever they please.
Apropos of this is a notable article,
under the suggestive title of " Di-
vine Myths, "to which that very'' lib-
eral " magazine The Expositor gives
hospitality. It is contributed by a
man who is vouched for as '' no
free-thinker, but, on the contrary,
an out-and-out believer in the
inspiration of Scripture." It is cu-
rious to hear an "out-andout be-
liever " saying to his Protestant au-
dience :
" I believe firmly and devoutly that
the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, />
the word of God ; I believe that the
Spirit of God not only moved by secret
impulses the minds of the sacred writers,
but also overruled to a great extent the
ipsissima verba of Holy Writ. And no-
where do I feel (rightly or wrongly) the
divine inspiration more strongly and
pervadingly than in the early records of
Genesis. . . . And yet I do regard
these records as myths ; and I think
that all the efforts made, and still being
made, to reconcile their statements with
history and with science are only so
much earnestness and ingenuity thrown
away."
This is the sort of plenary inspi-
ration which a Protestant maga-
zine sets forth to enlighten the
minds and promote the devotion
of Protestants.
The"French Reformed Church"
is perhaps not a very important in-
teger in the sum of Protestantism,
but its voice may be deemed to
some extent representative. The
History of the Dogma of the Deity
of Jesus Christ is the rather start-
ling title under which one of its
The Protestant War against Christianity.
327
clergymen, Albert Reville, D.D.,
calmly challenges the title of the
Lord of lords and King of kings.
It has been translated into English,
and has reached a second edition
under the patronage and auspices
of the Protestant churches of Great
Britain. The author bravely sets
out to prove that the divinity of
Jesus of Nazareth is a
" doctrine which, having been slowly
elaborated, arrived at supremacy in the
Christian Church towards the end of the
fifth century, and which, after continu-
ing undisputed, except in connection
with some obscure heresies, for eleven
centuries, has been gradually, from the
sixteenth century, losing its prestige,
although it is still the professed belief
of the majority of Christians."
Dr. Reville undertakes to show
that Jesus did not "claim for him-
self the name and the attributes of
the Divinity"; that he did not
found " upon this claim his right
to be believed and implicitly obey-
ed " ; that the dogma was not held
by the apostles nor taught for a
long time by any church authority ;
that it is neither expressly revealed
in Scripture nor deducible there-
from by legitimate inference ; and
that even the early councils of
the Catholic Church did not, in
this respect, pretend to announce
what was true, but only to " ex-
press with greater clearness the
permanent belief of Christendom."
Dr. Reville says :
" There is first a period of incubation
and slow formation, which dates from
the early days of Christianity, and ends
nearly at the commencement of the mid-
dle ages ; then comes a period of tri-
umphant immovability, which terminates
in the sixteenth century ; and lastly a
period of slow transformation and de-
cline, whi< h commenced at the Refor-
mation and still continues."
It was the fifth century, he ex-
claims, " before the Son of Man
became God," and the Reforma-
tion "was the signal for the decline
of this dogma, which is now verg-
ing towards ultimate extinction."
The first questions he proposes to
himself are: In what light did Je-
sus regard himself? and, In what
light was' he regarded by his disci-
ples during his lifetime? These
questions he answers by retaining
as much of the Bible as accords
with his view, and discarding the
rest. Of his own utter " freedom "
he says : " We exercise a complete
independence with regard to the
formulas successively sanctioned by
the dogmatisms of the past. What
we hold to of these for our own
part is what appears to us to be
true in them, apart from all super-
natural authority."
So he discards the Gospel- ac-
cording to St. John with a flourish
that would be amusing if it were
not irreverent. He says that this
Gospel
" speaks throughout, and makes Jesus
speak, as if from the very first he had
claimed and received from las disciples
the .honors due to a being of superhuman
origin, of transcendent nature, existent
long before his appearance on earth, and
only passing a short time here, to return
almost immediately to the super-physical
region whence he came."
He therefore decides that the
book is of uncertain date and
anonymous authorship; that it was
probably written four o.r five gen-
erations after the Crucifixion, and
that, " whoever may be the author,
whatever the date," it is not enti-
tled to credence. He does not
scruple to charge on the fourth
Gospel the attempt to palm upon
the world a fraudulent Messias,
and affirms that
" one of the most unassailable results of
the Biblical criticism of our time is the
demonstration it has furnished of the
systematically-formed plan of the anony-
328
The Protestant War against Christianity.
mous historian, and of bis unvarying
purpose, carried out with rare ability, to
eliminate from the evangelical history
whatever tended to compromise the
doctrine of the Word, while introducing,
on the other hand, many new elements
to confirm it."
With much casuistry and sophis-
try he follows what he calls " the
growth " of our Lord's divinity
from century to century; and fin-
ally, with sinister accent, says that
if there is nothing primitive in this
doctrine; if "not only Jesus him-
self, but the apostolic age and the
two following centuries, did without
it " ; if it " was not formed complete
in all of its parts, but little by
little," then its gradual and visible
decay, and the degradation of the
Head of the church to the low
level of a mere man, need cause no
alarm to the mind of Christendom.
Perhaps this volume indicates
the tendency of Protestantism as
clearly as any book of the year its
tendency to quit all anchorage, and
to cut loose from all moorings, and
drift, whithersoever atheistic winds
may blow, upon the fathomless
ocean of the supernatural. Such
Protestantism feels the set of all
the currents of rationalism, posi-
tivism, spiritism, agnosticism, and
goes with whichever influence hap-
pens to be strongest ; but Why does
it persist in calling itself Chris-
tianity ?
A fitting companion volume to
the work of the French pastor is
The Bible and Criticism, by Robert
Rainy, principal and professor of
divinity and church history of a
religious college in Edinburgh.
The Proverbs of Solomon, he in-
forms his school, are a piece of
mosaic, made up by collecting the
current maxims of the time and by
piecing together the work of differ-
ent authors, when or by whom we
do not know. And he does not
hesitate to tell his young men that
" those who think it important to
maintain the Mosaic origin of the
main substance of Deuteronomy
cannot exclude the idea of later ed-
iting." He is so very considerate
as to leave some of the Psalms
to David. Yet he hedges by say-
ing : " When I recognize an opinion
as in general compatible with faith
and with useful service to the com-
mon cause, I do not thereby decide
whether it is or should be free to
men to teach it in my own church."
This is very odd. One would
suppose that an opinion " compati-
ble with faith and with useful ser-
vice to the common cause " might
safely be left " free to men to
teach." But there is no knowing
what eccentric thing a sect will do
which holds the theory, " Every
man his own pope."
Dr. Rowland Williams is the au-
thor of a work entitled The Book
of Daniel and the Revelation of St.
John, which boasts of being " a
fearless and unsparing application
of the methods and principles of
historical criticism, irrespective of
any theory of revelation." He in-
sists that the Book of Daniel is not
placed among the prophets but
among the hagiographa, where it
has songs or semi-canonical books
for neighbors; then he detects in
Daniel certain Persian and Greek
words which, he thinks, could only
have been used "after Alexander."
He gives the book a recent origin,
says it was written by " some un-
known Jew " who personated Dan-
iel and 'masqueraded under his
name. Of the canonical authority
of Scripture Dr. Williams says that
"the mere canonicity or enrolment
on the list of the church in itself
determines nothing as to the in-
herent quality, whether human or
The Protestant War against Christianity.
329
divine, of the book enrolled," but
that it " recommends to us each on
its own ground, and leaves us free
to discriminate each." This is the
Protestant ground every man his
own pope. Luther took the same,
and even greater, liberty.
The fact that the Saviour spoke
of Daniel as a prophet the writer
disposes of by saying : " We have
no reason to assume that, in this
particular, our Lord exercised a
critical discernment in advance of
that of his own age"; and "the
writers of the New Testament do
not claim for their Master that in-
fallible knowledge which theologi-
cal inference has ascribed to him."
And he proceeds, with true Protes-
tant rashness and irreverence, to
say that
" It need not, then, surprise us to dis-
cover that Jesus shared the Messianic
conceptions of his contemporaries, and
that his apprehension of the Book of
Daniel corresponded with that of the age
in which he lived. . . . Whether Jesus
himself uttered the eschatological say-
ings recorded in the synoptic Gospels,
or whether they were put into his mouth
by the writers of the evangelical histories,
we have no means of determining. In
either case we are placed on the horns
of a dilemma. If he gave them utter-
ance, he was himself deceived ; if they
were put into his mouth by the evange-
lists after his death, they were negatived
by the course of events."
The same critic very kindly con-
cedes to St. John the authorship
of the Apocalypse, but contends
that the same John could not have
been the writer of either the fourth
Gospel or of the Epistles which
bear his name. Indeed, he sweeps
the fourth Gospel out of existence
with one wave of his pen, as an
anonymous work which is entitled
to neither reverence nor belief.
And the Christian Church, he con-
tends, must cease to worship God
and Christ must, in fact, cease to
worship at all, and become merely
a teacher of " disinterested virtue."
This is Protestantism !
Dr: William Cunningham, princi-
pal and professor of church history
in New College, Edinburgh, starts
up to prove, in a great volume of
Theological Lectures, the plenary ver-
bal inspiration of King James' ver-
sion of the Protestant Bible. How
it can be " verbally " inspired when
no special divine assistance is claim-
ed for King James' Forty-seven
the author does not condescend to
tell us ; but he does say :
" By far the most plausible objection
against the plenary verbal inspiration of
the Bible is that derived from the verbal
differences in the Bible narratives of the
same event, and especially from those
occurring in the different records of what
is narrated as having been spoken upon
the same occasion by God and Christ."
This he explains in a manner
which implies a complete surrender
of the doctrine he is. trying to
maintain, thus :
" The main ground which is taken by
the defenders of verbal inspiration in
direct answer to this objection, and the
only one, so far as I can see, which they
could take, is this : that as it is univer-
sally allowed that it is no argument
against the truth or veracity of witnesses
or narrators that their accounts, while
agreeing in substance, should vary some-
what in minute details and in the pre-
cise, words in which they are set forth,
so whatever is inconsistent with truth and
veracity in men, when left to the unaid-
ed exercise of their faculties, is consist-
ent with the agency and operation of the
Holy Spirit."
The difficulty with this theory is
that men " left to the unaided ex-
ercise of their faculties " are liable
to make serious mistakes, even
when their veracity is unquestion-
ed ; and such liability to error on
the part of the inspired writers is
not at all consistent with Dr. Can-
330
The Protestant War against Christianity.
ningham's claim. He completes
his survey of the evidences of
Christianity by endeavoring to de-
monstrate that all the books which
are plenarily and verbally inspired,
and no others, are included in the
canon of Scripture as accepted by
Protestants. As the Protestant Bi-
ble is the subject of such fierce
controversies regarding its origin
and meaning that there are no two
clergymen or parsons, much less
any two of the hundred sects, that
entirely agree as to its inspiration,
it is obvious that Dr. Cunningham
must be a very acute and ingenious
person to make his claim appear
plausible even to an audience of
Protestants.
Of the many non-Catholic books
issued during the last few months,
the most dangerous, because the
most insidious, are those which are
called histories, and next in the
classification of peril we must name
the so-called commentaries. These,
while claiming to be merely histori-
cal or analytical, are often polem-
ics in disguise. The volume con-
taining Matthew's Gospel and Par-
allel Passages is an innocent book
on its face, but the reader will not
go far before he observes that the
anonymous author attacks under
his mask not only " Popish super-
stition and Romish error," which is
a matter of course, but fiercely as-
sails the doctrine of the Trinity,
inveighs against plenary inspira-
tion, and descants in an aggrieved
tone on a version of the Bible
which deceives the world into be-
lief in the personality of the Holy
Ghost and the divinity of Jesus
Christ. The parallel passages al-
luded to in the title are dovetailed
into Matthew from the other Gos-
pels for the obvious purpose of
convincing the reader, in the ab-
sence of any competent explana-
tion, that the Bible is full of con-
tradictions and misstatemeiitS of
fact. The strange fact if, indeed,
it be strange is that the writer of
this assault on revelation claims to
be a Protestant Christian, and sug-
gests that the manual is issued for
use in Bible-classes and Sunday-
schools.
The utter perversion from the
purpose of their pious founders of
those ancient Catholic universities
of Oxford and Cambridge is em-
phasized in nothing more strongly
than in the religious literature put
forth by their faculties. One of the
latest of their exploits in Biblical
dialectics is A Commentary on the
Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians,
by Rev. John Venn, a fellow of
Queen's College, Cambridge. The
chief question which Ire discusses
is whether Pauline Christianity dif-
fered essentially and fundamentally
from the Christianity of Peter and
James. " If Paul taught to be sin-
ful that which the original apostles
not only tolerated but practised
and inculcated as an essential ele-
ment of Christianity, then it is in
vain to contend that his teaching
was in substantial harmony with
that of those who were apostles
before him." Mr. Venn very kind-
ly and complacently minimizes the
difference. He assures the world
with much assurance, it may be
said that Paul taught the Metho-
dist doctrin , " once in grace a.lways
in grace," and that it is impossi-
ble for a Christian to fall.
The Protestant sects are rent by
conflicting guesses and specula-
tions. Every sect has its rhetori-
cal adventurers, who publish volume
after volume to maintain theories
which originated in their own brains,
and which they present as creden-
tials of their right to speak as am-
bassadors of the Most High. A
T/ie Protestant War against Christianity.
331
recent English utterance of this
sort is Parousia : A Critical In-
quiry into the New Testament Doc-
trine of our Lord's Second Coming.
Having no infallible guide, either
in revelation or tradition, either in
apostle or bishop, it is not surpris-
ing that the second advent of
Christ has greatly puzzled and wor-
ried the most sincere Protestants ;
nor is it surprising that, in propor-
tion to their earnestness and their
misinformation, they have issued
dogmatic manifestoes announcing
what each supposes to be true.
The author of Parousia finds
throughout Gospels, Epistles, and
Apocalypse one single constant an-
nouncement, and that is the return
of Christ in a few years, at the de-
struction of Jerusalem, attended by
a resurrection and a judgment.
This prophecy, he believes, has
been strictly fulfilled. "The end
of the world " (or, according to his
translation, " the end of the age "),
the " last day," the resurrection,
the judgment day, he considers to
have been rightly described by
Jesus as close at hand, as contem-
porary with the second coming,
which was to be so soon that Christ
promised that " some should not
taste of death till they see the Son
of Man come in his kingdom."
Jerusalem was destroyed ; so much
of the prophecy came to pass ; and
this speculator claims that the rest
of the prophecy came to pass at
that same time ; that the resurrec-
tion of all who were dead took
place, though no eye saw it; that
they received judgment in the
spiritual world ; and that the Mas-
ter returned, but chose to remain
invisible. Even some Protestants
seem to feel that this is a lame and
impotent conclusion, for one of their
own reviewers says of this fantas-
tic conjecture :
" That all these grand prophecies were
fulfilled in the destruction of one town ;
in the abolition of an effete nationality ;
in a judgment, about the year 70 A.D.,
which took place no one knows why; in a
resurrection then, no one know-; where ;
in a coming in glory no one ever beheld,
cannot be considered highly satisfactory.
Certainly it is very curious, if the advent
really took place at the fall of Jerusalem,
that the primitive church was never
aware of it ; that no early Christian far
less any Jew was conscious of its hav-
ing happened ; that apostles should have
even lived to see it, and yet never known
it, and left their successors still looking
for it."
This reviewer thinks, however,
that the book has a certain value
for its " exhibition of the various
statements on eschatology " ; but it
seems to be particularly curious as
an illustration of the unrest and
anxiety of Protestants, which cause
them to feel in every direction for
solid ground, and constantly miss
it because they wander in the quag-
mire of egotistical speculation.
Some of those Protestant books
which masquerade under the spe-
cious titles of dictionaries, school-
books, etc., are capable of doing
an immense amount of injury, es-
pecially to the young. They are
made attractive by the pretence of
conveying in compact form much
useful and impartial information.
Our readers know how often histo-
ry is belied and sacred things are
blasphemed in the current " read-
ers " of the public school ; and not
less is this the case with multitudes
of alluring books which make their
way into unsuspecting houses. A
specimen of these is Biblical Things
not generally known, a chaotic con-
glomeration of fragmentary scraps
conveying to the vigilant read-
er " vast and varied misinforma-
tion." Much of this book is posi-
tively untrue and misleading. The
author, for instance, gravely tells the
332
The Protestant War against Christianity.
reader that "Publius Lentulus, who
was Governor of Judea in the time
of Christ, wrote to Tiberius Caesar "
a minute description of the person-
al appearance of our Saviour, and
he quotes, as if it were a genuine
epistle and not a coarse and im-
pudent forgery, the letter in ques-
tion, which purports to describe
his eyes, nose, mouth, hair, and
beard, and to characterize him as
41 the handsomest man in the world."
Jonas and the whale seem to trou-
ble the same author. In one scrap
we are informed that "a large whale
was lately stranded on the beach
near Tyre"; and, as this does not
clear up the difficulty much, an-
other scrap adds that the white
shark is found in the Mediterrane-
an, that it frequently swallows its
prey alive, and that " cases are on
record, sustained by the most un-
doubted authority, in which entire
bodies were found in the stomach
of this fish, such as a man, a man
clad with armor, and even a horse."
Feeling that something is still lack-
ing to explain the extraordinary
history of Jonas on " natural prin-
ciples," he proceeds to add, " Natu-
ralists have recorded that sharks
have the habit of throwing up again
whole and -alive the prey they have
swallowed," leaving the inference
that sharks are in the habit of dis-
gorging men alive. The disingenu-
ousness of this is striking. So ea-
gerly does this little innocent-look-
ing book strive to explain away
every miracle that it might almost
have been written by that peripa-
tetic Pope of Protestantism, Joseph
Cook, himself.
The Decalogue is not held in very
high esteem nowadays by the school
of transcendental philosophers.
They are not at all satisfied with a
mere moral code from the lips of
the Deity, but hold nothing bind-
ing except a law of right which is
evolved from their inner conscious-
ness and that they frequently hold
to be binding only on others. The
Evolution of Morality is a work in
two volumes, somewhat larger than
the Bible, and, in the minds of ra-
tionalists, quite superior to it as a
code of duty. Its author, C. Stani-
land Wake, seeks for the roots of
morality "down deep in the in-
stincts of humanity." The sense
of right he traces back to mere
animal instinct :
"The bird which has built a nest or
obtained certain food instinctively feels
that it has secured an exclusive interest
in the object as against all other crea-
tures. It can easily be shown that the
instinct which thus operates must in the
human mind give rise to the sense of
right, with the correlative feeling of wrong.
That which I have acquired a property
in I intuitively feel that I have a right
to retain, and, therefore, that it is wrong
for any one else to deprive me of."
A starting-point thus obtained,
Mr. Wake proceeds to evolve high
morals, and to demonstrate by what
steps andunderwhat influences this
instinctive feeling develops into the
delicate and sensitive . conscien-
tiousness and reverence for right
found among the most cultured
races. He enters on a critical re-
view of the principal modern theo-
ries of morals, and embarks with
Hamilton, Bain, and Mill on a dis-
cussion of the question, " What does
Ought mean ?" He reviews the al-
truistic, or Positive, or Comtean the-
ory, which holds that benevolence
arises from an educated regard for
others; and the egoistic or utili-
tarian theory, which holds that no
man does anything except from
self-interest, that vice is ignorant
self-interest and virtue enlightened
self-interest, and that so-called
wrong-doing is simply a miscal-
culation of what will pay the best.
The Protestant War against Christianity.
All of these high-flown and fan-
ciful notions of morals are perni-
cious. The Decalogue and the re-
wards and penalties of religion are
a thousand times better than the
best of them. Where the church
moves with its rule of duty, there
society is safe ; while if any of
these fantastic codes could be
wholly substituted for Christianity,
savage man would prey upon his
unprotected fellow and civilization
would perish from the earth.
One of the most curious books
of the year is the volume entitled
The Future Life, in which some
score of Protestant ministers " the
most eminent American scholars "
present a consensus of opinion in
favor of the endless duration of fu-
ture punishment. Several of these
are very spirited and rhetorical,
not to say declamatory and denun-
ciatory ; a few are scholarly and
exegetical, and a few more affect
to be metaphysical or philosophical
or psychological. But it is odd to
observe that each disputant decides
the tremendous question for him-
self, and seems to have no suspi-
cion that the decision may possibly
lie outside of his personal jurisdic-
tion. The Word of God in the
matter is of subordinate interest
and importance to them ; the main
question with each one seems to
be, " Is eternal punishment accept-
able to my reason, and does it sat-
isfy my affections and accord with
my prejudices ?" Nothing evinces
the chaotic character of Protes-
tantism more clearly than the com-
placency with which its preachers
take out of the hands of the Al-
mighty the question of the future
destiny of his children.
The Rev. Dr. Wylie, of Scotland,
whose breast is filled with virtuous
alarm over the decline of the sec-
tarians and the growth of the
333
Catholic Church there, gives to the
world a volume entitled The Papal
Hierarchy : An Exposure of the
Tactics of Rome. Of course this
outburst of holy wrath is caused by
the recent re-establishment by the
church of the hierarchy in Scot-
land, and the bestowal of territorial
designations on her prelates. A
Protestant reviewer says of Dr.
Wylie's frenzy : " He has made up
his mind that this latest step in the
great campaign of the Romish
Church against Protestantism is
pregnant with evil and ruinous con-
sequences for. the blinded and be-
sotted people of those realms, who,
confident in the civil liberties they
enjoy under the British constitu-
tion, refuse to trouble themselves
about the insidious manoeuvres of
the papal host."
The insidious sarcasm under this
quieting paragraph shows plainly
enough that the reviewer is of an-
other sect from the writer. The
odium theologicum is scarcely dis-
guised. The author beats the po-
lemical gong with great energy, and
marshals a tremendous array of
evidence to show that the Papacy
aims at universal dominion, and is
making converts by tens of thou-
sand in the empire of St. Knox,
the home of Presbyterianism. The
Protestant reviewer from whom we
have already quoted says further,
in the same vein :
" The volume will be read with satisfac-
tion by Roman Catholics, at any rate
a satisfaction that will not be unmingled
with surprise ; for they will learn from
its pages that their church ... is making-
its way toward absolute dominion in un-
happy Britain, and that there is every
reason to apprehend that the Pope will
ere long bfe more potent in the United
Kingdom than Queen Victoria herself. . .
The doctor has not condescended to
particularize the exact way in which the
Romish invasion should be repelled.
Would he repeal the Catholic Emanci-
334
The Protestant War against Christianity.
pation Act, and restore to the statute-
book the old persecuting laws against
Papists? Would he banish all Roman
Catholic bishops, make the saying of
Mass a penal offence, and exclude from
the army and navy, as well as from Par-
liament, all those Romanists whose pre-
sence there seems to be to him a source
of such lively uneasiness? If not, what
measures would he recommend ? Per-
haps it would be as well to fight the
enemy with his own weapons : divide
Italy into presbyteries, and send Dr.
Wylie, Dr. Begg, and a few other zealous
members of the Reformation Society to
act as moderators. It is not impossible
that, after a short experience of the mis-
sionary efforts of these gentlemen. Leo
XIII. would be willing to consent to a
mutual withdrawal of the priestly armies;
and even if he did not, neither Scotland
nor Italy would be much the worse."
We may add that the febrile
symptoms exhibited by Dr. Wylie
are evidences of an excitable tem-
perament rather than of any extra-
ordinary conquests of the church.
There is nothing phenomenal about
the progress of the Roman Catholic
religion in Scotland ; it advances
with a uniform step, as it does in
all the countries of the earth, slow-
ly but surely.
An extensive accumulation of
facts and inferences is given to the
world by Mr. Bonwick concerning
the life and religion of the ancient
inhabitants of the lower Nile val-
ley, under the title Egyptian Belief
and Modern Thought. The last
clause of the title contains a hint
of a sinister motive, and this ap-
pears in the chief purpose of the
volume, which is to show (i) that
the age of the world goes back far
beyond the Mosaic chronology, and
(2) that Christianity is a plagiarism,
having borrowed its rites and forms,
its morals and its creed, from the
religion held during the Pyramid
age, four thousand years ago. Mr.
Bonwick not only insists that the
people of the time of the Pharaos
were definite believers in a Supreme
Being and immortality as now un-
derstood, but he claims that the
Decalogue can be found in detach-
ed fragments on their ancient papy-
rus, that they " saluted the great
God with palm branches in their
hands," and that their creed em-
braced the Unity of God, the
Trinity, the Messias, the millen-
nium, the Sabbath, atonement, hea-
ven, hell, purgatory, circumcision,
baptism, the Eucharist, and the
Last Judgment. It is ingenious
but not ingenuous on the part of
Mr. Bonwick to leave unnoticed
the very obvious suggestion that,
were all the facts as he states
them, it would only prove that God
had vouchsafed to the Egyptians,
through the traditions imparted to
them by the children of Israel or
preserved from the common ances-
tor of the human race, a perhaps
figurative and prophetical know-
ledge of himself and of the future
coming of the Saviour. But many
of Mr Bonwick's assertions are
based upon imagination rather than
upon fact.
The Boston Monday Lectures of
Joseph Cook have been republish-
ed both in London and Glasgow.
These constitute the most highly-
spiced and sensational Protestant
polemics of the last year the most
brilliantly quixotic effort to solve
the insoluble and prove the un-
provable. Mr. Cook comes to the
footlights armed with a telescope,
a microscope, a crucible and re-
tort, a spectroscope, a tasimeter,
and some bathybius from the deep-
sea dredging, and he says, with
a brave sweep of his hand : " Go to,
now! I will discard the ancient
methods of defending religion. I
will not ask my audiences to de-
pend on faith or the Bible. I will '
demonstrate Deity and Immortality
The Christ of Vienna.
335
with this machinery!" And then
he talks learnedly, in the patois of
Herbert Spencer and Charles Dar-
win, of protoplasm and bioplasm,
of monera and primordial germs,
of spontaneous generation, and ev-
olution and natural selection, con-
ceding four-fifths of thtir perni-
cious philosophy, admitting their
false premises, and only stopping
just short of their logical and inevi-
table conclusions. To avert this
he sets up as "axioms " certain re-
ligious truths which are not axioms
at all to the mind of an atheist and
infidel, and then he arrogantly
commands atheists and infidels to
accept them as a basis of argument
on his personal authority. As
Tyndall would say, Cook is a meta-
physician who, instead of talking
about the unknown in the terms of
the known, " discusses the unknown
in the terms of the more unknown."
The most Protestant of Protestants,
he is the most illogical of logicians.
Ostentatiously advertised as de-
monstrating to the reason of the
unregenerate those sacred truths
the knowledge of which can be
reached only by love and faith, he
is doing more than almost any
other living man to spread unbe-
lief and confirm atheists in their
fatal errors. And 'in the reckless,
slashing, and unhesitating self-as-
sertion of his talk he reminds one
of Mr. Potts, the clever editor of
the Eatanswill Gazette, who, when
required to write for a magazine
an article on Chinese metaphysics,
and knowing nothing about either
China or metaphysics, turned to
the encyclopaedia, read up all under
the head of China and 'all under
the head of metaphysics, and then
" combined his information."
THE CHRIST OF VIENNA.
I HAVE read, in a story of old
Which some Austrian poet has told,
Of a wonderful picture of Christ,
In Byzantium's glory of gold,
Where the age and the colors sufficed
To endow with a value unpriced
The rude touch that, in missing all graces of line,
Sent a sweet, solemn power through the Faces Divine.
Not its age nor its art gave the name
That had drawn, by its marvellous fame,
The long crowds that came breathless to gaze
On the changing and mystical frame,
Where they saw, in adoring amaze,
The bright Form that would lessen or raise
His fair stature, rayed round with the light of his love,
And loom up or stoop down from his height far above.
336 The Christ of Vienna.
For the charm of this painting of yore
Was the varying aspect it wore ;
Just an inch, and but one, beyond those
Who would stand in calm wonder before
The grand figure that narrows or grows
As each gazer's own measure it shows :
An inch greater than babyhood's fond little span,
Yet for ever that one inch beyond the full man.
I believed this old tale in my youth,
But this hour with a still deeper truth
Is this fable no fable to me !
And I need not to question, in sooth,
If to-day in Vienna there be,
Or was ever, such picture to see ;
For the heart to a holier awe must be stirred
By its truth of Christ's self and his law and his word.
To the little, unlettered, and weak,
Shall be bowed the great Type that they seek: .
But however their wisdom increase,
Still beyond them the lessons that speak
From the fathomless pages of peace :
Past the limits where knowledge must cease
Spread the truths his Evangel must teach to the end,
Yet for ever to childhood's low reach will he bend !
Low and far, and so high and so clear,
For retracing and loving so near,
Yet when closest the Model Divine,
That one inch stretching out to a sphere !
Who art thou to draw compass and line
With thy science, until we opine
Thy may-midge of a mind has sufficed to hold all ?
Ah ! poor sage, wouldst thou make the world's Christ,,
then, so small ?
DETROIT, 1879.
English Men of Letters.
ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.*
_ 337
MR. JOHN MORLEY has gained
an unenviable notoriety in Eng-
land for affected and ridiculous
atheism by the publication of a
book in which he prints the name
of God with a small g. He puts
himself forward as the spokesman
of a large and increasing party of
English thinkers, who claim to be
the perpetuators of the distinctive
English philosophical thought of
the eighteenth century a sort of
modified Deism. To preserve the
memory of this broad school of
religion he proposes publishing,
and has published, a series of little
books upon English men of letters,
in which the predominant idea is
to find a certain likeness of liberal
religious sentiment and opinion.
Of this series the biographies of
Dr. Johnson, Edward Gibbon,
Oliver Goldsmith, and David Hume
have been given to the world, aad
sketches of other literary charac-
ters are promised. The new school
of biography is composed of Mr.
Morley himself, Leslie Stephen,
Professor Huxley, Wm. Black, Pro-
fessor J. C. Morison, and other
lights of the Fortnightly Review,
a periodical founded by the late
George Henry Lewes. In spite
of the flourish of trumpets, we can-
not help thinking that this new
school does not exert any appre-
ciable influence in England. The
unfair advantage which it takes of
such characters as Dr. Johnson
and Oliver Goldsmith merits a vi-
gorous protest ; and, as we purpose
showing, the idea, thinly veiled un-
der a pretended literary necessity,
* English Men of Letters. Edited by John
Morley. London, 1879.
VOL. XXIX. 22
\\ ijil '
is to present eminent English men
of letters as apostles and evange-
lists of the present state of reli-
gious indirTerentism in English
Protestant quarters.
One is surprised to find our
sturdy old moralist, Dr. Johnson,
placed as the choragus of advanc-
ed English thinkers. If there ever
was a true Church-of-England man,
it was Johnson. His bow to an
archbishop was as elaborate, if not
so graceful, as that which a delight-
ed prima donna makes to an ap-
plauding audience upon her sixth
summons before the curtain.
When he went to Scotland he re-
fused to attend a Presbyterian con-
venticle, on the sound principle
that a church without a hierarchy
is no church at all. On leaving
London for a visit to the country
he would go to his parish church
and salute its pavement with a
most reverent kiss. He kept Lent,
prayed for the dead, and nearly
kicked Boswell down stairs fo/r
making some disparaging remarks
about the Catholic Church. When
the foolish discussion was rife as
to whether Catholics are guilty of
idolatry in adoring the Eucharist,
his clear sense pointed out the ab-
surdity of the charge. He believ-
ed in confession, yet not even he
had the courage to face the anti-
Catholic storm which swept over
England in those gloomy days.
Besides, it was then, if it is not
now, an article of an Englishman's
faith, more fully believed in than
any of the Thirty-nine, that a man
cannot be a Catholic and a loyal
Englishman at the same time.
It is certainly astonishing that
338
English Men of Letters.
Mr. Leslie Stephen, a milk-and-
water infidel, takes up this noble
character and strives to represent
it as in full harmony with the
broad school. The very attempt
shows a recklessness which argues
ill for the general literary honesty
of Mr. Morley's venture. It is
enough to make the angry shade
of Johnson return in vengeance ;
and, as he believed in apparitions,
we warn Mr. Stephen not to trust
too implicitly to his own belief
that death ends all. Nor would
the ghost of the great doctor be a
particularly handsome one. A man
over six feet high, with his head
shaking with nervousness, his face
scarred with scrofula, his eyes half
blind, and the top of his wig burnt
through the necessity of having to
hold his book near the lamp, was
not a reassuring object to meet,
even in the flesh. Johnson would
have thundered forth his rage at
any infidel attempting to represent
him as a member of Mr. Stephen's
school. Nor do we think that
poor Oliver Goldsmith would have
been particularly pleased with Mr.
Black's characterization of him as
an " uncouth Irishman," whose
books breathe not the lightest whis-
per of a narrow sectarianism. Prof.
Morison must have sneered at Gib-
bon's unscientific knowledge, es-
pecially as the historian, in his
eagerness to throw discredit upon
the miraculous prevention of the
rebuilding of the Temple under
Julian, talks vaguely about " me-
teoric balls generated by a damp
atmosphere " a theory which the
professor would characterize as
worthy of an ecclesiastic. Hume
and Gibbon may perchance belong
to the broad school, but Johnson
and Goldsmith !
One of the most lamentable
characteristics of modern English
writing is its too frequent allusion
to, and dependence upon, human
authorities. This feature of our
literature is due to Protestantism,
which, having no divine authority
or infallibly certain moral code, de-
pends helplessly upon the opin-
ion of a few naturally gifted and
honest men that traditionally pro-
fessed its tenets. We cannot take
up a book on the simplest sub-
ject without finding it bristling
with references. A Protestant
writer always seeks external sup-
port for his religious opinions.
His mind is" at sea, and he would
fain hail the passing vessel, even if
it sometimes floats the black flag.
The consequence is that there are
a few great names in English let-
ters that really carry as much
weight with Protestants as the de-
crees of popes and of councils do
with Catholics. Nay, a most un-
reasonable authority, for its ac-
ceptance is a virtual surrender of
the right to think. The Catholic
has a basis for his faith, and he
knows that the doctrinal and the
moral decrees of the pope are any-
thing but mere opinions. But
what is the precise worth of the
judgments' of Dr. Johnson, or of
Archbishop Whately, or Frederick
Maurice, or Thomas Carlyle ? Yet
a quotation from one of these car-
ries a weight with it which is sup-
posed to settle conclusively any
point of morals at issue. Indeed,
most Protestant writers are fearful
of expressing the simplest moral
judgment without lugging in an
elaborate opinion of one tff the
sages. Nor is this done in a spirit
of pedantry, but of downright
ethical vagueness and weakness.
They are not sure they are right
on any first principles.
Take up at random a few late
English books in one or two de-
English Men of Letters.
339
partments. Here, for example, is
Rev. Frederick W. Robertson's
Turning Points in Life a book
which, the editor tells us, has run
through six editions. Now, Mr.
Robertson had a fair stock of
brains carefully cultivated, an hon-
est purpose in writing this book
of advice, and certainly common
sense enough to work out and
prove his very commonplace theo-
ries of life. But lo ! there is not
a paragraph free from quotation-
marks. We know what is coming
in every chapter. The topics are
business, marriage, etc. Dr. John-
son tells you: " Sir, marriages made
by the lord chancellor, without re-
ference to the parties at all, are
the happiest !" This he said when
he was talking for the sake of talk.
It must be confuted, says Rev. Mr.
Robertson. Next we find the abun-
dant hyphens and capitals of Mr.
Carlyle : " This eternally-dismal, all-
weeping flower-blowing, and devil-
ploughed Earth-Garden, with its
delving-deep, face-perspiring, and
never-to-be-comforted Adam and its
(what you like) Eve, etc." Or we
open a history, and the first line we
encounter is that one, ominous of
quotation : " It is well remarked by
Tacitus that the history of ancient
peoples is a matter rather of con-
jecture than of record; Merivale
says, etc. ; Gibbon wisely suggests,"
and so on with a string of com-
monplaces which the writer him-
self could put shorter and clearer
than in the quotation with its re-
lated matter. A quotation, to be
of any worth or relevancy, must be
one that shows an author to the
best advantage, and in his proper
literary genius and guise. Emer-
son in this is fine.
There are certain quotable au-
thors. One of the chief among the
English is Johnson, thanks, not to
his own written books, but to his
table-talk as chronicled by Boswell.
Johnson wrote a heavy, involved,
Latinized style, but he talked
pithily and pointedly. Deprived
of most pleasures save those of
conversation, he made it an art
and science. He held his own in
the most brilliant set of English-
men since the days of Shakspere
and Ben Jonson. He pronounc-
ed the chair of a club to be the
throne of human felicity. No
doubt there have been as good
talkers as Johnson, but, like the
brave men that lived before Aga-
memnon, they have lacked a chro-
nicler. The scraps preserved of
Coleridge's conversations do not
show him to much advantage ; but
no one can read Johnson's table-
talk without feeling the force of
Goldsmith's description of him,
that if his pistol missed fire he
would knock you down with the
butt. He is the typical English-
man, with the national horror of
shams and bores, as when he said
to a prosy judge who was recount-
ing his having transported fourteen
culprits : " Sir, I wish to heaven I
were the fifteenth !" He detested
any departure from the approved
customs of society and religion.
" A woman that preaches is like a
dancing dog. We are surprised at
the dog's dancing at all." When
the Abbe Raynal, a French infidel,
desired an introduction to him :
" Sir, I never shake hands, know-
ingly, with a scoundrel." His very
narrowness has nothing dishonest
in it, and his occasional perversi-
ties of judgment must be largely
ascribed to hypochondria, the re-
sult of physical disease, under which
he struggled to lead a brave, high
life.
It is easy to find in the sayings
of so copious a talker many things
340
English Men of Letters.
which seem to favor latitudinarian-
ism. His severe experience of pov-
erty and hardship made him cal-
lous to the finer emotions. He re-
fused to believe that we are touch-
ed by the misfortunes of others.
Under the head of cant he placed
our visits of ceremony, our anxious
inquiries after our friends' health,
and the thousand-and-one atten-
tions of courtesy. He looked upon
poverty with horror. He was as
quick as lightning to discern an
imperfect motive, and used to de-
clare that no author ever wrote ex-
cept for his bread. He boasted
that he never put pen to paper
unless he was threatened with want.
At the same time there is no ques-
tion that he talked much for effect
and in the spirit of contradiction.
It is unfair to take up his sayings,
divorced from surrounding con-
ditions, and put them forth as
weighty reflections and completed
results of conviction. This is what
Mr. Stephen has done. The great
moralist cuts a very sorry figure in
his book. An author must be judg-
ed by what he writes, not by what
he says in a social gathering. None
of us are bound in conversation
as we are in writing, and the written
essay is the only fair index of a
writer in his best estate. His talk
may not be. We are, alas ! less
perfect, less generous, less ideal
than our written word ; and it is
equally safe to say that a dangerous
and immoral writer is worse in his
life than in his books. We do not
believe in the immaculate purity of
Balzac or the virgin modesty of
George Sand.
Sing, O Muse ! the dire wrath of
Professor Morison, able to trace
the habitations of the many-lived as-
cidian, and to number the legs of
the house-ruling ant, frugal of corn.
Mr. Morley's selection of him
to write the life of Gibbon betrays
a want of editorial nous. It is true
that he is not an exact scien-
tist, and he has dabbled in sermon-
literature ; still, he/ is the last man
to sympathize with the gorgeous
and not severely-trained imagina-
tion of Edward Gibbon. Nor are
they at one on the religious ques-
tion. Gibbon always took a deep
interest in theology, which is Mori-
son's abomination. The great his-
torian allows no opportunity to
pass to show off his wide acquaint-
ance with church history. He mi-
nutely describes every heresy, and
is fairly correct in the statement of
the orthodox doctrine. We expect-
ed the professor to give us some
new light on Gibbon's remarkable
series of conversions. We believe
there was a lady in the case the
famous De Stael but it would ne-
ver do to ascribe to such an un-
philosophical passion as love the
mighty change of religious faith
wrought in the great mind of the
historian of the Decline and Fall.
The process must have been gra-
dual and profoundly logical. First
came the painful truths regarding
the primitive Christians, whom he
had been taught to look upon
through a dim religious light of
veneration and awe. What does
he discover? Wranglings, conten-
tions, backslidings, ignorant pet-
tishness represented as the zeal of
the martyrs, etc. His illusions
vanish. Christianity is revealed as
a myth, and the church of the
apostles a wofully undignified and
shabby sect.
But Gibbon's great defect, in the
opinion of the professor, is his ig-
norance of natural science. The
elaborate history is a huge waste of
labor. There is no true philosophy
of history which does not recognize
the truth of the evolution theory.
English Men of Letters.
341
Had Gibbon been blessed with this
light he would not have devoted his
uncommon powers to raking up the
fossil bones of a dead empire with-
out having pointed out the logical
sequence of the advent of the fittest
by which we really wonder if the
professor means the barbarian
hordes that overthrew the Roman
Empire ? We should not be surpris-
ed, for there is no length to which
the evolutionist will not push his
nonsense. Now, Gibbon's book is
the noblest historical treatise in En-
glish literature, and his very stric-
tures on Christianity and the
:hurch imparted an impulse to the
study of the Christian antiquities
which has given us such men as
De Rossi and what is called the
lodern school of Christian apolo-
getics. What need had Gibbon of a
irofound acquaintance with the in-
'.rtebrata ? We suppose that Prof.
Morison's idea of writing history
would be something in this wise :
riven the Arch of Trajan, the style
>f architecture would indicate apeo-
)le lately emerged from the woods,
the columns being an exact repro-
iuction of what we see in juxtapos-
forest trees. The Coliseum sug-
jests the nature of a bear's den,
ind shows that this ancient people
lad ursine proclivities. The re-
lains of ancient statuary, studied
r ith special reference to the dor-
sal region, give unmistakable evi-
dence of a rudimentary tail ; and the
uplifted arm of the Apollo Belvidere
is in exact position for taking a
swing from a lower to a higher
branch.
No biography of Goldsmith can
take the place of Washington Irv-
ing's. Mr. Black is a society nov-
elist, and would prefer detailing the
charming conversation of his hero-
ine to a recountal of poor Goldy's
desperate fight with famine and
cold. There is no sympathy be-
tween the fashionable novelist and
the sorely-tried Irishman. He is
made a subject of sport throughout
the book. The generous soul of
Thackeray boiled with indignation
at the horse-play to which his rude
companions subjected Goldsmith,
and he compared to the insult
offered a woman, or cruelty to a
child or to some patient dumb
creature, the pointless and cruel
practical jokes played upon one of
the sweetest-minded and tenderest-
hearted men that ever wrote. The
general idea conveyed by Mr.
Black is that Goldsmith was a fool.
Old Johnson, a better judge, said
that he touched no subject which
he did not adorn. The spirit of
poor Goldsmith's religion is an
humble thankfulness to the divine
Providence that pitied his wretch-
edness. It is very sad to think of
such a man as a hack-writer, a bal-
lad-composer, a thriftless genius,
who has left his splendid impress
upon English letters. No doubt a
successful novelist like Mr. Black
is out of patience with this sad, sad
story; but not even he can think
that his own tales shall outlast
the immortal Vicar of Wakefield.
This number of the series is in
much better taste than the others,
the author feeling that he cannot
adduce Goldsmith as a member of
the broad school.
We do not believe in scrap-books
of literary conversation. A good
biography should include letters,
and aim simply at the truth. To
write the man into the book, in-
stead of taking the book out of the
man, is to be guilty of a grave dis-
honesty. This is the fault of the
Bric-a-Brac Series, published some
time ago in New York. The editor
appeared to bring to his task only
the shears and the paste-pot. Mor-
342
English Men of Letters.
ley's idea is an improvement upon
this, but it errs in another direc-
tion. Besides, we do not attach
much value to the biography of
merely literary men. A scholar's
life is a mental growth. His ex-
ternals are of no importance. His
life is best read in his books. Yet
are we duly afflicted with biogra-
phies that point to the keen eyes
of Jenkins. We were lately amus-
ed in reading a ponderous Cy do-
pa di a of Biography which we feel
certain has Jenkins for author. No
one but a newspaper man of a cer-
tain kind could have given such
personal descriptions. We there
learned that Mr. Tennyson prefers
a pipe to a cigar, and that, in writ-
ing an idyl, he quaffs inspiration
from the good ale of old England.
Miss Braddon, when composing,
contracts herself into the narrowest
of chairs and writes with the side
of her pen. In an "old-fashioned
desk are numerous little skeletons
of stories, to which she will even-
tually add flesh and harden the
bones." A famous writer on poli-
tical economy " has a majestic
head crowned with wiry hairs, each
one of which seems to ask you a
searching question. His mouth is
large but firm, and his eyes are of
an indescribable color, but capable
of emitting a flash of sarcasm that
shrivels up a captious objector."
Mr. Carlyle " has a decidedly pug-
nacious nose. It is blunt, hard,
unyielding, and seems to snuff the
battle from afar off. It is a nose
not to be trifled with. Any one
that sees it once must turn to take
another look." George Eliot is not
beautiful, " but there is a lambent
fire in her eyes and a leopard poise
in her walk that startle and interest
you. She generally wears a dress
of some dark material, which clings
to her fondly, as if pleased with the
privilege of being worn." (A wo-
man must have written /7z#/ descrip-
tion.) Matthew Arnold " has what
you might call a Boanerges face.
His mouth seems to say to his nose,.
* Don't come too near or there will
be war.' His ears are well set r
and seem by their capacity and
outstretched position to be ever
listening for celestial harmonies. ""
And this is the kind of trash that
makes up the bulk of the artist-
biographies, literary sketches, and
anecdotes of eminent personages,,
which fill a wide space in literature
and command a good sale.
The writer of this has often been,
asked to furnish certain hints about
reading or about a course of Eng-
lish literature. To the great dis-
gust of his questioners, he has, in the
majority of cases, advised them to
let English literature alone, and to
take up a language or begin a
course of chemistry or natural phi-
losophy. A Catholic is only con-
fused by the variety of opinions he
encounters in a Protestant litera-
ture. There is no guiding star in
it, as there is in other literatures.
English literature is an tndigesta
moles. Darkness is upon the face
of the deep. We may save Shak-
spere, but let the rest go. His-
tory is either Protestant or infideL
The drama is insufferably noi-
some. "We hold our noses and read
on, "says Taine. The social essays
of the Spectator are not equal to a
good modern newspaper or maga-
zine article.
" But the style !" Rhetoricians
have much to answer for, chiefly
for their exaggeration of the im-
portance of style. The true doc-
trine is that the style is of no im-
portance as compared with truth
and fact. The older a man grows,,
and the better scholar he be-
comes, the less he cares for the
English Men cf Letters.
343
mere graces of style. In fact, he
is suspicious of them. And it is
to be hoped that this rhetorical
teaching will cease before the exi-
gencies of modern life. We have
no time to waste over elaborate
metaphors. A man who has any-
thing to say worth saying must
out with it as quickly and as plain-
ly as he can. Carlyle tells us that
the age of poetry is gone ; certain-
ly that of poetical prose is. The
style to be aimed at is that which
is clear from the shining of the
truth or the fact in the writer's
mind. The one style which will
supersede all others is the homely
and the plain.
But what is to become of all
those charming works of the ima-
gination that serve to delight and
make us pass the weary time ?
The sooner they disappear the bet-
ter. We should have no weary
time to pass away. The novel is
on the rapid decline, and its exit
should be hastened. What is there
really more ridiculous than to read
book of fictitious adventures
>r of commonplace conversations,
r hen the writer could tell us plain-
ly in a chapter what moral he
intends conveying or what social
ibuse he proposes combating ? So,
>o, we think that all moral essays
lust revert to Bacon's scientific
style in the De Augmentis the
>imple statement of principles, with
10 labored efforts to prove or to il-
lustrate. The moralist is nothing
not apodictic. A virtue that has
to be proved and defended is not
rorth practising.
We have a good English Catho-
lic literature, sufficient for the in-
tellectual needs of any man. Over
11 is the light of the faith. His-
>ry should be studied in the sim-
)lest way the mere learning of
events. Leave the church to ex-
plain its meaning. A good map is
better than a dozen books of travels.
A first-class journal and a careful-
ly-edited Catholic magazine make
up a sufficient library. The worst-
educated men affect the most
books, and no doubt read them.
Their minds are lumbered. They
become parrots, and weary and
bore people.
A Catholic who reads and medi-
tates upon the Catechism of the
Council of Trent has surer and bet-
ter religious and moral views than
the entire range of general English
literature contains. That one book
is better than all the writings of
Dr. Johnson, of Addison, of Pope,
of Buckle, or of Leeky. That book
gives him true ideas relative to God
and to man, and his duties to both ;
furnishes him with the reasons of
the moral law, and unrolls for him
not human opinions but divine
faith. What is it, then, but a waste
of time for a Catholic to peruse the
conflicting theories of English Pro-
testant moralists ? The more you
reflect upon the value of truth the
less you will care about mere style.
It is the heart of a book or an
essay that you will seek out. Nor
need you be afraid of the charge
of ignorance. It is not ignorance
not to know the useless. A Pro-
testant in society will not press
you for your opinions about this or
that book when you tell him sim-
ply that your mind is made up on
the subject of the work. God has
done your thinking for you, and
you don't believe that you or any
other man can improve upon it.
This plain and logical answer will
set a Protestant reflecting. It is
some such reply as this that startles
a badgered Protestant with the ab-
solute repose of our certainty in
the church, and allures him sweetly
to share in that peace which the
reading of many books only tends
to disturb.
344
The Reality of the Soul as a
THE REALITY OF THE SOUL AS A SELF-SUBSISTING
SEPARABLE SUBSTANCE.*
ENTELECHEIA is a Greek word
which has a fine sound and seems
to have a fine sense in it, if we
could only get at it. This is the
case with many Greek terms, which
appear, by comparison with their
similars in modern languages, like
an effigy stamped in gold beside
a silver medal bearing the same
stamp. Ideas impress us as having
a new dignity and worth from the
precious metal in which they are
coined ; and not only so, they seem
to have been more cleanly cut into
the language and better preserved
from the rubbing of general circu-
lation. Aristotle says that God is
pure entelecheia. The correspond-
ing Latin word is forma. How can
this be adequately done into Eng-
lish with one word ? Will the
term form answer the purpose ?
We fear not. In England, a form
is understood by school-boys to
mean a bench, and a grade of rank
in the school. We hardly ever use
the word here in that sense, but
there are other common significa-
tions, as the shape and figure of
things, the manner and mode in
which documents are drawn up, rites
or other observances performed, di-
vers acts accomplished in a regu-
lar manner. The Greek word ente-
lecheia, and the Latin /"<?/-;;/#, used in
philosophical writings, present at
once one distinct idea, rid of any
such associations. The term de-
notes the principle which gives
specific actuality, a positive deter-
mination of being. God is pure
* In the last number, p. 214, twenty-fifth line, in-
stead of the misprint "bouquet of a vine," read " of
a wine"
entelecheia, that is, pure act. He is
not actuated, not determined in a
specific grade of essence, not a re-
cipient of being and existence, or
in any respect in a dormant po-
tency of becoming greater and bet-
ter by an active force from within
or without himself, but he simply
is, in eternal, infinite plenitude of
being. It has already been proved
that he is the original fount of be-
ing, that the eternal ratios and
archetypal ideas are in his intellect,
and the physical power of causa-
tion in his will. All creatures are
made after the ideal pattern in his
mind, and have a similitude to his
essence, in proportion to their
higher or lower grade. Their exis-
tence is only by a participation
received from him. Each one of
them must have some entelecheia,
some active principle and force,
some determining and positive ra-
tio which makes it undivided in
itself, and divided from other things
and from mere nothing. This is
what we mean when we speak of
metaphysical form.
Aristotle uses another term, Hyle,
denoting what is not in God, but is
in every other being, namely, a de-
terminable element, an element of
passive receptivity, of limitation in
perfection, of liability to change, of
potency to acquire or to lose some
actuations. The Latin term is ma-
teria, of which the English matter
is the literal translation. The sig-
nification of this word has never-
theless undergone a restriction both
in Latin and English, by which its
use is confined to the passive, de-
terminable element of corporeal
Self -subsisting Separable Substance.
345
substance. In common English
usage, it has come to mean even
the whole corporeal substance.
We cannot, therefore, properly ex-
press what Aristotle meant by Hyle
the term, viz., in which a finite
active force or form, or actuating
and determining principle, is re-
ceived and in which it is indi-
viduated by the word matter. If
we do, we shall by most persons be
supposed to mean some kind of
body composed of atoms, or the
atoms themselves. Others will
think we mean the passive element
which conspires with the active force
in the substance of body. We will
employ, therefore, the term passive
potency to denote what in every
created and finite being falls short
of the pure entelecheia of the divine
being, and is the mark' of its con-
tingent, dependent nature and exis-
tence, as something which is not
in and from its essence being, but
which only has being, received from
the absolute being, and is confined
within a certain grade of limitation.
These limitations are the measures
of the unlikeness of creatures to
God, and mark their essential dis-
tance from his essence, while their
actual grade of being in the active
form which really exists and acts
within its limit of essence, marks
their likeness to God and their re-
lative approximation to his infinite
and eternal being. The created
essences which imitate the uncreat-
ed essence are necessarily within
limits, that is, they are finite. The
fundamental limitations of space
and time which bound the sphere
of the extension of their active
force and the duration of their
movement, have their foundation
in the immensity and eternity of
God which they resemble in their
indefinite possibility; but of which,
in actual extension as the measures
of real beings and their motions,
they fall infinitely short. The
more completely a being is confin-
ed within their circle of limitation
and diminished in its resemblance
to God, the lower and more imper-
fect it is in the scale of being. On
the contrary, the more it escapes
from these confining bounds, the
higher is its resemblance to its di-
vine archetype and the greater its
perfection.
The graduated scale of beings
from the lowest to the highest
grades has been already explained
in treating of the Reality of Know-
ledge. Extended bodies without
life, and their essential constituents,
that \s, matter, in the common sense
of that word, are the most confined
and limited by their relations in
space, as mere masses, or constitu-
ent principles of mass and molecu-
lar magnitude, inert, and only ac-
tive by attraction and repulsion of
their molecules upon other mole-
cules. Bodies organized in the
vegetable form are somewhat supe-
rior to these by their vitality, and
far above these are animals. We
cannot afford to touch the question
of the nature of the active and
vital principle in vegetables and
animals. We must hasten to the
consideration of the rational form,
the principle of rational and intel-
lectual life in man, which places
him in the highest grade of beings,
although it is by no means reason-
able to suppose that there are not
many higher degrees of beings in
this intellectual grade whose nature
is more perfect, and more nearly
assimilated to the divine nature.
The lowest beings imitate the being
of God but not his life, the inter-
mediate grades imitate his life but
not the attribute by which it is the
most perfect life, his intelligence.
The highest grade imitates and
346
The Reality of the Soul as a
participates in his intelligence.
The lower grades are only vestiges
of God, bearing the impress of his
thoughts and his power, and repre-
senting in a dissimilar form what is
not in God formally, but virtually
and in a more eminent mode which
is absolutely spiritual. But the in-
tellectual being is an image and
likeness of God, and his perfections
are in God formally. This is alone
a sufficient evidence that his na-
ture is spiritual, a pure entelecheia
by comparison with body, a form
subsisting in its own intelligent
essence, distinct from and inde-
pendent of matter. If it were ques-
tion of a being who is simply intel-
lectual and not in any way also
animal, it would be clear at first
sight that he must be a pure spirit,
a diminuted copy of the Infinite
Spirit. Nevertheless, although a
pure spirit by comparison with
body, and with any soul which is
the form of a body, he is not abso-
lutely pure from the passive and
potential, or absolutely above the
categories of space and time. He
is limited in duration by a begin-
ning, and his now of duration or
present instant is ever approximat-
ing towards. without ever reaching
the infinite. His power of apply-
ing his virtue to objects in space,
and the virtual presence and move-
ment in relation to these objects
which appertain to this power, are
limited, for he is not omnipresent.
He is subject to some changes at
least extrinsic. The highest and
lowest creatures, therefore, are alike
in a common unlikeness to God,
and there is something in a pure
spirit which in its lowest form in
bodies is called their matter. He
is all entelecheia, but the entelech-
eia is not all pure act, or infinite.
Neither is material substance all
matter. There is something in
body akin to spirit, a positive and
formal perfection which makes it
similar to the perfection which is
virtually and in a more eminent
form in the spiritual being and in
God.
Those who deny that there is
any reality in the world except
matter do not know what they are
talking about. \Ve disclaim all in-
tention of speaking disrespectfully
of matter or of any kind of beast.
Our venerable friend Plato was too
hard upon it, and it is often un-
justly vituperated by soi-disant spi-
ritualists. We respect the pig in
his own place, and admit that " at-
tainability of pig-wash " is a desi-
rable good for him. We allow that
dirt, in so far as it has being, is
good. The late F. Baker, in his
juvenile days, leaning in company
with the writer on the wall of a
pig-pen which had been encoun-
tered in the course of a ramble
through Baltimore, enunciated a
series of " pig-propositions," not
precisely the same with those of
Carlyle. One of them was : " Pigs
are chiefly distinguished by a
causeless fondness for dirt." We
dissent from this in respect to ani-
mals who are naturally pigs. There
is good cause for their fondness
for dirt, and there was truth in the
remark of the drunken man in the
gutter, that "even pigs were made
by God." 3ut the fondness for
dirt in amateur pigs is causeless
and irrational, and the drunkard's
apology for himself is inadmissible.
The whole of philosophy, ethics,
and history cannot be reduced to
a series of "pig-propositions," or
summed up in a " gospel of dirt."
All substance is not dirt, neither is
all life pig-life. The highest in the
lower grade of being touches the
lowest in the higher, and there is
thus a graduated scale in the uni-
Self -subsist ing Separable Substance.
347
verse, a connecting series of re-
lations uniting all in synthetic
harmony. The suppression of the
distinct and opposite terms in the
relation destroys all this, and both
pure spiritualism and pure materi-
alism are absurd. Human nature
is the microcosm in which all these
terms are combined in one complex
and wonderful whole, body, spirit,
vegetative, animal, and intellectual
life, sense, reason, and intelligence.
Man is certainly a corporeal be-
ing, and matter is a component
part of the human essence. His
organization is generically similar to
that of other animals, and he has
in common with them sensitive life
and sense-cognition. Those who
wish to believe that he is a merely
material being, an aggregation of
molecules moved by electricity,
fancy that it is easier to understand
what matter is, and to ignore every
superior substance, than it is to
understand what mind is, or spiri-
tual substance. But they are wo-
fully mistaken in this. They are
so accustomed to the impressions
made on their senses, and familiar
with sense and the sensible, that
they fancy they understand it and
have a clear idea of it. But the
common, gross notion which the
unthinking have of the nature of
bodies is on a level with the no-
tions of untaught children concern-
ing the sun and moon. The senses
present only the phenomena of
substance, it is the mind which
perceives and judges of essence.
There is an immaterial element, an
active force, conspiring with the
nude matter, the element of inertia
and extended bulk, to make up
body. What is this force? It is
an entelecheia, a form, an active
principle. Your solid, sensible
bulk or mass, which you can feel
with your hand and see, analyzed,
and reduced to its components, is
resolved into a minute molecule,
which is itself composite, and it
escapes your senses altogether, at
a vanishing point where you find
only something which is " next to
nothing," the name which every
real philosopher gives to nude, un-
formed matter. If one resorts to
the active force, that which is the
real agent in gravitation, light,
electricity, magnetism, he is not
much better off. This active prin-
ciple of motion in bodies is at least
equally incomprehensible with an
active principle of sense-cognition
or intelligence. Is it easy to un-
derstand the attraction and repul-
sion which proceed from the mole-
cules of a body and act upon the
molecules of the other bodies, at a
distance, which are attracted or
repelled? Is it easy to understand
the attraction of gravitation by
which the sun draws the earth to
itself, or the centrifugal force which
balances this, and makes the earth
fly in its orbit ? It is necessary to
infer the existence of all active
forces which are necessary to ac-
count for all effects which are
known, as their sufficient reason
and cause. From the nature of
the effect we infer the nature of
the cause, and from diverse effects
we must conclude diverse causes.
Animal life, with its sense-cogni-
tions, demands a form, an animat-
ing principle, immaterial, unextend-
ed, simple, and active, which co-
exists with the material stuff of the
organized body and makes it an
organic unity, determines its spe-
cies and gives it organic life and
motion, sensitive cognition and
enjoyment. A child may talk to a
doll, or whistle to a musical box.
But it knows that it is only playing
that they are aware of anything.
No one ever requested a piano to
348
The Reality of the Soul as a
play a tune, or asked a statue for
historical information, if he was in
full possession of his reason. We
do, however, whistle to a canary-
bird, and pat a good dog on the
head, guide oxen by the voice,
soothe, encourage, or restrain a
horse by signs and tones. The
form which vivifies the animal
body is above that which is in a
picture or statue ; it is quite differ-
ent from the principle of move-
ment in a mechanism, or the har-
mony which lies latent in a musi-
cal instrument. It is not identi-
cal with the material substance
which it informs, or a result of its
organization and affections. It is
distinct though not separate from
it, whether it can operate and exist
in a separate state or not. Animal
life requires a body as well as a
soul. Sense-affections and sense-
cognitions are organic in their
nature, as well as locomotion and
vegetation. But there is a sim-
ple, immaterial principle necessary
in order to make the mechanical
structure of the organism sensitive.
These explanations show what is
meant by the philosophical dictum,
anima humana est forma corporis
" the human soul is the form of
the body." It is the principle of
life, a simple, immaterial substance,
united substantially with the cor-
poreal substance in the human
subject, the two making one com-
posite but undivided essence. It
is also a principle of rational life,
and therefore far superior to a
mere animal soul, as Aristotle has
said: "It seems to be another
kind of soul."* It is formally a
spiritual substance, but it is also
virtually what the lower kinds of
souls are formally. Aristotle il-
lustrates this by a comparison with
geometrical figures. The more
* On the Soul, lib. ii. c. 2.
complete ones contain the more
elementary in potency. Thus, he
says, the principle of sensitive life
includes in potency the vegetative
principle, as the quadrangle con-
tains the triangle.* And in like
manner, the rational soul includes
the principle of sensitive life.
This principle of rational life is
a pure entelecheia or spiritual form,
in its activity specifically different
from the active force of bodies,
and in its potential or passive aspect
free from all matter, or potency of
extended bulk and aggregate com-
position of atoms. We infer this
from the nature of its modifica-
tions and operations. We cannot
immediately perceive the substance
of the soul, nor can we that of the
body. We infer the active force
in bodies and the point of depar-
ture in which it is concentrated as
a concrete principle of motion and
extension, because we are obliged
to do so by effects which demand
such a cause. And, by a similar
judgment, we affirm a nature or
principle, determined by its essence
and attributes to be a recipient and
an agent fit to be a subject of total-
ly different phenomena. These are
immaterial and spiritual. They
are not movements in space or ex-
tended magnitudes. Desire and vo-
lition, sensitive apprehension and
rational cognition, do not move
from point to point marking a lin-
ear track in space. Ideas and
thoughts, imaginations, memories,
reflections, inductions, fear, sorrow,
hope, enjoyment, have none of the
three dimensions, length, breadth,
and depth ; they have no geometri-
cal figure, are not triangular, circu-
lar, or square, cannot be seen,
touched, tasted, or smelled. A
mirror which reflects objects can-
not have by virtue of the material
* ib. c. 3 .
Self-subsisting Separable Substance.
349
composition which makes it a mir-
ror the cognition of the reflected
objects. It cannot be anything
more than an instrument by which
these objects may be apprehended.
If we fancy a mirror which has
cognizance, we are obliged to sup-
pose another and distinct principle
joined with the mirror and by its
help taking cognizance of reflect-
ed objects. The representative or-
gans of sense must therefore be
informed by a distinct and imma-
terial principle, one and simple,
whose instruments these organs are.
If its activity is strictly and totally
limited to the effect of giving life
to the organic body and exercising
with its parts and organs functions
of animal life, it is dependent on
matter for its operations, and there-
fore, most philosophers infer, for
its existence, which is commonly
thought to cease when animal life
is extinct in the body.
The human soul, however, has a
higher operation which is inorganic,
a life which it possesses in itself as
a substance having its being in it-
self, its own proper self-subsisting
principle, independent of the body
for operation and existence. This
life and operation it does not com-
municate to the body and its or-
gans. To this life, animal life is
an inferior, subservient adjunct.
The soul is like a swimmer who is
submerged in water as to the infe-
rior parts of the body, while his
head is above the water. It lives
in the body as the principle of ani-
mal, sensitive, corporeal life and
motion, but above it as a rational
principle, in its intellectual, moral,
and spiritual life. All this has been
heretofore proved in the analysis of
intellectual cognition. The object
of sense-cognition is the concrete,
singular, material object in its sen-
sible phenomena. The immediate
object of the intellect is the uni-
versal, abstracted from all matter,
above time and space, ideally ap-
prehended, virtually infinite, apper-
taining to the order of the eternal
reasons which are a reverberation
from the divine intellect. The
highest good of the will is also im-
material, and its highest virtue is
moral virtue. From these opera-
tions of the human soul which are
superior to all motion in space we
infer its nature, as superior to all
dimensive quantity and every ele-
ment of quantity or active force of
local motion, that is, its spiritual
nature as a spiritual being. The
nature of spirit is constituted by its
self-subsistence as a substance, in-
dependent of matter for existence,
life, and operation. This is some-
thing more than being simple and
immaterial. That is simple which
has no component parts, immateri-
al which is not a passive principle
of inertia and extended dimensions*
The active force of matter and the
vital principle of animal life are
simple and immaterial. But they
need to actuate matter in order to
get their centre and term of opera-
tion. A spirit can think and will,,
can live and act, attain perfection
and felicity, without any depend-
ence on matter. The human soul
is a spirit because it is rational, and
this is what gives to man his spe-
cific difference from other animals.
His spiritual substance, neverthe-
less, contains in its nature virtually,
in a more eminent mode, all that,
constitutes the principle of animal
life, as that contains the principle
of vegetative life. It has, therefore,
an attitude toward union with a
body, in order to complete itself in
the integrity of the human essence
and nature. Without the body, one
part of its activity would remain
necessarily dormant. In respect
350
The Reality of the Soul as a
to animal life, its dependence on
the body is intrinsic. But in re-
spect to rational activity, its de-
pendence is only extrinsic, and is a
consequence of the union of the
soul and body in one composite
essence.
The exposition already given of
the rational operation of the soul
shows, that the sensible species or
phantasm furnishes only the medi-
um of-communication between the
mind and its proper, immediate ob-
ject, the universal, or abstract truth ;
and afterwards presents itself as
the secondary, mediate object of
intellectual cognition in reflection,
as visible by the intellectual light
which the mind itself casts on it
from the universal. In this pres-
ent state of union with the gross,
animal body, the mind is bound
and restricted, somewhat in the
same way as oxygen is bound by its
union with hydrogen in water. It
must conform itself to the condi-
tions of its mode of life and action,
and remain turned toward the sen-
sible object. The brain and the
sensitive organism must act, in or-
der that the mind may be in a con-
dition to act. Therefore, sleep,
cerebral disorder, a diseased or de-
cayed condition of the organs, and
other physical conditions, impede
the liberty of the mind and will
to act. So much of the power of
the soul is absorbed in giving the
vital influx to the body, its state is
so much modified by its union with
it, it is so deeply immersed in sense,
and so fast bound to its organs,
that its innate faculty to perceive
spiritual essences and apprehend
the intelligible without any sensible
idea is dormant, like the aptitude
for breathing in an embryo. The
intellect needs the previous opera-
tion of sense and imagination to
set its object in view, because,
while the soul informs such a body
as it now has, it cannot understand
except by turning to sensible things.
If the brain cannot furnish the
images, the mind is like a mirror
with a cloth thrown over it, or a
student whose book is locked up
in a drawer. There are certain pre-
liminaries and conditions to the ex-
ercise of intelligence and volition
which the soul must place by its
conjoint action with its bodily or-
gans, as one complex principle of
operation. But, as its dependence
in the act of thinking on the con-
course of the body is not intrinsic,
but purely extrinsic, the act itself
is the separate act of the mind, in-
organic and wholly spiritual. This
was long ago demonstrated by Aris-
totle, and the same demonstration,
amplified in various ways, is found
in every treatise on psychology
which is worth anything.
The whole argument comes back
to this point, that the object of ra-
tional cognition is spiritual, and
therefore the act is spiritual, and
the subject spiritual. The univer-
sal cannot in its universality be
concreted in material conditions.
Even the individuated material
substance cannot manifest itself as
essence to the senses, but only in
its phenomena. The ideas of the
transcendental and the universal
as concepts of the mind are im-
material, and as they are received
in their subject according to the
mode of the recipient, the intellect
which receives them after a spiritu-
al mode must be a spirit.
Again, the impressions made on
the organs of sense, when they
reach a certain grade of intensity,
injure or destroy the organs, be-
cause they are material. Whereas,
the intellect is strengthened and
brought into more perfect activity,
in proportion to the vividness of
Self -subsisting Separable Substance.
351
the intellectual light which it re-
ceives.
Once more, a material organ can-
not turn back or reflect on itself.
You cannot apply your right hand
to itself, in the same way that you
can apply your left hand to it.
You must double one hand over
and change its figure, in order to
apply one part to the other part.
Moreover, if you join your two
hands, you must touch each part
of one by a corresponding part of
the other, and cannot touch one
part of one by the whole of the oth-
er, much less touch at the same time
each part separately and also the
whole by one indivisible contact.
The organs of sense, likewise, re-
quire their object to be at a dis-
tance from them, and their func-
tions are separate. The eye can-
not see itself or its vision. Nor
can we hear our vision, or touch
our hearing. The reflection, com-
parison, and co-ordination of sen-
sations require a common, interior
sense in the sensorium, and a sim-
ple, immaterial principle as an ac-
tuating form. By virtue of this
form sensation is reduced to unity,
there is a compenetration of sensa-
tions and movements which are
referred to one principle and pro-
duce an individual life. The sen-
sitive animal by sensation thus re-
turns partly upon himself, and by
imagination and memory retains
and in a measure reproduces the
impressions of sensation. If the
animal is merely sentient, he stops
with the cognition of sensible phe-
nomena. He returns on his sensa-
tions only, by virtue of the simple,
immaterial principle united with
his organization.
But the rational soul returns on
itself by a perfect reflection. It
touches the whole and every part
with its whole, in one simple act.
It returns upon its reasonings, im-
mediate perceptions, sensations, vo-
litions, upon all its acts and upon
itself as the subject and actor, in a
way which is partially illustrated by
the perfect coincidence of several
lines in one line, and several points
in one point. Its complete exemp-
tion from all extension and mate-
riality is thus manifest, and of
course it is a necessary consequence
from this that it does not think,
will, or reflect by an organ. It is
not the brain which thinks, but the
mind ; and the brain, with the or-
gans, only subserves and ministers
to it in thinking. It is therefore a
substance, self-subsisting, and not
intrinsically dependent on the body
for its intelligent operation and for
its existence. Its object is incor-
poreal, its ideas are incorporeal, its
operation is incorporeal, and it has,
therefore, incorporeal essence, life,
and existence. We repeat also,
once more, that it is an image of
God and participates in his intelli-
gence, understanding and measur-
ing every kind of being by the
eternal reasons whose seat is in the
divine intellect. Its archetype is
therefore God in his specific ratio
of being, by which he is most per-
fect. And as God is a spirit, the
soul which is in the highest grade
of being and possesses formally a
perfection which is in God formal-
ly as his highest perfection, must
also be a spirit.
The immortality of the soul is
an immediate and necessary con-
sequence from its nature as a
self-subsisting spiritual substance.
Death is a separation between the
matter of the living being and its
vital principle, by which the corpse
is left deprived of intrinsic self-
moving power, and abandoned to
extrinsic natural agencies. If the
vital principle depends for its ope-
352
The Reality of the Soul as a
ration and existence completely on
its material compart, it becomes
extinct when the body becomes
unfit to be informed by its vital in-
flux. The human soul does not
depend on the body for its exist-
ence, its highest life, and its proper
specific operation. The corrup-
tion of the body has no tendency
to deprive it of anything except a
mode of existence, an inferior kind
of life, and those operations which
have an intrinsic dependence on
the concourse of bodily organs. It
is capable of a continued ration-
al existence and operation, because
it has the nature and powers of
pure spirits in its essence, it is self-
subsisting and active, a real sub-
stance, and not a mere constituent
of a substance. It is an entelecheia
which does not require a material
term of actuation, but which in-
cludes its own term in its spiritual
essence, and has no composition
except that of spiritual essence and
existence. Its existence is its be-
ing received from God by the crea-
tive act. It can cease to exist only
when God reverses the creative
act, withholds the divine influx, and
lets it perish by annihilation. No
created power can destroy it, no
internal disintegration can change
it or resolve it into more simple
elements, no number of operations
can exhaust its vitality. Aristotle
calls it "incorruptible and eternal."
It is eternal in the sense of having
begun at the instant of its creation
an endless existence, because it
is free from all material composi-
tion and dependence on organic
structure and therefore incorrup-
tible. There is no destruction in
the universe except that of cor-
ruption and disintegration of com-
posites. God creates but does not
annihilate. All things created tend
to perpetuity and imitate, accord-
ing to their grade of being, the eter-
nity of the Creator. The matter
of the corporeal universe is ever-
lasting. Its changes and motions
are a series of states and acts in
which its potentiality is educed in-
to actuality by a perpetual process
in the line of being, and not by
a retrogression toward nothing.
Living things which are corrupti-
ble perpetuate their species. They
do this, says Aristotle, " in order
that, in so far as they can, they may
partake of the eternal and the di-
vine: for this all things desire, and
for the sake of it they do whatever
they do naturally. Since, there-
fore, they cannot partake of the
eternal and divine by a continu-
ous existence, because no corrupti-
ble thing can remain constant in its
numerical unity, they partake of
them the best they can, one more,
another less, each one continuing
not in the same nature individual-
ly, but in a like nature, which is
not numerically but specifically the
same."* That which is incorrup-
tible, Aristotle everywhere teaches,
as do all sound philosophers, cannot
perish, and there is consequently an
indestructible basis in matter for all
its various and changing forms, what-
ever the true theory of the ultimate
constitution of matter may be.
The perishable nature of the prin-
ciple of brute-life is asserted and
argued solely on the ground that
it is not a substance which God
immediately creates, but, though a
simple and immaterial form, an in-
complete entity, educed from the
potentiality of matter and existing
in it without self-subsistence. The
human soul is a spirit, incorrupti-
ble, and not amenable to the laws
of matter or subject to the action
of material forces. The effort at
perpetuity, the striving after a par-
* On the Soul, lib. ii. c. 4.
Self-subsisting Separable Substance.
353
ticipation of the perennial divine
being, is not, therefore, restricted
to a mere continuation of the spe-
cies, but is realized in individual
endless life.
This is the pure, metaphysical
demonstration that the soul is
deathless, derived from its very
nature as a spirit.
But there are other proofs which
corroborate this one and give great-
er intensity to the rational certi-
tude derived from pure philosophy
that the soul was created immortal
and destined to an everlasting per-
petuity of being.
In the first place, since the uni-
verse itself is indestructible, except
by the infinite power which created
it, and not only is it contrary to
fact that God ever does destroy
what he has made, but contrary to
reason that he should do so, those
beings who are highest in the uni-
verse, and for whom everything
was made, must be immortal. Ra-
tional souls belong to the highest
grade of being. Each one is bet-
ter, and more worthy of preserva-
tion, than all the stars. Therefore,
they will be preserved.
Again, the object of the intellect
is necessary and eternal truth, and
the object of desire is the universal
good. They are beyond the limi-
tations of space and time. The
faculties which are turned towards
the intelligible and the desirable
which is identical with it have an
attitude and propensity toward the
infinite. It is in the infinite, there-
fore, that their reason of being,
their final cause, and their ultimate
end must be found, and towards
this all their motions must be di-
rected.
That which is capable of perfec-
tion, and has a natural appetite for
this perfection, is not injured and
destroyed by the same causes which
VOL. xxix. 23
directly and naturally tend to give
and increase this perfection. The
principle of life has no death-giv-
ing influx. The soul does not cor-
rupt or kill the body, by diminish-
ing or withdrawing vital force,
much less by exerting a positively
deadly influence. Thought, un-
derstanding, knowledge, do not
weaken and destroy the intellect.
They strengthen and vitalize it in
proportion to their quantity and
intensity and duration. Volition,
and specifically the exercise of free
volition or free choice, does not
weaken but strengthens the will.
Acts and habits of virtue increase
by repetition and continuity. In-
tellectual and moral life grow
stronger as they endure, and the
vital impulse, the desire and en-
joyment of the intelligible and mo-
ral object of knowledge and voli-
tion, are never exhausted by the
widening and prolongation of their
sphere of action. The mind as-
pires after universal knowledge and
the heart after everlasting love.
There is nothing in nature which
is in vain. This aspiration is not
in vain. And, moreover, nature
proceeds from divine reason and
goodness. It is harmonious and
well-proportioned. There is no
harmony or proportion in it, no
wisdom manifested, no goodness
exhibited, unless rational beings
are immortal.
Nature does not deceive, because
the author of nature is Eternal
Truth. But the natural reason and
expectation of mankind in all ages
has awaited a future life. The
best, the most noble, the most he-
roic of mankind, by millions, have
lived, labored, fought and suffered >
made sacrifices and have died, in
the hope of immortality, encourag-
ed by the expectation of future
and everlasting happiness. It is
354
The Reality of the Soul as a
impossible that this should be an
illusion.
Finally, we recur once more to
the archetypal ideas in God, where
we find the eternal reasons which
measure our minds and all things.
The creation is an imitation of
God's essence, in so far as it is
imitable; a participation^ of his be-
ing, in so far as it can be partici-
pated. The highest grade of being
bears the formal image of God by
the participated light of intelligence
and the faculty of rational volition
which accompanies reason. The
intelligent creature imitates and
participates in the most excellent
act which is the divine life, the
pure, absolute Entclechcia, which is
eternal by essence. It is, therefore,
as Aristotle says, aidios, eternal, in
the full sense of the idea as con-
ceivable and possible in a finite
being. That is, it has a beginning
but no ending ; it has not the total
and simultaneous possession in per-
fection of interminable life, but a
continuous and never-ending pro-
gression in a line of life which
is never terminated, a revolution
around God in an orbit whose
curve is not re-entering. This is
known to human reason by its par-
ticipation in the eternal reasons
which are in the intellect of God,
and by which he created the world
in wisdom. Our mental spectro-
scope shows that this thought and
purpose is in God', and has been in
God from eternity, and that he is
the author of our rational conviction
that the soul is immortal. The
very same argument proves that
the soul was created to participate
in the desirable good and felicity
of God, as well as in his intelli-
gence and duration of existence,
in a mode proportioned to its na-
ture.
The one great difficulty which
presents itself in apparent opposi-
tion to this conclusion is the cor-
ruptible condition of human nature
by reason of the union of the soul
with an animal and mortal body,
and the universal fact of death,
which extinguishes each separate
human life and the collective life
of each generation in turn. It
might also be proved, from what is
known scientifically of the structure
of the earth and the sun, that the
laws of nature, if they continue to
operate unchanged, must eventual-
ly put an end to the life of the
whole human species. If the soul
is a self-subsistent substance, an
intelligent spirit, separate in exis-
tence and operation from an or-
ganic body, why is it united to a
body, and to a body which is mor-
tal ? Aristotle says : " It is a drud-
gery to be joined With the body
and unable to escape from it, and,
moreover, something to be shunned,
since it is better for the intellect
not to be with the body, as it is
commonly said and appears to
many consonant with reason." *
If it is not better for the soul to
be with than to be without the
body, it ought not in reason to
have been united with the body.
If it is 'better, and the human spe-
cies has its sufficient reason of be-
ing, body belongs to the human
essence, is an integral part of man,
necessary to his perfection, and
therefore ought to be incorruptible
and immortal.
Moreover, the inchoate state of
a rational, endless, and happy life
ought to contain in germ its own
* 'Eniwovov 5e *ai TO ^.e/xix^ac
SwdfJ-evov aTToAvflijvai, *al irpoaeri (J>ev;cTbv, eirrep
jSeATior T<p vcp fj.r) jnera. aw/maro? elvai, Ka.Bo.itep clcode
re XeyecrQai KO.I TroAAot? <rvv(>oKel. Laboriosum est
etiam conjunctum esse cum corpora, neque absolvi
ab eo posse, et insuper fugiendum, quippe quum
melius sit intellectui non esse cum corpora, quemad-
modum et dici solet et complures consentiunt (De
Anima, lib. i. c. iii. art. 19).
Self -subsisting Separable Substance.
355
perfection, and develop the same
under constant laws, according to
the analogy of other and inferior
parts of the universe. But is the
life of man on earth worth living,
taken as a whole, and worth con-
tinuing in an endless duration?
Ancient philosophers endeavor-
ed to solve the problem of man
and his mortal life, but with very
poor success. Modern rationalists
renew the effort, some with a ten-
dency toward optimism, others
with the opposite tendency toward
pessimism. Pure reason, if the
light of faith is shut out, may in-
vent plausible conjectures, or even
argue out some probable theories.
It cannot furnish an adequate and
satisfactory doctrine. There are
notable shortcomings in all purely
natural science; and in philosophy,
as well as in the other branches of
human knowledge. Most of those
who hold with firm assent and with
inward complacency the belief in
immortality hold it as a religious
doctrine, or by virtue of a philoso-
phy derived in part from the tradi-
tion of religious faith. Those pro-
fessed theists or rationalists whose
life is conformed to the higher
rules of natural reason, and in
whose breasts pure and noble sen-
timents and affections hold sway,
regard life and every bond of pure
and rational love uniting them to
their kind, as sacred. They esteem
intellectual and moral life, and the
union of love with those who are
worthy of love, as an inestimable
privilege, and long for their perpetu-
ation after death. Let their meta-
physical convictions be more or
less clear and strong, they are sen-
sible of a longing and a demand
in human nature for immortality
which cannot be defrauded by na-
ture or its Author. Separation,
and the extinction of the earthly
life, are to them unbearable, except
as they are sustained by the hope
of immortality. Love of wisdom,
love of the good, the beautiful, and
the lovable, and the love of those
persons who are justly dear, seeks
to eternize itself. Mr. Buckle de-
clared that his love for his mother
convinced him that the souls in
which such a love can exist must
be immortal. The late Mr. Bayard
Taylor is credibly reported to have
said that although he did not know
how to demonstrate immortality,
he knew its truth, and could much
better understand the infinite than
the finite. Persons of a pure and
pious disposition and great inten-
sity of natural affection, who seem
to themselves to waver in their be-
lief of a future life, especially when
they are in life-long, inconsolable
sorrow over the parting from the
persons whom they- loved the most
deeply and tenderly, do not neces-
sarily doubt with a real and posi-
tive doubt seated in their reason.
They may lack clear and consistent
knowledge of the divine truth, and
long for clearer evidence, while
they still possess an inward certi-
tude and an unwavering belief in
their minds to which in their hearts
they fully consent. Their waver-
ing is the tremulousness of the
light which is in them, which is
totally different from the darkness
of positive doubt and unbelief.
The common belief of mankind in
the future and separate existence
of the soul is a well-known fact.
Among the people who have been
brought up in Christian civilization,
the depth and intensity of their
belief in the dignity and excellence
given to human nature by the ra-
tional soul is shown by their hor-
ror for homicide. An instance of
the intensity of this feeling in re-
gard to the sacredness of human
356
The Reality of the Soul as a
life and of the body, on account
of the soul, occurred recently near
New York, and is so striking as to
be worth citing as a most curi-
ous illustration. A pretty and in-
teresting little boy, who was ap-
pointed to take part with his
school-fellows in a dramatic enter-
tainment that same evening, while
playing near a tame bear was sud-
denly seized and killed by the
bear. This was tragical enough,
and the grief and sympathy which
followed such a sudden and sad
death were natural and what might
be expected to arise in every sim-
ilar circumstance. But the strik-
ing and curious illustration of the
point we are considering, furnish-
ed by this particular instance, is
found in an accessory incident.
The bystanders were especially
horrified at seeing the bear quiet-
ly lick his paws imbrued in the
blood of the boy. This was em-
phasized in the newspaper account
of the sad event, and the fact
mentioned with evident satisfac-
tion that the bear had been killed.
Nothing could be less rational than
to condemn and detest the poor
bear for following his natural in-
stincts. But the horror at blood-
shedding and at bloodthirstiness
in a rational being is so strong,
that it overleaps the bounds of
reason and personifies the brute,
whose savageness is an image of
that which is so criminal in a man.
The sacredness of human blood,
of human life, of the human body,
in the common estimation, is most
vividly exemplified in this instance.
And this sense of sacredness is
founded in the sense of that worth
in man which is the primary reason
for believing that he is immortal.
It is for the same reason that
the most extraordinary care and
respect are evinced toward the
bodies of the dead. The univer-
sal and intense anxiety to find and
identify the bodies of the soldiers
who fell in our late civil war, the
vast outlay of time, labor, and
money devoted to this purpose,
the rage which was excited by
reports of insulting treatment of
corpses on the battle-field, the in-
dignation awakened by any sup-
posed negligence of due rites of
sepulture by the commanders, and
the affecting care lavished on the
decoration of the cemeteries where
this army of the dead reposes all
these are an overwhelming testi-
mony of popular belief and the com-
mon sentiment of the human heart.
The deification of heroes among
the ancient pagans, the veneration
of Christian heroes after death
among Christians, tli emotion call-
ed forth by the funeral obsequies
of the great and of the good, are
all manifestations of the common
sentiment of mankind that the soul
survives the body. In a descrip-
tion of the funeral rites of a bishop
lately deceased contained in a
secular newspaper, the writer has
inserted the following sentence, in
which he expresses the sentiment
awakened in all hearts not insen-
sible, by similar demonstrations :
" Emerson says that the religions
of the world are the ejaculations
of a few imaginative men. That
scene in the cathedral, so solemn,
so rich in everything that attracts
the senses, so overwhelming with
its force of the most momentous
truth of philosophy or fact death
so full of calm, of serenity, of
peace, was the effect of an ejacu-
lation. It represented the convic-
tion of nine-tenths of the enlight-
ened portion of mankind that the
human soul is immortal."'
* " Ceremonies at the Funeral of Bishop Foley,"
Chicago Tribune^ February 22, 1879.
Self-subsisting Separable Substance.
357
Those who are the most glorious
in their death and after their death
among men leave a testimony after
them in which this common senti-
ment of mankind is concentrated
and intensified. In them humanity
raised to its highest power speaks
with the force of universal reason
personified and manifested in visi-
ble majesty. Socrates drank the
hemlock calmly, as if he actually
saw the eternity before him. Those
who do not reverence St. Paul the
inspired prophet and commissioned
legate of God, must honor Paul
the philosopher and hero. " I have
fought a good fight, I have kept the
faith, I have finished my course :
henceforth there is laid up for me a
crown of righteousness which God
the just judge shall give me in that
day." No rational man can neg-
lect to give weight to such a testi'-
mony, without violating one of the
fundamental rules of all rational
philosophy. Much less can he
shut his eyes to the divine tragedy
enacted on the cross, or his ears to
the words of the august Sufferer
who among all men is emphatically
THE MAN, " Father, into thy hands
I commend my spirit."
If reason and philosophy come
short of an adequate solution of
the enigmas of human life and the
destination of the human species,
this is no just cause for abdicating
reason altogether. Suicidal despair
in philosophy is a mere insanity.
The eternal truths, the existence
of the most perfect Being, the spiri-
tual and immortal nature of the
human soul, are certain. Difficul-
ties arising from ignorance and
limitation before the intellect to
puzzle and baffle it in its effort to
search out the beginning and the
end of universal reality, and to
understand the harmonies of all
spheres of existence and knowledge,
cannot affect this certainty. It is
utterly irrational to deny or doubt
what is knowable and known be-
cause it is surrounded by the infi-
nite region which to the human
intellect is naturally unknowable or
in its present condition unknown.
There is a secret in human destiny
known to God, and which must be
made known by God to men, or
remain impervious to the human
intellect. The eternal reasons ac-
cording to which the human intel-
lect measures nature are inadequate
to measure man and his destiny.
So long as he is considered in his
relations to the purely natural
order, his reason of being and the
end toward which he is tending
are enveloped in obscurity, his
condition and history defy all ef-
fort to bring them into harmony
with divine reasons and a just
order, and the human race presents
the appearance of a planet which
is wandering from its orbit. This
is an indication that humanity is
under a higher and supernatural
law. Astronomers long ago guess-
ed that the order of the solar sys-
tem did not stop within its own
bounds, that it was not isolated
and still, within the limits of its
own orbital revolutions around the
centre. They conjectured also
that the fixed stars were not
still.
It is known now, that sun and
stars are moving with great rapid-
ity, that our solar system is a part
of a more extended system of move-
ment. The stars behind us are
drawing together, those in front
are opening and separating, like
objects on a road from which we
are retreating or towards which we
are advancing. So it is in the or-
der of rational philosophy. There
is a closing up when we look back-
ward on rational principles which
358
The Black Age.
indicates that we cannot remain
stationary or move backward.
There is no opening except as we
look forward toward a region re-
mote from mere human calculation
with the data of our short span
of existence, whose spaces and re-
lations are immeasurable by our
mind and its imperfect instruments.
The secret of God by us undis-
coverable, the higher knowledge, to
us, without revelation, unknowable,
was disclosed to man in the begin-
ning of his history; it has come
down -by a tradition of wisdom
above all philosophy, and has al-
ways been possessed by the most
favored and elect portion of man-
kind, the ancestors of Christ and
the apostles, the spiritual progeni-
tors of the whole race of Christians.
The reminiscence of it was never
anywhere wholly lost. The Greek
philosophers all refer to this an-
cient and to them dim tradition as
coming from the age and the source
of light. Plato vaguely and anx-
iously hints at a hope of some new
and divine illumination in the fu-
ture. Cicero's hesitating and re-
served tone in the affirmation of
philosophical truth manifests the
need and the longing of the human
mind for clearer, more divine, and
more complete answers to the ques-
tionings of the curious intellect.
The aspirations and attainments of
human nature show its capacity
and attitude for the maximum of
good in the aspect of the intelli-
gible and the desirable, its short-
comings on all sides show the un-
attainability of this summumbonum,
without supernatural revelation and
grace. St. Paul's declaration that
" by the Law is the knowledge of
sin," i.e., of a defect which separates
man, in respect to his highest rela-
tion, from God, is a universal truth.
All natural knowledge of nature
and its laws, all purely human phi-
losophy, ends with the sense and ac-
knowledgment of an irremediable
deficiency, and is a smothered, half-
suppressed moan of human nature
crying out for its Redeemer.
THE BLACK AGE.
WE mean the tenth century, for
of all the middle ages it is con-
sidered the darkest even by ex-
cellent Catholic writers. It gets
this character in history from a
negative namely, the comparative
lack of writers who lived in it ;
and from a positive namely, Luit-
prand,* a Lombard historian of
Spanish origin, who was especial-
ly hostile to the popes from being
* Luitprand wrote Liber de Rebus gesiis Ottonis
Magni Imperatoris, Relatio de Legatione Con-
ttantinopolitana, and Antapodosis^ a history
of Eu/ope. He was bishop of Cremona, and is him-
self one of the lights of the tenth century.
attached to the court and the cause
of the German emperor, Otho I.,
who, like his successors in the mid-
dle ages, sought to control the Pa-
pacy temporally and spiritually.
Is it fair to draw a conclusion hos-
tile to the tenth century from such
a negative and such a positive?
The anti-papal prejudices of Luit-
prand disqualify him as a reliable
witness in the case, since his trans-
parent purpose, as every reader of
him may perceive, is to defame the
condition of the church in Rome,
bring contempt on the popes, who
The Black Age.
359
were unfriendly to the ambition of
Otho, and extol the deeds of his
sovereign, of whom he was an ab-
ject courtier.
Flodoard, a contemporary his-
torian, who wrote a life of the Ro-
man pontiffs, is a much better au-
thority. The tone of his work iscalm
and impartial, as becomes a writer
of history, while every page of it
shows industry, research, and learn-
ing. Luitprand declaims while
Flodoard narrates facts. Those
who would have a correct know-
ledge of the so-called " black age "
should read Flodoard as well as
Luitprand. Yet the latter author
seems to have swayed the judgment
of even such writers as Baronius,
who calls the tenth an " iron age,"
and Bellarmine, who says it was the
most ignorant of the ages.* We
protest against the inference of
these authors. We propose to de-
fend the accused century from their
charges, and to show that it is not
a black spot in history, as they
would lead us to believe. That there
were scandals in it we admit, as
there have been at all times in the
church; but we deny that Luit-
prand's statements concerning the
popes of this age are true, and
maintain that his whole history
should be discounted with more
than the usual grain of allowance
for prejudice, bigotry, and partisan-
ship. It can be shown that al-
though the tenth cannot compare
with the eleventh century in bril-
liancy, still that the arts and
sciences flourished in it, and es-
pecially at Rome, in spite of many
drawbacks. Luitprand's authority
weighed too much with both Bel-
larmine and Baronius. If our pur-
pose were merely to defend the
Papacy from the inference which
* De Controversiis Fidei de R. Pontif., \. iv.
its enemies draw from the scandals
of that age, we should merely quote
the passage of Tertullian in which
he writes : " What, then, if a bishop
or a deacon should fall away from
the rule, must we admit that heresy
has won a victory over truth ? Do
we test the faith by persons, or per-
sons by the faith ?"* and dismiss
the subject. The church certainly
did not lose her fecundity in this
century, since it was during it that
the Gospel was preached to the
Normans, Sclavs, Bohemians, Poles,
Hungarians, and Muscovites. Fe-
cundity and sanctity in the church
are correlative terms. The ninth
century, the heir of three hundred
years of Irish f missionary labor on
the continent of Europe, combined
with the ancient Roman Christian-
ity of the Benedictine cloisters the
ninth century, still resplendent with
the traditions of Charlemagne and
Alcuin, did not sink into gloomy
night when the tenth was born.
There were still countless monas-
teries in Italy and Gaul, in which
the monks were busy, like bees in
the hive, copying ancient manu-
scripts, teaching the surrounding
populations gently but surely ex-
tracting the honey of classic litera-
ture from the records of the past,
while they deprived it of its poison
and its sting by the lessons of
Christianity. It is a historical im-
possibility that sudden night should
succeed to a brilliant day, or that
a brilliant day should suddenly arise
after a gloomy night. Decay in
history is as slow as growth. And
consequently, since the ninth centu-
ry, the parent of the tenth, was bril-
liant, as all admit, its rays must have
illumined the tenth, though they
* De Pr&scriptionibus, c. iii.
t Ozanam, in his Civilization Chrttienne chez les
Francs, shows that Irish monks evangelized semi-
barbarian Europe from the sixth to the ninth cen-
tury.
The Black Age.
may not have shone so brightly ;
and since the eleventh, the child
of the 'tenth, was confessedly an
age of learning and literary vitality,
it must have derived its vigor from
the paternal source. Many a man
is considered great simply because
there has been a historian to re-
cord his deeds. History written by
a skilled pen often ennobles and
immortalizes commonplace actions
and events, while without a record
the noblest deeds are often shorn
of half their splendor. May not
this fact account for the seeming
darkness of the tenth century ?
There were few historians of its
events, consequently their char-
acter has been underrated. But
whenever did silence prove the
non-existence of a fact ? When we
read of the Tiber in the classic
writings of a Roman poet or his-
torian we imagine it to be a large
and majestic river, while the fact
is that it is insignificant compared
with many an unrecorded stream
whose glories have never been sung
by bard or immortalized by a writer
of annals. Silence in this case
proves nothing.
Sufficient facts, however, are re-
corded to show that, besides the
logical inference drawn from the
antecedent and consequent ages,
the tenth was not so black as it
has been painted. It began with
the reign of a pope Benedict IV.,
a Roman whose piety and bene-
volence are praised in the high-
est terms by Flodoard, and ended
with Gerbert, the celebrated ma-
thematician, who took the name of
Sylvester II. Thus the so-called
" black age " began with a saint
and ended with a scholar. Nor
can we find that any of the scan-
dals alleged against the intermedi-
ary pontiffs rest upon any better au-
thority than that of the notorious
romancer and anti-papal partisan,
Luitprand.* The reform of the
Benedictine monasteries inaugurat-
ed by St. Berno, the first abbot of
Cluny, A.D. 910, speaks well for the
character of the regular clergy. In
the year 927 seven large monas-
teries had accepted his rigorous
sway. His successor, the learned
St. Odo, continued the good work,
until the reform became general,
so that in a short time two thou-
sand monasteries in Europe had
accepted it in all its severity. Two
abbots in Gaul, Einold and St.
John, labored in the same good
cause ; so that in spite of the de-
moralization consequent upon the
struggles of the German and Italian
factions and the disorders engen-
dered by the continual private wars
of the feudal nobles, counts, mar-
quises, and dukes, against one an-
other, the monks maintained the
purity of their institutions.
In judging this age from an An-
glo-Saxon stand-point it should not
be forgotten that in it lived the
good King Edward, son of Alfred
the Great, Athelstan, Edmund, Ed-
red, and St. Edward, all remarkable
for their piety, learning, and zeal
in purifying the church. It was
the age, also, of St. Odo and St.
Dunstan, Archbishops of Canter-
bury, whose synodical letters still
exist to attest that learning as well
as piety adorned the episcopacy of
the tenth century. The age is also
celebrated as having been the first
in which we have an instance of the
canonization of a saint by the Ro-
man pontiffs with solemn rite. This
happened in the case of St. Udal-
ric, who was canonized by Pope
John XV. in a Roman synod held
in the year 993; although the cus-
* Muratori, in hisAnnatt tfltalia^ ad annum 914,
says that Luitprand got some of his statements con-
cerning the popes from a life of Theodora, which
the learned critic calls " Un infante romanzo. "
The Black Age.
361
torn of canonizing saints without
this solemn rite was usual with the
popes from the earliest period. *
The fact that more care was taken
to prevent abuse or error in such
an important matter speaks well
for the prudence and critical spirit
of the Papacy in this age. A spirit
of criticism and discrimination al-
ways characterizes enlightenment.
There are many facts which go
to show that education, both reli-
gious and secular, was not neglect-
ed in the much-maligned "black
age." In the beginning of this cen-
tury we find that certain canons
were appointed in Pisa to teach
theology and canon law. A bull
of Benedict IV. proves this. It is
probable that a similar custom ex-
isted in other dioceses. Certainly
at Ravenna towards the end of the
tenth century there-lived a certain
Vilgard, surnamed " The Gramma-
rian," who taught school in that
city, and gave out with great pride
that " Virgil, Horace, and JuVenal
had appeared to him in a dream
and promised him immortality." f
Thus we see that classic lore was
not dea$. We have also a cata-
logue, made in this century, of the
library of the monastery of Bobbio,
founded by the monks of St. Col-
umbanus. It contains an excel-
lent list not only of sacred authors,
but even of the best profane histo-
rians, orators, poets, and gramma-
rians, copied by the daily labor of
those self-sacrificing men to whom
we are indebted for the preservation
of ancient literature. Raterius of
Verona, speaking of Rome in this
century, says that nowhere else
could one be so well instructed
* Those who doubt this should consult the ablest
book ever written on the subject, Benedict XIV.'s
De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Canoniza-
tione
t Tiraboschi, Storia. della Letteratura Itali-
, torn. iii. p. 192.
in the sciences. This author was
himself one of the great lights of
the age. He was born in the dio-
cese of Liege about the year 896,
entered the monastery of Laubes
when a boy, and studied with great
success both the Greek and Latin
authors (which were commonly
taught in his country). He went
to Italy with Ilduin, Bishop-elect
of Liege, who afterwards became
Bishop of Verona, and from it was
transferred to the archbishopric
of Milan ; and then Raterius .suc-
ceeded him as Bishop of Verona.
The learned Belgian fell into dis-
grace with Hugo, King of Italy,
who exiled him to France, where
he taught literature for a long time.
His works are divided into three
parts. The first, besides six books
ot Preloquia \\\ which he treats of
the duties of man, contains many
essays on canon law, sacred histo-
ry, and apologies for his conduct
in dealing with his diocesans and
the king; the second contains his
letters and many theological tracts;
the third is made up of his ser-
mons to the people. He shows
great scholarship on every page,
not only in sacred but also in pro-
fane literature. His style, how-
ever, is harsh, as is the style of most
of the authors of the middle ages.
They were ages when men sought
after solid learning and not after
the beauties of style. In our days
we have the graces of style studied
to excess, while our learning is su-
perficial and our erudition very
often slip-shod. It will hardly be
disputed by those who make a spe-
cial study of the so-called dark
ages that although education was
not as general as it now is, because
the art of printing was not known,
yet that the learned classes of that
period were far in advance of the
moderns in profound knowledge
362
The Black Age.
and genuine erudition. Works
written in the middle ages have
never been equalled since; witness
the poems of Dante and the theo-
logical and philosophical works of
Thomas Aquinas.
Atto of Vercelli was another
great writer of the " black age."
He was probably of Lombard
origin. He was made bishop of
Vercelli A.D. 924, and lived till
about the year 960, when he was
succeeded by Ingone. His works
were numerous and learned. One
called the Capitular is divided into
a hundred chapters, and contains
the acts and decrees of various
councils held by him for the regu-
lation of his diocese. In this work
we find many decrees ordering his
priests to establish public schools for
the instruction of youth. Another of
his works is called Ecclesiastical
Oppressions, in which we have an
interesting account of the grievan-
ces and vexations of the church in
those times. He also wrote a com-
mentary on St. Paul's Epistles, and
two sermons, one on the Ascension,
the other a panegyric of St. Euse-
bius, Bishop of Vercelli.*
These two bishops may be fairly
taken to show that learning still
flourished in the tenth century,
and that schools were established
for the education of the people in
other dioceses as well as in theirs.
The church was always faithful to
this early tradition regarding the
establishment of schools for the
people.
Nor were there poets wanting in
this age of comparative darkness.
Theodolfus, Bishop of Orleans,
had the reputation, of being a
second Ovid among -his contempo-
raries; Paulinus, the Patriarch of
Aquileia, was also a cultivator of
* Father d'Achcry's Spicilegium^ vol. i., edit.
Paris, 1723, contains most of Atto's works.
the muse ; and their poetry was
read with delight in the first part
of the tenth century. That Greek
literature was still cultivated is
shown by a panegyric of King
Berenger, the title of which is in
Greek ; and from the writings of
Luitprand himself, who scatters
Greek passages over his pages, no
doubt to show his knowledge of the
tongue.
Two anonymous historians, call-
ed respectively, from the places of
their nativity, "The Salernitan '"
and " The Beneventan," flourish-
ed at this time. The former con-
tinued the excellent history of the
Lombards, by Paul the Deacon, up
to the year 980; while the latter
gives us a faithful chronicle of the
years 996, 997, and 998. We have
already spoken of Luitprand, who,
although a writer of great preju-
dices, was a man of real learning.
As for mathematics and philoso-
phy, we may fairly ask how could
Pope Sylvester II., formerly Arch-
bishop of Rheims, have become so
celebrated as a mathematician, un-
less there were professors to teach
him or books of the science from
which to study ?
Other writers of note flourished
in the tenth century. ^Elfric,
Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a
Saxon grammar, an Anglo-Saxon
lexicon, and a Saxon version of
the Old and New Testament. Yet
this was the age of the " chain-
ed Bible"! (Ecumenius, a Greek
writer, wrote an exposition of the
Acts of the Apostles and a com-
mentary on the Pauline and Ca-
tholic epistles. Witikind, a monk
of the Abbey of Corbie, in Sax-
ony, wrote a history of the Sax-
ons in three books, not to speak
of many other writers on sacred
and profane subjects. In view of
these facts we can with justice say
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
363
of the "black age" what is so
well expressed by the learned
Pagi :* " This century had indeed
few historians, but it did not yield
to the preceding ages in learning,
when emperors and kings favored
literature. Nor should it be call-
ed an age of ignorance and ob-
scurantism for any other cause than
that of the paucity of its writers
when compared with the multitude
who flourished in the antecedent
and subsequent periods. That it
had more writers than were known
in the time of Bellarmine is now
evident to any one who peruses a
modern catalogue of ecclesiastical
authors. It was illumined by
many bishops and abbots, monks
and religious of both sexes, of every
rank and condition, remarkable
alike for their holiness and their
learning." We may say, therefore,
that the tenth was the most silent
of the middle ages ; but it is not
logical on that account to say that
it was illiterate, or to infer from its
silence that it was inferior to the
other centuries.
PLAIN CHANT IN ITS RELATION TO THE LITURGY.
\Concluded ^\
X. TONALITY OF THE LITURGICAL
CHANT.
WHOEVER has carefully followed
our explanations concerning the
rhythm, and from what has been
said has obtained an idea of the
essence of natural music, as well as
of the significance of the chant in
the offices of the church, will in
consequence be obliged to defend,
as a necessary and essential condi-
tion, .the diatonic tonality. There
subsists, in fact, between the rhythm
and tonality a connection and mu-
tual relation. The rhythm once
established, the tonality is deter-
mined ; the duration and accent of
the tone once ascertained, the
character of the tone-intervals is
evident. In other words, the free,
natural rhythm of the chant re-
quires a free and natural tonal-
ity, while the artificial, measured
* Critica in A nnales Baronii ad annum goo.
rhythm adopts with a decided
preference the measured division
of the intervals into half and quar-
ter tones.
But, to proceed methodically, let
us first ask the question : What do-
we understand by tonality, and
what is the tonality of the Grego-
rian chant ?
When we speak of tonality we
mean the proportion according to
which the tones of a scale ascend
and the relation in which the tones
stand to each other, or, in other
words, we understand by the tonal-
ity the intervals between the tones.
Of the various tonalities which
the history of music exhibits only
two are worth considering, because
they are the only ones that have
been retained in use, and because
a contest for precedence is now go-
ing on between them in the field of
church music. These are the so-
called diatonic and chromatic tonali-
3 6 4
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
ties. The diatonic from diaro-
VIKOZ, extending through is so
called because in it the tones as-
cend according to relations natural-
ly given, and without introducing
strange intervals, so that in one
octave there are never more than
two natural half-tones Si-Ut and
Mi-Fa or E-F and B-C and a
whole tone is never forced in be-
tween two halves, nor do two half-
tones ever follow each other in
immediate succession. The chro-
matic tonality, on the other hand,
admits other intervals besides these
natural ones of five whole and two
half tones. This is done by sharp-
ing and flatting the natural tones ;
and because at first the sharp and
the flat were represented by various
colors, the variegated appearance
of the scale gave it the name of
chromatic (xpooj^ariHo?) /.<?., the
colored tonality.
Now, these two kinds of tonality
correspond so fully to the two kinds
of music and rhythm we have so
carefully distinguished that we may
at once call the diatonic the na-
tural and the chromatic the artifi-
cial tonality. This is justified both
by the peculiarities of each scale
and by authority. Natural music
can only have a natural tonality,
which, resting upon natural laws,
has nothing artificial or conven-
tional about it, but is, like speech
and natural rhythm, a gift to men
from the Creator. This natural
tonality, or, to speak more specifi-
cally, the natural diatonic scale,
consists, as we have said, of five
whole and two half tones in the fol-
lowing order :
J. J. j* ^L. JL JL Ji
Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La Si Ut, or
JL JL ^L J-, JL J^ L
CDEFGABC
That this scale is natural and is
derived from the ear can be eas-
ily shown experimentally. Take a
person with a good ear for music
but without musical education, and
let him begin and sing up from a
low note. He will keep exactly to
the intervals of the diatonic scale,
and, having reached the eighth note,
will, if he goes higher, complete the
whole octave again ; but he will
never sing the chromatic scale,
which, by the way, is no easy task
even for one who knows the con-
ventional intervals between the
tones. Thus we see that the dia-
tonic scale has its sanction in the
natural ear, the u aurium adrnira-
bile- judicium " so often quoted.
The ear rests contented with it,
showing it to be in conformity with
the natural musical sense, while the
chromatic scale (O#C-D #D-E-F-#
F-G-ttG-A-#A-B-C) makes anything
but an agreeable impression upon
the ear and mind. Now, that which
impresses the natural, unprejudiced
organ of sense as agreeable and in
conformity with nature must un-
doubtedly be natural.
This argument from the nature
of things may be further confirmed
by authority, since all those mas-
ters of song whose opinion is of
weight, and whose judgment has not
been warped by the influence of
artificial music, reach the same
conclusion. In the course of this
chapter a number of these authori-
ties will be cited. Here we will
only admit one passage, from an
anonymous author of an excellent
treatise entitled L'arbre convert
de fleurs dont les calices renfer-
mant les principes de ^ fart musi-
cale. The passage is as follows :
" Natural song is based upon eight
melodic tones, which the voice
forms in a manner altogether na-
tural, and between the first and last
of which there is a constant ratio.
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
365
Besides these eight tones no other
can be elicited by the voice in a
natural manner that is, without
effort. The voice always returns
periodically to the same intervals.
When the octave is reached the
cycle is completed and a perfect
interval formed, from which a new
cycle begins." We may add to this
passage a remark that suggests it-
self to us. It can easily be proved,
and will scarcely be gainsaid, that,
like the liturgical chant, the genu-
ine songs of the people (Volksge-
sdfige) of almost all nations are
thoroughly diatonic an argument
which is no more weakened by the
circumstance that other tonalities
are sometimes found than the exis-
tence of a poetical literature de-
stroys the fact of the greater pre-
valence of prose. In fact, it is pre-
cisely the variety of the conven-
tional tonalities among different
nations, coupled with the invaria-
bleness of the diatonic, which gives
a further and infallible testimony
to the naturalness and universality
of the latter and to the artificiality
of the former.
We will not here give any place
to the assertion that the diatonic
scale contains only the rude ele-
ments of music which the chroma-
tic first improves and develops.
We shall establish in the following
chapter, when treating of the modes,
that the chromatic is rather a de-
generacy than a higher develop-
ment of the diatonic, and in a cer-
tain sense is far more wanting in
musical worth. To the reasons
already given for our division of the
tonality into a natural and an arti-
ficial one, let us add the most im-
portant point of all, which entirely
precludes the reproach of proceed-
ing arbitrarily. It is this : that this
division rests upon the fixed, intrin-
sic, and essential laws of music. In
order to prove this fact we are
obliged to have recourse to the
primitive elements of music i.e., to-
the physical laws of sound.
It is well known that sound is
caused by the vibration of elastic
bodies. If the sound is not of too
short a duration and is of a uniform
character, it is called a tone. The
height or depth of a tone depends
upon the rapidity with which the
sounding body vibrates. These
vibrations can be easily observed
on a stretched cord. The greater
the tension supposing, of course, a
uniform length and thickness of
cord the quicker is the vibration
of the cord and the higher the tone
that is the result, and vice versa.
The number of vibrations corre-
sponding to a given tone is accu-
rately computed by means of an
instrument called the sirene. An-
other instrument, called the mono-
chord, furnishes the simplest and
easiest method of obtaining the
proportion of the number of vibra-
tions of each tone of a scale, whether
diatonic or chromatic, to the fun-
damental tone and to each other.
We shall now exhibit, as service-
able for our purpose, two principal
results of the physical investigations
on this subject.
i. If we assume a single vibra-
tion for the fundamental tone of
the diatonic scale, the tones will
bear the following proportion to
each other :
Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La Si U
CDEFGAB C
i 9-8 5-4 4-3 3-2 5-3 15-8 2
If, in order to avoid fractions,
we ascribe twenty-four vibrations
to the fundamental tone, the num-
ber of vibrations for each tone will
be as follows : >
366
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La Si Ut
CDEFGAB C
24 27 30 32 36 40 45 48
2. If we wish to raise or lower a
given tone by one semitone the
number of vibrations must be mul-
tiplied or divided by 16-15.
From these laws let us draw an
argument in favor of our essential
distinction between the diatonic
and chromatic scales. A glance at
the numbers given above shows us
that from one tone to another in
the diatonic scale there is not pre-
cisely the same progress or the
same interval, but a greatly vary-
ing proportion. But in the chro-
matic scale, on the contrary, from
one semitone to another there is
a constantly uniform progress and
always the same interval obtained
by the multiplication or division of
the given number of vibrations by
16-15. While, therefore, the dia-
tonic scale rests upon mathematical
laws implanted by nature in the
voice and ear, and exhibits that
freedom and unevenness which is the
mark of naturalness, the chromatic
scale is based upon laws which,
though also mathematical, are yet
conventional i.e., artificially estab-
lished and which, like everything
artificial, impart to the original
laws of nature, upon which they
rest, the character of constraint and
uniformity. The diatonic scale is
evidently the older and more vene-
rable, the chromatic the later and
inferior. The former no one would
have discovered, no mathematician
could have calculated, had it not
been given to men, along with the
voice and ear, immediately by the
Creator; but this once given, it
was easy enough to get up the lat-
ter by the application of a fixed
conventional law. So, also, the
physicists, in the computation of
the tone-relations and the vibra-
tions, have presupposed the tones
as given and then calculated the
vibration from them; they have
not constructed the diatonic scale
upon the basis of the laws of vibra-
tion, but have abstracted these very
laws from this scale already in ex-
istence. On the other hand,iri the
case of the chromatic scale and the
still more complicated ones which
admit fourth and eighth tones, the
musicians have first established the
conventional laws, and then con-
structed the scales according to
them.
From this development of the
question every one can see the jus-
tice of designating the diatonic as
the natural, original, universal scale,
based upon the natural musical ca-
pacity of man ; and the chromatic,
on the other hand, as an artificial
scale, of more recent origin, known
only to certain peoples, and based
upon conventional laws. And who
cannot discover here the intrinsic
relation between the diatonic natu-
ral music, the natural rhythm, and
plain chant on the one hand, and
between the chromatic measured
music, the artificial rhythm, and the
cantus figuratus on the other? It
is plainly the same principle which,
in the rhythm as well as in the
tonality, has superadded art to na-
ture, or, to speak more expressly,
artificial to natural music namely,
the principle of measure and con-
ventional laws, which is opposed to
freedom and the laws of nature.
We must here again remark, how-
ever, that we are not in any way
Tinding fault with artificial music
as such. We only desire that each
kind of music should be estimated
at its due worth, and above all that
full justice should be done to na-
tural music, which has been so long
misunderstood.
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
367
The diatonic or natural tonality
having been thus shown to be es-
sentially different from the chro-
matic, and independent in its laws,
it must retain its full and exclusive
privileges in every piece of natural
music, and especially in the litur-
gical chant. Whenever in such a
piece a departure is made from na-
tural music, it thereby ceases to
be natural without becoming artifi-
cial ; it is disfigured and perverted
into a degenerate and unnatural
position, as we only too often have
occasion to complain.
We shall now devote a few words
to our opponents on this question,
with the full conviction that our
arguments will thus acquire a new
confirmation. The diatonic scale
knows only two kinds of half-tones :
i, the natural half-tones from Mi
to Fa and from Si to Ut ; and, 2,
the B moll i.e., the semitone from
La to Si flat. This flatting of the
Si is only admitted to avoid what
is called the tritone, which is dis-
pleasing to the ear. In the mod-
ern notation it is indicated by the
flat sign, k, but in old times it was
observed by itself, or according to
certain rules. We do not need to
treat of it any further here, as every
choralist knows the rules for the
B moll sufficiently well. But some
modern choralists do not hesitate
to introduce besides into the litur-
gical chant the chromatic semi-
tones and the sharp. They give,
as the grounds for their opinion
and practice, the agreeableness of
the sound, a tradition which they
say is long established, and the
judgment of competent critics.
This last support is a weak one,
owing to the fact that at least equal
authorities can be brought on the
other side. Among the defenders
of the diatonic tonality we reckon
Benz, Janssen, Schubiger, Bilseke,
and Mettenleiter. They all appeal
on the one hand to the testimony of
such weighty authorities as Martini
and Gerbert, and on the other to the
practice of the Papal Chapel, and
quite justly acknowledge that the
tones lose their purity if they are
not strictly diatonic, and that the
admission of the chromatic half-
tones necessitates more or less a
change to the modern modes of
major and minor. If a few, like
Birkler, would permit the chroma-
tic intervals when the chant is ac-
companied by the organ, for our
part, without committing ourselves
to a judgment as to what kind of
organ accompaniment is best suit-
ed to the chant a problem as yet
unsolved we must adhere to that
very different opinion which re-
gards the melody as the principal
thing, and the accompaniments a
something so altogether subservi-
ent and subordinate that princi-
ples as well as the tonality ought
never to be sacrificed to it. We
may remark, moreover, that all the
modern defenders of the diatonic
tonality regard it from a purely
musical stand-point. We are confi-
dent that their correct views will
ripen into a full, sure, and firm con-
viction, only when they have con-
sidered the question also from the
point of view which we have set
forth in our chapter on the rhythm
and execution of the chant. In the
light of those principles all the
objections that have been made
against the diatonic tonality will
vanish like mist, and it will be seen
that this tonality, taken in connec-
tion with the proper rhythm and
execution, alone enables us to sing
the chant in an intelligent, dignified,
and edifying manner.
With regard to the long-estab-
lished tradition, the second weapon
of attack against our principle, it
368
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
is well to bear in mind that this
tradition reaches back only to the
time when the elements of figured
music began to be mixed up with
the chant, or when they had al-
ready in many ways disfigured it,
if, indeed, the chromatic tonality
was not the very means of bringing
this about. In proof we may cite
here an appropriate passage from
the estimable work of P. Anselm
Schubiger, entitled The Singing-
School of St. Gall from the Eighth to
the Twelfth Century : " The tonality
of all the Gregorian chants at the
time of Romanus, and as far back
as documentary evidence on this
subject extends, was exclusively
diatonic, in the scale of which two
whole tones alternate with one half,
and which alone is in keeping with
the eight old ecclesiastical modes
namely, the four authentic and the
four plagal modes. It certainly
cannot be denied that among the
old chants, especially among the
oldest sequences, some examples
are to be found of the same piece
written in two different modes.
But such passages are none the
less diatonic. They are to be con-
sidered to some extent as a trans-
position, and in the scale that is
introduced we have the same fea-
ture of two and three whole tones
alternating with one half-tone. But
the accordance of the old musical
authors, as also of the oldest trans-
latable compositions, furnishes us
with irrefragable proof that the
chromatic and enharmonic tonali-
ties were altogether excluded from
the Roman ecclesiastical chant."
The author then proceeds to prove
his statements: "Even as early as
the time of Charlemagne Albinus
speaks of the four authentic and
four plagal modes, and calls these
their customary names (nomina
usitata). Aurelianus Reomensis
writes that at his time the anti-
phons, responses, offertories, and
communions of both the Roman
and Greek liturgies were composed
in the eight ancient modes. Hue-
bald, in his work on the ecclesias-
tical chant, gives the distances of
the tones from each other accord-
ing to the diatonic scale alone, and
says that this suffices for the pur-
poses of his work. His manifold
and easily translated examples show
no trace of a chromatic or enhar-
monic tonality, but are all written
in the diatonic. Regino of Priim
divides music into natural and arti-
ficial, and counts the ecclesiastical
chant as belonging to the first kind.
While artificial music admits semi-
tones, natural music allows only
those that come in the scale (* in
naturali musica omnes octo toni
nullum recipiunt semitonium, nee
diesin, nee apotomen, etc.') Odo
of Cluny speaks still more plainly :
' The kind of music of which we
have been treating the diatonic,
namely according to the opinion
of the most experienced musicians
and the most holy men, on ac-
count of its more correct, more
pleasing, and more natural method,
is shown to be perfect ; since St.
Gregory, whose precepts the church
in all things most faithfully ob-
serves, composed his Antiphonary
in this kind of music and gave it
to the church, and he himself in-
structed his own scholars therein.' "
The second ground upon which
the employment of the chromatic
semitones is defended their agree-
ableness and the avoidance of
harsh sounds has already been re-
futed by the last citation from St.
Odo. We may add, however, that
those pieces of chant which actual-
ly contain harsh sounds are defec-
tive compositions, in which we pos-
sess very little that has come down
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
369
from antiquity. Let any one ex-
amine only the Graduales of the
Proprium de tempore, and see how
astonishingly easy is their move-
ment, how exceedingly delicate
their composition. If a seemingly
harsh passage occasionally occurs,
it is sure to be an isolated and in-
significant exception. I say, advis-
edly, a seemingly harsh passage, for
very often such apparent harshness
is the result of a defective rhythm
and execution, and the remedy is:
Tollatur abusus, ut maneat usus !
But to seek to make up for the
want of the correct execution by
the introduction of chromatic in-
tervals is only to substitute one
error for another. By this the
liturgical chant is not merely
weakened but essentially destroyed.
Passages which, on account of a
bad rendering, appear harsh, in a
good execution are generally seen
to be remarkable for their strength,
and are frequently even of wonder-
ful delicacy.
Before closing this chapter we
cannot refrain from casting a glance
of investigation into the pre-Gre-
gorian times, in order to discover
the judgment of Christian antiquity
upon the diatonic and its contra-
dictory, the chromatic, music. It
would carry us too far were we to
bring before the reader the great
cloud of witnesses who speak in
favor of diatonic music, among
whom are SS. Cyprian, Basil, Atha-
nasius, Augustine, Ambrose, and
the like. Of St. Ambrose we may
say that it is pretty generally ac-
cepted that he based his method of
singing upon the ancient Grecian
system, without regard to its later
corruptions, and that among the
Grecian modes he adopted only
four, the Dorian, Phrygian, yEolian,
and Mixo-Lydian, which admit
only the diatonic scale and exclude
VOL. xxix. 24
any employment of a half-tone for-
eign to this scale. We shall confine
ourselves, then, to a very few cita-
tions. Clement of Alexandria, in
the fourth chapter of the second
book of his Padagogus t writes :
" Sunt enim admittendae modestae
et pudicae harmonise : contra a forti
et nervosa nostra cogitatione vere
molles et enervae harmoniae aman-
dae quam longissime, quae improbo
flexuum vocis artificio ad delira-
tam et ignavam vitae agendae ra-
tionem deducunt. Graves autem
et quae ad temperantiam pertinent
modulationes, ebriebati ac proter-
viae nuncium remittunt. Chromati-
cae igitur harmoniae impudenti in
vino proterviae, floribusque redimitae
et meretriciae musicae sunt reliquen-
dae" " Temperate and chaste har-
monies are to be admitted, but our
strong and vigorous judgment must
censure as much as possible those
weak and effeminate harmonies
which through pernicious arts in
the modulation of the voice train
to effeminacy and scurrility. But
grave and sober melodies banish in-
temperance and wantonness. The
chromatic harmonies are therefore
to be abandoned to immodest re-
vels and to flowery and meretri-
cious music." In the sixth book
of the Stromata, c. xi., the same fa-
ther says : " Est autem supervaca-
nea respuenda, quae frangit animos
et varie afficit, ut quae sitaliquando
lugubris, aliquando vero impudica
et incitans ad libidinem, aliquando
autem lymphata et insana " " We
must reject that superfluous music
which enervates men's souls and
produces various impressions, now
mournful and then licentious and
voluptuous, and then frenzied and
frantic." St. Jerome, the ascetic
zealot for the purity of the church's
doctrine and the church's worship,
commenting upon Eph. v. 19, lifts
370
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
up his warning voice in these
words :
" Audiant haec adolescentuli ; au-
diant hi, quibus psallendi in ec-
clesia officium est, Deo non voce,
sed corde cantandum ; nee in tra-
goedorum modum guttur et fauces
dulci medicamine colliniendas, ut
in ecclesia theatrales moduli audi-
antur et cantica, sed in timore, in
opere, in scientia scripturarum "
" Let the young men hear these
words; let those whose office it is
to chant the psalms in the church
take heed that they must sing unto
God not merely with the voice but
with the heart; not after the man-
ner of players anointing their
throats with a sweet preparation in
order that the tones and strains of
the theatre may be heard in the
church, but singing in the fear
of the Lord, in practical piety, in
the knowledge of the Scriptures."
Finally, not to make too many
citations, St. Basil speaks thus
in a homily on the i25th Psalm:
" Est autem divina et musica
harmonia, non quae verba quae-
dam complectitur aures demulcen-
tia, sed coercentia et mitigantia
malignos spiritus, qui obnoxias in-
juriis animas infestant " " Divine
harmony is not that which flatters
the ear, but that which holds in
check the malicious spirits who
annoy and hurt our souls."
But the same Holy Ghost who
for more than a thousand years
has ruled the church with watchful
care, not only nourishing with his
holy breath the sacrificial flame of
the altar, but also preserving in its
purity the sacrificial chant, to-day
also manifests his mysterious inspi-
ration in those ordinances which
issue from those who hold authority
in the church, concerning the mu-
sic that best befits the Christian
temple and its tremendous sacri-
fice. We shall only quote here a
passage from the most recent Pro-
vincial Synod of Cologne, cap. xx.
de cantu ecclesiastico : " Statui-
mus ergo et mandamus, ut cantus
ille Gregorianus suo restituatur
juri ac magis magisque colatur, et
ut, qui in componendis novis melo-
diis occupantur, non tarn chroma-
ticis modulationibus, quam scalis
sive tonis Gregorianis utentes et
modis diatonicis, molle et lascivum
quodcumque excludant " " We de-
cree and command that the Gre-
gorian chant be restored to its
rights and cultivated with ever-in-
creasing zeal, and that those who
compose new melodies exclude
everything effeminate and volup-
tuous by the use, instead of chro-
matic modulations, of the Grego-
rian scales or tones and the dia-
tonic modes. " We must here again
express our conviction that, by the
aid of tradition and the logical de-
ductions from the principles of na-
tural and liturgical music, the con-
clusion is necessarily reached that
genuine plain chant is an impossi-
bility without a strict adherence to
the diatonic tonality ; and yet that
this can be fully understood only
after having both heard and sung
for a long time a correctly-executed
diatonic chant.
XI. THE MODES OF THE LITURGI-
CAL CHANT.
In beginning to give a few sug-
gestions about the modality or the
tones of the chant, before bringing
our treatise to an end, we are first
of all obliged to exclude those
parts of this extensive subject
which might tempt us to overstep
the limits of the present work,
which, as we have often remarked,
is concerned only with the most
general principles. We cannot,
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
371
therefore, treat of the physical basis
of the modes, nor enter into the
dreary historical disputes about the
origin and number of the modes, as
to whether or not they are deriv-
ed from the old Grecian modes,
or whether their number is eight,
twelve, or fourteen matters of but
little importance towards further-
ing the revival of the chant. Nor
can we treat systematically each
particular mode, of the intervals,
dominants, finals, the range of the
melody, the cadences, etc., all of
which belongs to a grammar or
history of the chant. Another ex-
tensive subject that we shall have
to omit relates to the different kinds
of chant, varying, according to the
greater or lesser simplicity of the
melody, from the simple recitation
in directum of the final tone of the
prayers to the complicated melodic
chant of the Graduals, Versicles,
etc. Finally, we are obliged to
pass by in this chapter a subject
that is commonly taken up when
treating of the modes namely, the
Psalmody, or the psalm-tones, with
the rules about the intonation,
mediation, and termination. We
shall therefore simply confine our-
selves to sketching briefly the theo-
ry of the modes, in so far as this
may be serviceable and indispensa-
ble for the illustration of our prin-
ciples, and to drawing a compari-
son between the diatonic and chro-
matic modalities, in order to form
an estimate of their relative musi-
cal value.
What, then, do we understand by
modality or modes ? What are the
modes of the chant and what those
of modern music ? What is the
relative musical worth of these two
modalities ? With the answers to
these questions we shall conclude
our work.
Modality in its widest significa-
tion may be defined as the modus
essendi of music, characteristically
expressed by certain modes or
tones. In the tonality the musical
elements are given us by the suc-
cession of the tones and intervals,
but this succession is still unlimited
in extent. In the modality it is
portioned out according to fixed
laws, and made applicable for the
expression of definite ideas in a
musical form. This is accomplish-
ed by means of the -modes, which
in their most general sense may be
defined as "divisions of the scale
of a definite extent, distinguished
from other series of tones by cer-
tain characteristic marks." With-
out tonality music would be incon-
ceivable, but it is modality which
gives to a piece of music a physi-
ognomy and character of its own,
which distinguishes it from other
pieces. The tonality is the matter
and the modality the substantial
form, and both taken together make
up the constituent elements of mu-
sic. From their intrinsic connec-
tion with each other it follows that
the character of one is determined
by that of the other. The diatonic
tonality, therefore, requires diatonic
modes, while the chromatic conse-
quently makes chromatic the few
modes it possesses.
This preliminary question an-
swered, we now pass on to the
modes of plain chant. There are
in the chant eight distinct modes,
based upon the nature of the dia-
tonic tonality, and received by the
authorities of all times. The scale,
properly speaking, consists of only
seven tones, the eighth being the
beginning of, a new octave. Never-
theless the number of the modes is
not seven, as one might infer from
this, but neither more nor less than
eight. The reason for this is that,
on account of what is called the
372
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
chorda mobilis, the intervals in the
octaves which are constructed upon
the last three tones of the diatonic
octave correspond with those of
the octaves built upon the first
three, so that it is only the Sol-oc-
tave which is quite different from
each of the others, as we may see by
the following :
,a Sr~Ut Re Mi~Fa Sol La
j Re MT^Fa Sol LafeSi Ut Re
^ .La w
(Mr
2 - far
j Fa Sol La ^Si Ut Re Mi~Fa
3 ' ( Ut Re Mi~Fa Sol La Si~Ut
^Fa Sol La feSi Ut Re Mi
Ut Re Mi~Fa Sol La Si
4. Sol La Si^Ut Re Mi~Fa Sol
Therefore instead of seven we
have only four octaves essentially
differing from one another, forming
what are called the four authentic
modes, with Re, Mi, Fa, Sol as their
finals. They are as follows :
and a fourth. The lowest note of
the fifth is always the final, but the
fourth which completes the octave
can be placed either above or below
the fifth, so that the final may be
either at the beginning or in the
middle of the octave. By thus
dividing the octave, and varying
the position of the fifth and fourth,
the character of the mode is plain-
ly changed, though the final re-
mains the same. Thus either the
final is the lowest note, its octave
the highest, and the fifth note in
the middle of the scale, or the final
is in the middle, the fifth note the
highest, and the fourth, instead of
completing the upper part of the
octave, is placed below the final.
We have here the basis for the for-
mation of the so-called plagal or
subordinate modes, which, taken
together with the four authentic,
make up the eight modes of plain
chant. They are all diatonic, they
RE Mi~Fa Sol La Si Ut Re (Dorian).
Mi~Fa Sol La Si^Ut Re Mi (Phrygian).
FA Sol La Si~Ut Re Mi~Fa (^Eolian).
SOL La Si~Ut Re Mi~Fa Sol (Mixo-Lydian).
Thus we obtain four of the
modes of plain chant, taking root
quite naturally in the diatonic
scale. But how are we to find the
other four, called plagal modes,
which fill up the number of eight
modes ? They cannot be con-
structed simply by changing the
fundamental tone, for we would
then still have the same four modes
with a difference only of key or
pitch, which is not an essential dif-
ference in music. Nor can other
intervals be formed by the intro-
duction of the flat and sharp, for
the four tones in question must be
diatonic. The explanation is sim-
ply the following :
Every octave consists of a fifth
have, as is clearly seen, the same in-
tervals, the same range, the same
finals as their authentics, and yet
in their application they differ es-
sentially from them, so that, for in-
stance, we can tell at sight whether
a composition is written in an au-
thentic or a plagal mode.
These two ways of dividing the oc-
tave are called respectively the har-
monic and arithmetical divisions.
The authentic modes have the har-
monic division, so called because
the fifth note is the natural har-
monic mean between the first note
and its octave ; the plagal tones
have the arithmetical division, so
called because the fourth is placed
below the fifth in the numerical
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
373
order. Nothing is more unfound-
ed than the representation that this
way of* dividing the octave has
been a source of confusion in the
chant. Whatever confusion has
been introduced in the course of
time has been rather the result of
the extravagances in which the
composers of the last centuries
thought fit to indulge, now over-
stepping the range of the octave,
so that the plagal modes could no
longer be distinguished from their
authentics; now, though still retain-
ing the dominant in its place and
thus preserving at least the unity
and character of the mode, yet
perverting its nature by a depar-
ture from the old traditional figures
and cadences, and thus producing
a colorless mixture of several
modes. Add to this the introduc-
tion of the chromatic half-tones
and measured notes, and the con-
fusion was supreme.
In order to make more plain the
theory we have set forth, we sub-
join a table showing the succession
of the tones, the position of the na-
tural half-tones, the dominants and
the finals, which table will also as-
sist our further explanations :
these eight modes have been re-
ceived by the authorities of all
times. And, first, it is certain, on
the most indubitable testimony,
that St. Gregory was in possession
of these eight modes of the chant.
It is not so easily proved, though
highly probable, that St. Ambrose
made use of the four authentic
modes only, and that the introduc-
tion of the plagals was reserved for
St. Gregory. Certainly he could
find a sufficient reason for this in-
crease of the number of the modes
partly in the fact that the four au-
thentics did not give enough va-
riety to the chant, and partly be-
cause the Ambrosian method of
singing seemed to have assimilated
the germs of elements contrary to
the spirit of the liturgical chant,
such as rhythmic metre and a
measure for the note. Yet, granted
that the eight modes were received
by St. Gregory, or even before his
time, it does not follow therefrom
that the great regenerator of the
chant either found already in exis-
tence or adopted more than eight.
Neither the music older than St.
Gregory, nor that composed by
him, nor yet the nature of the holy
First mode auth.
Finals. % Dom. y t
RE Mi^Fa Sol La Si^Ut Re
Third mode auth.
^
Second mode plag. La Si Ut RE Mi Fa Sol La
Dom.
Mi^Fa Sol La Si^Ut Re Mi
Dom.
Fourth mode plag. Si Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La Si
Dom.
Fifth mode auth. FA Sol La Si~Ut Re Mi~Fa
Dom.
Sixth mode plag. Ut Re Mi FA Sol La Si~Ut
Dom.
Seventh mode auth. SOL *La Si Ut Re Mi^Fa Sol
Dom.
Eighth mode plag. Re Mi Fa SOL La Si Ut Re
So much for the character and
number of the ecclesiastical modes.
We shall now briefly show that
chant itself in the least requires a
greater -number. Rather this num-
ber received by St. Gregory was
374
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
considered, as it were, sacred and
inviolable. St. Odo tells us in his
book De Musica that St. Gregory
received his music from above, and
that therefore it is sanctioned not
alone by human but by divine
authority : " Sanctissimus Grego-
rius, cujus praecepta in omnibus
studiosissime sancta observat ec-
clesia, hoc genere compositum mi-
rabiliter antiphonarium ecclesiae
tradidit suisque discipulis proprio
labore insinuavit. Cum nunquam
legatur, eum secundum carnalem
scientiam hujus artis studium per-
cepisse : quern certissime constat
omnem plenitudinem scientiae di-
vinitus percepisse. Unde constat,
quod hoc genus musicse, d um divi-
nitus Sancto Gregorio datur, non
solum humana, sed etiam divina
auctoritate fulcitur."
In the eighth century Flaccus
Alcuin declares that every musi-
cian ought to know that in music
there are eight tones (modes) :
"Octo tones in musica consistere,
musicus scire debet." In the ninth
and tenth centuries we have the
same testimony from Aurelian,
Notker, and Regino of Prurn. The
latter says: " Inveniuntur in natu-
rali musica quatuor principales toni
et ex eorum fontibus quatuor "
"In natural music are found four
principal tones and four derived
from these." Hucbald, the great
master of the chant, in the same
age, describes the formation of the
eight modes upon the four finals,
upon one of which every melody
must end, and declares it culpable
in a church singer to be ignorant
of the properties and distinguishing
marks of these modes: "Quatuor
sonorum virtus octo modorum po-
testatem creat. Necesse est, ut
quidquid rite canitur in uno ipso-
rum quatuor sonorum nniatur. In
octo tonos melodiam dividimus,
quorum differentias et proprietates
ecclesiasticum cantorem culpabile
est ignorare." Later on we have
testimony to the same effect from
St. Odo, Berno, Hermannus Con-
tractus, St. William, Theoger, Aribo,
Engelbert, and many others. The
last-named says expressly that the
musical tones (modes) are neither
more nor less than eight : " Scien-
dum ergo, quod octo sunt toni
musici, nee plures nee pauciores."
The distinction between the au-
thentic and plagal modes is quite
unequivocally put forth and insist-
ed on by these old authors. Thus
Hucbald correctly distinguishes
the authentic mode from its plagal
by the position of the final : ** Ab
eodem sono (finali) ut sit major
tonus aut minor mensuram ac-
cipit." So also Berno: "Si ultra
diapente aliquid superius ascendit,
nee inferius diatessaron habet, can-
tus ille authentici erit; si inferi-
us diatessaron habuerit, subjugalis
erit " " If the melody rises higher
than the fifth and does not have
the fourth below, it will belong to
an authentic mode ; if it has the
fourth below, it will belong to an
inferior (or plagal) mode."
Yet even then these rules were
not always strictly observed. Some
compositions went beyond the given
range, and were therefore styled
degenerate and illegitimate (" de-
generes," " nothi potius quam legi-
timi "), pieces belonging to " mixed
modes," and were only preserved
on account of their age and beauty.
But such compositions of several
modes were always considered " su-
perfluous."
We shall conclude our series of
authorities with Guido. He says,
in the seventh chapter of his Mi-
crologus, that there are only seven
different notes, because in the next
octave the same tones are repeat-
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
375
ed; whence he concludes that it
is enough to explain these seven
upon which the different modes
are based. The first mode, start-
ing from Re to La, has below the
first note a whole tone, and above
it first a whole, then a half, and
then two whole tones. The sec-
ond mode, beginning from Si or
Mi, has two whole tones below the
first note, and above it a half and
two whole tones. The third mode,
starting from Ut or Fa, has below
the first note a half and then two
whole tones, but above it two whole
tones and then a semitone. The
fourth mode descends one whole
tone and rises two whole tones and
a semitone from Sol.
We may add here in explanation
that the modes are characterized
and distinguished from each other
by the final \ the dominant, and the
cadences. The final is the last note
of the cadences, especially of the
concluding cadence, upon which
the voice rests, and upon which the
piece is ended, and regularly also
its particular divisions the dis-
tinctions or phrases as well. The
dominant is the principal note,
about which the other notes are
grouped, and to which the voice in
recitation constantly returns. The
dominant as well as the cadence
the concluding figure of the piece
and of its divisions are most
prominent in the psalmody, the
dominant being different in every
mode.
Now, finally, let us ask, What are
the modes of chromatic music?
We shall be brief, because we might
reasonably pass this by as already
quite well known. We answer,
therefore : In modern music there
are only two modes, the major and
the minor. With the exception of
the difference of pitch (which, as
we have said before, constitutes es-
sentially no difference at all), all
major as well as all minor scales
are identical with each other, be-
cause they have precisely the same
intervals in the same succession.
In every major scale the order is
two whole tones and one semitone,
and then three whole tones and
one semitone. In every minor
scale (according to what is still the
most common method) in ascend-
ing we have one whole tone, one
semitone, four whole tones, and one
semitone ; in descending, four whole
tones, one semitone, and one whole
tone. This brings us to our last
question :
How do the chromatic compare
with the diatonic modes? It must
now be conceded that chromatic
music, with its two modes only,
must be inferior in real musical
merit to the diatonic with its eight
modes, which, in the succession of
intervals, in the finals, dominants,
and cadences, are all essentially
different from one another, and
thus present the most beautiful
contrasts, the richest variety. Yet
this comparison is not sufficiently
marked, and a closer examination
of this question is necessary, partly
for the perfect justification of our
position, and partly in order not
to lay ourselves open to the objec-
tion that, while prizing the musical
treasures which were the delight
of the middle age, we undervalue
the works of the great masters,
such as Palestrina, Allegri, Orazio
Benevoli, Carissimi, Scarlatti, Du-
rante, Pergolese, Cherubini, Mo-
zart, Haydn, Bach, Beethoven, etc.
As the history of music teaches,
and as we have repeatedly pointed
out in this work, the chromatic
tonality was formed in the course
of time from the diatonic by the
aid of artificial laws, the diatonic
modes dwindled down to the major
376
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
and minor scales, and upon this
foundation, together with the in-
troduction of the artificial elements
of harmony and measured notes
and rhythm, modern music was
constructed. While the artistic
creations of modern music possess
artificial harmony, measured notes,
and a measured rhythm, they are
lacking in that variety of interval
which is the characteristic of the
chant. If in the chant we look in
vain for the much-vaunted artistic
developments and the elaborate har-
monies of modern music, it has the
advantage of a free and independent
rhythm, of the rich fulness of soul-
entrancing musical life, of all the
wonderful beauty and variety of
the modulations and tone-combi-
nations as displayed in the diato-
nic modes. Who can find fault
with us for looking upon the chant
from this point of view as nobler
and richer, and upon modern mu-
sic as more deficient in musical
merit ? Who can blame us if we
secure for the holy music of the
altar the mother's place of honor,
and raise her above the daughter
who is indebted to her for her
richest beauties, but who has put
off the robes of the sacrifice and of
the temple to don the garments of
the world? For chromatic music
has in truth borrowed all its musi-
cal worth from the diatonic, and
then has artificially decked out its
acquisitions, that they might figure
upon the stage of art, now in this,
now in that richly ornamented and
glittering costume. The diatonic
music has, however, lost nothing
by what it has given to the other,
but, despising the artificial elements
and chromatic modulations that are
so foreign to its nature, it keeps on
its way in noble and sublime sim-
plicity, not serving the profane,
but consecrating all its treasures
to the glory of the Holy One. That
chromatic music, in spite of its
having only two modes, is able by
changing the keys to form the
diatonic tone-combinations cannot
and shall not be denied. But as a
matter of fact it is not done, partly
because the natural melodies lose
their freedom by the constraint of
harmony and measure, partly be-
cause they are not serviceable for
profane music simply because they
are holy. These sublime strains
are at home only in the sanctuary,
and the same is the case with them
as with the rhythm the creations
of profane art could apply all the
rules of grammar or of rhetoric, but
they could never draw down to
their lower region the accent of re-
ligion and of faith. This is why,
as a general thing, it has as little
occurred to the great masters to
introduce the figures of the chant
into their compositions as it would
to one of us to go out and take a
walk in a cope or a chasuble.
The musical richness of the chant,
and on the other side the relative
meagreness of figured music, will be
obvious if we take a composition
of each kind, and, after stripping
the figured piece of its accessories,
harmony, time, etc., place its un-
masked melody, its naked theme,
in comparison with the choral me-
lody. It will not be necessary to
point out the surprising contrast.
Or, for example, what is left of
even the best-composed Masses, if
we take away the orchestra and the
accompanying voices, but an un-
meaning succession of tones ? How
different in the chant, where every
composition, even the simplest, is
imposing in the richness and variety
of its movements, and all the more
imposing if it be unhindered by the
accompaniment in its natural or, if
you will, its supernatural progress.
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
377
A comparison with the opera
shows a still more startling con-
trast. Take away from an operatic
aria the instrumental accompani-
ment, the lights and the scenery,
the costumes and the action of the
performers, and the music becomes
almost expressionless, which would
not be the case if the effect were
produced by the words or the mu-
sic itself. Yet only let the simple
Pater Noster be sung, without ac-
companiment, and we are sure to
be affected and disposed to prayer.
This is what we call wealth, the
other relative poverty in musical
worth. Thus on one side we leave
undiminished the great fame and
merit of the masters of modern
music, while on the other the incom-
parably higher genius and creative
power of the authors of the holy
chant remain indisputable.
We shall in conclusion seek to
make our position still more plain
by drawing two analogies. The
first that offers itself to us is the
comparison we have already made
with language. Poetry, owing to
the diversity of its metres, to rhyme,
in short, to all that properly be-
longs to it, seems to possess more
variety than prose, yet the latter
unites and encloses within itself all
those elements, and freely makes
use of them in accordance with
the requirements of the mean-
ing. And so the chromatic figur-
ed music apparently displays more
variety than the diatonic chant,
yet the chant includes all the ele-
ments of the other, and freely em-
ploys them, not according to con-
ventional rules, but as the mean-
ing of the words demands. Our
second comparison we shall bor-
row from the region of light and
color. As a picture traced by the
magic power of a master-hand up-
on the canvas or in fresco, with its
glowing figures full of expression,
with the charm of its well-arranged
colors, with its surpassing beauty
of harmony, brings the invaluable
treasure of its meaning as to time,
place, persons, and circumstances
in sublime though silent eloquence
before the soul of him who looks
thereon, and exercises a lasting,
mysterious influence upon his
mind and feelings, so the musical
pictures of plain chant, in their
melodies so full of dignity and
character, in their union of the ut-
most grace with the holiest fervor,
in their quiet development of the
simplest yet the noblest resources,
unfold before the spirit and heart
of man the whole fulness of the
text with its inexpressible heaven-
ly mysteries, and lay hold upon the
soul with a peaceful yet irresistible
power. And as, on the other hand,
dissolving views, the product not
of the artist's genius but of the
camera-obscura, by their magical
changing, by the incessant shifting
of various colors, by their restless
appearance and vanishing, attract
the eye indeed, but produce but a
fleeting and temporary impression
upon the spirit and mind of the
beholder, so also figured music, by
its minor tones, by its resolutions,
by the distribution of its resources,
and the interchange of harmony
and melody, captivates and holds
spellbound the soul of the listen-
er, but it does not fasten upon the
troubled hearts of men with that
deep energy, that peaceful power
of making them better and holier.
From all this we have again
the conclusion that the tenden-
cy of modern or chromatic music
is to flatter the senses by the
outward form, often with entire
forgetfulness of the thought, while
plain chant aims at giving musical
expression to the ideal meaning in
378
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
the unrestrained form of rich melo-
dies. This fact explains the cir-
cumstance that figured music ex-
hibits various styles, not musically
but only formally and convention-
ally distinct, such as the ecclesias-
tical style, the alia capella style,
the theatrical style, etc., just as
the appearance of the stage is
changed by different scenery; while
in the chant there is but one style,
amply sufficient for all that is re-
quired of it, and needing no change
of dress in order to figure in every
rdle.
But while we do not hesitate to
acknowledge to the full all that has
been done by the chromatic tonal-
ity in the department of secular
music, let no one, on th'e other hand,
blame us if we more earnestly and
firmly claim that in the worship of
the church of God we may have
left to us the diatonic pure and in-
tact, and that we may not be ask-
ed to undervalue its singular merits
and go begging at the doors of pro-
fane music.
XII. CONCLUSION.
In laying down our pen and giv-
ing publicity to the result of our
studies we are possessed by a two-
fold feeling, of hesitancy and of
confidence. Of hesitancy, because
we are aware that in this work we
have undertaken an attack upon
deeply-rooted and widely-cherished
opinions opinions which are sup-
ported by the authority of men of
distinguished knowledge and emi-
nent talent, to whom in many re-
spects we look up with reverence.
Yet, owing to the decided mistrust
to which merely subjective opinions
are always open, we have not put
forward in these pages a single
principle which has not been abun-
dantly supported by quotations
from famous authorities, nor have
we had anything else in view than
to establish the venerable, well-
nigh forgotten conceptions and
rules of antiquity, not to create
new principles.
We cherish the hope that the
friendly reader is now in a condi-
tion to regard the holy chant in
that light and from that point of
view in which it appears to us, a
guardian of the holy liturgy by our
very vocation. He will have readi-
ly drawn for himself the conclusion
to which we have been tending,
and we may now be permitted to
give expression to it with frank-
ness.
The question is not of a relative
improvement or a moderate com-
promise, nor yet of a partial ac-
ceptance or rejection at pleasure
the issue must be an entire trans-
formation in church music.
The holy liturgical chant must
be restored to its place of impor-
tance in the church's worship, the
Holy Sacrifice again be crowned
with its shining aureola, and chief-
ly by the agency of those whose
hands have been consecrated to
offer it. The choir must again
draw near to the altar, and from
the awful place of sacrifice and
from the priesthood must receive
its impulse, that shall cause it to
resound and re-echo a thousand
times its strains of benediction and
of peace in the broad nave of the
church and in the hearts of the
pious throng. There must be an
end to that deplorable estrange-
ment which has been brought about
between the priesthood imparting
benedictions and the people who
receive them, and which isolates
the sacrificing, priest at the altar
while the congregation are taking
an unworthy pleasure in worldly
music ; for this state of things has
Plain Chant in its Relation to the Liturgy.
379
blunted in the people the appreci-
ation of the mysteries of the faith
and of religion, and has given them
over to a sensuous revelling in
mingled religious feelings, or to an
apathetic indifference towards the
divine service. There must be an
abrogation of the privilege which
the orchestra has usurped of dis-
turbing the holy action, now short-
ening, now lengthening it out by
the introduction of strange and un-
seemly passages, stripping it of its
unity, significance, and dignity, and
leaving the officiating priest unsup-
ported. In a word, our churches
must again be in all respects what
they should be, places devoted ex-
clusively to the homage of the
Most High ; and this homage must
in all its parts again be offered
in the way in which the Lord has
shown that he desires it by the
mouth of his holy church, as the
fathers practised it in the ages
when faith was fullest and love
most glowing, and as the Christian
people, joining their voices, always
hailed it as the divine instrument
for their edification and sanctifica-
tion. And what from the very first
gleam of settled conviction has
stood vividly before our mind, that
the reader will now have deduced
for himself as an irrefragable con-
clusion namely, that an almost
complete change in church music,
and a thorough revolution in the
relation of the choir to the altar,
must be effected.
But for this revolution we are
now no longer unprepared. This
is for us the bright star of hope,
casting into the future a friendly
light. Ten years ago it would per-
haps have been not only a fruitless
but even a hazardous undertaking
to give open expression to such
penetrating truths, such authorita-
tive claims. But it is no longer so
to-day, when so many powerful
voices are lifted up for the revival
of the ecclesiastical and liturgical
spirit; when bishops, both at sy-
nods and in their separate utter-
ances, commend in such a positive
manner the most earnest attention
to the liturgy and the holy chant;
when there is everywhere manifest-
ed a desire for closer conformity to
the principles and traditions of the
Roman Church ; when the Chris-
tian people, engaged in a more
energetic warfare with falsehood,
need the keener weapon of a more
fervent ecclesiastical life, and,
weary of the stale and worldly per-
formances in their churches, long
for more wholesome food, and
thirst for purer drink as it gushes
alone from that perennial spring of
divine grace the holy liturgy.
For this desirable revolution, we
repeat, we are not unprepared,,
because it has been already in
great part effected in other depart-
ments, in philosophy, in art, in the
religious life. To sceptical ration-
alism in philosophy has succeeded
the positiveness which comes from
faith and serious study, and where
this has not been thoroughly
brought about the opposing ele-
ments are engaged in earnest con-
flict, from which good results are
to be expected. In the department
of art capricious extravagance and
bad taste have yielded to the
readoption of old traditions and
a worthier taste; in architecture
and church decoration a purer
style once more prevails, and our
churches are adorned with new
statues and pictures artistically
fashioned by masters of the revived
school of sacred art. Finally, in-
the religious life the all-levelling
principle of humanity and tolera-
tion has given way to firmness of
conviction and clearness of princi-
June.
pies ; the distinction between truth
and error is more sharply drawn,
hatred of heresy, yet charity to-
wards those in error, increased.
Who could close his eyes to such
indications? Who does not recog-
nize in these phenomena the dawn
of a new ecclesiastical era? To
us, in truth, they are the sure fore-
runners of a better future for the
church's song as well. They
awaken thoughts of those blessed
days when, according to the beau-
tiful description of St. Ambrose,
this chant was like "the majestic
roaring of the ocean's billows ;
when the hymns of the saints, the
strains of the psalms, broke like the
stormy surf against the lofty vault-
ed arches; when young men and
maidens, old men and children,
united their swelling voices in one
common, joyful song of praise to
God.
In submitting, full of such hopes,
these pages to the good-will of the
reader, we cherish the wish that he
may exercise a kindly indulgence
towards the author, and tender him
a friendly hand in hearty co-opera-
tion. We would be extremely
gratified, and more than rewarded
for our pains, if men of talent, im-
pelled by our poor suggestions,
should direct their attention and
interest to this highly important
subject from the point of view
herein laid down. That success
will come at last, and the end we
have in view be happily attained,
we believe with all the more con-
fidence since we recognize in the
tendencies of the reaction that
has already begun the guidance of
the Holy Ghost, whose work it
shall also be to set the seal of the
divine sanction upon the revival of
the holy chant.
JUNE.
" June ! dear June ! Now God be praised for June."
J. R. LOWELL.
"And yet in vain,
Poet, your verse : extol her as you will,
One perfect rose her praises shall distil
More than all song, though Sappho led the strain.
Forbear, then, since, for any tribute fit.
Her own rare lips alone can utter it."
CAROLINE A. MASON.
EACH year she comes whom poets call " Dear June,"
With face e'er young, and voice of griefless tune,
Bright'ning the waysides with her roses' glow,
Filling the woods with song where hides below
Not any note of pain to trace sad line
On her smooth brow, crowned with youth divine,
Whence eyes look forth wherein no shadow lies
Of any thought less glad than Paradise
Soft, trustful eyes that look in ours to give
Wealth of pure soul that but in joy doth live.
Each year she comes as one that grows not old,
Whose unstained robes unchanging heart enfold.
June. 381
Upon her daisy-fields, that stretch to meet
The glitter of blue bays, her strong, white feet
Fall with the melody of western wind
That no dark thunder-clouds lurk low behind ;
While, from her broidered raiment's every fold,
The wild-grape's subtle incense is unrolled.
Wide open are her hands that gifts may fall
With grace of one that, loving, giveth all,
Fears not that any cloudy day shall come
When sun shall shine not, or sweet birds grow dumb.
She never hath known loss ; how shall her heart
Fear with its generous wealth in love to part ?
And we, that list each year her winning speech
Music of ripples on low, sandy beach
That gaze into the depths of her clear eyes,
Trusting each thought that in their shadow lies ;
We, unto whom her roses' wayside blush
Seems witchery strange as that quick-passing flush
That, as day dieth, melteth into air
Titanic strength of rocks high-heaped and bare ;
To whom snow-peaks scarce fairer vision seem
Than her blue seas where wind-pressed vessels gleam ;
To whom a world of stars naught richer yields
Than the white radiance of her daisy-fields
We seek in our fond hearts some ne'er-heard phrase
Wherewith to speak our dear queen's fitting praise,
And lips grow dumb though heart be eloquent.
Our little treasure of love's speech soon spent,
Our murmuring lips but echoes old repeat
Of some true poet's clinging accents sweet
Whose mouth June kissed ere he had sung her grace,
Left on his page the print of her young face,
Guided his pen with her pink finger-tips,
So perfecting the blessing of her lips.
And sweet June mocks us not that incomplete
And, unto outward seeming, all unmeet
The stammering homage of our words' poor praise ;
Her thoughtful eyes in ours, soft smiling, gaze.
'Perchance for our joy's sorrow might she weep,
Did any thought of tears her dear eyes keep.
She reads, "We love her," written in her heart,
So, pushing her white daisies wide apart,
She places on our lips a red June rose
That unto none but her each heart disclose
What she hath waked, lest idle words do wrong
To love that lieth deeper e'en than song.
382
A Knight's Wooing.
A KNIGHT'S WOOING.
A STORY OF RUSSIAN POLAND.
IT was one of those magnificent
northern nights when the moon
shines and reigns with all her splen-
dor in a heaven of such blue as
we never see in these western lati-
tudes ; when space becomes illimita-
ble and earth holds her breath in
the tingling silence. On such a
night Hedwige Barowitska was
keeping watch with her maid in the
old castle of Zabor, situated some
twenty versts from Kamienetz.
" It must have been a false alarm,
Vinka," said the young countess.
41 It is now two hours past mid-
night, and no messenger has come.
Let us go to bed."
" I knew we should lose our
night's rest for nothing ; but you
never listen tome, panna,"* said
Vinka, and she stuck her needles
into her knitting and gathered up
her work, while Hedwige put aside
her book and rose to leave the room.
Suddenly both started, instinctive-
ly clutching one another and listen-
ing with white faces, as a long, dis-
mal sound, like the howl of a wild
beast with a human moan in it,
smote -their ears, first far off, then
nearer, and at last almost close to
the castle walls.
Hedwige was the first to recover
herself. " What fools we are !" she
exclaimed, laughing. '" It is only a
wolf."
" When folks are half-dazed with
want of sleep small blame to them
for mistaking a wolf for Cossack,"
said Vinka sulkily. " Who knows
if one does not bode the other?
What brings the wolf down on us
* My young lady.
at this time of year, when the
snow has not been a week on the
ground ? Be you sure, panna, the
Cossacks are not far of; they are
beating the forests, and the wolves
have fled before them. Besides, it
is a warning: when a wolf comes
before his natural time, and gives
that long howl under the windows
of the house, it is the holy souls
that send him."
" Then the holy souls will take
care of us," said the young coun-
tess, but in a tone which betrayed
as much contempt for her maid's
superstition as trust in the vigilance
of the blessed dead.
She was very beautiful, this young
Polish maiden, but it was a beauty
of marble and metal ; her clear, ivory
skin and chiselled features were too
statuesque, and her large blue eyes
had a flash of steel in them that
was more dazzling than sympa-
thetic. She looked a born heroine,
and though the peasantry on her
widowed mother's estates called
her an angel, it would have better
expressed her character and their
mutual relations had they called
her a queen. She was a creature
born to rule, and to rule nobly ; but
she lacked that tender, womanly
softness which by common assent
is supposed to represent the angelic
attribute in woman. If the coun-
try rose in arms, Hedwige Baro-
witska would have led her people
against the foe or defended their
last stronghold from the battle-
ments like another Maid of Sara-
gossa ; but the village girls did not
come to her with their love troubles.
A Knight's Wooing.
383
The noblest amongst the chivalry
of her native land had courted her,
but they failed to make an entrance
into her well-guarded heart, and
one by one threw up the siege, de-
claring there was no heart to take.
As she and her maid stepped
from the library into the noble gal-
lery on which it opened, the moon-
light streamed in upon them from
the unshuttered windows with daz-
zling effulgence. Marbles and pic-
tures, bronzes and panoplies, stood
out as brilliantly distinct as in day-
light, and the polished oaken floor
shone like a sheet of steel.
Hedwige advanced to an oriel
window and looked out into the
night. The snow gleamed with
blinding whiteness in the moon-
light. One wing of the castle was
in shadow a black mass reflected
in deeper darkness on the ground
but the other side shone in silvery
brightness ; every line in the clock-
tower, every arch and moulding, eve-
ry grinning gargoyle and delicate
bit of tracery, was picked out dis-
tinctly in ebony and silver. Hed-
wige, as she stood in her mourn-
ing dress, bathed in the crystal
light of the moon, resembled some
spirit from its own mysterious cav-
erns. She was paler than her
wont, for that remark of Vinka's
had made a deeper impression on
her than her pride would own, and
she could not banish the terrors it
had conjured up.
Witold Ranolzki was on his way
to her with tidings, of life and
death, perhaps, concerning one dear
to them all ; but at the promised
hour of his arrival there had come,
instead of him, this howl of the
hungry wolf. Where was the mon-
ster now ? Not far off assuredly ;
his howl had sounded close to the
castle ; he was most likely prowling
within the park. Riveted by the
lovely glamour of the night, Hed-
wige stood gazing into it, watching
the shadows that slept upon the
snow, noting the blue sheen of the
window-panes in the clock-tower,
the trees that stretched up their
white arms breathless to the stars.
Nothing stirred, not even a shadow,
but was it fancy, or did she see
something moving in the gloom
under the left wing ? No, it was
not fancy. Something moved, ad-
vancing softly, stealthily, pressing
the snow with a sleek, firm tread, to
the foot of the terrace. It was the
wolf. Fascinated with horror, Hed-
wige watched him until he paused
just opposite to her, and then; as if
obeying a law of nature, lifted his
head to the oriel window where,
with fasji-beating pulses, she stood
looking down at him. The hungry
eyes glared red as balls of fire in
the shadow, while the moonlight
washed the lank body of the brute
in a soft blue flood. He did not
move for some minutes, and Hed-
wige stood breathless, her blue eyes
dilated with terror, staring down at
him. Did he see her ? Would he
stay there till she moved, or would
he come up the steps of the terrace
and howl at her ? There was an
exulting sense of safety in the gaze
with which she met his glare, al-
though the sense of close vicinity
to the monster made her blood run
cold. The red balls rolled and
flamed in his upturned head, as if
their devouring fire would have
pierced through the massive walls.
Suddenly the long ears pricked up
and wavered; the hideous head
turned back, listening; the brute
lifted one paw, and held it sus-
pended a moment, then, with an-
other howl, he bounded away to
the park.
" What can he have heard to set
off like that ?" thought Hedwige ;
3^4
A Knight's Wooing.
and she turned away and went on
to her room, where sleepy Vinka
was out of patience waiting.
" Panna," cried the maid with
sudden energy, and forgetting her
ill-temper in a rush of unselfish
fear " panna, if it should be the
messenger that he heard ?"
" Go ! run for the men ! Quick !
Tell them it is for life and death !
Fly, Vinka, fly !"
Vinka snatched up a light and
flew, as with wings, to the distant
part of the castle where the men-
servants, some fifteen in number,
slept. Hedwige threw a large
furred cloak about her and sped
back to the gallery. The armory
was at the other end of it, and
there were firearms ready loaded
there. She hurried to it, and se-
lecting a small revolver from a va-
riety of pistols that hung, wheel-
like, against the wall, she flew back
to the window where a few minutes
ago she had been gazing in poetic
meditation. It was a western win-
dow, that swept the park and the
distant high-road that came winding
down through the forest on the
mountain beyond.
Drawing the furred hood over
her head, the young countess
opened the casement and met the
keen night air. All was steep-
ed in midnight hush. Nothing
stirred except the stars palpitating
in the deep blue sky. And yet
the vvolf had heard a sound? It
might be that Witold was wrestling
with him in mortal combat close
by, and yet too far for help. The
snow-clad trees, clustering in broad
masses all through the park to the
very foot of the forest, offered safe
opportunities for such an encoun-
ter ; the wolf lying in ambush might
spring upon his prey before there
was time for Witold to seize his
pistols. But hark ! That was cer-
tainly the sound of a horse's gallop
that she heard. Were the men
never coming! Hedwige rushed
out to the staircase, determined to
go out alone and see if she could
not help; but suddenly she remem-
bered that the great door was bolt-
ed and barred, and that she could
no more have lifted those heavy
bars and bolts than she could have
lifted the castle on her shoulders.
She uttered a cry of despair and
rushed back to the gallery. As
she did so a report of firearms
came crashing through the open
window, once, twice, three times.
Then all was silence, and Hed-
wige clung to the wainscoting and
listened with a beating heart.
Presently a horseman was to be
seen galloping towards the castle,
and at the same moment she heard
the men hurrying down to the hall;
but before they reached it a howl
of rage came echoing through the
starlight. The wolf was close upon
the rider ; another stride and his
fangs were in the horse's flanks.
The terrified animal flung up his
forefeet and fought the air for a
moment, then with a loud cry fell.
The wolf drew out his fangs and
turned to attack the rider, who had
fired his last shot and stood, re-
volver in hand, ready to sell his
life as dearly as he could. The
brute, who was wounded and mad-
dened with pain, sprang forward,
but as he did so a bullet came
whizzing through the air and struck
him in the head. With one last,
long howl lie rolled over and lay
dead upon the snow.
The men now came flying down
the terrace and across the park,
some with torches, some with fire-
arms.
Prince Witold, who had been
flung violently down by the wolf in
that last spring, raised himself from
A KnigJtfs Wooing.
355
the ground, shook the snow from
his pelisse, and made sure that he
was not a dead man.
" Heaven be praised ! you are
safe, Prince," cried several in
chorus.
" Yes, thank Heaven, and then
you, my good friends! That shot
was a timely one. Which of you
fired it?"
" None of us, Prince," replied
the old majordomo. " It went off
as we opened the castle door."
" Then it was one of your fel-
lows who took aim from within.
You must find him and bring him
to me."
" It was the Countess Hedwige
who fired it, Prince. She was
watching, and sent to wake us up."
Witold looked quickly up at the
castle, and saw a hooded figure in
the western window ; he recognized
it instinctively, and, dropping on
one knee, pulled off his sable cap
and bowed low to his deliverer.
It was a striking scene the dead
body of the wolf stretched upon
the snow, the wounded horse close
by, the men with their flaring
torches, the young man kneeling in
knightly fashion to the lady of his
love, and the whole group trans-
figured by the mystic glamour of
the moonlight into some weird
vision.
Hedwige returned no salutation
to the knightly homage, but a light
laugh that rang out in the silver
silence assured Witold it was not
resented. He rose and walked
quickly on to the castle, while the
air resounded with the cheers of
the men.
Hedwige received him in the
library. She was as white as mar-
ble, and apparently as cold ; noth-
ing could have been more stately
than her greeting of the man for
whose life she had trembled in
VOL. xxix. 25
every fibre and saved by an almost
heroic impulse.
Witold raised reverently to his
lips the small white hand which, in
spite of all womanly shrinkings, had
delivered him from a loathsome
death.
" I owe you my life, cousin," he
said ; " but it was yours already, to
save or cast away as you thought
fit. I know what it must have cost
you to fire that shot. Tell me that
it was your heart gave you courage
to do it ?"
"I will tell you nothing but the
truth. My conscience would have
nerved my hand to do the same for
any fellow-creature whose life de-
pended on the effort. It is true I
am a coward at playing with fire-
arms, but I am a daughter of the
Jagellons, and our race have never
known cowardice in the face of
danger. You might have remem-
bered that."
Though playfully spoken, the
words held the bitterest taunt those
proud lips could have uttered. He
remembered it only too well, this
blood of the Jagellons, which made
a gulf between their beautiful de-
scendant and himself, the grandson
of a Russian trader. He and Hed-
wige were cousins by his father's
side, but this vein of purple blood
did not wash out the stain of his
mother's birth and nationality, and
Witold felt this too keenly to heed
that indirect reminder of the blot.
" What news do you bring of
Pere Alexander ?" she said, sitting
down and pointing familiarly to a
seat for him.
" Forgive me, cousin ; after rid-
ing thirty-six hours, and escaping
by the skin from the clutch of the
Cossacks, and finally from the fangs
of a wolf, a man may be pardoned
for a momentary lapse of presence
of mind. To proceed at once to
3 86
A Knight's Wooing.
the subject of my unseasonable
visit, Pere Alexander is alive. Af-
ter hiding in the forest for three
weeks he was discovered by a pea-
sant, who informed the pope, who
immediately denounced him to the
district authorities. Pere Alexan-
der was taken to Kamienetz, tried,
or at any rate convicted, and con-
demned to imprisonment for life."
"For life! O my God!"
She clasped her hands and her
large blue eyes filled with tears.
Witold Ranolzki bethought him
that, let fate do her worst, Pere
Alexander was still a man to be
envied.
" You have this from good au-
thority? There is no possibility
of a mistake ?" she said entreat-
ingly.
" None. I carried my inquiries
as far as they could go, and there
is not the shadow of a doubt as to
the identity and the facts. He is
at this moment undergoing sentence
in the Fortress at Kamienetz."
" In that terrible Fortress
and for life ! Well, it cannot
be for long. Death will soon re-
lease him. But how long, O Lord !
how long ?"
She hid her face in her hands
and sobbed aloud. .
" He is alive, cousin ; the For-
tress* is not death. He may be set
free; take courage in that hope,"
said Witold.
" What hope? That those cruel
fiends will find pity in their hearts
for an old man who can neither
bribe nor trick them ? I might as
well have hoped that the wolf
would have drawn his fangs out of
your flesh just now."
" Hope is inventive ; we may find
means of bribing and circumvent-
ing his jailers, though he himself
can do nothing," replied Witold.
" O Witold ! do you mean this?
Have you any grounds for bidding
me hope, or is it only that you
wish to comfort me ?"
'* It would be sorry comfort to
raise false hopes that would Jjut
mock your grief. Will you never
learn to trust me, Hedwige ? But
forgive me. I meant to tell you that
I have a scheme in my head ; it is
full of difficulties, but not imprac-
ticable. Pere Alexander himself
thinks so, and you know he is no
dreamer. He can only help us by
his prayers; but the prayer of an
apostle has opened prison doors
before."
"He thinks? Then he knows?
You have seen him?"
"Yes; and he sent you a mes-
sage. Have you a knife or a pair
of scissors at hand ?"
Witold turned back the breast
of his coat and glanced round the
table. Hedwige took up the silver
chatelaine that dangled from her
belt, and, opening the tiny scis-
sors, deftly cut the lining where he
pointed to her.
"Here are my credentials, since
I cannot be taken on parole," he
said, handing her a thin letter
which he drew from its hiding-
place.
Hedwige opened it with trem-
bling fingers, and read in Pere
Alexander's well-known handwrit-
ing the following lines :
" MY CHILD : It is a great joy to me
in my prison to receive tidings of you
and your dear mother, and to send you
with my blessing the assurance of my
undying affection. You have rejoiced
with me in that I have been counted
worthy to taste even a little drop of the
cup of my divine Master. You have
grieved because of the sorrow of my
flock, poor lambs bereft of their shepherd
and exposed to the fury of the wolves.
But be of good heart, my daughter.
Sorrow endureth for a night, and joy
cometh in the morning. It may please
our good Lord to give us all once more
A Knight's Wooing.
387
the joy of meeting here below. Words
fail me to speak of my noble son Witold,
of his devoted courage in braving so
many perils and enduring such sacri-
fices for my sake. I can but bless him,
and pray that his reward may be great
in proportion to my love and his.
"With affectionate greetings to your
admirable mother, I am, my child, your
father in Christ,
"ALEXANDER WALARINSKI."
Hedwige, when she had read the
letter, looked up at Witold, and
now read in his features the true
meaning of their pallor and haggard
look.
" Dear Witold ! how can we
ever thank you ?" she said, holding
out her hand, which the young
man, after the chivalrous fashion
of his country, raised to his lips.
"I am more than repaid," he
murmured ; ; ' I am your debtor."
Yet it was not so much, after all,
for the devotion of a lifetime, for a
worship which had been faithful to
its object as the stars to their
course, and pure as ever fired Crusa-
der's breast for his liege lady. Hed-
wige 's heart smote her as she look-
ed at him, and saw in imagination,
too terribly whetted by experience,
all that he had gone through to
give her this last proof of love.
And he held himself her debtor
because she had deigned to thank
him ! What is there in these mar-
ble women to kindle such flames
in hearts of men ?
Vinka came in upon the confer-
ence, and broke the spell by asking
if the prince was not hungry, and
whether he would have refreshment
brought to him here or go down
to the dining-room.
" How I have disgraced myself
to-night !" exclaimed Hedwige,
laughing; "first I demean myself
like an Amazon and kill a wild
beast, and then I sin against all
the laws of hospitality as never
hostess did before ! Send up the
supper here. I will serve Prince
Witold myself."
And so, in spite of the young
man's entreaties and protestations;
she insisted on doing.
"You are a hero to-night, so you
must let me worship you. You
know my weakness for heroes ?"
She spoke in a tone of graceful
banter; but it sounded cruel to
the man who loved her, who would
have bartered away all his earthly
possessions to hear her speak those
words in earnest. But even when
her heart was touched Hedwige
seemed incapable of owning a soft
or tender emotion towards him.
Was this coldness genuine, or was
it a feint ? \Vitold could not tell ;
but the mere sound of her voice
wrought on him with the potency
of a magician's spell. He felt in a
kind of dreamy rapture while she
stood beside him, pouring the rich
wine into the silver flagon and hold-
ing it to him to quaff, as if he had
been, as in truth he was, a knight
going forth to do battle for the lady
of his love.
"Will not the countess have
been disturbed by all the noise we
made ?" he inquired, anxious to
turn away her attention from him-
self to some more congenial subject.
"Alas! no. Her sad infirmity
preserves her from all disturbance.
It will be a glad surprise for her to
see you to-morrow morning."
" I shall not be here ; I must re-
turn to Kamienetz-in time to report
myself by mid-day to the governor.
Nay," seeing Hedwige was going
to protest, " remember the slight-
est imprudence now may ruin
everything. I am on parole ; I
must ride back in an hour's time."
"You know best. I shall not
hinder you," replied the young
girl; and resuming her air of mar-
338
A Knight's Wooing.
ble calmness, she sat clown, her
hands clasped on her knees, medi-
tative and silent, while her guest
did ample justice to the viands
bountifully set before him. He
was a hero, and his appetite,
like his temperament, was heroic,
starvation forming no element
either in his heroism or his love.
" May I not know something of
this scheme for our father's deliv-
erance ?" said Hedvvige after a
long pause.
" There is little to tell so far. I
have made a breach in the wall by
gaining access, to the jailer, and
through him to Pere Alexander.
But while he remains in the fort
there is nothing to be done. We
must first get him changed to
Kronstadt."
" And how is that to be done ?
There is not the faintest probability
of his being removed there."
" There are difficulties in the
way, but I shall overcome them.
The jailer is well disposed, and I
have made it worth his while to be
faithful to me."
" That means that you have al-
. ready made tremendous sacrifices,
.and have pledged yourself to fur-
,ther ones which may compromise
.your own and your brother's for-
tunes."
" Gently, fair cousin. I have so
,far compromised nothing but the
.family jewel-case, which I have pil-
fered of a few trinkets for. the jail-
er's wife."
The few trinkets meant a neck-
lace of diamonds that represented
the dower of a princess, and a pro-
.mise of the eardrops and coronet
on the successful escape of the pris-
oner.
" Cousin, the time flies fast in
your presence, but I must not let
the charm lure me to my ruin,"
said Witold; and washing down his
copious meal with a last bumper of
Burgundy, he rose and prepared
to equip himself for the road.
She rang, and ordered the stout-
est hunter in the stables to be
brought round without delay.
" You have told me little, cousin,"
she said, as Witold was about to
depart, "but I conjecture much
from your silence, and I augur all
things from your daring and the
generosity of your heart."
"I thank you for trusting me,
fair cousin. You shall not repent
it. Farewell."
He raised her hand to his lips
again, pressing them longer than
was needed for mere courtesy, and
then left her.
She waited till he was in the
hall, and then went out to the gal-
lery, and stood in that oriel window
which had been her watch-tower
twice to-night, and waited to see
him mount and ride away.
The light of the moon had wan-
ed, but the stars were shining
brightly. The men had dragged
away the body of the wolf, and
stood by, scaring the starlight with
the red glare of their resin torches,
that threw lurid shadows on the
snow.
Witold did not know that Hed-
wige was watching him, but instinct-
ively,, as he turned away, he looked
up at the window where she stood,
invisible, but present to the eyes
of her lover's memory. He was a
lover to feel proud of, Hedwige ac-
knowledged, as she saw him vault
lightly into the saddle and ride
away with the air of one bound on
a noble mission and fitted to ac-
complish it.
Alexander Walarinski had made
one of a band of five young noble-
men,, chosen from the flower of
Polish chivalry, who in the year
A Knight's Wooing.
339
1830 took arms for the deliverance
of their country. They fought like
heroes. Two met a glorious death
on the field of battle, and the others,
when the insurrection was over, went
one morning to the old cathedral
of St. John's at Warsaw, and, kneel-
ing before the shrine of the Mother
of Sorrows, dedicated themselves
henceforth to the service of their
country by sacrifice and prayer.
They laid their swords upon the
altar and went forth to become
priests.
One went on the mission to Siberia
and died there. The other was
convicted of treason for saving the
life of a young political criminal
who fled to his presbytery for pro-
tection. He was condemned to
work in the gold-washings of Ir-
koutsk; for five years he bore it,
standing in ice-cold water to the
waist, his shoulders blistered by
the burning sun and cut open by
the lash of the overseer. Then
death came and set him free. The
only survivor of the band was
Pere Alexander. He was close on
seventy, and it was a mystery to all
who knew him that he should have
lived to such an age; for no man
had been more reckless of his life
than he, both in driving his body
by austerities and hard work and
in defying the authorities up to
their very teeth. Yet the law
which he systematically broke with
open contempt had never laid a
finger on him. The authorities
knew that to touch Pere Alexander
would have been to rouse every
man, woman, and child in the
district to rebellion ; and as he was
known to be as strongly opposed to
rebellion as he was dauntless in the
face of danger and uncompromising
in his principles as a priest and a
Pole, they felt it was safer to toler-
ate his stiff-necked independence
than to lock him up. So for near-
ly fifty years he had taught and
preached and ministered to his
flock and warded off many a blow
from them ; he had also kept down
many a rebellious upheaving, which
the government knew, and paid
back in self-interested toleration to
the patriot priest. But there came
a day when his priestly influence
became his greatest danger and his
greatest crime. The ukase had
gone forth ordering Catholic priests
to be replaced by Greek priests
whenever a vacancy occurred, and
when the vacancies were slow to
come they were to be created.
This was easily done. The parish
priest disappeared one morning on
business ; his return was delayed,
and then it was announced that he
was named to another parish and a
new priest was appointed in his
stead. The Greek minister arrived
with his schismatical doctrine and
ministrations. In most cases the
stricken flock recognized the wolf in
the sheep's clothing and held aloof;
but it sometimes happened, owing
partly to their simplicity and igno-
rance, and partly to the devilish
cunning of the false priest, aided
by the systematic lies of the autho-
rities, that they were deluded by
his well-counterfeited orthodoxy.
He gained their confidence; little
by little their faith was undermin-
ed, their perception of right and
wrong weakened, at last utterly con-
fused, and then the work of lies
became complete. Vacancies of this
description had been thus created
and filled up in nearly all the vil-
lages round X , where Pere Al-
exander dwelt, but the trick had
not succeeded in a single instance.
The peasants were proof alike
against blandishments, threats, and
cruelty. They showed a kind of
apostolic instinct in detecting the
390
A Knight's Wooing.
frnud, and resisted it with the spirit
of confessors. They stoutly refus-
ed to assist at the sacrifice or par-
ticipate in the sacraments provided
for them by the schismatic priest.
In all this they were supported and
encouraged by Pere Alexander,
who multiplied himself to be with
them far and near, late and early.
He marched from village to village,
indifferent to wind and weather,
fatigue and hunger, like the old
soldier that he was; thinking only
of how he could help the afflicted
people and circumvent or defy their
treacherous persecutors ; confessing
and saying Mass, preaching and in-
structing, communicating his own
fiery spirit to the much-suffering
flocks, and inciting them to be
worthy of the martyr's crown.
The government knew all this,
and bore it bore it till the for-
bearance seemed to the people a
sort of miracle. Yet it was not
prompted by pity or respect for the
aged confessor, but simply from
fear that if they took violent means
to stop him and nothing short of
violence would do it they would
bring worse troubles on themselves.
Still, this open defiance constituted
too great an outrage on the autho-
rities to be indefinitely tolerated.
It was a power fatal to their power.
His very presence was in itself
the last bulwark of his persecuted
religion in the country. There was
not now another Catholic priest
remaining within a radius of four
hundred miles, and if he could be
got rid of the last vestige of the
pestilent vermin would be swept
away. How to do it was the ques-
tion.
Count Barowitzki was another
opposing force with whom, in self-
defence, the government felt it
necessary to reckon. He was so-
cially as great a power with the
people as Pere Alexander was
spiritually. To lay a finger on
him would have been to set a
match to the fires of rebellion, al-
ways smouldering in the persecuted
land, and which, once lighted, spread
with such terrible rapidity. The
priest was close on threescore and
ten he must soon die ; but the
count was a man in the prime of
life, and had a good quarter of a
century before him yet.
But men reckon without those
unseen forces which come unex-
pectedly to cut the knots of des-
tiny and mock our puny schem-
ings and short-sighted calculations.
The count caught a fever and died
of it. Pere Alexander assisted his
friend through the dark and nar-
row pass, pronounced the final ab-
solution upon his grave, and the
next day received a letter which
obliged him to go to Kamienetz on
business.
He did not return, and was-
never seen or heard of again.
That was now six months ago, and
his desolate flock had long since
given up all hope. It was said at
first that he was hiding in the
forest ; that he had been warned
to fly, and had done so without
telling any of his friends, in order
that no one might run any risks in
trying to save him. But this con-
jecture was proved to be false.
The peasants beat the forest for
miles and miles, and found no trace
of the missing priest. The first
true tidings that had been received
of him were those just brought by
Prince Witold to Hedwige. They
were as bad as could be, short of
his death. But Witold, spurred on
by love, as much as by reverence
and loyalty towards the man whose
name had been a war-cry to his
people, and whose life shone for
half a century like a light upon the
A Knight's Wooing.
391
darksome waters, had already made
possible the work of his deliver-
ance.
Kamienetz was about fifty miles
from Zabor; Witold reached it in
lime to report himself punctually
at the governor's before noon. It
was a ride for life, for if he failed
to make his appearance the conse-
quences would have been imme-
diate arrest and imprisonment, and,
once within the Fortress, no man
can tell what may follow. Over
the gates of that awful abode may
with truth be written those saddest
words ever uttered by human voice :
" Voi che entrate, lasciate qui ogni
speranza."
But so far he was safe ; he was
still free to go whither he listed, to
walk abroad, to breathe the sun-
shine. His absorbing object must
now be to turn this liberty to ac-
count in behalf of Pere Alexander.
For the moment, however, he had
but one thought, and this was to
get home and to fling himself on
his bed. He had not slept for two
nights, and he had been on horse-
back over forty hours, with no
respite but that brief halt at Za-
bor.
Witold was not a hero every day.
He loved a merry life, a life of ease
and pleasure ; he loved the chase,
the song, the brimming bowl, the
glance of lovely woman; he hated
trouble and waste of energy. But he
had, withal, that capacity for hero-
ism which is the birthright of every
Polish gentleman, and which, at the
first blast of the trumpet-call of
duty, wakes up in sacrifice and ac-
tion. He had been fatally com-
promised in the insurrection of
1860, and had only escaped death
through the intervention of that
Muscovite connection which he de-
spised, but which had stood him
in good need more than once. It
was now his sheet-anchor in the
perilous undertaking in hand.
The next day he drove, after his
early breakfast, to a large house
not far from the governor's palace.
"Is your master at home?" he in-
quired of the porter.
" Yes, prince."
And Witold was shown into a
room opening on the hall, and
which the master of the house call-
ed his study. It would have been
difficult to surmise what kind of
studies were carried on there, for
there was not a book to be seen,
nor any trace of writing materials,
nor artistic appliances, nor scienti-
fic instruments. The walls were
covered with panoplies, coats of
mail, hauberks, weapons of every
form and period, while heads of
tigers, jackals, and other wild beasts
made an appropriate variety of or-
nament. Side by side with these
suggestive trophies were the usual
sacred images in gold and jewelled
frames. Divans ran round the
room, and there were tables litter-
ed with cards, glasses, bottles, tea-
cups, etc., while an ominous smell
of brandy pervaded the apartment.
In the midst of this novel sort of
study, close by the great stove, sat
the master of the place, an old
man, clad in a loose dressing-gown,
with a greasy velvet cap covering
his bald head. A long, tawny beard
gave a ceitain gravity to his face,
which otherwise betrayed little else
than cunning and the habit of co-
pious libations.
" Well, scapegrace nephew, what
brings you here to-day?"
"To see you, my uncle."
" Humph ! And now that you
have seen me, what have you got
to say ?"
" That it rejoices me to see you
looking so well."
" That proves that you are either
39^
A Knight's Wooing.
blind or a hypocrite. I am abomi-
nably ill. Why should I suffer as
if the foul fiends were devouring
me? I have worked hard all my
life, and I have always saved my
money."
" I am grieved to hear this, my
dear uncle."
" You lie ! you are not grieved.
You are glad, because you count on
my inheritance. But you may be
disappointed. Why should I not
marry ? Tell me that !"
" There are a thousand reasons
why you should, my uncle," replied
Witold, with that imperturbable
good-humor which was his chief
offence and his chief attraction in
the old Muscovite's eyes. "It
would cheer you up to have a pret-
ty young wife, and the wedding
would be very jolly for us all. But
let it be quickly done, or else I
may be too late for the fun."
"Too late, eh?" said the old
man, bristling up like a hound at
the blast of the horn " too late ?
What new devilment are you at ?
Had I not trouble and expense
enough getting you out of that last
mess? Do you expect me to re-
duce myself to beggary in my last
days ?"
" My dear uncle, I have no idea
of anything so wicked. I merely
urge you to make haste about get-
ting married, so that I may not
miss the merry-making. I should
like, before I arn borne on the
wings of holy Russia to Nerchintz,
to make acquaintance with my
beautiful young aunt. I shall fall
madly in love with her, but I shall
devour my passion in silence and
die of it."'
"Incorrigible rascal!" chuckled
the old man, with a twinkle in his
eye. " What is this new trouble
you are in ?"
" Our best friend, the man who
has christened and married and
buried us all for the last fifty years,
is in prison."
" Alexander Walarinski ! He
ought to have been in prison long
ago. Where is he ?"
"Here in the Fortress."
The old man gave a long whis-
tle.
"My uncle, we must get him out
immediately."
" What ! do you want to drag
me into another infernal mess, to
take my last rouble from me ? I
will not lift a finger to save that
insolent fanatic from his just fate.
I would go a long way to see him
hanged."
" Well, my uncle, I will do the
work of deliverance alone. I
thought you would gladly have
helped to save the life of the man
who soothed your beloved sister's
last hours, and to whose care she
commended her children. I also
was foolish enough to enjoy the
prospect of seeing those proud
aristocrats who have ignored my
mother's family compelled to eat
the dust at your feet. But this is
all vanity, and you have a soul
above it. Let us speak no more of
it. Tell me about my future aunt.
Let her have dark eyes, my uncle.
We are overrun with blondes ; the
race will be improved by the in-
troduction of a brunette into the
family."
" Incorrigible dog ! How dare
you mock me to my face ?" said
the old man. " Why do I not turn
you out of my house ?"
" Because you love me, my uncle.
In spite of my iniquities, nay, be-
cause of them, I am dear to you."
" Dear to me ! You have cost
me dear enough, if that is what
you mean. I have not yet recov-
ered that last bleeding. Those
bureaucrats are ravenous wolves.
A Knight's Wooing.
393
They never have enough. While
they are gulping down gold as fast
as they can swallow it their in-
satiable maw is crying for more !
more !"
" They are a race of jackals, my
uncle."
"And you would drive their
fangs into me again! You would
drain me of my last rouble ! And
for whom, forsooth ?"
"My uncle, forgive me. I
thought of that death-bed, where
I saw you sobbing, where I heard
you blessing the man you now
curse. I thought of the insults
you have suffered, and it seemed
to me I had found you a noble op-
portunity for revenge, and for mak-
ing them your debtors for ever-
more. I was mistaken. Forgive
me."
Macchiavelli could not have
played his cards better. The one
soft point in Paul Ruboff's nature
had been his love for this sister ; she
had become a Catholic, and died
in the arms of the valiant soldier-
priest, who had guided her through
every trouble and seen her safe
into port at last. The one vulne-
rable point in his character was his
desire to be recognized by the proud
Polish family into which his sister
had married.
" I have no care to buy so costly
a revenge; I despise them all, the
proud-stomached aristocrats ! A
pitiful lot, always in debt, for ever
running their heads into the noose.
I could buy out the whole tribe
and not miss it. A stiff-necked,
beggarly crew !"
" You are hard on your own kin-
dred."
"Perhaps so, my nephew; but I
am a practical man. I confess,
nevertheless, it would rejoice me
to bring them to eat dirt at my
feet, as that proud fellow Baro-
witzki did when I got his brother
commuted from the mines."
" Yes, my uncle ; but you must
not let your heart run you into im-
prudence. You must not compro-
mise yourself with the authorities.
They might, moreover, resent your
interference ; people never know
what their influence is worth until
they try to use it."
" I am not afraid of that," said
Ruboff, his vanity kindling. "Prince
T [the governor of the city]
owes me a good round sum, and
he is hard set to pay me the inter-
est regularly."
" Prince T is brother-in-law
of the governor of Kronstadt, is he
not ?" inquired Witold.
"What has that to do with it ?"
" It might have been of use. I
want to get Pere Alexander trans-
ferred to Kronstadt."
" To Kronstadt ! Why not to
the moon?"
"That would be safer; but un-
fortunately I have no influence in
the moon."
" And you expect to use my in-
fluence to get this fellow to Kron-
stadt ? You are mistaken. I will
not move a finger in it !" And he
struck the table near him till the
cups and glasses rang again.
" My uncle, I understood you
to say so. But I mean to achieve
the perilous feat alone. The gods
are on the side of : desperate men.
Farewell, my uncle. If any harm
befalls me I commend Boleslas to
your care. You always loved the
boy. He is his mother's image,
and he is proud of your affection
for him."
Witold stood up and held out
his hand. He looked anything but
desperate, and yet he seemed fitted
for deeds of daring: tall, strong,
iron-sinewed, his air commanding,
his eye alight with the fire of youth,
394
A Knight's Wooing.
with youth's reckless love of dan-
ger. The old man fancied he de-
tected a softer light in it no\v, kin-
dled, perhaps, by the remembrance
of his mother and by the emotion
inseparable from a solemn farewell.
The youth knew that it was no
idle vaunt when lie spoke of peril
and calmly foreboded the issue.
He was mad, stark mad, like all his
father's people; still, he was his
mother's child, and Paul Ruboff
had never loved any one but that
mother.
" Witold, son of Ladislas," he
said, looking curiously up at the
broad-chested Polish gentleman,
" thou art a fool."
" My uncle, you speak the truth,"
said Witold, laughing.
" But I also am a fool."
" Nay, my uncle "
" I am a fool, I tell thee, boy ;
and there is no hope for me, for an
old fool is the worst of all. Sit
down and answer my questions.
Why must this other old fool be
got to Kronstadt ?"
" Because, once there, I have a
scheme for effecting his escape."
" Ah ?"
" One of the jailers of the For-
tress owes me his life and the life
of his daughter, an only child,
whom I watch over. He would
risk a good deal to serve me."
" Humph ! He will open the pri-
son door to Walarinski for your
sake ?"
" I think so ; that is, he will con-
nive at my plan. I have meditated
upon this plan long. Listen "
"Chut! I will listen to no-
thing !" And he struck the table
beside him till the glasses jumped
and an empty bottle rolled off. " I
am an old man, and I have many
sins to answer for, but I will not
die with the guilt of treason on my
soul"
" But, my uncle, to save an in-
nocent man "
" I will not conspire against the
will of our father, the czar. Be
silent ! I will hear nothing. This
much I will do for my sister's son:
I will ask Prince T to have
Walarinski sent on to Kronstadt.
Good heavens ! it will cost me
Holy St. Nicholas ! what a fool I
am. In my old age to squander
my hard-earned roubles on a ras-
cally Pole!"
He threw up both hands, caught
his head, and angrily twisted his
greasy cap first this way, then that,
and groaned as he thought of his
darling roubles.
"My uncle, you are an angel!"
said Witold.
"You lie! I am a fool!"
"You are the truest noble among
us."
" I despise your nobles !"
" You will have to tolerate their
esteem, their admiration, their
gratitude." . .
" I despise them. But thou art
thy mother's son. Go!"
It was scarcely an hour after
daybreak, that hour of dim white
light peculiar to the northern dawn,
when a strange-looking coach
might be seen travelling on the
road from Kamienetz to L .
It was like an enormous coffin set
on wheels ; the wheels were low,
the coach was long, painted black,
and with no windows to speak of,
only a round hole, protected by an
iron grating, close under the roof
a conveyance that looked more like
a hearse to trundle the dead than
a vehicle to serve the living. It
was, in fact, the travelling prison in
which those social dead, the con-
demned, are taken to their destina-
tion within the empire. If their
doom extends beyond it they leave
A Knigkfs Wooing.
395
the luxury of this rolling cell for
the kibitka or continue their jour-
ney on foot.
The coffin-like vehicle was drawn
by four horses and accompanied
by an escort of soldiers. It bound-
ed along like a whirlwind, blowing
the snow before it ; a little driver,
almost a child, seated in a high sad-
dle on the right leader, kept whip-
ping his horses with all his little
might, until suddenly coach and
cavalcade pulled up at the post-
house of a village. The hour was
early, yet many people were already
astir. True, the arrival of the tra-
velling prison is always announc-
ed beforehand, in order that fresh
relays may be ready ; but, besides
the people of the post-house, there
were peasants coming and going,
and a movement about the place
that was hardly to have been ex-
pected at such an early hour.
The soldiers alighted and went
in to their brea'kfast ; the small pos-
tilion tumbled out of his saddle and
followed them, while hostlers hurried
out and began to unyoke the jad-
ed team. In a moment the quiet
roadside was a scene of busy con-
fusion and loud talk. People came
round the travelling tomb and
looked up at the grating wistfully ;
but no wan face such as they were
used to see appeared there. It
might have been carrying a corpse,
so devoid of living tenants did it
seem. Presently a merry fellow
struck up a dumka on his korbana,
and the gazers deserted the coach
and gathered round him at the inn
door. Every one went away except
one tall peasant girl, whose face
was nearly quite concealed by a
fur hood drawn close round it.
She waited a moment, glancing
nervously around her, and then,
looking up to the grating, she said
in a low, eager voice :
"Father!"
"My child!"
"Close behind the cairn, to the
right, there is a man who is dying;
they have brought him here to get
absolution. See, they are com-
ing."
As the group of two peasants
bearing, the dying man approached,
a tipsy peasant opportunely came
rolling across the road, and, stag-
gering in amongst the hostlers, began
swearing at them; they answered
him in kind, blows followed quickly,
and then the Jew postmaster came
out and belabored them all round
with his stick, till in a second eve-
rything was confusion, and every-
body was screaming and vocifer-
ating.
While the melee was at its height
the two bearers approached .the
prison, laid down their stretcher,
and drew near to witness the fray.
The dying man, with the sweat of
death upon his brow, but fully con-
scious, turned his eyes with an
expression of contrite supplication
towards the grating, and murmur-
ed in a broken but audible voice :
" Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."
A face appeared at the window,
a pair of sunken eyes, still full of
fire, met his, a hand was uplifted,
and the words "Ego te absolvo " fell
on the dying man's ear like the
heavenly message that they were.
His eyes were fixed on the face
of the priest, whose hand continu-
ed uplifted, repeating the blessing
and the absolution, mingled with
brief, strong words of hope and
faith. The peasant girl, standing
under the hedge, watched the scene,
while her lips moved rapidly in
prayer. Five minutes passed. The
bearers went back to lift their bur-
den. The fray was at an end.
" Whom have you there ?" inquir-
ed the postmaster, approaching.
39 6
A K nig] it ' s Wooing.
"Our brother; we are taking
him to our old home to be nursed ;
he is dying."
They bent down to lift the
stretcher, but dre\v back with
startled faces.
"He is dead 7" said the Jew in
awe-stricken tones; and all the
people, moved by pity and curiosity,
drew near to look.
" Yes, he is dead !" they repeat-
ed.
A low cry of joy, as it sounded,
rose up from some one perhaps
from the hooded figure, whose eyes
were lifted to the grating, where
through blinding tears she could
see a bronzed face, paler than it
used to be, but still full of energy,
with the bristling gray hair shorn
and in its place the hideous con-
vict cap. The convict's lips were
moving rapidly, and the hand was
raised, repeating benedictions over
the dead confessor.
All the people stood back re-
spectfully as the brothers, who
bore their affliction with surprising
equanimity, raised the stretcher,
now become a bier, and went on
their way, the stately young figure
following at a distance.
"Whom have you within?" in-
quired the postmaster of one of
the soldiers, pointing to the coach.
"A Polish priest."
"Bound for?"
u Siberia."
Mysteries lie around us in the
dark. The wicked pass upon their
way exulting; but the glare of the
tyrant's chariot lamps comes like a
heavenly beam upon the victim,
and shows him the cup which the
angel is holding out.
Siberia ! If the word fell on
Hedvvige's ear, it was a stab that
might have been spared. The
man spoke at random, answering
from conjecture rather than ac-
knowledge his ignorance. In the
land of tyranny every man aims at
being a trusted agent. It did not
much matter, he thought, whether
the convict was condemned to the
great prison land or to the nar-
rower tomb of Kronstadt. Kron-
stadt, with its dungeons sunk be-
neath the sea, was good measure
even for a Polish priest, and left
little cause for envy to those who
were told off to the icy arms of
Siberia unless, mayhap, the pri-
soner was sentenced to the mines ;
even then, indeed, the choice was
difficult.
If Hedwige heard the answer
she took no heed of it, but hurried
on to Kronstadt as soon as her
departure became possible.
She was to be the guest there of
a Mme. RakomofT, a distant cousin
of Paul RubofFs. Mme. Rako-
moff was a widow of about forty ;
her husband had held a post of
some importance in the customs,
and this had given her during his
lifetime an importance which she
spoke of now as " my former bril-
liant position," and to the rags of
this position she clung with leech-
like tenacity. Like most women
of her class, she affected fine man-
ners, talked, of the court as if it
were her native element and the
society of Kronstadt a land of ex-
ile. She was a harmless soul, and
good-natured except when her
vanity was touched or her loyalty
suspected, in either which case she
would have been as cruel as a
Nero. She had a heart of stone
for any one who rebelled against
the czar, especially if the rebel
were a Pole. Still, the proud Po-
lish nobles, who, through their mes-
alliance with a Ruboff, had been
drawn within the circle of her remote
belongings, were a subject of pride
A Knight's Wooing.
397
to Mine. Rakomoff, though they
had never noticed her.
Witold Ranolzki found her out,
detected her weak points, and play-
ed upon them with that skill which
wrought upon Paul Ruboff. He
gradually brought the widow to
send an invitation to the young
Countess Hedwige to come and
visit her. But when the letter was
gone, and Witold added as a con-
dition of the visit that it should be
kept a secret, the scheme nearly
fell through. What! Mme. Rako-
moff was to spend countless roubles
in entertaining a great lady, her
cousin to boot, and she was to get
no glory out of it ? She was to
hide her splendid candlestick under
the bed? And why? What mys-
tery was there to hide? Either
the countess was ashamed of being
the guest of Ivan Rakomoffs wi-
dow or she was plotting mischief.
It taxed Witold's diplomatic skill
to the utmost to pacify the vain
little woman, but he conquered at
last, by dint of flattery so broadly
tendered that he laughed openly
at himself as he administered it.
" She is no conspirator, I swear
to you, my cousin," he declared ;
and Mme. Rakomoff purred like a
stroked cat to hear herself so ad-
dressed by Prince Ranolzki. " She
is a tender-hearted girl, bent on a
mission of mercy. Will you not
take my word as a kinsman ?"
"Assuredly, prince, if "
" Nay, why this ceremony be-
tween cousins ? Call me Witold, I
pray you."
" Dear Witold, since you assure
me " And the widow, chuckling
with gratified vanity, gave in.
The dreary state room was made
ready for Hedwige, the tapestries
were uncovered, the silver-embroi-
dered counterpane was spread, and
Mme. Rakomoff, in a flutter of de-
licious excitement, awaited the ar-
rival of her guest.
But when Hedwige appeared the
gushing hostess felt at once that
there would be neither sympathy
nor companionship between them ;
her fussy affectation was* cowed by
the simplicity and proud reserve of
the Polish girl. It was as if a
queen had alighted under her roof
and put an extinguisher on her
brass candlestick. It had taken as
much persuasion to induce Hed-
wige to accept the Muscovite's hos-
pitality as to compel the latter to
consent to the conditions, and, now
that she had come, she stood aloof,
courteous, unexacting, and mis-
trustful. Witold had made all
ready for the bold venture. The
jailer had been won ; many others
were bought, blinded, or circum-
vented.
While these preliminaries were
going on Pere Alexander languish-
ed at Kronstadt in one of the tombs
beneath the sea a slimy den where
no ray of light penetrated, whose
walls were thick with foul live crea-
tures that crawled over him, hissing
in the darkness, stinging and de-
vouring him ; where no sound ever
broke the death-like silence except
the heavy wash of the wave against
the dungeon wall, or now and then
the moans and shrieks of fellow-cap-
tives in surrounding cells. Some
of them were raving maniacs^ oth-
ers only cried out under the lash or
the screw or some other device
of cruelty; for their jailers, brutaliz-
ed by their diabolical employment,
made a sport of the agonies of their
wretched-victims, and added illegal
tortures to their miserable lot. No
beam of sun or stars pierced the
dense gloom of those horrible
abodes, where man, become a de-
mon, works his wicked will upon
393
A Knight's Wooing.
his fellow-men unseen. Only the
light of faith may enter there to
illuminate the saddest of earthly
dooms, and bid the sufferer look
beyond this life for the justice that
has no witness here below. God
said : *' Let there be light, and there
was light." In Russia, the land of
slaves and tyrants, one man says,
" Let there be darkness !" and forth-
with the light goes out, and men
are plunged into the darkness of
the shadow of death.
Here, in our own free land, the
sun of liberty is shining ; we are
wronged, and we take our grievance
to the law, and the rulers them-
selves are ruled and no man fears
injustice ; Sabbath bells are ring-
ing, children's laughter comes echo-
ing across the fields where the free-
man drives the plough through the
smoking furrow ; but yonder, in
Kronstadt, captives, many of whom
are blameless, heroic men, are
calling to us from their tombs be-
neath the sea; calling for help to
their free brothers, who do not hear ;
calling for pity to God, who does
not answer.
Witold arrived early one morning
to see Hedwige and give her the
final directions. Everything was
ready for the rescue that night.
" And the watch you are sure
of him ?" she inquired.
" His pay depends on the suc-
cess of the enterprise."
" And the boatman you have
no misgivings of him ?"
" His head is staked on the issue,
and the game is worth ^the candle
to him. He will be waiting for you
under the north tower. He will
give you the watchword, 'Czen-
stochowa!' You will answer, ' Ora
pro nobis !' As the clock strikes
two the watch within will be re-
lieved, and in a few minutes a win-
dow in the north tower will open,
and Pere Alexander will let himself
down by a rope-ladder. You will
get into the boat and the man will
row you to the stone stair. Re-
member you keep close under the
wall; then, all three, you will leap
across the bar, and, taking to the
water, swim out to the Britannia.
You will know her by a red light
shining at her stern ; this is the
signal. Swim round her to the off
side ; the boat will be waiting there
to pick you up."
"Why must the boatman come
with us ?" asked Hedwige. " It
may be foolish, but the idea of
having a Russian hireling for com-
panion in our flight frightens me."
" He is a tool and an accomplice,
and you cannot do without him.
He must swim with you or else re-
main in his boat to be detected
when daylight conies ; he would be
at once taken up and put to the
torture till he accounted for his
presence there. There is no al-
ternative but to let him swim with
you to the ship. And it must all
be done with the utmost rapidity.
I can count upon the watch, but
there are lynx-eyes stationed in the
harbor, and if one of them spied
the boat or any unusual movement,
the alarm would be given and pur-
suit would be immediate. Happily
the nights are dark, and we are not
likely to have a moon to-night.
My only fear is for Pere Alexander.
Will he be equal to the effort ?"
"He used to be an excellent
swimmer. I have heard my father
tell of his feats in early days."
"But he was young then."
" He is young now. I have no
misgivings about him."
" And for yourself, my cousin
have you calculated the risks ?
They are tremendous : the sea is
fearfully cold ; the distance will
A Knight's Wooing.
399
strain your strength to the very ut-
most. The dangers are great and
manifold."
" I have the blood of the Jagel-
lons in my veins."
" True ; but you are a woman
and not inured to hardship."
" Women who come of a race of
heroes can bear hardship better
than others. I know this night's
work will try my metal, but I have
put my trust in God. Moreover, I
am alone now. If I die I leave
no mother to mourn me."
"Bid me come and share the
danger with you, cousin."
" You are not free to obey me if
I did. A prisoner on parole is
bound by the chains of honor."
u Does a man feel bound to the
wolf who drops him a moment from
his fangs ?"
"Your uncle has made great
sacrifices for us already. If you
break your word and fly he will
answer for it with his life."
"I forgot! I forgot that he ex-
isted," said Witold, turning from
her with visible agitation. " Hed-
wige! Hedwige!" he cried, com-
ing back, and his fine features
were convulsed with passionate
feeling, " why are you so cruel ?
Bid me at least hope that later,
when these terrible times are pass-
ed away, and we can meet in secu-
rity and peace "
" These are not times to talk of
hopes," she said, interrupting him ;
but the rebuke in her blue eyes
as they met his was more sad
than stern.
" I know it ; they are times for
action. But hope lends energy to
action. Forgive me, my cousin,
but we are parting, perhaps for
ever, and I fain would have had
one gentle word from your lips to
remember when I shall have no-
thing else to live for."
"You are my dear cousin, my
best friend, my brother," said Hed-
wige, with a tear in her voice; and
she held out her hand to him.
" Is this our last good-by ?" he
asked.
"It must be so if you leave this
afternoon."
" I might be in time by leaving
this evening; I need only reach
Kamienetz by noon on Thursday."
" It would be folly to risk it.
Let us say good-by now. God
guard you, cousin !"
He raised her hand to his lips,
and turned from her without
speaking.
She heard the great door close
upon him, and then the proud girl
clasped her hands with a wail and
sobbed as if her heart would break.
The morning passed, and the
afternoon. Happily, Mme. Rako-
moff was in bed, resting herself
for the coming fatigues of a ball
that she was to attend that night,
so Hedwige was free and alone all
day. She spent hours pacing up
and down the gaudy crimson draw-
ing-room, her arms crossed, her
head erect, and a strange light of
triumphant energy on her pale, low
brow. As she swept to and fro in
her dark, clinging draperies she
looked a true daughter of her he-
roic namesake who gave Christian-
ity to Poland in exchange for the
Jagellons* crown, a creature born-
for high achievement and assured
of victory.
Mme. Rakomoff, having rested
since eleven o'clock the previous
night, rose at'eight, and at ten made
her appearance, equipped for the
fray. She came rustling in, sparkling
with jewels and self-complacency,
and expecting to excite the young
Polish girl's admiration and envy
by her magnificence. Hedwipe
was still wandering up and doun
4OO
A Knight's Wooing.
the room with that restless motion
which betokens inward agitation
too strong for physical repose.
She met her hostess with a cheer-
ful smile, and, with true feminine
instinct, gave the praise expected of
her.
" What glorious emeralds, ma-
dame !" she exclaimed in genuine
admiration of the large green gems
that shone on the widow's neck
and in her hair.
Mme. Rakomoff laughed, and
declared that these were nothing
compared to what she had upstairs.
She said good-night to her guest,
and was turning away when Hed-
wige, moved by some secret yearn-
ing of her young heart for a touch
of sympathy, as well as by a feeling
of gratitude to the woman who had
sheltered and trusted her, and
whom she would never look upon
again, put her arms round Mme.
Rakomoffs neck and kissed her.
" Good-night, my cousin ; you
have been very good to me," she
said.
Mme. Rakomoff returned the
caress with some surprise, but cor-
dially, and rode away in a flutter of
happy excitement. Hedwige then
went to her room. The night wore
on ; the hours went slowly as a
passing bell. When it struck one
she dressed herself in a peasant
costume made of light material,
'and throwing a large, hooded
cloak, lined with fur, round her,
stole softly down the stairs. The
lamps were burning, but the porter
was not in the hall ; Mme. Rako-
moff was not expected, till four
o'clock, so every one was resting.
The door had been left unbarred.
Hedwige opened it with velvet fin-
gers, and closed it as if her heart
were in the lock. She then stepped
out into the street, and walked on
as rapidly as she dared. The night
was inky dark, but she made her
way unmolested across the city
through the deserted streets. No
one was abroad on foot ; only a few
carriages were bearing revellers
home from a feast. As she ap-
proached the Fortress her heart
beat in hot thumps against her
side. If the watch should have
been changed, or if he should turn
traitor? She sent up a prayer
and walked on. She passed the
gates unchallenged, whether unseen
or not she could not say ; then,
creeping with cat-like steps through
the gloom, she crossed the great
quadrangle and on through courts
within courts, all dark and unten-
anted, and at last she reached the
trysting-place under the north
tower. The little boat was riding
lightly on the water, moored to the
bank.
11 Our Lady of Czenstochowa !"
murmured the boatman.
" Ora pro nobis !" answered Hed-
wige in the same low tone.
The man did not rise or motion
her to enter the boat, but sat per-
fectly still, hi:j arms crossed, his
sheepskin cap pulled low over his
face. She dared not ask a ques-
tion, but stood there in the dark-
ness, looking out over the sea, dot-
ted with a wilderness of vessels,
great and small, all dimly visible
like spectral ships blotting the
blackness of the night. Where
was the Britannia ? Witold said
she would know it by a red light in
the stern ; but she strained her
eyes in vain for the beacon. If it
should fail ? It was an awful fate
that she was tempting. As she
stood there shuddering in the
lonely darkness, all the perils and
possibilities of the issue rose up
before her like a horrible vision.
Mysterious sounds seemed to echo
from the depths of the subterranes
A Knight's Wooing.
401
beneath her. Was it the moans
of the wretched captives, or might
not those dread abodes be haunted
by spirits from the other world?
the ghosts of those who had lin-
gered there, first goaded to mad-
ness and then starved and tortur-
ed to death. The cold flap of the
water at her feet sounded porten-
tous and supernatural ; it struck
terror into her soul, and made her
heart die within her. Was escape
yet possible ? She looked round
her, cowering with fear. The great
donjon keep reared itself above
her far up into the night a stone
giant lifted out of the sea by
strong, hideous monsters who
dwelt in the depths below. Were
they grinning at her from the cy-
clopean battlements, dimly visible
near the stars ?
But what miserable cowardice
was this ! Hedwige made the sign
of the cross and sent up her heart
in a cry for strength. She had
come here trusting in One mightier
than the. giants of the deep, more
powerful than all the powers of
darkness; she would trust him still;
he was merciful and faithful, and
she was his child. Terror had
made the time seem long, but in
reality she had not been waiting
ten minutes when the clock of the
Fortress struck two. A hundred
dials from the city answered it.
They were still clanging when a
window opened in the tower ; a
rope-ladder was let down, and
presently a large, heavy form
was dimly discernible descending
slowly. Hedwige did not dare
watch it, but hid her face in her
hands, praying with all her might.
Presently she heard some one close
beside her, and looked up.
''Father!"
"God be praised, my child !"
They had spoken in a whisper,
VOL. xxix. 26
but the boatman hissed out an
angry hush! and signed to them to
take their places beside him. They
did so quickly, and then the boat
shot out over the flood, keeping
close in the deep shadow of the
wall. A few minutes brought them
near the stone stair which park-
ed the line that no boat dare pass.
Thank Heaven ! they were safe so
far. But just at this moment the
moon sailed out from beneath a
bank of cloud and swept the
darkness from the sea. Ghosts
started up from the shadows and
glided along the rigging, signalling
silently from ship to ship; ghouls
leaped out from the loopholes of
the donjon keep, goblins perched
upon buttress and battlement; the
vessels stood out like a phantom
fleet in the offing, that was white in
the silver illumination. The senti-
nel boats gleamed in horrible dis-
tinctness on the nearer waters.
They lay as silent as logs; the sen-
tinels were most likely asleep, but
the lightest noise upon the waters
would arouse them. And where
was the red beacon that was to
guide them after their perilous
plunge ? There was no sign of it
anywhere A cry rose to Hed-
wige's lips, but happily did not
pass them, for at the same moment
the red light became visible in the
stern of the Britannia.
" Quick, take to the water !" said
the boatman in a hoarse whisper.
" You first, father ; it will give
me courage," said Hedwige in low,
hurried tones.
Pere Alexander made the sign of
the cross, commended his soul to
his Maker, and plunged into the
water. The noise of his fall sound-
ed preternaturally loud. Hedwige's
heart stood still. But no sign
came from the watch-boats to show
that they had heard anything
402
A Kniglit's Wooing.
Pere Alexander, after disappearing
for a moment, rose to the surface
and struck out with the ease of a
practised swimmer.
Hedwige turned to the boatman
and motioned him to follow, but as
she did so the clear beam of the
moon fell upon his face, and she
repressed a scream.
" Witold!"
"Hush! Jump in!"
"You first."
" I cannot."
"You must!"
" I cannot. I only came because
the boatman failed at the last.
Quick, for Heaven's sake !"
" I will not move until you do.
It is madness to hesitate. Witold,
if you love me "
" Dearest, begone ! Every mo-
ment is precious. If the watch
should hear us!"
" Jump in, and I will follow."
" I cannot "
" But why ? InHeaven'sname "
There was a second's hesitation
before he answered :
" / cannot swim."
"O Witold,- Witold!" She flung
herself on his breast. " Then I will
stay with you. Let us die together ! "
He clasped her for one moment
in a passionate embrace ; then,
lifting her in his strong arms as
lightly as if she had been an infant,
he flung her from him into the
heaving flood.
The shock took her breath away,
for the water was cold as ice, and
he thought she had fainted; but
loveof life quickly asserted itself and
lent an almost superhuman strength
to the delicate young limbs.
The red light was shining steadi-
.ly ahead, and he saw that Hedwige
had it in sight. No sign or stir
t came from the sentinel-boats ; but
as she passed within a few yards
of one of them Witold fell upon
his knees and followed her with a
prayer as pure as ever heart of man
sent up for the woman he loved.
He followed her track upon the
water until she disappeared behind
live Britannia, and then he knew
that she was safe.
Pere Alexander was already on
board, and kindly hands were min-
istering to him. The captain's
wife, an English lady, was waiting
to receive Hedwige, but, with an
exclamation of anguish, she hur-
ried to the ship's side.
The boat lay half in shadow and
half in the silver light; she saw
W T itold standing there, and she
knew that his eyes were straining
for some sign from her. She pull-
ed out her little handkerchief, Grip-
ping from the sea, and shook it
above her head. He saw it and
waved his hand in answer. Then
Hedwige fell upon her knees, cry-
ing like a child. The captain's
wife put her arms round her, and
the girl let herself be led down to
the cabin, while the sailors looked
on, their honest hearts full of chiv-
alrous compassion for the beautiful
young lady and the lover who had
rescued her at the sacrifice of his
life.
All was activity now on board
the Britannia, for she was to sail
by daybreak. The anchor was
hauled up, the canvas was unfurl-
ed, and before the last star had
faded from the sky the good ship
stood out to sea bearing Hedwige
and Pere Alexander to the free
shores of England.
Not long after this memorable
night the governor of Kamienetz
was dismissed because, so the ru-
mor ran, he had connived at the
flight of a Polish nobleman, who
had escaped to France disguised
as the valet of a rich Russian trader.
The name of the Russian was
Paul Ruboff.
Science and Sentiment'
403
"SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT."
THE first public meeting of the
Phi Beta Kappa Alumni of New
York was held in this city, April
19, at Chickering Hall. The ob-
ject of the association was to bring
together the college graduates in
this city, so given to trade, and re-
new the influence which the Phi
Beta Kappa had exerted in the
colleges, and the audience was re-
fined and cultivated in character.
Dr. Noah Portef, President of
Yale College, was chosen to give
the address of this anniversary,
which we find reported in the col-
umns of the Tribune.
The subject which Dr. Porter
treated is one that engages the se-
rious attention of the active, intelli-
gent minds of our day. His treat-
ment of it was scholarly and his
line of argument was philosophi-
cal, while the general tone of his
address was practical and popular.
We are always gratified in see-
ing our distinguished scholars
coming to the front and discussing
those serious and great questions
which occupy, agitate, and even
try that class of men who have not
received their souls in vain. It is,
indeed, a part of the duty of this
class to endeavor to bring to light
the truths which are necessary to
the satisfactory solution of these'
problems, and to aim at producing
certain, strong, and healthy con-
victions in the minds of the com-
munity. While appreciating high-
ly as we do Dr. Porter's efforts,
and trusting that his example will
stimulate others, equally as well
equipped, to enter into the same
* Dr. Porter's address to the Alumni of the Phi
Beta Kappa of New York.
field, we cannot avoid at the same
time giving expression to certain
thoughts which have arisen in our
mind while attentively reading his
interesting address.
The title of President Porter's
address is "Science and Senti-
ment." The two are in the first
place put in contrast to each other
as natural enemies, following which
they are shown to be indispensable
friends, and then that sentiment is
the moving force of science, and,
finally, the claims of sentiment are
established as interpreted by science
robed in common sense.
Dr. Porter, after having explain-
ed how " sentiment is the moving
force of science," proceeds to show
that " sentiment is to be regulated
by science," and under the heading,
" The appeal always to the intel-
lect," he says :
" In such cases it is not the claim of
sentiment as such, still less of sentiment
as pure feeling, which decides the ques-
tion, but of sentiment as recognized and
interpreted by science. The appeal is
not taken from the intellect to the feel-
ings, which would open the flood-gates
to fanaticism and passion ; nor is it
from one feeling to another, which would
call on the blind to lead the blind ; nor
is it to transfer one subject-matter to the
court of the intellect and another to the
court of the feelings which would intro-
duce endless questions about jurisdic-
tion, and make the courts a laughing-
stock by injunctions and counter-in-
junctions but it is an appeal to the
intellect, in robes of science, too, as
grounding its judgments upon the data
furnished by the presence and demands
of sentiment in the nature of man."
Now, what serious thinking
minds are anxious to be inform-
ed about is what are the ultimate
404
Science and Sentiment '."
grounds on which the sentiment
makes this " appeal to the intel-
lect "? Grant "'the presence and
demands of sentiment in the na-
ture of man," what is the force and
validity of its presence and de-
mands? Can sentiment stand up
and face intellect, and say : "I am
here on as legitimate and firm a
basis as you are, and can also
prove in the court of reason that
my claims to attention are as well
grounded as yours " ? It would
seem so by the assertions of the
distinguished author of this ad-
dress, and his unquestionable abil-
ity and the character of his audi-
ence lead us to anticipate, in an-
swer to this question, satisfactory
evidence and a triumphant deci-
sion in favor of the rights of senti-
ment.
"Science," he tells us, "should often
recognize in sentiment an important ele-
ment and datum of proof. If science is
called into existence by sentiment, and
sentiment furnishes and shapes the ends
of science, and sentiment is controlled by
science, then science may reasonably re-
cognize sentiment as having an impor-
tant place in the economy of nature.
" For example, in all those sciences
which have to do with human interests,
as in all the subdivisions of political and
social philosophy, it may be assumed as
a sound maxim that any principle which
can be clearly proved to be inconsistent
with the elevation and enjoyment of the
greatest number of human beings is to be
regarded as untrue. In other words,
those teachings of political economy
which can be shown to be the most hu-
mane give, pri ma facie evidence that they
are true. Those systems that favor in-
dividual ownership of property, a mea-
sure of copartnership in capital and co-
operation in labor, general education,
the alleviation of drudgery, reasonable
amusements, the refinement of the pub-
lic tastes, bring a strong recommenda-
tion in their favor on strictly scientific
grounds. These grounds rest upon the
axiom that all the arrangements of na-
ture contemplate the gratification of the
better and nobler sentiments of individ-
ual men. All social and political or-
ganizations find the reason of their being
in this as an assumed and attainable
end.
" Nature would be a monster did she
not arrange for the common good, and
Nature would be a bungler if she did
not provide that whatever makes one
man happier and better should be con-
sistent with the well being of all the
rest."
We accept this appeal to the
"nobler sentiments "as good argu-
ment as far as it goes, but it does
not go far enough to meet the scien-
tists who hold, as the address in-
forms us, the following :
" For what, pray, has sentiment to do
with science, when sentiment itself, ac-
cording to the ' conquered stand-point,' is
nothing but a transient tremor of a brain-
cell a rosy blush suffusing for an in-
stant the surface of super-refined mole-
cules a rose-leaf hanging slightly on
the stem evolved from a material germ,
as frail as it is beautiful
" ' Or like the snow upon the river,
A moment white, then gone for ever' ?"
Nor does it strengthen his case
in their eyes by appealing to " a
theory of life," which he makes :
" If this is true of institutions and so-
cial economies, it must also be true cf a
theory of life. Whatever theory shocks
the modesty or the moderation of nature
does violence to that fellow-feeling which
makes the whole world kin, gives spur
or rein to the appetites which we have
in common with the brutes. Whatever
tends to degrade or debase our man-
hood, whatever ministers to bad neigh-
borhood between men or communities,
*>r inflames envious or selfish passion, is
for these reasons rightly held to be false
on purely scientific grounds. It is the
dictate of a rigidly scientific spirit to re-
ject such a theory altogether until it
forces conviction by absolute demon-
stration."
The last sentence seems to sup-
pose the possibility of demonstrat-
ing a theory of Jife such as modern
socialists and communists wildly
dream of. We submit that so far Dr.
" Science and Sentiment."
405
Porter does not show a strong grasp
of the radical points of his subject,
hence his language is a little hazy ;
his statements are somewhat weak,
and lie fails to give full satisfaction.
For if the sentiments of our nature
are as valid as its cognitions, why
stop at simply saying so? Why
not carry the war into Africa, and
remove any doubt on the minds of
his hearers by proving it ? Is it
not a culpable weakness to even
suppose that perhaps, after all, it is
possible they may be demonstrated
to be all moonshine ?
But it may be that, as the learn-
ed professor advances in his sub-
ject, his clearness, force, and men-
tal courage will increase, and by
what follows this appears to be the
fact :
" Science finds in man," he tells us,
"the desire for immortality, and finds it
to be a persistent and irrepressible force.
It craves existence for those whom we
love as truly as for our individual selves.
This desire is a constant and ever-recur-
ring fact, a phenomenon of enormous
significance, a force of terrific energy if
we estimate it by its power of work. It
may not be legitimate to reason : We are
unwilling to cease to exist, then we shall
not cease to exist ; but it is perfectly ra-
tional to conclude that Nature must put
a lie on all her analogies and indications
if she has not provided a fact which shall
answer to this desire when viewed in its
place among the springs of human ac-
tion."
This is well and strongly put,
but it is spoiled by the clause,
" It may not be legitimate to rea-
son." Why put this dead fly into
the ointment? Has Dr. Porter
himself a lurking doubt as to the
ability of reason to demonstrate the
immortality of the soul ? If not,
then why make this supposition to
his audience ? These are not the
times when men who stand high in
the estimation of the community
may use hesitating language on the
great truths which underlie all re-
ligion, or state them, as it were,
hypothetical! jr.
Let us do no injustice to Dr.
Porter; perhaps it was but tender-
ness on his part towards what he
supposed might be the state of
mind of some of his cultivated au-
dience, and, like a wise strategist,
he is cautiously leading them on
to the recognition of the legitimate
claims of sentiment and to strong-
er convictions. In the following
statement we have reason to be-
lieve that some such motive has
guided him in the use of his
words :
" If a man," he says, " is scientific in
proportion as he is sensitive to the most
subtle intimations and analogies within
a limited field of observation and expe-
riment, he is as truly scientific when he
is equally sensitive to the indications
that fly into his face in another. That
the field of science ought to recognize
the sentiments of the soul among the phe-
nomena of nature will not be denied,
however often the fact is overlooked.
The feeling of reverence or worship for
the more than finite is another phe-
nomenon which science has at last con-
ceded deserves its notice. It fails to do
justice to this sentiment, however, if it
does not find its counterpart in that liv-
ing God for whom the heart thinks and
longs."
Precisely so ; the case is well
stated, and as this occasion has
been thought appropriate to bring
before a scholarly audience the
claims of sentiment face to face
with those of science, who is bet-
ter fitted than Dr. Porter to bring
home to science by plain facts the
proof of its injustice, and by the
truths of reason and the force of
sound logic to compel science to
do justice to sentiment, and to
" find its counterpart in that living
God for whom the heart thinks
and longs"? But it would be idle
to imagine that the fact of pitting
406
"Science and Sentiment.'
one against the other, and stating
the claims of each, settles the ques-
tion.
Is there, then, no authoritative
principle recognized by both par-
ties, by which it can be clearly
shown and turned to account that
the faculty of feeling, or sentiment,
is as valid in what it duly attests
as the faculty of cognition, or know-
ing ? That is the question. Dr.
Porter says :
"Thus far in our argument we have
treated the so-called sentiments or sen-
timentalisms as though they were emo-
tions only, having no positively intellec-
tual element, and as only indirectly hav-
ing claims to the notice of science. We
have argued that even so regarded they
are important as data for scientific in-
ferences, and have, so to speak, authori-
ty over the conclusions of the intellect.
We proceed to exhibit them in another
aspect."
Evidently the speaker is con-
scious that his thesis requires of
him .to go deeper into his subject
than he has thus far ventured.
Hence his presentation of it in a
new aspect :
" Much of what passes," he says, " for
sentiment has a positive intellectual ele-
ment. Many of the so-called sentiments
signify strong convictions warmed into ar-
dent enthusiasm and held with passionate
earnestness. The intellectual element
may not be obtrusive. The truths on
which these convictions rest may be seen
so clearly and reasoned so readily that
the presence and activity of the intellect
can scarcely be observed. The feelings
may flash so quickly into flame, and
glow with such intense earnestness, that
even the subject of them scarcely knows
that he thinks at all. It should never be
forgotten that emotion in man rests on
belief ; that feeling of every sort is the
legitimate product of what is taken to be
true. The proverb which reads, 'Wher-
ever there is smoke there is fire,' may
be expanded thus : Wherever there is fire
there is fuel, and this may still further be
applied : Wherever there is the fire of
emotion there is a firm belief of truth."
This is approaching nearer to
the vital point, but we should have
understood him better if he had
said : " Much of what passes for sen-
timent has a positive objective ele-
ment." For we are not sure what
he means by an " intellectual ele-
ment." He seems to identify it
with the subject, or the knowledge
of the subject, of its feelings, and
hence resolves all feelings into a
purely subjective experience, which
is pure nonsense. This impres-
sion is confirmed by his remarks on
the proverb which he quotes. For
the logic of the proverb seems to
us to be this : " Wherever there is
smoke there is fire." Wherever
there is fire there is fuel, and wher-
ever there is the fire of emotion
there is the fuel of truth. We pro-
test against the weakening clause,
"there is a firm belief." We insist that
if you put this qualifier in the sen-
tence for emotion, then put it also
in the sentence on knowing. ** What
is sauce for the goose is sauce for
the gander." And now the doubt
begins to creep over our mind
whether Professor Porter himself
really believes that there is an
objective element in any of the
emotions of the soul.
But no; he grows bolder, and in
the following paragraph he faces
science and says :
" Science, so far as it dishonors senti-
ment, exposes its own narrowness and
brings into question its own right to
exist and to give law to man. That
philosopher who reasons that sentimeni
has no rights over the scientific intellect
because its phenomena and their effects
can neither be observed by the senses,
pictured by the imagination, nor verified
by experiment, may seem to be con-
sistent in dismissing sentiment, in all its
forms of faith and duty, as having no
possible relations that he can define to
what he accepts as scientific truth. It
would be well that he should ask him-
self whether on his own principles he
Science and Sentiment"
407
does not bring into question the au-
thority of those intellectual processes
through which all the results of science
have been achieved, and by faith in which
all the devotees of science must stand.
It were a pity that, seeking to clear out
of its way all impertinent intruders and
make for itself a clear and open field, it
should cut off its legs."
It would seem that the boldness
he assumed in the above paragraph
had excited his fears, and he
hastens to retrace his steps by a
most damaging admission to his
entire thesis :
" But we may not linger," he says, " on
this treacherous ground. Let us return
from this metaphysical quagmire and
gain a firm footing, so that we may
gather the results of our argument in a
few brief definitions."
So, according to Dr. Porter, it is
*' treacherous ground " to seek to
find the basis of sentiment, and in
this pursuit there is the danger of
landing one's self- in the bogs of a
"metaphysical quagmire." If this
be so, then what Mr. Emerson sings
is true :
" Alas ! the sprite that haunts us
Deceives our rash desire ;
It whispers of the glorious gods.
And leaves us in the mire."
This is rather a sad picture, and
we are not surprised at the admis-
sion contained in the sentence
which closes this remarkable ad-
dress :
"In a truly scientific theory of the
universe we recognize common sense,
with its intuitions that command convic-
tion and defy analysis ; science, with its
verified phenomena and demonstrated
reasoninrs ; and faith, with its inspiring
analogies, that are the precursors of an
ampler knowledge and a purer emotion,
of a sphere in which science and senti-
ment never even seem to conflict, but
are always at one."
Are we, then, to accept these
statements as the ultimate grounds
of the defence of sentiment, and
stop here, and admit that all be-
yond what the president of Yale
College has given us in his address
on the question of the origin of
our sentiments is " metaphysical
quagmire," and that what he calls
" the intuitions of common sense
defy analysis"? This answer may
not be the sounding for retreat,
but it looks to us very much like
giving up the contest and leaving
the best of the field in the posses-
sion of " science."
Instead of stopping here with
scientists, agnostics, pos'itivists, and
the school of German subjectivists,
it is just at this stage of the argu-
ment that the issue with them, in
our opinion, should be joined. And
it is at this precise point we do join
issue with them.
It is an admitted fact of common
experience that there are longings
and yearnings and strivings after an
excellence and a good, even in sav-
age bosoms, which the soul sees,
and which the intelligence appre-
hends more or less clearly, but
which it cannot fully comprehend.
Whether these " nobler sentiments "
belong to man's natural state, or
are partly due to a special divine
influence acting on the soul, we are
not now interested in determining.
It suffices for our present purpose
that these are acknowledged by all
parties as indisputable psychologi-
cal facts.
This admitted, we proceed to in-
quire : From whence come, or
what is the origin and force of,
these great longings of the soul,
these earnest desires of the heart,
these " nobler sentiments "? Their
origin and basis can be no other
than that which in the last analysis
is common to all the operations of
the soul, for man is a unit and
always acts as a unit in all his
relations. This being so, we are
408
Science and Sentiment''
then forced to advance in our in-
vestigation a step farther, and are
bound to ask the ultimate question :
From whence, then, do all know-
ledge and desire proceed ? or what
are the constituent elements of all
our knowledge or operations of the
soul? All the operations of the
soul, we reply, proceed primarily
from the relation of ourselves with
something not ourselves.
If we analyze any one of the
primal operations of the soul, it
matters not which, we shall find
that all knowledge is born of the
knower and the thing known, the
lover and the object loved, and
their relation. Hence all life,
which is the sum of our knowing
and loving, is born of the thinker
and lover, man, and his relations
with the object thought and loved.
These three elements, the think-
er, and the thing thought, and their
relation, are the essential condi-
tions of all knowledge, of all senti-
ment, of all life, of every process of
the soul. Eliminate either one of
these constituents, and the mind
remains a blank. For it is evident
something to be known and loved
must exist. No one can know
what does not exist. No one can
love what he does not know.
Nothing can come from nothing.
It is equally clear that whatever
exists cannot be known or loved
unless it comes in some relation or
contact with our intelligence or
sensibility. Hence to think or to
love at all, which is equivalent to
exist at all, there must be some-
thing not ourselves, and in some
sort in contact with ourselves.
Were the soul by possibility left
alone to itself, it would be power-
less to start the least act of any
one of its faculties; it would be al-
together unproductive.
If, therefore, the faculty of think-
ing or feeling is awakened into ac-
tion in the slightest degree, it is
due to the presence of something,
whatever that may be, independ-
ent of itself and in contact with
its faculties. Hence every opera-
tion of the soul is inseparable from
something not ourselves, and so far
as this something exists it must be
true, and so far as this something
is true it must be good. It is im-
possible, therefore, for any one of
the faculties of the soul to come
into operation without the presence
of something real, true, and good.
Even in the wildest and most ex-
travagant productions of the ima-
gination, the elements out of which
these are formed are real and ex-
isting things. Take, for example,
the centaur, a fabulous being, half-
man and half-horse. Now, man ex-
ists, and so does the horse exist,
but each separately, and what the
imagination does is to join these
two separate existences together
into one. The imagination does
not create things, but only recasts
the already acquired knowledge of
things into new combinations.
Three things are therefore nec-
essary to every process of the
soul, whatever may be its charac-
ter : the soul itself with the con-
sciousness of its acts, the object,
and their contact with each other.
But the mere contact of these
two factors would not necessarily
produce action, unless there were
in each something which is com-
mon to both of their natures. For
only so far as things have some-
thing in common with man's na-
ture are they to him intelligible
and desirable, and exert an influ-
ence over him. Totally dissim-
ilar things have no relation what-
ever with each other, are not cogi-
table, are unknowable and ever
will be unknowable simile simili
"Science and Sentiment.'"
409
cognoscitur. " Wherefore it must
be clearly held that everything
whatsoever that we know begets
at the same time in us the know-
ledge of itself; for knowledge is
brought forth from both, from the
knower and the thing known."*
" Nothing hath got so farre
But man hath caught and kept it as his prey.
His eyes dismount the highest starre :
He is in little all the sphere.
Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
Finde their acquaintance there."
It is, therefore, the object, or
this something not ourselves, which
determines the character of the
operation of the soul. For the
sight of the ocean, or of a bright,
starry heaven, or of an assembly
of human beings, gives birth to dif-
ferent thoughts or emotions in
the soul. Why is this ? We re-
mained the same in viewing each,
but the objects were changed, and
these being of a different charac-
ter, we were consequently differ-
ently affected. For it is the ob-
jects present to us which inform
and shape our thoughts and senti-
ments, and not we them.
To sum up : Without, in the first
instance, the presence of an object
there can be no thought, no senti-
ment, no movement of the will, and
every operation of the soul is deter-
mined by the character of its ob-
ject ; these are necessary truths, of
reason, and constitute the primal
law, in every sphere of existences,
of all action, all growth, all life.
Accordingly, then, the aspira-
tions, or " nobler sentiments," of
the soul could not have come in-
to existence unless something real
was present and connatural with
the soul. Consequently the con-
tents of what are called and ap-
pealed to by our distinguished au-
thor as the "nobler sentiments"
are the indisputable witnesses of
* St. Augustine, De Trinitate, b. ix. c. xii.
the intelligent and sensitive soul
testifying to the presence of a re-
ality which is above itself, and
which gives birth in its very depths
to an insatiable thirst after ampler
knowledge, a desire for an unbound-
ed happiness, and dreams of an un-
earthly and indescribable beauty.
These " nobler sentiments," these
''intuitions of common sense,"
which, as we see, clearly admit of
analysis, are the dawning rays of
that Divine Sun which have pene-
trated the soul, constitute the es-
sence of all religion, and whose
meridian splendor, if the windows
of the soul are not shut against
them, will imparadise it for ever in
beatific bliss.
It is here, then, on this primary
and irrefragable basis of reason,
we take our stand, refute the errors
of agnosticism, positivism, scien-
tism, transcendentalism, and all
the errors of the schools of modern
subjective philosophy, and main-
tain on the terra firma of a sound
metaphysical basis the great truths
which underlie religion and soci-
ety and all their great and grand
institutions.
What we deeply regret is that
a certain class of public champions
of religion, of Christianity, seem
not to be aware of the value and
force of their weapons, and skir-
mish with a sort of timidity when
they should join in battle with its
enemies, and in the midst of the
fight ask for a truce when there is
a fair opportunity of giving a dead-
ly home-thrust to error.
For example, when Strauss af-
firms that " to this extent Feuer-
bach was right : when he declares
the origin of religion, nay, the es-
sence of religion, to be a wish.
Had man no wish he would have
no God. What man would have
liked to be, but was not, he made
4io
" Science and Sentiment.'''
his god ; what he would like to have,
but could not get for himself, his
god was to get for him " on read-
ing '^uch a passage we feel inclin-
ed to ask : Did it never occur to
these German philosophers to in-
quire, But whence is this "wish "?
Did it never cross the minds of
these deep casuists to ask, Why
does " man like to be what he is
not "? And why does he "like to
have what he cannot get for him-
self"? Who or what has put these
things into man's head and heart ?
Surely such questions are the pro-
per subjects for the students of men-
tal philosophy.
Had Strauss or Feuerbach gone
into these studies, and honestly
investigated the origin of this
"wish" and whence these "lik-
ings," and followed sound logic,
they might have, and probably
would have, reached the essence of
all true religion. Yet these men
professed to be philosophers, and
wrote in their way much about re-
ligion; and why did they not ac-
complish this simple task? These
problems are not so difficult. Let
us endeavor to fill up this impor-
tant gap.
What, then, is a wish ? A wish
is the consciousness of a capacity
which is not filled and is therefore
not satisfied. But there can be no
consciousness where there is no
act, and there can be no act where
there is no object. A wish, conse-
quently, is the product of some-
thing present to the soul which is
not itself, be that something what
it may.
Now, this fact is an all-important
point gained, for it frees the mind
at once from all pure subjectiv-
ism, the source of neatly all, if not
all, the intellectual errors of the
century.
For what we think or feel exists,
not because we think or feel it, but
it exists independently of our fac-
ulty of thinking or sentiment or
of ourselves. The thing we think
or feel existed before, and will ex-
ist after, we have thought or felt it,
all the same. The subject and the
object are two independent factors
in every act or process of the soul.
For the power to think, to feel,
or to act creates of itself noth-
ing; hence what does not exist is
not thinkable. Pure subjectivism
begins by excluding God, humani-
ty, and nature, and attempts to
fasten its thoughts exclusively on
the thinker, affirming that the
thinker is the only reality, when it
owes the knowledge of the thinker
to his relation with those very
realities which it denies! It at-
tempts the impossible and lands in
the absurd. Hence the possibility
of a wish with no objective ele-
ment as an integral part of its com-
position is a contradiction to the
law of all knowledge, is the extinc-
tion of all intelligence, and turns
the universe into a huge lie.
Were we, then, to reverse the
statement of Feuerbach, Strauss, et
id omne genus, " Had man no wish
he would have no God," and say,
Were there no God man would
have no wish, we would not only
come nearer to the truth, but hit
the truth precisely.
God exists, therefore I think
God ; this is a sound, correct, and
an irrefutable statement of truth. I
think God, therefore God exists;
this is a non-sequitur. God does
not, therefore, exist because I think
him, but I therefore think God be-
cause he exists; this is the order
of real thought and good logic.
The first makes my thinking God
depend on the existence of God,
the second makes God's existence
depend on my thinking him ! In
"Science and Sentiment."
411
the former statement all the facul-
ties of the soul are placed in har-
mony with the dictates of reason,
with the common instincts of men,
with the voice of the entire human
race, and in conformity with the
reality of all things ; the latter stul-
tifies the faculties of the soul, con-
tradicts the dictates of reason, re-
pudiates our common instincts,
and says of the reality of this uni-
verse :
u There is nothing, but all things seem,
And we see the shadows of the dream."
Kant was the first among the mod-
ern German thinkers to enter up-
on this dreary road, and his jour-
ney ended in scepticism. Fichte,
his disciple, advanced further on
the road and reached pure sub-
jectivism. Hegel continued their
course and reached the absurd,
and with Feuerbach, Strauss, Scho-
penhauer, and Hartmann the road
has ended in the slough of de-
spair called Pessimism. The an-
cient " fool said in his heart, There
is no God !" but in him error had
not reached its ultimate evolution.
In the modern fool the disease has
reached his head and disturbed his
brain, and in his delirium he ex-
claims : " Homo sibi deus " " I
am God !"
But here it may be said, You
have shown that " the wish " is the
product of something real, objec-
tive, and independent of the soul,
but you have not shown what that
something is ?
True ; and we now proceed to the
second step in the analysis of " the
wish " in the following manner:
This wish, we are told, consists in
" what man would have liked to be,
but was not," " what he would like
to have, but could not get for him-
self." Now, as the object deter-
mines the character of the act of
the soul, it follows that man's wish
to be what he is not, and to have
what he had not, and could not
get for himself, must be awakened
in the soul by the presence of an
object greater and more excellent
than himself, and more desirable
than anything he has got. For no
one is so devoid of common sense
as to wish to be less than what he
is, or to have less good than he has
got. It is not possible in the na-
ture of man so to wish or to desire.
This wish, therefore, is an "inward
impulsion " for an increased great-
ness, for a more perfect happiness,
an " ideal excellence in all direc-
tions."
Now, what is this somewhat or
something present to the soul, and
not itself, which awakens in it the
insatiable wish to be like it that is,
to be transformed into it ; and in
so being, possess, or rather be pos-
sessed by it, and in this way attain
its highest perfection and supreme
happiness ?
Here let the light of reason speak,
here let the common voice of the
human race over the whole world
be heard, and they join together
with the language of sound philo-
sophy, and unhesitatingly proclaim
that this something present to the
soul, independent and above them,
this is no other than the living
God ! O vain sophists ! it is God's
blissful presence which has awak-
ened in the soul the apprehension
of his divine perfections, and it is
these which have given birth to
" the wish " and all its " nobler
sentiments," and herein lies the
true origin and essence of all reli-
gion !
God, then, who is at the bottom
of " the wish," and its sire, is the
origin and essence of all religion,
and the apprehension and knowledge
of God rests on the fast foundation
412
Old Irish Cliurches.
of the essential la\v of our rational
nature ; and so long as man remains
man, so long as he retains a ra-
tional element in his nature, so
long will religion make its claims
upon him, and its claims will be
imperative.
This demonstration, of which we
have given an inadequate outline,
is the work of mental philosophy,
and if it would accomplish its task
it must fearlessly advance beyond
its present stopping-place, and, with
a stronger and deeper grasp of the
first truths within its own province,
grapple with the problems which
now occupy the thoughts of serious-
minded men, otherwise it will fail
to meet the intellectual, religious,
and moral needs of our age. We
think we see, and see clearly, that
the road is open for philosophy to
accomplish its great missiorr in the
simple fact that the analysis of any
one of the primary operations of the
soul contains in germ the complete
refutation of one and all of the
false theories of modern subjective
philosophical speculations, espe-
cially those of Germany and France.
In this simple analysis, so plain,
so true, and so fruitful, will be
found, if men could be led to seek
it, the antidote to that poison of
scepticism which has blighted the
highest intellectual activity and
smothered the noblest aspirations
of the soul of the most gifted men
of our century, and which has
driven them to turn their genius to
the anatomy of the hindmost bone
of the hind-head of the carp, and
to the serious study of prehistoric
cockroaches. When it is under-
stood, appreciated, and fully turn-
ed to account that no act of the
soul is possible without an ob-
jective element which determines
its character, then that reign of
darkness, of unbelief, from which
few active minds in our day have
escaped, will be dispelled as the
fog vanishes before the influence of
the rising sun. Then, and perhaps
not till then, will the way be open-
ed for the divine light of Chris-
tianity to re-enter into the souls of
men, and with its creative spirit
restore the inward man to peace
and joy and might, and through
the instrumentality of man renew
the whole face of the earth.
OLD IRISH CHURCHES.
PERIODS of transition have been
generally the most interesting on
record, presenting as they do those
contrasts which give a sort of col-
oring or shading to events and form
what maybe termed the picturesque
of history. Among the most no-
table of these transitions was that
of old society from paganism to
Christianity in various countries ;
and one of them has tempted us
to offer a few observations on that
subject, apropos of a book recently
published by M. Gaston Boissier,
and entitled La Religion Romaine,
d'Auguste aux Antonins, though this
author does not dwell much on the
locality to which we would make
special reference.
That locality is a part of Ireland,
including those islets named the
"Three Aras " (like the mother
island herself, which always and
most anciently bore the title of
Old Irish Churches.
413
Aire or Eire], and situated at the
entrance of what was once Lough
Lurgan, and is now known as the
Bay of Galvvay. These islets take
the first shock of the Atlantic bil-
lows rolling in with the full force
of the American winds.
" Lonely they stand,
Like some old Druid pillars, by the sea,
Worn by the foam-flakes and the arrowy salts
Blown blighting from the surge."
They were called Ara Mor (the
great island), Inis Meadom (the
middle island), and Inis Oirthir
(the most easterly island), and
have been for ages remarkable
for the rude architecture, in the
ancient style of pagan masonry,
that lies along their weather-beat-
en cliffs, headlands, and sheltered
nooks, in a scattered and broken
condition. They who first thought
of setting up their architecture in
such places must certainly have
been a people driven away and
into the ocean by those who, in
the early centuries of our era, felt
the force of some strong influence
bearing on them from the east; and
the traditional records of that peri-
od assure us that they were pagans
recoiling from the advance of Chris-
tianity. They were, in fact, those
whom the Irish annalists and poets
called the Firbolgs, who were beat-
en by the Tuatha de Danans in the
battle of Moytura a field on the
isthmus between Lough Mask and
Lough Corrib and driven from
the mainland of Connaught into
the isles of the sea. Here they
resided for ages, claiming kindred
with the Firbolgs of other western
islands off the coasts of Ireland
and Scotland, making a savage live-
lihood after the manner of their
piratical cousins, the Picts and
Scots, and housing themselves,
like other troglodytes, in crannoges
and a/ier/as, for which they found
plenty of material on that stony-
hearted soil. They also built crom-
lechs and towers after the ancestral
pagan fashion.
But the Firbolgs lived in a peri-
od of transition. The Christian
missionaries were in the rest of
Ireland, and in time found their
way to the islets of Ara, where
everything underwent what may be
called "asea-change." The monks
or teachers for muinac is the old
Irish original of monk dealt hu-
manely with those pagans, imitated
their simple style of building, and
even turned the old aherlas into
Christian churches, retaining the
name aherla, and giving it, in time,
the improved and poetical shape of
oriel. They also seem to have
adopted the old fashion of the
round tower ; and Petrie seems
to argue very correctly when he
maintains that many of those tow-
ers had an ecclesiastical origin in
Ireland. In its first diffusion
Christianity had respect to the tra-
ditions and customary reverences
of the human race, guided in this
by the sentiments of St. Paul, St.
Gregory, and a number of other?,
who succeeded all the better in
their mission for their tenderness
towards their misguided fellow-
beings. As regards the progress
of Christianity in Ireland, no great
change was ever brought about in
a more gentle way. The Firbolgs
seem to have been won by the gen-
tleness of St. Patrick, St. Columba,
St. Adamnan, and the rest, and
never ill-used any of them. It must
be said for the Irish that in all
ages they have exhibited a very
kindly and intellectual respect for
those civilizing sister-agencies of
religion and literature.
But to return to our islets. The
great island of Ara, which is about
nine miles long, with an average of
Old Irish Churches.
about four in breadth, contains the
ruins of fourteen temples and a
mass of fragments which seem to
be the remains of others. The
walls of those rude edifices are
without mortar in the style of the
old Asiatic hoglas, which in Greece
were called kydop, or cyclop and
their doors are very low, like those
of the first Pelasgian and Egyp-
tian fanes. The chief of these
structures is called the Cell of St.
Benan, on the highest part of the
island. It is a relic of the fifth or
sixth century, and quite a curiosity
for its size, being only eleven feet
long by seven broad, with but one
window, in the east wall. The old
stone roof is gone ; and the cloghan,
or house, of the priest that stood
beside it is in ruins. Hard by is
another stone structure called a
cashel, and round it are a great
many little stone huts in which the
old monks had their lodging.
A little way from St. Benan's
Cell is a fort built in Cromwell's
time from the ruins of the round
tower of St. Eney, and of seven
little chapels that had stood about
it. The stump of the tower is still
visible. There is a little temple
called Teglach Enda on the beach
near the place; and this is called
the aherla of St. Eney, long con-
sidered the most sacred spot in all
the Ara group; for that saint
brought with him, they said, a hun-
dred monks from Rome and settled
them at Killeany. The little vil-
lage of Kilronan has also its ruins
those of Teampul -Assurey and
St. Kieran together with the
grave of the saint and a holy well.
Hard by is the <4 Church of the
Four Saints," one of whom was
Fursey, founder of the French
abbey of Lagny on the Marne ;
and at a little distance are the
ruins of the Teampul Mac Duach,
the best specimen of Christian
architecture on the islet, being
thirty-seven feet long by nineteen
feet wide.
The record of these solitary
ruins may seem trivial. But they
have an authentic history, and
that is vouched for by Dr. Mala-
chias O'Kealy, Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Tuam in 1640,
whose testimony is preserved in
Colgan's Acta Sanctorum Hibernitz,
p. 714, as follows :
" The parish church (of the first island)
commonly called Kill-Enda lies in the
county of Galway and half-barony of
Aran ; and in it St. Endeus, or Enna, is
venerated as patron on 2ist of Marc|p.
2. The church called Teglach-Enda, to
which is annexed a sepulchre of St. En-
deus, with one hundred and twenty-
seven other sepulchres wherein none
but saints were ever buried. 3. The
church called Kill-Enda, or the great
church of Enda. 4. The church called
Teampul Mic Ceanon. 5. The church
called St. Mary. 6. The Teampul Be-
nain. 7. The church of Mainistir Con-
nachtach, or Connaught Monastery, on
the ruins of which was built the chapel
of St. Kieran. 8. The church called
Kill-na-manach i.e., the Cell of the
Monks. 9. The church called Teampul
Assurnuide, a church held in especial
veneration. 10. The church called 7V-
ampul na ceathrair aluinn i.e. , Church
of the Four Saints, Fursey. Brendan,
Conall, and Berchan. n. The Teampul
Mac Duach, which is a beautiful church,
ii. The handsome parochial church call-
ed Teampul Breccain, in which St. Brec-
cain's feast is celebrated on the 22d of
May. 13. Another church near St.
Breccain's, called Teampul a Fuill"
So much for the church ruins on
that largest of the three islets, Ara
Mor. There are others of a secu-
lar and pagan sort, and very nota-
ble. On the western or weather
side of the isle are the ruins of the
Firbolg fortress Dun Angus, lying
on the edge of a precipitous cliff
over 300 feet above the sea. It
has three enclosing walls,
Old Irish Churches.
415
uncemented stones, and its enclo-
sure is 150 feet long by 140 in
breadth. It was once, no doubt,
a strong defence against the pirati-
cal races of the stormy western
isles. On that same western edge
of Ara Mor stand the broken out-
lines of another formidable fort,
called Dhu Cahir, occupying its
own precipitous cliff, and shut in
on the land side by a huge wall
over 200 feet long and 16 feet
thick ; the surges presenting a ter-
rible barrier on every other side.
Within its enclosure are the ruins
of a crowd of dochans, or huts, the
quarters of the garrison, probably.
On the northeast coast is another
savage stone keep, Dun Onagh,
three hundred feet in diameter.
And there was yet another arx,
Dun Oghil, a precipice on which
now stands the well-known light-
house of the islet.
Having traced the stony records
of Ara Mor, we turn southward to
Inis Meadom (middle island), and
are first aware of the Fort of Con-
chovar, a grand oval structure, two
hundred and thirty feet one way
and one hundred and sixteen the
other, within a massive wall twenty
feet in height, and situated on a
cliff above the ocean. In its
neighborhood, and under its pro-
tection against the Picts of the
Clyde or the corsairs of Armorica
and Biscay, stood the church of
St. Cananogh,an old cell with mas-
sive walls and a stone roof; and in
the neighborhood may be seen the
remains of two other churches, one
named from the Virgin Mary and
the other called Seacht Micaire.
On the third of this Aran group
is visible, or traceable, a vast hold
oftheFirbolg times, within which
was erected a strong mediaeval
fortress of the O'Brien chieftains,
who had a sort of custom-house
at the place, and obliged all ves-
sels passing up to Lough Lurgan
through the bealac, or strait, to pay
toll. Near this place stands the
Teampul Chomain, or the church of
St. Kevin, a beautiful little relic of
old times, presenting several ar-
chitectural improvements of the
twelfth century ; and in the vicini-
ty are visible the remains of the
small church of St. Gobanat, a
female saint of the first ages, still
remembered in the calendar of the
Celtic antiquarians, and perhaps in
the Irish hamlets of Kerry and Gal-
way. Her day is the i4th of Feb-
ruary that which we call St. Val-
entine's day.
After this brief pilgrimage
through the islets of Galwegian
Ara the reader may be rational-
ly astonished by the number of
churches and shrines once crowd-
ed within the narrow spaces of the
three Aras. One would suppose a
single church would be sufficient
for each of those stony and savage-
looking little skerries with their
scanty population. And yet they
were very probably more crowded
than we are apt to fancy. Their
land was sterile ; but they had the
water, and that was always a grand
source of human aliment a*hd civi-
lization. The oldest races of the
world as in Switzerland multi-
plied from their little villages fixed
on piles above their lakes, and cities
grew from such lacustrine begin-
nings. " Amsterdam was built up
with herring-bones," according to
the old Dutch proverb ; and it is
very certain that the oldest city on
our own continent of America had
a similar origin. The city of Mex-
ico grew out of the Pfahlbauten of
the Lake Tezcuco. The people
of those Ara islets gathered their
floating harvests from the waters,
in the shape of "lings, cods, hawk-
416
Old Irish Churches.
fish " the enumeration is that of
Roderic O'Flaherty, who in 1684
wrote a history of his native Jar-
Connaught " turbots, plaices, ha-
dogs, whitings, gurnards, makerels,
herrings, pilchards," and a corre-
sponding variety of shell-fish of all
sorts. The islanders would be in no
great want of the means of living ;
and for the rest, their rude buildings
were necessities of the times they
lived in. The greater part of them
had the character of muinstreachs,
or schools, to which students and
lovers of literature would come to
escape the predatory disturbances
of the tribes inhabiting the main-
land of Ireland, especially after
Christianity had given an addition-
al protection to those venerated
localities. Those little oriels of the
saints were also colleges and ora-
tories where \\\zmuineachs, or monks
("learners ") pursued their studies
for the purpose of becoming priests
or poets the two names having
nearly the same signification in
those remote ages of Ireland. It is
also interesting to note that the
students of those rude monasteries
were also named aolaide (" men of
science," scholars), and that this
name was generally written culdee
in later*ages. The Irish culdees
professors alike of sacred and secu-
lar .literature were honored all
over Europe as well as in the Cel-
tic archipelago, and they seem to
have been, if not the originators,
at least the great lights and helpers,
of the school which was termed
"scholastic" in the middle ages.
It will be remembered that Vergil
belonged to that school or or-
der of scientists the man who in
the eighth century anticipated the
telluric and astronomic doctrine
which subsequently made Koper-
nik of Thorn so celebrated. And
it is not less interesting to note
that the ancient Irish name of
aolaide^ or culdee, was reproduced
in the middle ages to represent
the various societies of craftsmen
and men of trades which then exist-
ed in society the guilds. These
guilds were features of ancient so-
ciety in Ireland, as they were, in
fact, all over Europe. M. Boissier
has devoted some of his space to
such societies as they existed in
Italy from the earliest times be-
fore the beginning of our era. It
may be gathered from the old re-
cords of Rome that craftsmen of all
sorts had their guilds or clubs for
purposes of instruction, initiation,
and mutual support. They had
also their feast days, their repasts
in common, and their " suppers,"
as they termed them, which were
considered the grandest as well as
the most genial features of their
societies.
The early church history of the
Celtic west presents a great many
traces of that old fashion of the
culdees, or guilds, giving a very cu-
rious interest and perhaps some-
thing of a contemporary interest
to that immemorial theme of human
thought and progress. People in
general are under a mistake with
respect to the records of the church,
regarding them as rather dull and un-
attractive to the reader. But there
is no necessity why they should be
so. The early movements of the
Christian teachers were blended
with the movements and feelings
of secular society, and are as much
a part of history as the picturesque
wars, emigrations, and the change-
ful turmoil of men that are usually
so interesting to the general reader.
Current Events.
4*;
CURRENT EVENTS.
ALARMISTS might readily imagine
that the whole framework of Euro-
pean society is breaking up. There
is neither peace on earth nor good-
will among men. There is an os-
tensible peace among the nations,
and international jealousies are
scarcely at such a fever-heat as
they were a year ago, or perhaps
at any given period within the pre-
sent century. The chief reason of
this is that the nations are fully oc-
cupied with their internal disorders
and financial distress. From Eng-
land, Germany, Italy, from all the
nations with the exception of France,
comes the same story of actual suf-
fering among the laboring and in-
dustrial classes, and of a still gloom-
ier outlook in the future. In Eng-
land there has been one series of
gigantic strikes throughout the
year; yet bad as "business" has
been there, it has been and is con-
fessedly worse in Germany. Eng-
land is still the financial centre of
the world, and a country undoubt-
edly of vast wealth and resources ;
yet it has been compelled this win-
ter to open public subscriptions for
the relief and support of its poor
in important manufacturing centre's,
such as Sheffield, while the docks
in Liverpool were closed in conse-
quence of strikes. On the conti-
nent of Europe the disease has
stricken deeper, and the strifes
there are not confined to workman
and employer, but extend to rulers
and ruled. The sense of respect
for authority of any kind is daily
diminishing among the people, and
attempts on the lives of heads of
states are becoming common occur-
rences. We do not here propose
VOL. xxix. 27
inquiring into the cause of this;
we only notice the fact. The
cause has been investigated often
enough in this magazine. Those
who are anxious to refresh their
memories need go no farther
than the Syllabus, in which the dis-
orders that afflict modern society,
government, and thought are
clearly exposed. The "monarchs
and statesmen " who, accord-
ing to Lord Beaconsfield, govern
Europe rejected the Syllabus and
clung to the errors it condemned.
Those who regard themselves as
the leaders of modern thought fol-
lowed the monarchs and statesmen.
But the errors were there although
they refused to see them, and the
voice of the church is the voice of
divine authority, even though mo-
dern thought refuses to accept it
as such. Our Lord Jesus Christ,
who founded the church to perpetu-
ate and propagate his teachings
and to be an infallible guide to
men, said : " I am the way, the
truth, and the life." If those words
are true and real and living, mon-
archs and statesmen, as well as
their subjects, must accept them in
all their fulness, must accept his
church, must model their lives on
his, must rule their daily actions
by his teachings. If he is true and
the church is his voice, the solemn
decisions of the church are inspir-
ed and sanctioned by him. But
the rulers have rejected his church
and rejected him. They are now
reaping their reward. Whether we
believe the church or not, the
much-derided Syllabus pointed out
the very germs of the poison that
is now working so fiercely in the
Current Events.
veins^of liuman society and vitiat-
ing all that is noble and good in it.
Even those who rejected the Sylla-
bus, frightened at the evils that
have since afflicted and now threat-
en mankind, are beginning to tacit-
ly acknowledge its truth. The
universal respect with which the
first Encyclical Letter of our Holy
Father, Leo XIII., was received
by those for whom it was chiefly
intended, and who are not of the
fold, shows this. And what was
that letter but an extension and
amplification of some of the lead-
ing points of the Syllabus ? Rulers
strive in vain to strengthen their
hands by bayonets -and terror.
Who provide them with the bayo-
nets but the people ? The people
are growing weary of forging
their own chains, and the rulers
who refuse to recognize this fact
will sooner or later experience a
rude awakening. The rule of
blood and iron cannot last for any
length of time in days when mo-
narchs are necessarily brought so
very near their subjects, when every-
thing is called in question, when
monarchs and statesmen make it
their business to deny divine au-
thority save so far as it is embodied
in their own persons, which after
all are composed of common enough
clay. A change of base must be
effected. If men would rule at all
they must rule by justice and
equity for the welfare of the peo-
ple, not for their personal aggran-
dizement. They must strengthen
their arms, not by cannon and ter-
rorism, but by the love of their sub-
jects, based on good deeds, a sense
of public security, of personal liber-
ty, and of such happiness as is af-
forded to honest men in this world.
There is no power to guide men to
right thinking and right doing like
the church of God, which must be
free to do its work among men.
That which the rulers have so long
regarded as their greatest enemy
must be called in to resume its gen-
tle and blessed sway, if they
would turn aside the torrent of
revolt against all that is right and
good and sound which is now
sweeping around the thrones and
deluging the world.
The Russian government is at
last beginning to feel the force of
ideas that have long been ferment-
ing in the body politic and social
of its people. The ebullition is of
the violent order that long repres-
sion is sure to engender. In no
state to-day claiming to be civilized
is the monarch so absolutely the
head of the government as in Rus-
sia. He is, in fact, the govern-
ment. There is no such thing as
a Russian parliament ; the Russian
people has no sure and adequate
representation in the government.
The czar is the first, the middle,
and the end of all affairs of state.
It is against this system that
Russian intelligence and Russian
ignorance alike have long revolted ;
for all alike feel the blind force of
despotism. Such concessions as
the reigning czar has made to the
drift of the feelings of the age the
emancipation of the serfs, for in-
stance have affected neither the
system nor the temper of his gov-
ernment. All the thought, all the
intelligence, all the feeling of
Europe and of the civilized world
is opposed to the Russian system.
No Russian can read a foreign
book or newspaper of any kind
whatever without feeling how terri-
bly he is behind others in the sense
of all that makes manhood : free-
dom of thought and of utterance;
inviolability of the person ; the
strong sense that he is not a mere
Current Events.
419
chattel in the hands of an irrespon-
sible power. Other governments
may, and sometimes do, invade
these rights in one shape or an-
other; but sooner or later they
either recognize their mistake and
retrace their steps or come to
grief. But from the days of Peter
the Great downwards Russia, while
making great material and some
intellectual advances, has, in its
system and form of government,
practically stood still a Western
power under an Eastern despotism.
But the very fact of material and
intellectual advance among the
people necessitates a correspond-
ing advance and yielding from ab-
solute usages on the part of the
government. The constant con-
tact with other peoples, the con-
stant influx of new ideas, generates
the desire to be like them in what
they have of great and of good.
Unless the czar invented a purely
Romanoff religion, worship, and
literature, and brought his people
to accept that as their gospel of
life in this world and of hope here-
after, he could not expect to with-
stand the ever-increasing torrent of
western ideas. An absolute ruler,
of course, may be very good and
very wise and a great lover of his
people ; and as long as he is that
his subjects may submit, though
they secretly chafe under his rule.
But he will not live for ever ; they
cannot trust him always ; and they
cannot trust his successor. Sub-
jects have rights, so many and so sa-
cred that they cannot be entrusted
to the will or the whim of a single
person. Such is the bitter experi-
ence of all history. Men need many
and great safeguards against the
encroachments of rulers. These
safeguards have been persistent-
ly refused in Russia, and it is for
these that the terrible conspiracy
now raging there is striking in an
apparently blind, aimless, and des-
perate manner.
For years past it was known in
a vague way that there were strange
knots of men and women banded
together secretly in Russia to ac-
complish men knew not what. As
recently as a year ago the outside
world knew little or nothing of the
Nihilists. Suddenly a girl in broad
day shot at a Russian official and
missed him. She was brought to
trial. She told a story of harrowing
cruelty to political prisoners, of the
hopelessness of any redress, and
that the only means of bringing
their wrongs before the world was
the one she adopted an attempt
at assassination. Her guilt was
undeniable, yet the jury acquitted
her. The government immediately
prohibited the trial by jury of such
prisoners. The attempt of Vera
Zassulitch was the beginning of a
long and far more successful series
of attacks on officials of all kinds.
Though the prisons were filled to
overflowing with suspected persons,
the actual criminals in most cases
escaped with an ease that was re-
markable. The conspirators grew
bolder, and issued their pamphlets
and edicts in a constant shower
and in the most high-handed man-
ner. One official after another fell,
and still the assassins escaped.
Persons of every rank and of both
sexes, in all departments of life and
service, were arrested. Both po-
lice and army were suspected of
being tainted. At last an attempt
was made on the emperor's life by
Sobolieff, an ex-schoolmaster, who
who has since affirmed on oath that
he was told off to kill the emperor,
and that, though through dread of
the threats hanging over him he
shot at the czar, he purposely miss-
ed him. From the circumstances
420
Current Events
of the case the man's account
would seem to be true ; for nothing
short of the direct intervention of
Providence could under ordinary
circumstances have saved the em-
peror's life. Since then Russia has
been placed under military law, and
no such thing as civil life in the
ordinary sense exists there. The
country offers a deplorable specta-
cle of terrorism from above and
terrorism from below. The at-
tempts of assassins can win no sym-
pathy from men of honest feelings.
But if the ukase of the emperor pro-
claiming military law be true, the
wholesale measures adopted alto-
gether exceed the requirements of
the case. 'Fhe ukase expressly states
that the conspiracy is the work of a
small but desperate band of men ;
and in consequence all Russiais plac-
ed in a state of siege, the life and lib-
erty of every man and woman be-
ing placed at the absolute disposal
of the military governors appointed
over the various provinces, while
the most odious and repulsive re-
strictions are set upon the conduct
of daily life. The prisons are
glutted, and Russia is practically
converted into one vast prison.
Life under present conditions is
not worth living there. The Nihil-
ists may be stamped out for the
time being, but such a cure is not
radical. They have done their
work already. They have brought
before the eyes of all the world
the iniquitous system under which
Russia is governed, and the general
apathy of the people shows plainly
enough to which side leans the
sympathy of the masses. It is
plain now that neither the war with
Turkey nor the diplomatic issue
at Berlin has increased the popu-
larity of the czar or strengthened
his government. To the wild and
desperate appeals for reform he op-
poses a tyranny that cannot fail, in
the eyes of outsiders, to nullify to a
great degree the genuine sense of
alarm and outrage at the attempt
made on his .life. Russia refuses
to stand still any longer; to shed
its blood and lavish its money in
very costly enterprises for the re-
lief of peoples and the erection of
new states with constitutional safe-
guards and liberties to which Rus-
sia herself has for ever been a
stranger; and the czar will find
that Russia is greater than he.
The present government of
France seems resolved on showing
that names make little difference
where the) spirit is the same, and
that a French republic can be every
whit as intolerant and tyrannical as
a Russian imperialism. Jules Fer-
ry's educational bill is the most re-
cent and startling instance in point.
Its aim, however its author may
strive to disguise it, is very plain
and thoroughly understood by the
general public. It purposes ban-
ishing Catholic teachers and Ca-
tholic teaching from the schools,
lyce'es, colleges, and universities of
France. All educational establish-
ments are to be secularized. The
privilege of granting degrees, which
was conceded by the state in 1875,
is to be withdrawn from the Catho-
lic universities, five of which were
founded since that date, and on the
strength, of course, of the conces-
sion. For the rest, as the project-
ed law is now framed, no member
of a religious congregation is to be
permitted to give instruction, either
in public or private, unless the con-r
gregation of which he is a member
be especially authorized to teach.
This measure will, if carried through,
at once disarrange the whole system
of education in France, in which
the Catholic congregations of va-
Current Events.
421
rious kinds, male and female, play
a very large and important part,
and, as has been shown by every
variety of test that can be applied,
play it with the greatest credit to
themselves, the very best results to
their pupils, and to the advantage
of the state. There is no question
on this score. Official statistics,
such as have been set forth in these
columns, with regard to the con-
gregational schools in Paris,* es-
tablish the superiority of the schools
under Catholic control. Yet it is
now proposed to remove this large
body of educators, whose efficiency
is proved and acknowledged, to
either break up their establish-
ments or transfer them to purely
secular and state teachers, and to
allow religion, Catholic or any oth-
er, to have no part at all in the
education of French children.
Evade, disclaim, explain away as
he may, such is the object of Jules
Ferry's bill, and the government is
with him in the resolve to force it
through. According to it the edu-
cation of France is to be thorough-
ly irreligious by order of the gov-
ernment, and so irreligious that
Catholic teachers are not even to
have a chance of imparting reli-
gious instruction either in the
schools or in private.
As the London Times tersely
puts it, "this means war to the
knife " between the state and the
Catholic Church, and it is some
satisfaction here to record that the
expression of English public opin-
ion, so far as we have had the op-
portunity of seeing it in the Lon-
don Times, Spectator, Saturday Re-
view, Pall Mall Gazette, and other
journals, is one of utter and une-
quivocal condemnation of so ini-
* See " The Proposed Expulsion of the Teach-
ing Orders from the Public Schools of Paris," THB
CATHOLIC WORLD, April, 1879.
quitotis a scheme. Their religious
prejudices, strong as they are, are
not of such strength as to cause
these journals to lose their heads
or deprive them of their native
sound sense. They see very clear-
ly that the monopolization of edu-
cation by the state in a govern-
ment which, though it has some
Protestant members in its cabinet,
is practically and avowedly infidel
is an assault on the very founda-
tions of Christian morality and con-
sequently of sound government.
Zeal for " culture " and educa-
tion in "the modern spirit" is
Jules Ferry's ostensible plea for
this vast projected change in the
French system of education. In
distributing the prizes of the pro-
vincial learned societies at the
Sorbonne, April 19, he described
the societies thus : " Non-political,
as belonging to the party of free
research, with which a republican
government would always be on
good terms, for scientific or litera-
ry progress promoted the educa-
tion of the democracy. By culture
alone were powerful democracies
maintained."
The cant that these men use !
''''Free research !" French children
and students are to be free hence-
forth in everything save to learn
that there is a God above them,
who created this world and set
them in it, with certain duties to
him and to each other, for this
is the sum of religion ; but in this
particular department of necessary
human knowledge research is not
to be " free," " progress " is abso-
lutely prohibited, and " culture "
made a crime. This intelligent advo-
cate of "free research " and "cul-
ture " went on to describe French
democracy vaguely as " the accu-
mulated sum of past culture, indus-
try ordeals, and as bent on liberty
422
Current Events.
and national liberty. He distrust-
ed the pretended liberty which
sought to split French youth into
t\vo parts, which, though of the
same race and origin, would have
different ideas both on the past and
the future of France, and, though
speaking one language, would end
by not understanding each other.
He rejected this liberty as the pre-
cursor of servitude and despotism ;
consequently, despite clamor and
insults, sophisms and petitions, the
government would persist in re-
claiming the rights of the state with
regard to education. They would
maintain the supremacy of the
state ; they did not aim at mono-
poly, but at control and guaran-
tees, and they were confident of
their eventual success ; for in
France there was always success
when they relied on constant na-
tional tradition and on the aspira-
tions of the modern spirit."
What the French democracy may
be remains yet to be seen. Sound-
ing phrases will affect it in nowise.
We hope the democracy is " bent
on liberty and national liberty."
If so, it will speedily reject M.
Ferry's bill. It is plain enough
from his own words that M. Ferry
is in love with liberty so long as
it is on his side; but altogether
against it when it favors those ras-
cals, the Catholics. And there the
matter stands at present.
Did M. Ferry complain that Ca-
tholic teaching was inadequate,
and that government teaching was
better, the question would rest on
an altogether different ground.
He would then have been relieved
of the harsh resource of closing the
Catholic schools. The question,
however, on tins point is decided
against him beforehand. French
parents, often without any special
claim to piet}, prefer to send their
children to the congregational
schools for the simple reason that
they get there better care, training,
and education. If the government
schools were superior, the others
would soon find themselves empty,
and there would be no need of re-
strictive measures under the ab-
surd claim of love of liberty and
culture. The fact is the bill is
utterly indefensible on whatever
ground it is viewed. Competition
is good and healthy ; without it
education is deprived of its con-
stant spur. The state monopoly
of education which M. Ferry disa-
vows, but which is really the object
of his bill, puts an end to all such
competition.
The author of the bill, being
hard pressed for its justification,
searches about among old legal
enactments for precedents. There
are no lawful precedents for wrong
acts. France has millions of Ca-
tholics, and they will have Catholic
education. The French hierarchy,
the clergy, the Catholic laity are
uniting in petitioning the govern-
ment to refuse its sanction to this
bill. Judging by the present tem-
per of the government, their peti-
tions are likely to be unavailing.
And what then ? Is Catholic edu-
cation to cease in France ?
What then ? Why, there will be
nothing left then but for the Ca-
tholics of France to brave the
government and open their schools
and colleges in face of its outra-
geous mandate, as Lacordaire and
his companions did in 1820. Men
in all lands who have any respect
for civil and religious liberty will
support them. They have a noble
opportunity. Let them seize it
unhesitatingly. Let the govern-
ment work its will, the world will
soon see on which side is law,
order, freedom, and morality. The
Correspondence.
423
shackling of education is impossi-
ble in these days. It may suc-
ceed for a time, but cannot List;
least of all can it succeed in a
land claiming to be free. We ex-
hort our brethren in France to be
brave ; to open their schools in the
eyes of day in every town in
France ; to teach in them with the
orders, or persons devoted to that
purpose by the wisdom, love of
learning, and providence of the
church in all ages. If closed by
the government in one place, let
them open in another, always bold-
ly and unhesitatingly. It will cost
something for the time being, but
the moral sense and support of the
world will be with them, and
victory must be theirs. The bur-
den of tyranny and oppression is
all on one side in this contest for
civil and religious liberty.
CORRESPONDENCE.
SOUTH AMERICA, January 3, 1879.
To THE EDITOR OF THE CATHOLIC
WORLD :
DEAR SIR : A friend in Natchez has
just sent me the October and November
numbers of your magazine. In reading
the review on Mazzella's Treatise on
Grace, No. 163, I resolved to write a few
observations to you, even if they will
reach you out of time, since I received
the magazines quite late, and, besides,
our mail facilities are quite scarce. The
reviewer of Mazzella insinuates that the
doctrine of his author " is only that
which is most received and best estab-
lished " even in questions which are
open and free to admit of diverging
opinions, since the author, after paying
special regard to the system of the Tho-
mists, follows the one of Molina, which
is amply defended ; and the admiration
of the reviewer for the prudence of Maz-
zella when using his ''strongest argu-
ments" is unbounded. Now, I think it
very questionable that Molinism is ac-
cepted more than Thomism ; should it
be so, it would be owing only to certain
papers which manufacture public opin-
ion so as to remain always with the best
litigant. About 1860 I learned from Sal-
zano's Ecclesiastical Hist^y that Tho-
mism was preferable to Molinism ; as I
knew the man, I accepted his conclu-
sion, but failed to study his reasons.
Since, however, your reviewer is quite
jubilant over the philosophy of Mazzella,
because " philosophy is at the bottom of
all theology, and right philosophical
views are necessnry for a coherent view
in theology," I take courage in depre-
cating these unlimited praises of Molin-
ism in the pages of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD, because it has tried to follow (in
my humble judgment) a better philoso-
phic system than the one of Molinists.
A true Molinist will make an " hon-
orable exception " to the scholastic axi-
om, omne quod esl in potentia non reduci-
tur in actum wsi per id quod est actu ; yet
it affects the highest logic of the writings
of St. Thomas. On this principle and
scholastic axiom the Thomists build
their system. With this principle and
their matter and form, causality and po-
tentiality, cause and effect, first and se-
cond act, oclus co)nposi f us&c\di divistis (the
reduplicative]^ that God is almighty,
hence his causing should not be meas-
ured by the limited power man has of
causing, etc., etc., they conclude that
" God moves the will of man in a way
corresponding to man's nature viz.,
without impairing man's liberty." This
conclusion is obscure, and the Thomists
grant it ; but did not Balmes wish for
"more light" about space, time, exten-
sion? Or else do all know the essence
of light or electricity? No Thomist
will pretend to explain a mystery, but
he tries to give only a coherent view
in theology based on right philosophical
ground ; in this he succeeds better than
any Molinist.
424
Correspondence.
The reviewer, to make more efficient
his praises of Molinism, alludes to the
encomiums lavished on Mazzella by the
Civilta Cattolica, and styles it "a perio-
dical of unquestioned authority in these
matters." Such a broad assertion is an
unbecoming flattery ! The Italian pe-
riodical, in its No. 681, gives a second re-
view to Mazzella (which every one should
have expected !), thus summed up at
page 329: "We gave ourselves with an
immense love to the study of the Tho-
mistic philosophy, and more than twen-
ty-five years ago we unfurled high its
banner, courageously braving the aber-
rations of public opinion. It appears
to us, then, that we have some right
to be believed when we say that the
more we studied the more we became
convinced that pred<.t rmination has no-
thing to do with St. Thomas." These
lines would ill fit a Liberatore, who al-
ways conversed otherwise ; they are im-
personal, and one must deal with their
meaning alone. It is true that the Je-
suits have done a good deal for the
scholastic philosophy everlasting honor
and glory be to them for this their good
deed ! however, the secular clergy of
Naples, headed by San Severino, should
be allowed a fair share of the honors.
But it is not true that predetermination
has nothing to do with St. Thomas, since
his philosophical principles lead to it,
firstly ; and, secondly, the system and the
very word predetermination are to be found
in Quidlib. xii. art. iv. vol. 9, page 621,
column 2, Fianadori's edition, 1859.
The authority of the Civilta Cattolica is
not quite so dogmatically unquestion-
able'' in ihese matters," and the reviewer
could and should have known that his
broad "puff" to it might be found
aliunde a servile flattery. While we are
at the whimsical question of names, I
remember that in the spring of 1862 a
quite young Dominican priest in Rome
showed to Liberatore, in a pamphlet of
three hundred pages, that his, Libera-
tore's, solution of a great metaphysical
problem "was wanting in truth and op-
posed to St. Thomas." Here was no
question of words. But Liberatore knew
better than open a fight on philosophical
ground with scholastic principles ; he
answered not. Secchi, however, came
to the rescue, forcing a side show to get
people to laugh at the pretentious young
priest, who " about Molinism had used
all the old arguments of the school."
The young Dominican, though taken
at a disadvantage by Secchi, showed
" game " ; he had to acknowledge Sec-
chi's superiority about meteorology, the
sun-spots, the deviation of the pendu-
lum, the variation of the needle, etc., etc.,
but, coming to principles, he handled Sec-
chi rather roughly, and threw him into
Cartesianism head foremost, and the
main question remained where it was.
In 1876 Zigliara published by the types
of Propaganda a Minima Philosophica. In
its third vol., page 393, Liberatore's argu-
ment is again honored with ncgo supposi-
tum and the exposition of the supposi-
tion ; but Liberatore speaks not.
My question with you is not What sys-
tem you should have, much less I wish
you to enlighten public opinion if your
interest compel you to echo it, but only
to remonstrate with you for the injured
interests of our students ; the unlimited
partiality for a system in your influential
pages is dangerous to them. Addiscentem
oportet credere ; authority goes a good
way with students.
Should you find herein aught offen-
sive, please ascribe it to my ignorance
alone, because we Catholics in these
parts feel a kind of " family pride " in
the press over which you preside. Nor
do I intend to belittle the Jesuits' school,
whereat I am proud to have got a B.D., and
to them personally, as to other teachers,
I owe gratitude ; only I thought that you
had lost sight of the " Americans love
fair play," and therefore wrote to you
accordingly.
With most cordial best wishes, and
compliments of the season, I remain,
Your obedient servant,
NICHOLAS MIALEZ.
We publish the piquant letter of
our South American friend at the
earliest date after its reception
which we have found convenient.
We assure the writer that we are
not offended at his freedom of ex-
pression. ' We are. moreover, na-
turally quite flattered at discover-
ing how much interest is taken in
our humble efforts at so great a
distance. We will not attempt a
discussion with our learned friend
on the merits of the question of
Correspondence.
425
physical premotion. Those who
have had the direction of THE CATH-
OLIC WORLD have given a prefer-
ence to Molinism because it so hap-
pens that they personally hold it to
be more probable than any other
theory. They are, however, not
quite so exclusive as the writer of
the letter supposes. The text-book
used in the Paulist seminary is not
Molinistic in its treatment of the
doctrine of grace, but decidedly of
another to.ii. Bonal is the author
who is firs?' put into the hands of
the Paulist students by their dog-
matic professor, and one of the au-
thors whom he prefers and recom-
mends to his pupils is Billuart. If
our friend reads regularly THE
CATHOLIC WORLD he will also per-
ceive that it has admitted to its
columns a series of essays now in
course of publication which are
written in the contrary sense to
Molinism. It is our opinion that
Molinism is really the system which
is by far the most commonly held
among the clergy of the United
States, Great Britain, France, and
other countries where the English
and French languages are spoken.
We will not assert positively the
same of Italy, Germany, and Spain,
though we believe it may be said
with truth, in a general sense, that
the adherents of the older Domini-
can school are everywhere in the
minority, although we acknowledge
that this minority is most respecta-
ble and includes a number of men
distinguished as philosophers and
theologians.
As for the authority of the Civil-
ta Cattolica or any other periodical,
it is of course perfectly well under-
stood in North America that it is
not a dogmatic authority, but a
moral weight and influence, arising
from the learning and the power of
reason manifested by the writers in
the same, to which any of these lay
claim, or which is accorded to them
by persons who have a good share
of common sense.
The merits of San Severino and
other eminent writers of the Nea-
politan clergy and laity are fre-
quently recognized and lauded by
the Civilth, and by Father Liberatore
himself, who is one of the most
courteous of writers, toward adver-
saries as well as friends, and; we
suspect, was rather moved by com-
passion than fear when he chose to
leave the young friend of our cor-
respondent unmolested in the en-
joyment of his innocent pastime of
" pitching Father Secchi into the
middle of Cartesianism." Let our
friend make his mind easy about
our theological students. They are
quite as much disposed to form their
own opinions as he could wish, and
if they are disciples of Liberatore in
philosophy and Mazzella in theo-
logy, it is because these eminent
writers have a certain art of con-
vincing the mind by their reasoning
on the most important questions,
though in some others of minor
consequence they may come short,
which is not always found in wri-
ters on philosophical or theological
topics. We conclude by wishing
our reverend friend a happy Easter
in return for his happy New Year,
though it may be as long after Eas-
ter when he receives our greeting as
it was after New Year's when his own
reached our hyperborean region.
426
New Ptiblications.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
COUNTER-POINTS IN CANON LAW: a Re-
ply to the Pamphlet Points in Canon
Law and to the American Catholic
Quarterly Review of October, 1878.
By Rev. S. B. Smith, D.D. Newark :
J. J. O'Connor & Co. 1879.
Dr. Smith deserves a great deal of
credit for this reply to the criticisms
made upon him. We may say that it
has really been a piece of good fortune
for him to be attacked ; for it has given
him an opportunity to show not only a
knowledge of the subjects to which he
has devoted himself that could not
otherwise have been displayed, but also
a singular degree of good temper under
very considerable provocation. To an-
swer calmly and charitably a pamphlet
written in the style of that which opened
this controversy shows him to be pos-
sessed of a rare degree of self control.
We expected great ability to be shown
in the defence which it was announced
that Dr. Smith would make ; but we
must confess we did not expect that he
would be so successful as he has been
in maintaining his positions.
On the first point namely, the form of
confirmation of the Baltimore decrees
Dr. Smith makes out a specially strong
case, strengthened, of course, by the ne-
cessity, in itself sufficiently obvious, but
proved by him on excellent authority
(p. 19), resting on his adversaries, of
taking the burden of proof on them-
selves. To put it on him would be as
unfair as to accuse him of a factious
spirit, or even of acting like one having
such a spirit, in refusing to accept an
obligation not clearly established. It
must be remembered throughout that Dr.
Smith is not writing a spiritual book ;
he -is treating of questions of positive
law, which must be treated according to
strict legal principles. Minimizing in
such things is no indication whatever of
a spirit of disobedience, as is sufficiently
evident from the example of the saints
themselves. It would be equally unfair,
and also something of an imputation on
the wisdom of the church, to make it
seem as though a confirmation in forma
communi was of no use, and that Dr.
Smith, by taking that view of the con-
firmation actually given, was depriving
the council of all practical value.
On ttie question of the ''jura stola"
on which he has also given very strong
and convincing arguments, a remark
similar to that above may well be made.
The question is here simply, not what
the practical conduct should be of a
priest who wishes to ctftfform to the
spirit of the Gospel, but what is actually
the law of God and of the church on the
subject. It seems to consist properly of
two. The first is, whether a priest can
be condemned as guilty of simony who
should demand, after the performance
of an ecclesiastical function, the stipend
which law or laudable custom has as-
signed to it. It does not need to be
proved that such a demand might in
many, or even in the great majority of,
cases savor of avarice or give scandal ;
it may often be inexpedient, and even
sinful, all things being considered, to
claim one's just rights ; the question is
whether the "'jus stolx " be really a
"jus" or strict right, and how far that
right extends. If it be an obligation
per modum stipendii, duly placed on the
consciences of the people, it is evidently
a right on the part of the priest. And if
it be a right, it is evidently not simonia-
cal, or in any vryy per se sinful, to ask for
it. The second question is whether the
proper authorities, to whom the execu-
tion of the law of the church has been
committed, can compel by external pen-
alties the giving of this right. It seems
perfectly plain that they do not act ille-
gitimately in doing so ; it is almost
equally plain that cases may arise in
which it will be no sin of any kind on
their part, and in fact that it may some-
times even be required by the duties of
their office.
With regard to the question of the pub-
lication of the decree " Tametsi," and the
consequent establishment of the impedi-
ment of clandestinity in this country, we
have already, in a preceding notice, suffi-
ciently expressed our views in opposi-
tion to the sweeping statements of the
original Pamphlet. We have nothing to
add to Dr. Smith's able refutation of its
New Publications.
427
assertions assertions that may, without
violating charity, be considered sensa-
tional rather than sound, and to rest in
their most important part on an inter-
pretation of a document which may be
admitted as theoretically a probable one,
but practically otherwise, being insuffi-
cient to establish any obligation in the
face of probable opinions to the contra-
ry, to say nothing of custom not con-
demned by the church. But it would
be evidently unfair to accuse the author
of the Elements, either in the first
volume of his work, as he himself re-
marks, or in his present answer, of in-
sufficient treatment of a subject on which
he has not as yet properly entered ; as
much so as to find fault with him for
not incorporating all the diocesan laws
of the United States into his treatise, as
the Pamphlet seems to consider him
bound to do in its remarks on Paschal
Communion.
In no part of the present reply of Dr.
Smith is his learning and accuracy of
thought more conspicuous than in his
chapter on the " Irremovability of Parish
Priests." The question is here precisely
whether a parish priest canonically con-
stituted is by the general law of the
church removable ad nutum, or in per-
petual possession, subject only to dis-
missal for grave causes " in jure . ex-
pressas." That there are parish priests,
even in great numbers, who are remova-
ble, does not prove that removability is
now the law of the church, any more
than the fact that the abstinence on Sat-
urday is now a thing almost of the past
shows that it is not even now the general
law of the church, in the strict and tech-
nical sense. Whether the authorities
and arguments brought forward on the
side of irremovability are conclusive or
not is a question which is, of course,
open to discussion ; but one thing seems
certain, that if it can be proved that at
any time whatever it has been the law of
the church, it must still be considered to
be so, unless changed by positive enact-
ment proceeding from the Head of the
church, or by general custom tacitly
sanctioned by him under the proper con-
ditions. The allowing of removability
in one country or another proves noth-
ing, unless it can be shown that the al-
lowance was made as an interpretation
of the law, not as a dispensation or re-
laxation from it, which last Dr. Smith
very clearly shows to have been the case
in the reply of Pope Gregory XVI. in
1845.
With regard to the question of the re-
movability of our own pastors, though
it has, of course, taken an entirely new
shape since the instruction of last year
was received from the Propaganda, it is
still an important one for Dr. Smith's jus-
tification. He shows that pastors who are
removable ad nutum cannot, according to
good authorities, be removed in certain
cases without cause, and that these cases
may be shown to exist and the removal
declared invalid by the legitimate su-
perior, though meanwhile the removal
must, for the sake of discipline, be prac-
tically considered as valid.
So far his position seems to us unex-
ceptionable. But he goes further, if we
mistake not, and considers it at least
probable that all kinds of delegated ju-
risdiction are subject to the same decla-
ration of invalidity in their removal with-
out cause. It is of jurisdiction in the
Sacrament of Penance that he specially
speaks, and here, it seems to us, his ar-
gument is wanting in its usual conclu-
siveness. For he adduces the opinion
of Coninck, Suarez, and others quoted
by St. Alphonsus, and considered pro-
bable by others, and apparently by St.
Alphonsus himself, to the effect that ap-
probation cannot be always validly with-
drawn without cause, and extends the
same to delegated jurisdiction, on the
ground that the two are necessarily unit-
ed for practical purposes. But this is
a theoretical question, not a practical
one; and it does not follow that juris-
diction cannot be withdrawn because the
approbation would be useless without
it, for that might well remain, inopera-
tive, it is true, but really existing, and
not requiring to be renewed when juris-
diction was again given. So the with-
drawal of jurisdiction without cause
would not be contrary to the opinion of
the theologians named. In fact, a similar
case to this exists in the withdrawal of
episcopal approbation from some regu-
lar confessor, his jurisdiction, even out-
side of his order, remaining meanwhile
untouched and not needing to be renew-
ed with the approbation, though in the
meantime it is practically inoperative as
regards the people.
It seems to us that the argument could
only be made a part ; but there is cer-
tainly a greater reason against the with-
drawal of approbation than that of juris-
428
New Publications.
diction without any cause furnished by
the subject ; for approbation is an act of
judgment on his qualities, whereas ju-
risdiction, especially if itbe merely local,
may well be conferred on him or taken
away for reasons not concerning him at
all. A subordinate has a real right to
approbation as long as he continues
worthy of it, but not necessarily to ju-
risdiction, at least as it seems to us.
This is really the only criticism which
we have to make on Dr. Smith's reply.
We regard his views on the '' Imprima-
tur" as tenable, though perhaps here he
may seem to carry principles of inter-
pretation rather to an extreme. But here
again it is a question, not of what course
he would recommend to others, or him-
self observe, but of what the real state
of the law must be considered to be, and
of how far a strict obligation can really
be laid on the conscience. The church
has in matters like this, especially where
censures were involved, given all the
liberty possible ; and it is the true pro-
vince of a writer on canon law to make
all possible examinations of the text of
any law seeming to have a wide bearing,
to see if it will not admit of a more be-
nignant interpretation. Here is certain-
ly an opportunity for him to be guided
by the spirit of the Gospel, in not laying
on men's shoulders burdens heavier than
they can, or at any rate will, bear.
In conclusion, we heartily congratu-
late Dr. Smith on his triumphant vindi-
cation of himself, and think that the con-
troversy into which he has been drawn
will serve still further to increase his
deserved reputation as a canonist, pro-
mote the sale of his work, and attract
interest to that portion of it yet to come.
THEOLOGIZE DOGMATICS COMPENDIUM.
H. Hurter, S.J. Second edition.
Innspruck, 1878. New York : Pustet.
On the first appearance of Father
Hurter's Compendi-um, in 1876, La Kevue
des Sciences Eccle'siastiques praised it in
the following terms : "We do not hesi-
tate to express the conviction that this
work is a very great improvement upon
the ordinary text-books. It is, indeed,
a compendium, but it is a complete one,
including everything essential, and meet-
ing satisfactorily all that we need to
have in a compendium. The author
has displayed a remarkable precision of
expression and philosophical depth, to-
gether with a secure exposition of doc-
trine, and a general intellectual culture
which is only too often wanting in the
compilers of our theological school-
books. He is no mere theologian, but
a scholar in the strictest sense of the
word, and this quality is nowadays more
indispensable than it has ever been in a
theological writer. We regard this work
as supplying a need that several other
authors have attempted to satisfy, but
have failed of success in their effort :
the need of a dogmatic course for be-
ginners and more advanced students,
easy to be grasped and yet truly scien-
tific, holding firmly, on the one hand, to
tradition, and on the other making suit-
ably available the results and new dis-
coveries of the sciences, a product of
really scientific labors of such a kind
as not to frighten away our young peo-
ple from scientific research."
We can endorse this most favorable
judgment without much reservation.
Among the noteworthy excellencies of
its particular parts, we would designate
especially the clear exposition of the
natural and supernatural orders, of ori-
ginal sin, and of the distinction between
the submission due to that authority of
the church which is infallible, and that
doctrinal authority in the church which
is legitimate though not sanctioned by a
guarantee of absolute infallibility. We
are particularly pleased, moreover, that
the author has withheld his approbation
from the obsolete and scientifically un-
tenable theory, which we are always
sorry to see advocated by any learned
theologian, that the universe was creat-
ed outright, a few thousand years ago,
in six days of twenty-four hours' dura-
tion. Exegetically, we do not think
there are any conclusive reasons for this
interpretation, there is no decisive rea-
son for it from authority, and we regard
adhesion to it as placing a great and
most unnecessary obstacle in the way of
a rational defence of the inspired truth
and divine authority of the Holy Scrip-
tures. In the exposition of that most
difficult topic, the formal object of faith
in its relation with the rational motives
of credibility, we think that the author
has been too succinct and incomplete,
although he has given his own opinion
clearly and distinctly enough to satisfy
those who have not paid attention to the
reasons which militate against it and in
favor of the opinion of Suarez and Father
Mazzella. We abstain from any minute
Neiv Publications.
429
criticism of Father Hurter's Theology,
and content ourselves with a general ex-
pression of our opinion, that for advanc-
ed students, and for the use of the clergy,
it is the best and most satisfactory com-
pendium which we have had the oppor-
tunity of examining. Of course it does
not compete with works of the order of
Cardinal Franzelin's Treatises and the
Woodstock Course. It is primarily in-
tended as a text-book, and is therefore
intentionally compendious. Text-books
must be judged, not only by a standard
of value which measures their relative
excellence as succinct and complete
compendiums of systematic theology,
but also by their aptitude to the
minds of students and the practical
use of the class-room. In this regard
we consider the older manuals prepared
before the Council of the Vatican as no
longer available, whatever their intrinsic
merits may be. It seems to us quite
unreasonable to continue the use of Lie-
bermann, Bouvier, or even Perrone or
Kenrick, if we can have a perfectly satis-
factory substitute for any one of these or
similar manuals, prepared since the de-
finitions of the last council were pro-
mulgated. In a comparison of class-
books for practical use, we put aside,
therefore, all consideration of any as
eligible, except those which are recent.
In this view Hurter and Bonal are, to
our thinking, the two principal compe-
titors for the palm.
For Germany, very likely Hurter may
be the best extant text-book. We are
inclined to think that for general use in
seminaries Bonal is, in some respects,
preferable. For the most capable stu-
dents, each one of these distinguished
authors supplements the other in such a
way, that the two together would furnish
an elementary system of dogmatic theo-
logy, on which the most complete and
solid foundation would be laid for more
extensive study at a future period. Bo-
nal is easier, shorter, simpler than Hur-
ter. There is a less copious erudition
displayed in his pages. Yet, he has an
uncommon art of going to the depths of
a topic, gathering the essence and suc-
culence of patristic, scholastic, and
Scriptural doctrine, getting at the in-
trinsic reasons of things, and presenting
the result with that brevity, comprehen-
siveness, and distinctness of language
which is best adapted to the intelligence
of beginners. There is more work left
for the professor, in expanding and sup-
plementing the simple and elementary
thesis presented by the author, but if the
professor is competent, his pupils will
better understand his vivd voce explana-
tions than those which are found in the
pages of a book. If any one wishes to
apply an easy test to the correctness of
our statement, let him examine Bonal's
treatise de SSmd Trinitate.
Unless new competitors of equal or
superior merit appear in the field, we
venture to predict that both Hurter and
Bonal will obtain a wide popularity like
that enjoyed for so long by the illus-
trious Perrone in dogma, and Gury in
morals. We venture to recommend to
all those whose duty it is to determine
what text-books shall be used in the
seminaries of the United States, to ex-
amine these two. In conclusion, we
beg of Mr. Pustet to abrogate the vexa-
tious European custom of putting a pa-
per night-gown on his books, and to
give them a decent suit of binding.
Hurter's Theology is admirably printed,
but our copy is tumbling to pieces al-
ready, and we must have the trouble of
sending it to the binder. It will doubt-
less be much more inconvenient to the
students who may have to purchase the
work, and to priests living in the coun-
try, to get their volumes bound before they
can use them, than it is for us. Besides,
it costs each one more to pay for bind-
ing a book than the additional price
would be which a publisher could rea-
sonably demand for a bound book. By
all means let us have bound copies of
books that are worth binding, especially
when they are sent to an editor for no-
tice.
SONGS AND SONNETS. By Maurice F.
Egan.
It is impossible to read any of Mr.
Egan's verses, a few of which are here
reproduced for private circulation, with-
out feeling at once that he has the true
poetic tone and touch. There is a rare
grace and tenderness in all he does, and
a classic sweetness that reminds one of
Keats. He is unequal, however, and
that is the very best sign in a young
poet, or writer of any kind. The man
who attains to a fixed level and runs in
a steady groove, never moving higher or
falling lower, or stepping for a moment
out of his beaten track, even if it be to
430
New Publications.
make a mistake, is not likely to be
spurred into great things. Mr. Egan is
very fond of Theocritus, so we give his
sonnet to that poet :
" Daphnis is mute, and hidden nymphs complain,
And mourning mingles with their fountains' song ;
Shepherds contend no more, as all day long
They watch their sheep on the wide cypress-
plain ;
The master-voice is silent, songs are vain ;
Blithe Pan is dead, and tales ot ancient wrong,
Done by the gods when gods and men were
strong,
Chanted to waxed pipes, no prize can gain :
sweetest singer of the olden days,
In dusty books your idyls rare seem dead ;
The gods are gone, but poets never die ;
Though men may turn their ears to newer lays,
Sicilian nightingales enraptured
Caught ail your songs, and nightly thrill the
sky."
And here is a sweet extract from the
" Song of Cyclops to Galatea," a para-
phrase from Theocritus :
' Last night I dreamed that I, a monster finned,
Swam in the sea and saw you singing there ;
1 gave you lilies, and refreshing wind,
Laden with odors of all flowers rare ;
I gave you apples, as I kissed your hand.
And reddest poppies from my richest land.
" Oh ! brave the restless billows of your world :
They toss and tremble ; see my cypress-grove,
And bending laurels, and the tendrils curled
Of honeyed grapes, and a fresh running trove
In vine-crowned ^Etna, of pure running rills !
O Galatea, kill the scorn that kills !"
We hope, however, that Mr. Egan will
soon desert Theocritus for higher com-
pany, nor linger too long among the
"waxen lilacs," and "tall reeds," and
"maidenhair," and "fauns and dryads,"
and " lowly dandelions," and " clover
and cowslip-cups," and" carmine peach-
es " of which he is very fond.. There are
men and women in the world worthy of a
song. Souls are better than daisies and
all the adornments of the idyllic property-
shop. The spirit of paganism and mere
nature-worship is apt to creep into young
blood and deaden it to higher impulses.
Surely the fierce days we live in ought
to draw to themselves the poets' fire ;
yet many with gifts of great promise turn
aside from to-day and waste themselves
in out-of-the-way nooks, seeking for Mr.
Matthew Arnold's " sweetness and
light," which is only another name for
a milk-and-water moral and mental re-
gimen. Setting out to be discoverers,
or builders, or architects of something,
they fall early into bad company, and, if
they do not sink in the mire, rise to the
height of bric-a-brac and stay there.
Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, whose vol-
ume, The P^et and his Master, was le-
cently noticed in THE CATHOLIC WORLD,
is one of the younger poets whose ver-
ses give promise of high things, if he only
find them and pursue them. Mr. Egan
is another. But if he would rise he
must shed his Theocritan shell as speed-
ily as possible.
FAITH AND RATIONALISM. With Short
Supplementary Essays on Related
Topics. By George P. Fisher, D.D ,
Professor of Ecclesiastical History in
Yale College. New York : Scribner.
1879.
This is a quite small and unpretend-
ing volume, which grew out of a lecture
that Dr. Fisher delivered at Princeton.
It has more thought in it than some very
bulky works, and the author makes a
number of good points. In the outset
the author describes himself as ' one
who can claim to represent no party or
school in theology, but who feels himself
drawn with an increasing conviction to
the catholic truth which has been the
life of Christian piety in all ages of the
church." Accordingly he quotes from
or refers to St. Augustine, St. Bonaven-
tura, Hugh of St. Victor, Cardinal New-
man, as well as from Luther, Bacon, But-
ler, and Schleiermacher. One of the
leading ideas which he presents, and
which he has before now most ably vin-
dicated, is the historical basis of religion,
and the evidence of the truth of Chris-
tianity which its very existence presents.
Another line of thought leads into the
consideration of the grounds of firm con-
viction and belief of the great and high
truths of natural and revealed religion
which are contained in implicit reason,
and of the relation of the will, moral dis-
positions, sentiments, and states of the
affective nature to the intellect and their
influence upon its apprehensions and
judgments. It is just here that the
question lies of the reasonableness and
certitude of assent to matters which have
not been and often cannot be the object
of thorough study and scientific know-
ledge, as in the case of the simple
and unlearned. This is an intricate and
most interesting subject. Dr. Fisher is
in very close agreement with Cardinal
Newman in his way of viewing it, and
acknowledges his obligations to him in
the most frank and generous manner :
" By the various writings of this author,
New Publications.
431
on the foundations of religion, I have
been stimulated and instructed in ways
that do not always admit of specific ac-
knowledgment " (p. 31). This is a new-
illustration of the extent and magnetic
force of Newman's influence on the mind
of the present generation. We have
often tried to discover the secret of it,
and we think we have found it in the
Grammar of Assent, It lies in the vivid
apprehension of a great many impli-
cit thoughts and sentiments which are
working in a multitude of minds, to-
gether with a remarkable power of giv-
ing them explicit form in a charming
style. There is a religious, a Chris-
tian, a Catholic movement in the centu-
ry, as well as an opposite movement.
Among the thinking, reading class of
the English-speaking world, Newman is
the leader bf the religious movement,
because he interprets to them their
thoughts in their own mother-tongue.
He deals largely in history and facts of
experience, and he gives an explanation
of their sense, their meaning, their rela-
tion to God's providence and man's sal-
vation, from principles of faith and in
harmony with sound reason and the dic-
tates of the unperverted natural con-
science. The current of Dr. Fisher's
thoughts, in the present little volume,
funs generally in the same direction. It
is to be hoped that the religious current,
which is deeper, swifter, and wider than
the sceptical, materialistic, atheistical
current, will in the coming age absorb
and overmaster all opposing influences
and obstacles, and turn all the powers
of real knowledge and genuine science
into their legitimate direction to serve
Christianity. The greater number of the
tolerably well-disposed people are tired
of individualism and of theories hatch-
ed by restless, ambitious innovators.
They wish to fall back on the common,
universal beliefs of the human race, and
on the universal beliefs of Christendom.
Even the Index and Mr. Frothingham
confess that individualism and the ex-
clusive use of private judgment have
failed, and that common, unifying prin-
ciples only are organic and constructive
and controlling. Mr. Frothingham has
dismissed his congregation and gone to
Europe to prepare for constructing a
new church, with a new faith, for a posi-
tive renovation of mankind, on his re-
turn. Unless he should succeed better
than we anticipate he will, or something
far superior to the religion of Christ be
established by a " consensus of the com-
petent," we shall adhere to our belief in
Jesus Christ and the church he founded,
and continue to regard the unchange-
able religion which is coeval with the
beginning of the world as the one des-
tined to last until the end of the same.
We are happy to find that Dr. Fisher is
of the same mind, and we trust he may
continue to discover and make known
more and more of the real nature and
divine truth of historical Christianity as
the regenerating power for the present
and the future as well as the past ages
of the world. This is a road which leads
to certainty and agreement among those
who hold the same first principles of na-
tural and revealed theology, all summed
up in the belief of the real divinity and
humanity of the One who called himself
the Principium qui ft loquor v^bis. Opin-
ionuni enim commenta delet dies ; natures
judicia confirmat.
THREE CATHOLIC REFORMERS OF THE
FIFTEENTH CENTURY. By Mary H.
Allies. London : Burns & Gates.
1878. (For sale by the Catholic Pub-
lication Society Co.)
It is by just such books as this that
"Rome's recruits" in England have
been won to the fold. The Oratorian
Lives of the Saints made a profound im-
pression upon the English mind by their
revelation of a saintship so much in ac-
cord with the proverbial common sense
of the people that the deepest effects of
divine grace appeared, as they indeed
are, the very flowering of our human na-
ture. The rigid sanctimoniousness of
the Puritan, and that pietistic effeminacy
which Goethe sketches so masterly (Die
Schone Seele\ have been the only ideals
of holiness held up to Protestantism.
The burst of splendid heroism in the
knightly saints of Spain, so beautifully
drawn out in this book ; the contempla-
tive life, which shelters under its loving
wing so many holy and learned men ;
the passionate love of the poor which
warms even this age of "gold"; the
profound self-forgetful ness and abase-
ment which made Napoleon ,,I. say
of Pius VII., "Bah! this is the first
gentleman of Europe ; he thinks not of
himself"; and that supreme caritas, a
word the fulness of whose meaning
only the saints know, are sympathetical-
ly described by one who bears the hon-
ored name of him who has traced the
For/nation of Christendom.
432
New Publications.
The general theme of the book, whose
unity of idea is admirably kept, is that
the church is ever able to reform her
children, provided they maintain the one-
ness of the faith. The student of his-
tory knows, for example, that the fif-
teenth century was signally afflicted with
the disputes of anti-popes ; the laxity
which the spread of Hussism fostered in
Northern Europe making still broader
the road for the Reformation and the in-
cursions of the Turks. Gibbon and Sis-
mondi have ascribed to the Papacy the
deliverance of modern society from these
several pests. But the} r never thought
that there stands at every pope's side a
saint, an angel clothed in human flesh,
who, in the rough garb of a poor old
begging friar, or the finished toilet of a
" first gentleman of Europe," is marvel-
lously filled with the gifts of the Holy
Ghost.
St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Bernardine of
Siena, and St. John Capistran would of
themselves have redeemed a century of
centuries. What the author says of St.
Vincent's day applies strikingly to our
own :
" He lived in times of strong passions,
which had acted somewhat like a heresy in
blinding the minds of men to the truth.
His weapons were therefore twofold :
there was the vocation to combat the
passions, and the human learning as
the natural arm against ignorance."
St. Vincent Ferrer was, by excellence,
the greatest orator of the middle ages,
and he was so precisely because he did
not know it. St. Bernard (in vita S.
Malachi) gives the oratorical palm to
St. Malachy, although Bernard himself
roused all Europe to the most difficult
of the Crusades. What we have of the
writings of the Doctor Mellijiuus indi-
cates the supreme realization of that
" sweetness and light " for which Mat-
thew Arnold and John Ruskin are seek-
ing and imploring in modern literature.
Ranzano has a few of St. Vincent's ser-
mons (evidently badly reported, as an
editor would say), and they strike one
as rather poor and commonplace, until
one begins to realize that the man who
cried out, " My beloved ones," would
have gladly died for one soul ; and that
" O God !" meant to him a union with
Jesus which, we fondly hope, is reserved
for us when the Beatific Vision dawns
upon our sight.
The best characterization of the church
is St. Augustine's, " Ever ancient, ever
new"; for the church, according to St.
Paul, is the Body of Christ, her Love and
Beauty, of which Augustine wrote those
immortal words. It is gratifying to ob-
serve how unerringly Miss Allies ap-
plies this great thought to the treatment
of the saints, who reappear in the firma-
ment of the church like stars whose
light is never quenched, though the time
of their conjunctures with the Sun may
be deferred for ages. We cannot close
this notice without a tribute to the clasr
sic elegance of the style, which is a re-
freshment in itself.
GRANTS OF LAND AND GIFTS OF MONEY
TO CATHOLIC AND NON- CATHOLIC IN-
STITUTIONS IN NEW YORK COMPARED.
New York: The Catholic Publica-
tion Society Co. 1879.
The Catholic Publication Society Co.
has here reproduced in pamphlet form
the two articles on the charitable insti-
tutions of New York and the donations
to them in land and money which ap-
peared in the April and May numbers of
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. They form a
complete and absolute refutation of all
the calumnies that have ever appeared
or ever could appear concerning the
Catholic charitable institutions of New
York. The Protestant press and pulpit
and platform are for ever ringing the
changes on these wicked calumnies and
outrageous charges, and are not likely
to abandon their favorite amusement for
many years to come. It is very impor-
tant, therefore, that the truth, as here
quietly and fully stated, should be made
known and spread abroad over the
country. Catholics should have this
matter at their fingers' ends. This cheap
little pamphlet will for all future time
be an effectual extinguisher on any elo-
quent gentleman who, like the unfortu-
nate Mr. Clarence Cook in the Atlantic
Monthly, is foolish enough to bring for-
ward charges of this nature without first
ascertaining whether they are true, and,
secondly, whether in bringing them for-
ward he is really not digging a pit for
himself. Over and above this, the pam-
phlet forms a condensed and complete
history of the charities of New York,
and is thus of use and interest to all sorts
of readers.
ERRATUM In the note preliminary to
the canto from Dante's '' Purgatorio," in
the present number, for Sir Frederick
Pollock read Baron Pollock, and for
Mr. Haselfoot read Mr. Ha^elfoot.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD
VOL. XXIX., No. 172. JULY, 1879.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES.*
WE propose in the following
pages to treat of the original ele-
ments of the Catholic Church in
the United States, her relations
with the republic, the causes of her
growth, and her future prospects.
The discovery of the western
continent was eminently a religious
enterprise. Columbus had in vain
sought aid for his great undertak-
ing from his native city, Genoa,
from Portugal, England, Venice,
and the court of Spain ; and it was
after these fruitless applications
that Juan Perez, the prior of La
Rabida, took up his cause and
pleaded it with so much earnest-
ness and ability in a letter to Queen
Isabella that she at once sent for
Columbus and offered to pledge
her jewels to obtain funds for the
expedition. The motive which ani-
mated Columbus, in common with
the Franciscan prior and Isabella
the Catholic, was the burning de-
* Bancroft's History of the United States.
" The Catholic Peril in America." By Francis
E. Abbott. The Fortnightly Review, March,
1876.
The Papacy and the Civil Power. By R. W.
Thompson.
Future cf the Republic. By Ralph Waldo
Emerson.
Democracy in Europe : a History. By Sir
Thomas Erskine May.
Romanism and High Schools. By the Rev.
Joseph Cook. A lecture delivered in Tremont
Temple, Boston, March 17, 1879.
sire to carry the blessings of the
Christian faith to the inhabitants
of a new continent, and it was
the inspiration of this idea which
brought a new world to light.
This inspiration has never died
out ; if the Spanish and French
missionaries did not accompany
the first discoverers, they followed
speedily in their tracks, and the
work of the conversion of the abo-
rigines was earnestly begun. In a
short time they traversed the whole
northern continent from the rnouth
of the St. Lawrence to California,
and from the Gulf of Mexico to
Hudson's Bay. Sometimes mission-
aries were slain, but the fearless
soldiers of the cross continued un-
ceasingly their work of converting
the natives and bringing them into the
fold of Christ. Though the pages
of history which narrate the self-
sacrificing labors of the missionaries
to the Indians are among the bright-
est in the annals of the church, still
the whole number of Catholic In-
dians will not appear as a large item
in the sum of her members in the
United States. One of the reasons
for this is that the heroic efforts
made for their conversion and civi-
lization have been in a great mea-
sure thwarted by the inhuman pol-
Copyright : Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1879.
434
The Catholic Church iu the United States.
icy pursued towards the Indians.
Yet, when we come to consider the
actual elements which blend to-
gether in forming the Catholic
Church in the republic of the Unit-
ed States, her faithful children of
the forests ought not to be left out
of the count. According to the re-
port of the Bureau of Indian Af-
fairs for 1875 the whole number of
Indians under the government of the
United States is about 279,333, and
it is estimated, on good authority,
that of these 106,000 are Catholics.
The raising of the red men to
the height of the Christian faith
was but one of the fruits of the dis-
covery of the new continent ; an-
other was to offer an asylum to all
who in other lands were persecuted
and oppressed on account of their
religious convictions. Among the
first to seek this relief from oppres-
sion on the virgin soil of the New
World were the English Catholic
colonists under Lord Baltimore.
To their honor it is to be said that,
both by the original design of the
proprietary, Lord Baltimore, and
by the legislative enactments of
the freemen of the province, there
reigned, while their rule lasted in
Maryland, a perfect equality among
all Christian denominations, and to
all were secured the same rights
and privileges, civil and religious.
This act on the part of the colo-
nists of Maryland was in harmony
with the dictates of right reason
and the authentic teachings of
faith ; for all attempts to bring by
coercion men who differ in their
religious convictions to uniformity
in the profession of religious belief,
if successful, would logically put
an end to all rational religion.
Compulsion never gave birth to
faith, which is " not by any means
a blind assent of the mind," * but
* Vatican Council, De Fide, ch. iii.
essentially an intelligent and vol-
untary act. Convinced of this, as
Catholics, the idea of religious tole-
rance flowed naturally and consist-
ently in the minds of the first set-
tlers on the shores of the Potomac.
It was a noble act on their part to
proclaim that within the province
and jurisdiction of Maryland no
Christian man should be molested
in worshipping God according to
the dictates of his conscience, and
whoever supposes that the Syllabus
teaches anything to the contrary
seriously mistakes its meaning.
Honor, then, to the pilgrim fathers
of St. Mary ! who, when the other
settlements had a state-supported
church and were intolerant to all
others, asked for themselves no fa-
vor, but offered equal rights to all ;
thus excluding the secular authori-
ty of the* state from interfering in
matters of religion a principle for
which the popes, in their struggles
with the secular powers for the
rights of the church, have always
contended, and for which they still
have to contend. Let, then, those
Catholic Anglo-Americans have
their due share of praise for the
religious toleration of which they
were the first to give an example
an example, furthermore, which had
a formative influence in shaping the
republic and its free institutions.
For the principle of the incompe-
tency of the state to enact laws
controlling matters purely religious
is the keystone of the arch of Ame-
rican liberties, and Catholics of all
climes can point to it with special
delight. This noble course of the
Catholics of Maryland, however,
was little appreciated, and they
were hindered in their progress
and trampled upon when those to
whom they had so generously of-
fered a refuge from persecution had
attained to power in the province ;
The Catholic Church in the United States.
435
nevertheless, they kept their faith,
and were by far the largest part of
the body of the Catholic Church up
to the time when the great tide of
immigration set in towards the
shores of the United States, and
their descendants still form a pro-
minent and influential portion of
the Catholic community.
The next original element was
that furnished by France. The
soil of the United States was at an
early period watered by the blood
of the French missionaries t<^the
Indian tribes. In 1775 an acces-
sion to the church came through
the expulsion by the Puritans of
Massachusetts of a colony of French
Catholics from Acadia, on the Bay
of Fundy. In spite of the solemn
engagements of the capitulation,
that they should not be disturbed,
they were driven from their peace-
ful homes, and about seven thou-
sand were scattered among the Bri-
tish colonies. These are the Aca-
dians whose sad tale has been told
by Longfellow in the beautiful poem
of Evangeline. The influence ex-
erted by the flower of the French
army and nobility who entered the
service of the infant republic at a
time when, but for their aid, its
cause would likely have been lost,
in removing prejudices from the
minds of colonists against the Ca-
tholic religion, and compelling them
to show at least a decent respect
for the religious convictions of their
Catholic allies, is not lightly to be
estimated. Then the storm of the
French Revolution drove to the
shores of the United States, be-
tween the years 1791 and 1799, a
body of apostolic clergymen whose
labors reanimated the zeal of Ca-
tholics, caused conversions to the
faith, organized new parishes, found-
ed seminaries and colleges, and
created bishoprics. It would be
difficult to estimate the influence
which these French missionaries
exercised throughout the country
by their exemplary lives, their
learning, their virtues, and their
qualities as men. Among them
was a Marechal, a Cheverus, a
Brute", a Flaget, and a Dubois.
Twenty-three French priests came
at that period to aid the young
church in the United States ; six
were made bishops, and of these
Marechal became the third arch-
bishop of Baltimore. Cheverus was
the first bishop of Boston, and was
recalled to France and made arch-
bishop of Bordeaux and cardinal.
To these are to be added several
thousand Catholics, among whom
were some hundred colored people
who came from San Domingo and
other West Indian islands in 1793
to escape the effects of the French
Revolution and the negro insurrec-
tion. These French Catholics add-
ed faith, piety, wealth to the in-
fant church, and their posterity,
constant to their religion, rank
among the distinguished citizens
of the republic. Their number was
also considerably increased by the
territories acquired or admitted to
the Union, which were mostly in-
habited by French Catholics. Loui-
siana *was acquired in 1803, and
had at that time about thirty-two
thousand inhabitants, nearly all of
whom were Catholics. Besides
these were other settlements, peo-
pled by the descendants mostly of
French-Canadians, at St. Louis,
Detroit, Vincennes, which have
grown since into places of import-
ance, and still retain the deep im-
print of the French race.
Moreover, the immigration of the
French from Canada to the United
States has been slowly on the in-
crease, and in recent years has
grown rapidly in volume. On in-
43 6
The Catholic Church in the United States.
qtiiry made of a dignitary of one
of the principal dioceses of Canada,
we were told that the number of
French-Canadians who had emigrat-
ed to the United States during a
period of thirty years should be
estimated atfive hundred thousand.
The presence of this Canadian ele-
ment is a marked feature in all
the dioceses bordering on Canada,
which contain a considerable num-
ber of parishes composed entirely
of French-Canadians. Thus it will
be seen that the Catholic French
element was an active and important
one, both in regard to character
and numbers, in the formation of
the Catholic Church in the New
World.
The Catholics from Ireland will
not be found so numerous as
those from England and France
among the early settlers of North
America. The Irish settlers, how-
ever considerable their aggre-
gate number may have been, were
not concentrated in any one lo-
cality like the Spanish, French, or
English. A number of Catholic
Irishmen, however, or their descen-
dants, one of whom was Charles
Carroll, the signer of the Declara-
tion of Independence, took an active
part in the struggle for indepen-
dence. The first commodoTe, the
father of the American navy, was
John Barry, born in Ireland, a
faithful Catholic, a true American,
and an able seaman. But before
the great exodus Ireland had given
to America prelates distinguished
for their faith, virtue, learning, elo-
quence, and apostolic zeal prelates
such as Bishop England, Archbi-
shops Ken rick and Hughes. No
man did more in his day than Bi-
shop England to make the Catho-
lic Church respected. Love for
the free institutions of his adopted
country was with him a vital prin-
ciple, and often prompted his elo-
quence. Bishop England as a pul-
pit orator was unrivalled, and may
be called the Chrysostom of the
American Church. The first bishop
and archbishop of the church in
the United States, John Carroll,
and the first in North America to
be invested with the dignity of
the cardinalate, the Archbishop of
New York, John McCloskey, were
Irishmen by descent.
But the famine of 1846-1847 gave
the^npetus to a mighty stream of
immigration which did not cease in
volume until it supplied millions of
faithful children to the young church
in America and rapidly extended
her borders. The number of immi-
grants from Ireland who arrived at
the port of New York during the
thirty years ending in 1876 was
2,001,727.
There will not be found in the
Catholic Church in the United
States a people, as a class, more
devoted, sincere, and better in-
structed in their religion than the
Germans. The number of their
churches, schools, seminaries, hos-
pitals, orphan asylums will com-
pare advantageously, from an intel-
lectual no less than a material
point of view, with those of any
other portion of the Catholic popu-
lation. None are better supplied
with priests for their people and
teachers for their children than
the Germans. The religious orders
flourish among them, and are re-
presented by the Benedictines, with
several abbots; the Capuchins, and
other branches of the order of St.
Francis; thejesuits, Redemptorists,
and other religious congregations
both of men and of women, especial-
ly such as are devoted to teaching.
In the hierarchy there is one Ger-
man archbishop, and a considerable
number of the bishops are German
The Catholic Church in the United States.
437
by birth or descent. The Catholic
German element had been almost
insignificant until the period in-
cluding the last thirty years; for
although Catholics are consider-
ably in the majority in South Ger-
many, immigration to the United
States in the past was mostly from
the Protestant states. According
to the latest and most accurate
computation of German Catholics
in the United States, they number
1,237,563 souls.
Conversions to the Catholic
faith during the early part of the
century were few and isolated in-
stances ; but within the last twenty-
five years they have become more
numerous. Speaking on this sub-
ject, a French writer who visited,
twelve or more years ago, the Unit-
ed States, says : " It is difficult
to apply a statistical table 'to the
study of the question of conver-
sions. The different Protestant
sects furnish very unequal contin-
gents to the little army of souls
daily returning to the true faith ;
and it is a curious fact that the two
sects which furnish the most are the
Episcopalians, who in their forms
and traditions approach nearest to
the Catholic Church, and the Uni-
tarians, who go to the very oppo-
site extreme, and appear to push
their philosophical and rationalistic
principles almost beyond the pale
of Christianity. These two sects
generally comprise the most en-
lightened and intellectual people
of North America."*
This observation is exact and
has a profound reason for its basis.
The human mind is uneasy until
it has reached unity and grasps
universal truth. And this is ar-
rived at by two diverse but equally
legitimate ways. Those who are
born in sectarianism, as soon as
* E. Rameau, Le Correspondent, 1865.
they allow their reason to act on
their faith learn that they have
but fragments of Christian truth ;
and by tracing these to their logi-
cal connection with other truths
contained in divine revelation they
gain by degrees the knowledge of
the whole body of revealed truth.
Having reached this stage of prepa-
ration, there breaks upon their men-
tal vision the divine character and
mission of the Catholic Church.
This once seen, to enter her fold
becomes a test both of their intel-
lectual consistency and of the sin-
cerity of their faich in Christianity.
This is the road which leads Epis-
copalians and others who still re-
tain firmly one or more of the
revealed truths of Christianity to
the Catholic Church. The second
class fall back upon the essential
truths of natural reason. This
basis recovered, the rejection of
sectarianism logically follows, for
the denial of any one truth of di-
.vine revelation involves of necessity
a contradiction of human reason.
Indignant at this, they ask rightly
for a religion which is consonant
with the dictates of reason and
finds its foundation in the human
breast. Americans who have repu-
diated Protestantism on the grounds
of reason and they are not a few
have made the discovery that the
exposition of Christianity by the
Catholic Church agrees with the
dictates of reason, and that it takes
in its scope all the faculties of
human nature. This is the Unita-
rian road, which is destined, in
our opinion, to become the great
American highway to the Catholic
Church.
There is scarcely an American
family, distinguished either by its
ancestry, or by its social position,
or by its wealth, which to-day has
not one or more representatives
438
The Catholic Church in the United States.
among the converts to the Catholic
Church. In some parts of the
country there are congregations al-
most altogether made up of con-
verts. Converts will be found
among the archbishops, bishops,
and clergy, and a fair share also
belong to the different learned pro-
fessions or hold positions of simi-
lar respectability. Statistics which
bear upon this point vary. In
some dioceses the number of con-
verts among the confirmed is as
high as twelve per cent., in others
it is about seven per cent., and in
others again not more than five,
while elsewhere probably the pro-
portion is smaller. To the fore-
going source of Catholic increase
is to be added the accession of
Florida by purchase in 1819, con-
taining a population of about
18,000; also the acquisition of
Texas in 1845, and California and
New Mexico in 1848, having about
160,000 inhabitants. These peo-
ple were for the most part of Span-
ish-American blood, and nearly all
Catholics. Finally, if we add from a
rough guess 25,000 to 30,000 colored
people, we have all the original
elements which the power of the
Catholic faith has blended together
in one, forming the organization
and strength of the Catholic Church
in the republic of the United
States.
The connection between the re-
public and the Catholic Church, if
satisfactorily treated, requires that
the fundamental principles of the
republic should be clearly stated,
and their relation with Protestant-
ism first be disposed of. This is
what we now attempt.
The republic of the United
States is the result of the gathered
political wisdom and experience of
past ages, shaped by a recognition
of man's natural rights and a trust
in his innate capacity for self-gov-
ernment beyond what had found
expression in the prevailing politi-
cal systems of Europe. The fun-
damental articles of the American
political creed and the formative
principles of the republic are em-
bodied in the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, whence they passed gra-
dually into the constitutions of the
several States and into the Consti-
tution of the United 'States, and
have step by step worked their
way more or less perfectly into the
general and special laws of the
country. These articles consist
principally in the declaration " that
all men are created equal ; that
they are endowed by their Crea-
tor with certain inalienable rights;
that among these are life, liber-
ty, and the pursuit of happiness;
that, to secure these rights, govern-
ments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed."
These declarations can be looked
upon only by superficial thinkers
as " glittering generalities," where-
as some are divine and fundamen-
tal, and all are practical verities,
having a ground both in reason
and revelation. They are divine,
inasmuch as they declare the rights
of the Creator in his creature;
they are fundamental, for without
the enjoyment of the natural rights
which they proclaim man is not a
man, but a slave or a chattel ; they
are practical, for man is, or ought
to be, under his Creator, the master
of his own destiny and free from
any dominion not founded in di-
vine right. The Creator invested
man with these rights in order that
he might fulfil the duties insepara-
bly attached to them. For these
rights put man in the possession of
himself, and leave him free to
reach the end for which his Crea-
The Catholic Church in the United States.
439
tor called him into existence. He,
therefore, who denies or violates
these rights offends God, acts the
tyrant, and is an enemy of man-
kind. And if there be any supe-
rior merit in the republican polity
of the United States, it consists
chiefly in this: that while it adds
nothing and can add nothing to
man's natural rights, it expresses
more clearly, guards more securely,
and protects more effectually these
rights ; so that man, under its popu-
lar institutions, enjoys greater lib-
erty in working out his true des-
tiny.
Since Christianity claims to be
God's revelation of the great end
for which he created man, it fol-
lows that those rights without
which he cannot reach that end
must find their sanction, expressed
or implied, in all true interpreta-
tions of its doctrines.
That the interpretations of Chris-
tianity by the so-called Reformation,
especially by its leaders, neither
sanctioned nor even implied the
natural rights of man, the peculiar
articles of its creed and its history
plainly show.
When the Puritan Fathers landed
on Plymouth Rock they brought
with them a fixed religious creed,
whose primary article was **the
total depravity " of human nature,
and, as a consequence, the loss of
free-will ; from which premise it
was held that man, in his unre-
generate state, is not able to do
any good, but is inclined/ to all evil.
This fundamental dogma, applied
to the political order, excludes un-
regenerate men from all part in the
organization of the state, as well
as from all participation . in the
rights and privileges of citizenship.
Such, too, is the historical fact ;
political citizenship in the province
of the Puritans, where they trim-
med the state to suit their creed,
was exclusively granted to mem-
bers of the orthodox church. " All
civil power," says the Presbyterian
Dr. Hodge, " was confined to the
members of the church, no person
being either eligible to office or
entitled to the right of suffrage
who was not in full communion of
some church."* The natural man
had no rights. To be a freeman
you must be a Puritan. The men
who came in the Mayflower did
not hold the principles which gave
birth to religious toleration or po-
litical liberty in the New World.
And so far were their annals from
the " grand historic lines of the
country " that it was as late as 1834
when Massachusetts granted full
religious liberty, while even to-day
a Catholic is ineligible to office in
the State of New Hampshire be-
cause of his religion. Hence there
can scarcely be an assertion farther
from the truth than that made by
Ranke and D'Aubigne, and repeat-
ed by Bancroft and men of less or
more note, that republican liberty
is due to Protestantism, and due
to Protestantism under its most re-
pulsive form that which was given
to it by John Calvin.
An appeal to the New World,
where the original Protestant colo-
nies were free to form apolitical gov-
ernment in accordance with their pe-
culiar religious belief, gives no coun-
tenance to this peremptory assertion.
It is, moreover, made in face of the
historic testimony of the Old World,
for nowhere in Europe has Pro-
testantism been favorable to popu-
lar rights, or called into existence
what by any honest interpretation
can be termed a republic. This
statement can be easily verified.
During its three centuries of ex-
istence a republican form of gov-
* Princeton Review, 1863.
440
The Catholic Church in the United States.
eminent has nowhere under Pro-
testant ascendency made its ap-
pearance. One will look in vain
in Germany, the cradle of Protes-
tantism, for a popular government.
The same is true of Prussia, Eng-
land, Scotland, Sweden, and Hol-
land, for the Dutch Republic was
founded upon the ancient consti-
tutions of the provinces, and not
upon popular rights. It was a re-
public only in name, and, such as
it was, its life was very short. M.
Guizot, in his Life of John Calvin,
reveals the cause for this, and right-
ly discriminates between the influ-
ence of Calvinism on churches and
the influence of Calvinism on lib-
erty when he says: "Calvin's In-
stitutes were the source of the
strength and vitality of the Re-
formed churches in these countries,"
but at the same time he acknow-
ledges that " their claims were in-
compatible with the progress of
liberty " (Guizot's Life of John
Calvin, ch. v.) " Calvin did not
believe in man's free-will," says
the same author, " and he treated
it with severity and a kind of con-
tempt. Calvin believed and as-
serted that he had more right over
other men's opinions and actions
than he ought to have claimed, and
he did not show sufficient respect
for their rights " (ibid) He knows
little of the origin of liberty in
America or elsewhere who honors
in any sense John Calvin as its
author.
If Protestants have contributed
to human freedom, it was not as
Protestants ; the motives which
prompted them did not spring from
their religious creed, for that was
a foe to human rights and the
grave of liberty. The servitude of
the human will in consequence of
original sin, as taught by both Mar-
tin Luther and John Calvin, cut off.
root and branch, personal, political,
civil, intellectual, moral, and re-
ligious liberty. Protestantism as a
religious system was an insult to
all ideas of freedom. Hence it
was not due to any principle of
liberty of the original Protestant
colonists that religious toleration
was made a part of the organic law
of the republic, but to the fact that
the Protestant sects were not able
to agree, and that there was no
one of them sufficiently powerful
to press its exclusive claim and get
its peculiarities incorporated into
the Constitution.
In no place where Protestantism
prevailed among a people as their
religion has it given birth to a re-
public, and nowhere in the nine-
teenth century does there exist a
republic in a Protestant land.
The so-called Reformation, follow-
ing out its own principles, failed
altogether to reconcile Christianity
with popular rights. Its spirit and
doctrines, derived from an exagger-
ated idea of the sovereignty of God
and the utter nullity of man, are in
accordance with the Oriental mind
and suitable to an Asiatic despot-
ism, and it deserves credit for civil
and religious liberty nowhere. As
for the Puritans in particular, one
of ^.heir descendants covers the
whole ground when he says : " I
believe we are descended from the
Puritans, who nobly fled from a
land of despotism to a land of
freedom, where they could not only
enjoy their own religion but pre-
vent everybody else from enjoying
his."
Protestantism in its political as-
pect might be defined as a theo-
cratic corporation composed exclu-
sively of regenerate men of ortho-
dox faith, having for its' premise the
religious dogma concerningthe " to-
tal corruption of human nature "
The Catholic Church in the United States.
441
in consequence of Adam's fall, as
taught by its leaders, Martin Luther
and John Calvin. One may repel
this conclusion, but it will be at
the expense of intellectual consis-
tency and historical testimony.
So long as the New England set-
tlements were content to remain
English colonies it was possible
for them to hold their peculiar re-
ligious tenets and maintain their
exclusive religio-political organi-
zation; but when they joined with
the other colonies, and appealed to
the equality by birth of all men
and the inalienable rights of man
to justify their separation from
Great Britain, the Puritans then
and there, in sanctioning these de-
clarations, entered upon a road
which necessarily terminated in a
radical and total change of the
peculiar articles of their religious
creed. For the proclamation of
man's natural rights involved the
overthrow of the whole theological
structure built by the reformed
theologians upon the corner-stone
of man's "total depravity." The
Puritans, in signing the Declaration
of Independence, signed their own
death-warrant.
A comparison between the two
will show this. The political sys-
tem of the Puritans was founded on
an exaggerated supernaturalism ;
the political system implied in the
truths contained in the Declaration
of Independence supposed a mere
naturalism. The former held hu-
man nature to be totally corrupt ;
the latter- supposes human nature
as essentially good. The one
maintained that man, by Adam's
fall, forfeited all his natural rights;
the other declared that the rights
of man by nature are inalienable.
The first granted political suffrage
exclusively to the elect ; the sec-
ond based the right of suffrage
on universal manhood. The Pu-
ritans relied altogether on the
strength of divine grace ; the Ame-
rican republican trusted in the
inborn capacity of human nature.
The two parties started from oppo-
site poles in regard to man's rights
and the value of human nature.
The Declaration of Independence
was the antithesis of Martin Lu-
ther's work on the Slave-will and
John Calvin's Institutes, looked at
from their political side.
That Calvinism excludes repub-
licanism in politics has been shown ;
and .that republicanism excludes
Calvinism in religion we will now
endeavor to prove.
The process of this exclusion was
a simple one. The natural influ-
ence of the practical working of
the American political system, bas-
ed on universal suffrage, is an in-
citement to the intelligence and
conscience of the people under the
conviction that the choice of the
ballot-box will be in the main on
the side of good government. Fre-
quent elections and the popular
agitations attending them awaken
aspirations, excite debate and ac-
tion, and under this stimulating in-
fluence the people are soon led to
trust human reason and to become
conscious of the possession of free-
will ; and it was quite natural that,
as these repressed powers grew in
strength by action, their leaders
should assert, and rather defiantly
at first, the rights of man, be for-
ward as champions of human lib-
erty, and indulge in some pretty
" tall talk " about the dignity of
man and the nobility of human na-
ture. Nor can it be a matter of
surprise that rousing appeals were
made to men who, under the de-
pressing influence of a religious
creed, would have lost their man-
hood, if that were possible : " to
442
The Catholic Church in the United States.
act out yourself," "obey your in-
stincts/' "assert your manhood,"
"be a man "! The extravagant ef-
forts to magnify man were the na-
tural rebound from the opposite
extreme of excessive abasement.
Universal suffrage is the most
efficient school to awaken general
intelligence, to teach a people their
rights, and to arouse in their bosoms
the sense of their manhood. For
what is a vote ? It is the recogni-
tion of man's intelligence and lib-
erty and responsibility, the quali-
ties which constitute his manhood.
What is a vote ? It is the admis-
sion that man, as man, is, or ought
to be, considered a factor in a
tolerably perfect political society ;
that he has the right to shape, and
in bounden duty ought to shape
so far as his ability extends, the
course of the destiny of his coun-
try. A vote is a practical means
by which every man can exercise
his right and fulfil his duty by mak-
ing his voice heard in the councils
of the nation. It is the practical
application of the truth that " all
men are born equal " that is, " all
men have an equal right to life/'
to " liberty," and to the " pursuit of
happiness," and, armed with a bal-
lot, a man has the power of main-
taining and protecting these rights.
Every vote rightly understood
means at least all that has been
here stated. The force of these
truths, by virtue of their applica-
tion, effaced from the minds of the
offspring of the Puritans in less than
two generations the " injurious im-
positions of their early catechetical
instructions." It is speaking with-
in the boundaries of moderation to
say that scarcely one descendant
of the Puritans in fifty, perhaps not
one in five hundred shall we say
one in a thousand ? perhaps not one
in ten thousand will be found who
would willingly make, without seri-
ous reservations, an act of faith in
the five points of Calvinism. So
thorough has been this reaction
that a good part of the New Eng-
land people now hold that to be
Christianity which their forefathers
would have condemned as the total
negation of Christianity. This is
not to be wondered at when you
consider that every time a freeman
goes to the polls and deposits his
vote in the ballot-box he virtually
condemns the dogmas of Protes-
tantism and practically repudiates
the Reformation. The persistent
action of the ballot-box of the re-
public outweighed the persuasive
force of the Puritan pulpit.
A writer in an English periodi-
cal, commenting on this religious
phase of the New England mind
resulting from their rejection of
the doctrine of "total depravity,"
remarks : " It is now a part of the
Boston creed that a man born in
that city has no need to be born
again."
The people may not draw
promptly the conclusions which
How from tneir premises, for they
act rather from implicit than ex-
plicit reflections ; but in the long
run they reach the explicit logi-
cal conclusion from these premi-
ses. The early Puritans, in conform-
ing their politics to their religion,
founded a theocracy ; their descend-
ants, in conforming their religion
to their political principles, found-
ed Unitarianism. " I trust," wrote
Mr. Jefferson in 1822, " there is
not a young man now born in the
United States who will not die an
Unitarian.'" 1
This truth, then, if we mistake
not, has been clearly shown : that
every religious dogma has a special
bearing on political society, and this
* Parton's Life ofjffferson, p. 711.
The Catholic Church in the United States.
443
bearing is what constitutes its poli-
tical principle ; and every political
principle has a religious bearing,
and this bearing involves a religions
dogma which is its premise. And,
as a corollary from the above, it
may be rightly said that Protes-
tant religious dogmas are foreign
to republicanism and lead to a
theocracy in politics ; and that re-
publicanism in politics is foreign
to Protestantism and leads to Uni-
tarianism in religion. But Unita-
rianism is naturalism, and no close
observer of the current of religious
thought of the American people
will deny that under the genius of
republicanism its main drift is in
that direction.
This much being said, the way
is now clear to treat more satis-
factorily of the relation between
the republic and the Catholic
Church.
There exists a necessary bond
and correlation between the truths
contained in the Declaration of
Independence and the revealed
truths of Christianity, since the
truths of the natural order serve as
indispensable supports to the body
of revealed truths of faith. Deny
to man reason, and religion can
have no more meaning to men
than to a brute or a machine.
Deny the certitude of reason, and
there would be no foundation for
certitude in supernatural faith.
Deny the innate freedom of the
will, and the basis for all moral-
ity would be undermined, and the
fountain-head of personal, political,
and religious liberty would be dried
up. Deny to man the gifts of rea-
son and free-will, and the natu-
ral rights of man which flow from
these gifts are the wild fancies
of a dreamer, and a republic
founded upon them becomes the
baseless fabric of a vision.
The following declarations will
throw more light on the value of
human nature, and of the bearing
of the truths of reason upon the
supernatural truths of faith, and
make our road still easier. Rea-
son is the organ of truth, and acts
upon the truth which lies within
its domain with infallible certi-
tude. The action of reason pre-
cedes faith, and can admit the
claims of no authority which does
not appeal with entire trust to its
jurisdiction for its verification, and
can accept of none that does not
accord and blend with its dictates.
Man is by nature in possession of
his free-will; therefore freedom is
a birthright, and he holds it in
trust from his Creator and is re-
sponsible for its right use. Hu-
man nature, as it now exists, is es-
sentially good, and man naturally
seeks and desires his Creator as
the source of his happiness. Man
has lost none of his original facul-
ties and has forfeited none of his
natural rights by Adam's fall, and
therefore is by nature in possession
of his natural rights, and it is right-
ly said: "Among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happi-
ness." " God has created all men
equal " in regard to these rights,
and therefore no one man has the
natural right to govern another
man ; and all political authority in
individuals is justly said to be de-
rived from the consent of the col-
lective people who are governed.
The people, under God, associated
in a body politic, are the source of
the sovereign political power in the
civil state. The light of reason is
the light of God in the soul, and
the natural rights of man are c^m-
ferred by God directly upon man ;
and therefore a religion which
does not affirm the value of hu-
man reason and defend the natural
444
The Catholic Church in the United States.
rights of man is baseless, and by
no manner of means revealed by
his Creator, but is a delusion or an
imposition and worthy of no re-
spect. With the light of these
statements, the truths of which are
in conformity with her authori-
tative teaching, the connection
of the Catholic Church with the
American republic can easily be
understood, and at the same time
the light which they shed lays bare
to the view of all men the real
motives which actuate Catholics in
their devotion to popular rights,
and places above all suspicion the
sincerity of their love for popular
institutions.
The American people in the
Declaration of Independence avow-
ed unequivocally their belief in the
value of human nature, made a sol-
emn act of loyalty to human rea-
son, grounded their popular gov-
ernment on a solid foundation,
and opened the door which leads
directly to the truth. These truths
which it asserted were not the
fruits of philosophical speculations,
but evident truths of human rea-
son ; and the rights which it affirm-
ed were not the declamations of
political dreamers, but rights insep-
arable from man's rational nature.
Nor were these truths and these
rights proclaimed to the world for
the first time on the 4th of July,
1776, by the Continental Congress
of the colonies; for they are as
old as human nature, and will be
found among the traditions of all
races of civilized men. They are
not lifeless abstractions but living
truths, concreted more or less in
all political governments, in their
institutions and laws. Freedom is
no tender sapling, but a hardy tree
and of slow growth, whose roots
are grounded in and entwined
around the very elements of hu-
man nature, and under the shel-
ter of its' stout branches man has
reached, through many struggles,
his existing state of manhood.
The War of Independence was a
struggle for man's sacred rights and
liberties, and in support of these
rights and liberties the colonists, as
British subjects, cited the Magna
Charta outlined by Cardinal Lang-
ton and his compeers, and won by
them from King John in the mea-
dow of Runnymede. Upon these.
inherent and acknowledged rights
of man, and upon the conclusion
which they derived from them that
no taxation without representation
ought to be permitted, as a practi-
cal maxim of government and safe-
guard of these rights which they
had received as a legacy from our
common Catholic ancestors, the
war for independence began, was
fought, was won ; the republic was
erected, and stands unchanged and
immovable. Had the far-seeing
Count de Maistre been as well
acquainted with the history of the
American colonies as he was with
the history of his own country or
that of England, he would not have
hazarded the statement, advanced
in his Considerations on France, that
" he did not believe that the United
States would last " or that " the
city of Washington would accom-
plish the object for which it was
projected." All the conditions
which he considered as essential
to form a nation, and the vital prin-
ciples necessary to produce a con-
stitution, were existing and gave
birth to the republic. The repub-
lic came forth from these into exis-
tence as naturally as the flower ex-
pands from the bud. The illus-
trious count's unbelief was in con-
tradiction to his own political doc-
trines no less than to the truths
of his Catholic faith. He whose
The Catholic Church in the United States.
445
intellectual vision is open to the
light of first principles and their
main bearings, and is not altogether
a stranger to true history, knows
full well that the Catholic Church
has battled her whole lifetime for
those rights of man and that liber-
ty which confer the greatest glory
on the American republic.
That the pages of history testify
to the close relationship existing
between popular governments and
the Catholic faith is shown by the
fact that all republics since the
Christian era have sprung into ex-
istence under the influence of the
Catholic Church, were founded in
the ages of faith and by a Catho-
lic people. The republic of San
Marino has existed in an entirely
Catholic population in the heart of
Italy one thousand years or more ;
and that of Andorra, on the bor-
ders of Spain and France, has stood
the same number of years, and
neither shows any signs of approach-
ing dissolution. But these repub-
lics are small in numbers and in
extent of territory ? Grant it ; yet
they are large enough and have
existed long enough to illustrate
the principle that republicanism is
congenial with the Catholic reli-
gion and at home in a Catholic
population. Then, again, we have
the Italian republics .in Catholic
ages those of Venice, Pisa, (f enoa,
Milan, Florence, Padua, Bologna.
In fact, there were no less than two
hundred republics spread over the
fair land of Italy. The princi-
pal Italian cities may be regarded
as model republics. Some were
founded in the ninth, others in the
tenth or eleventh, century, and last-
ed several hundred years. Venice
stood one thousand years and more.
The Swiss republic was founded in
mediaeval times, and counts among
its heroes and martyrs of political
liberty William Tell, Arnold von
Winkelried, and Andrew Hofer, all
faithful sons of the Catholic Church.
The republics in South America,
though rather quarrelsome, are at
least the growth of a population al-
together Catholic. How else can
we explain that the love of liber-
ty and popular institutions should
spring up spontaneously and ex-
clusively on Catholic soil, unless it
be that republicanism and the Ca-
tholic Church have one common
root ?
From this point of view it is a
matter of no surprise that Catholics
were the first to proclaim religious
freedom among the original colo-
nists, and were also among the first
and stanchest patriots in the war
for independence. None will be
found among the signers of the
Declaration of Independence whose
position in society and wealth were
equal to those of Charles Carroll,
the intelligent, sincere, and fervent
Catholic layman. The priest who
became the first bishop and first
archbishop in the hierarchy of the
Catholic Church in the United
States was the intimate friend of
Benjamin Franklin, and, an asso-
ciate with him, invited by Congress
to engage the Canadians to be
neutral if they were not ready to
join their efforts for independence.
Washington, with his characteristic
impartiality, publicly acknowledged
at the close of the war the patri-
otic part which Catholics as a class
had taken in the great struggle for
liberty. No one can appreciate
the depth of conviction and the
strength of affection of Catholics
for republican institutions unless
he sees, as they do, the same order
of truths which serve as the foun-
dation of his religious belief un-
derlying, as their support, the free
institutions of his country. The
446
The Catholic Church in the United States.
doctrines of the Catholic Church
alone give to popular rights, and
governments founded thereupon,
an intellectual basis, and furnish
their vital principle. What a Ca-
tholic believes as a member of the
Catholic Church he believes as a
citizen of the republic. His reli-
gion consecrates his political con-
victions, and this consecration im-
parts a twofold strength to his pa-
triotism.
What a Catholic believes as a
citizen of the republic he believes
as a member of the Catholic Church ;
and as the natural supports and
strengthens the supernatural, this
accounts for the universally ac-
knowledged fact that no Catholics
are more sincere in their religious
belief, more loyal to the author-
ity of the church, more generous
in her support, than the Catholic
republican citizens of the Unit-
ed States. Catholicity in religion
sanctions republicanism in politics,
and republicanism in politics favors
Catholicity in religion.
Their relationship is so intimate
and vital that no attack can be
made against the church which is
not equally a blow against the re-
public. The animus of the so-call-
ed Native-American party was hos-
tility to the Catholic Church, and
its principles were in direct con-
tradiction to the American bill of
rights, and its policy was a flagrant
violation of that religious, civil, and
political liberty guaranteed by the
Constitution of the United States.
The question of education affords
another illustration. Catholics fa-
vor education, none more than
they, and they take the strongest
grounds against ignorance, for they
look upon ignorance, when volun-
tary, as being frequently something
worse than a misfortune ; they
even condemn it in many cases as
a sin. They are prepared, if their
rights be respected, to give their
children all the elementary, scien-
tific, and moral education of which
they are capable, and even more
than the state will ever ask. As
an evidence of their spirit and de-
votion to education witness their
schools, academies, and colleges
dotted all over the land. No de-
nomination of Christians, no class
of American citizens, can stand
alongside of Catholics when it is a
question of earnestness and self-
sacrifice for education. But " No,"
say the votaries of the common-
school system to Catholics ; " we
insist that you shall educate your
children according to our specially-
devised state system, and that, too,
under compulsory force ; and, what
is more, you shall be taxed by the
state for its support."
Catholics say in reply that it is
no necessary part of the function
of the state to teach and educate
children. The education of chil-
dren is rather a parental than a
political duty. Besides, to ascribe
this function to the state is anti-
American ; for the genius of our
political system dictates that the
state should abstain from all inter-
ference in matters which can be
accomplished by individual enter-
prise or voluntary associations. It
is cle*ar that the chief aim of the
advocates of the present public-
school system in the United States
is less the desire for general diffu-
sion of knowledge than the advance-
ment of a pet theory of education ;
and they insist upon its exclusive
adoption because they imagine that
its spirit and tendency are against
the spread and progress of the
Catholic faith. Thus they subor-
dinate education to a sectarian
prejudice. These feelings of hos-
tility to the Catholic Church actu-
The Catholic Church in the United States.
447
ate a considerable number of the
advocates of this un-American sys-
tem of what is claimed to be purely
secular but really is infidel educa-
tion, and to such a degree that
they are blind to the fact that it is
equally destructive to every form
of the Christian faith ; that it leaves,
because of its practical inefficiency,
thousands of children in ignorance ;
that it does violence to the reli-
gious convictions of a large body
of citizens of the republic; that it
tramples upon the sacred rights of
parents, and endangers the state it-
self by perverting its action from
its legitimate function. " Heat not
a furnace so hot that it doth singe
yourself" is good advice. The so-
called American public-school sys-
tem is a cunningly-devised scheme,
under the show of zeal for popular
education, for forcing the state, in
violation of American principles of
liberty, to impose an unjust and
heavy tax on its citizens, with the
intent of injuring the Catholic
Church, while in the meantime it
is sapping in the minds of the
American youth the foundations of
all religion and driving them into
infidelity.
There are other questions, agi-
tated only by an inconsiderable
portion of the American people,
and equally foreign to the genius
and normal action of the republic.
Some would change the Constitu-
tion of the United States, and,
under the plea of Christianizing it,
make it sectarian; while others,
under the garb of liberty, would
make the state at least pagan, if
not atheistic. Had these partisans
their way, the one would make the
church the state, and the other
would make the state the church.
Catholics are content with the or-
ganic law of the republic as it
stands, because it is as it ought to
be. They say to both leagues,.
"Protestant" and ''Liberal":
" Hands off from the palladium
of American rights and freedom!
Let there be an open field ; there is
no ground for fear that truth will
be worsted in a fair encounter."
" Truth," in the inspired words of
Holy Writ, " is mighty above all
things, and will prevail."
But we are told quite recently
by a well-known and distinguished
author, in a lecture on the " Fu-
ture of the Republic," that " The
Catholic Church exasperates com-
mon sense." Common sense ?
" Common sense " is the decision
of unperverted reason, and its voice
has been given counting nineteen
centuries in favor of the Catholic
Church, and this record lias not
been reversed. It was not com-
mon sense that dictated the ill-tem-
pered sentence quoted; it bears the
unmistakable ear-marks of the grim
spirit of the old Puritans. The
presence of the Catholic Church
always did exasperate the Puritans,
and acted upon their irritable
nerves as her exorcisms act on evil
spirits. Error always feels ill at
ease when confronted by the oppo-
site truth. This was so with the
heathen, and in their exasperation
they forced Catholic virgins into
houses of infamy in the vain ex-
pectation of their fall. The times
are changed and no longer suffer
such an outrage, but in revenge
this writer couples the holy church
with" trance-mediums "and " rebel
paradoxes." He says : " The Ca-
tholic Church, trance-mediums, and
rebel paradoxes exasperate com-
mon sense." This utterance of the
oracle of transcendentalism is a
singular survival of the Puritan and
heathen spirit, and as such it may
be left to the investigations of stu-
dents of atavism. To them also
448
The Catholic Church in the United States.
may be left the explanation of how,
under their spell, an otherwise
acute and polished writer witlessly
commits a blunder against common
sense and civility. "To what base
uses we may return !" O Seer
of Concord ! it's your nerves, and
you need physic.
" Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy fine wits !
Thy sight is growing blear ;
Rue, myrrh, and cumin for the Sphinx,
Her muddy eyes to clear."
Error forces truth to appear and
become known ; hence every new
attack, every new agitation, and
every newly invented calumny
against the Catholic Church brings
out into clearer light her divine
character, removes prejudices from
the minds of her adversaries, pro-
motes conversion, and adds to her
strength.
Let it, then, be clearly under-
stood that what we maintain is
that the common aim of all legit-
imate political government is the
security of man's natural rights;
that the American republic is
most distinctly founded on this
common basis ; that the Catholic
interpretation of Christianity em-
phatically sanctions its declaration
of these rights, and as the natural
and supernatural spring from one
and the same divine source, "and
God cannot deny himself, nor one
truth ever contradict another,"* it
follows that the republic and the
Catholic Church can never in their
normal action, if intelligence reigns,
clash, but, by a necessary law of their
existence, mutually aid, advance, and
complete each other. A citizen of
the American republic who under-
stands himself is all the more loy-
al to the republic because he is a
Catholic, and all the better Catho-
lic because he is loyal to the re-
public. For the doctrines of the
Catholic Church alone furnish him
* Vatican Council, De fide et ratione.
with the principles which enable
him to make a synthesis between
republicanism and Christianity.
We give below a table to show
the gradual increase of the Catholic
Church, so far as the data was at-
tainable, from the time of the De-
claration of Independence to the
year 1878 inclusive. As for the
number of Catholics, we have taken
what may be considered an aver-
age estimate :
tx ro ro to toon
** ?%2
C1 m
"
ir~
oo
.
<Q<OwWOfc.OH
-
actio
popu
The Catholic Church in the United States.
449
The increase of Catholics in
the United States has been due
almost altogether to immigration;
and when immigration diminishes
will not her progress cease ? The
number of immigrants may fall
short of what it has been, but still,
for good reasons, it will continue
to be large. Recently, on account
of the financial crisis, it nearly stop-
ped ; but as this is now sensibly
passing away the tide ( of immigra-
tion is again rising. This will con-
tinue ; for the liberty which is en-
joyed under popular institutions,
and the material advantages which
the country offers to settlers, espe-
cially in its cheap and fertile lands,
are inducements that will suffice
of themselves to attract large num-
bers to its shores. The millions
of immigrants settled in the repub-
lic as their home and their coun-
try act as an attractive force to
their relatives, friends, and former
countrymen. The desire to escape
the almost insupportable burden of
military service by forced con-
scriptions, occasioned by frequent
wars and by the dangers from ri-
val nationalities continually loom-
ing with threatening aspect on the
political horizon, will drive large
numbers in the prime and vigor
of manhood to a country that has
no standing army to speak of, and
whose geographical position ren-
ders it free from all threatening
dangers to its peace, Last and
not least of the causes bearing on
this point are religious persecu-
tions. These send large numbers,
thanks especially to Prince Bis-
marck, to the land of religious tol-
eration. For these and other cau-
ses, from Ireland, Germany, and
other countries of Europe will flow
a continuous stream of immigrants
to the United States. And as
three-fifths of Europe retain the
VOL. xxix. 29
Cathojic faith (omitting to count
the promise of a greater increase
from its Catholic population for
which there are special* reasons),
the Catholic Church in the United
States may rely on having, rela-
tively at least, her share in the fu-
ture immigrants.
But the increase of Catholics in
the United States is not solely due
to immigration ; there is another
cause, a moral and a potent one,
which accelerates her growth. It
has been noticed, by several au-
thors who have written works on
the population of the United States
and on kindred subjects, that the
natural increase of the foreign ele-
ment of our population is much
greater in proportion than that of
the home-born element. This will
be best seen by following the sta-
tistics of Massachusetts and Rhode
Island, the former the largest State
in New England and the latter the
smallest, in population, and where
registration reports have been care-
fully kept. Taking the population
of American origin in these States
as a class, their deaths exceed their
birth-rate. Dr. Allen, of Lowell,
who is an authority on this subject,
speaking of Massachusetts, says :
" It is very questionable whether
there is much increase by numbers
in the class of Americans. " " Take, "
he observes, " the towns contain-
ing none or scarce any foreign
populations, where in 1846 and 1865
not a single foreign birth is report-
ed (there are thirty such towns in
Massachusetts), and the whole num-
ber of deaths in these towns for
1864 and 1865 exceed each year
the births." The registration re-
port of Massachusetts for 1870
says : " The character of our popula-
tion is undergoing a great change.
Surely, and not slowly, a mixed
stock of Irish, German, and Cana-
450
The Catholic Church in the United States.
dians is taking the place of the
pure English stock which has pos-
sessed Massachusetts for more than
two centuries. " To pick and to
choose and to reject among the
truths known to be revealed by
God is properly called heresy, and
it is evident that such a state of
mind is incompatible with either
intellectual or moral rectitude, and
therefore all heresy, by its very
nature, leads inevitably to self-
extinction with its fanatical adher-
ents.
But there is an increase of po-
pulation in the State of Massachu-
setts, and whence does this come ?
" Wherever an increase has taken
place," observes the same writer,
"it is found on examination to be
made up largely of the foreign ele-
ment, either from emigration or by
great number of births. It is a
fact now pretty well established
that the foreign class will have, on
an average, about three times as
many children as an equal num-
ber of the American." In Rhode
Island the census report of 1875
shows "that its native American
population by parentage has in-
creased only 12.89 per cent, in ten
years past, while the foreign popu-
lation by parentage has increased
80. 1 1 percent, in the same time.
If this increase should continue at
the same rate in the future, the
population of Rhode Island will
be in June, 1877 : American 138,-
195, and foreign 143,307; and in
1885, American 152,087, and for-
eign 222,466." "Old Massachu-
setts," remarks another writer on
the subject, " has passed away, and
a new Massachusetts is taking its
place." But these comparative
birth-rates apply with equal force
to other Eastern States; and if
things follow their actual course,
.and right names are applied to
things, New England presently will
have to be called New Ireland.
The ratio of the Catholic popula-
tion in all the New England States,
compared with the non-Catholic, is
considered at present to be about
one-fourth. As Catholics are
taught and believe that the bonds
of wedlock are perpetually binding
in conscience by a divine law, and
the duties of parentage are sacred,
they have no temptation to be freed
from the restraints of the one or
relieved from the duties of the other ;
or if such temptations arise they
are quickly repressed by the in-
fluence of religious motives. Sad
experience will teach statesmen
that there is no other way of pro-
tecting the state from sure decay
than in conforming its legislation
to Christian morals as taught by
the Catholic Church only. If the
Catholic Church in the United
States were left to the law of na-
tural increase alone, this, it is evi-
dent, would suffice for her con-
tinuous progress relatively to the
population of the country.
No vessel sails without back-
water, and this is true of the bark
of the church. Her counter-cur-
rent has been in the number of her
children who have strayed from
her fold on account of the insuffi-
ciency of priests, churches, and the
means for their religious instruc-
tion ; and, again, the increased
death-rate of the children of for-
eign parentage, occasioned for the
most part by reason of poverty.
As to the first drawback, the num-
ber of priests, churches, schools,
these are in the larger settled States
approaching to the needs of the
faithful. The vocations to the
priesthood in the most settled dio-
ceses, we are informed, suffice for
their wants. Seminaries are in-
creasing; many of them are fine
The Catholic Church in the United States.
451
buildings, and that of the diocese
of Philadelphia, if equalled anywhere
in Catholic countries, is not sur-
passed. The recent decrease in
immigration has given the church
a breathing-spell, and she is putting
forth her strength and coping with
these difficulties, as the table in re-
ference to these points on page
18 shows. As to the second, the
relative poverty of Catholics, this,
with their energy, industry, and
spirit of enterprise, is rapidly disap-
pearing. " From whatever branch
of industry," says a Protestant
writer,* " the Irish adopt they suc-
ceed in driving off native Ame-
rican competitors, and they are
equally successful in establishing
and maintaining in all departments
under their control an enhanced
rate of compensation. They have
swept our factories almost clear of
native help. They have nearly the
monopoly of boot and shoe making,
the most important and lucrative
industry of Massachusetts. They
are planting their colonies in many
of the best towns and cities ; and
when they once get a foothold
in a neighborhood there springs
up forthwith a populous Hibernia.
They are fast taking to themselves
the lion's share of the actual earn-
ings of productive industry. They
are sending immense sums to Ire-
land ; the rapidly-growing capitals
of our savings-banks belong in very
great part to them ; they have
very heavy deposits in the hands of
their priests ; and their ecclesiasti-
cal property is enormous, especial-
ly in our Western cities and on the
Pacific coast, where the church
(generally under Irish auspices)
has anticipated other purchasers,
and obtained at the outset corner-
lots and other real estate yielding
* Andrew P. Peabody, D.D.
the most ample revenue, so that the
Romish Church often holds more
property than all Protestant de-
nominations." But it is not only
in branches of industry that Catho-
lics have become prominent; there
will be found among the distin-
guished merchants, bankers, judges,
legislators, inventors, officers of the
regular army, professors in colleges,
literary and scientific men, mem-
bers of the Catholic Church, and in
all these classes Catholics are gain-
ing, proportionately, representatives
of their faith.
This prosperity and elevation
have also their effect upon the ma-
terial advancement of the church.
The Catholic cathedrals, both as to
size and style of architecture, are the
most conspicuous structures in the
largest cities in the United States,
such as Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Boston, Cincinnati, New Orleans,
Buffalo, Newark, Cleveland, Pitts-
burgh, Albany, Rochester, Colum-
bus, Mobile, Portland. Preparations
are being made for the construc-
tion of cathedrals, or cathedrals
are actually being built, in other
populous cities in Brooklyn, St.
Louis, Providence, and Hartford.
That of New York, which is on the
point of completion, has, as be-
comes the metropolis of the Union,
no rival in size, in costliness of ma-
terial, and in architectural character
on the continent of America. The
wealth of the Catholic Church has
more than kept pace with the in-
crease of the country's wealth, as
is shown by the following statement :
" In 1850 the total property valua-
tion of the United States, accord-
ing to the census report of that
year, was $7,135,780,228; in 1860
it was $16,159,616,068 ; in 1870 it
was $30,668,518,507. That is to
say, the aggregate wealth of the
452
The Catholic Church in the United States.
country increased about 125 per
cent, from 1850 to 1860, and about
86 per cent, from 1860 to 1870.
"The total property valuation of
the Roman Catholic Church in the
United States in 1850 was $9,256,-
758; in 1860 it was $26,774,119;
in 1870 it was $60,985,565. That is
to say, the aggregate wealth of the
Catholic Church increased about
189 per cent, from 1850 to 1860,
and about 128 per cent, from 1860
to 1870. While, therefore, in the
first of these two decades, the
wealth of the whole country gained
125 per cent., the wealth of the
Catholic Church gained 189 per
cent. ; and while in the second de-
cade the wealth of the whole
country gained 86 per cent., the
wealth of the Catholic Church
gained 128 per cent."
The Catholic Church in the re-
public finds her strength in relying
for her material support upon the
piety of the faithful, and the spir-
it and generosity with which all
classes of her children respond to
this test of the sincerity of their
faith is an example which has a
meaning at this moment for the
whole Christian world. Socially
and politically Catholics are slow-
ly taking the rank to which their
education, virtue, wealth, and num-
bers entitle them among the pro-
minent forces of the republic, and
the light which their religion throws
upon its vital principles and its
Constitution will make them con-
spicuous as intelligent and patriotic
citizens.
The future of the United States
belongs, under God, to that religion
which, by its conscious possession
of truth and by the indwelling
Spirit of divine love, shall succeed
in bringing the American people to
unity in their religious belief and
action, as they are actually one in
the political sense. It would be
the utter despair of reason to sup-
pose that truth cannot be known
with certitude, and it is the vir-
tual denial of God to question his
readiness to fill the hearts of all
men with his love. The thought
that the existing wr anglings in re-
ligion are to go on and increase
for ever can only enter base minds
and satisfy vulgar souls.
Admitting, then, all that has been
said as true, it may be added that
as the faith of the greater part of
Catholics who come here from
abroad rests on a traditional and
historical basis almost exclusively;
conceding that this traditional faith
will be firm enough to keep its
hold upon the immigrants and re-
tain them in the fold of the church
until death granting all this, the
question starts up forcibly here :
But will not the Catholic faith, un-
der the influence of republicanism,
lose its hold in one or two, or at
most in three, generations on their
children ?
It is too obvious to admit of de-
nial that a people born and edu-
cated under the influence of popu-
lar institutions will tend to exalt
reason, and emphasize the positive
instincts of human nature, and be
apt to look upon the intrinsic rea-
son of things as the only criterion
of truth. It is equally clear that
the Catholic Church, if she is to
keep within her fold those who
have received her baptism, and to
captivate an intelligent and ener-
getic people like the Americans,
will have to receive their challenge
and be ready to answer satisfacto-
rily the problems of reason ; meet
fully the demands of the needs of
their spiritual nature ; bless and
sanctify the imagination and senses
and all man's God-given instincts.
And while answering the most ener-
The Catholic Church in the United States.
453
getic and sublime intelligence at
the bar of reason, she will have to
know how to retain her sweet and
gentle hold on the tenderest affec-
tions of the child.
This task will not be an arduous
one ; for, as has been shown, the
authoritative teachings of the Ca-
tholic Church maintain the natural
order as the basis of the superna-
tural, and, in the minds of many of
the class of which we speak, Ca-
tholicity is still identified with Cal-
vinism. Hence they do themselves
the injustice to believe that in re-
jecting Calvinism they have also
rejected Christianity altogether.
They are not aware that the truths
on which they based their rejec-
tion of Calvinism are affirmed by
Catholicity. What they did in
their repudiation of Calvinism and
Calvinism is nothing else but the
logical basis of the dogmas of Pro-
testantism was only a repetition of
the anathemas of the fathers of the
Council of Trent, and their action
at bottom was founded mainly on
the same reasons. They have ab-
jured Protestantism, and never can
be led to go back to what they
know to be hostile to the genius of
their country, contrary to the dic-
tates of reason, and repugnant to
their holiest affections. Its pro-
mised heaven has lost for them all
attractions; its hell no longer ex-
cites any fear in their bosoms ; and
its ministers openly confess that, as
a religious system, Protestantism
fails to exercise any authority over
the minds, or to exert any influence
on the conduct, of the majority of
the American people. It demands
from them a crippling of their na-
ture and a sacrifice of its rights
which, once its thraldom has been
broken, nothing can restore. These
minds have impeached Protestant-
ism on Catholic grounds, and when
they have been led to see that,
their prejudices against Christianity
will be removed and they will be
willing to complete their task. .
They cannot rest content where
they are, for the human mind was
made by its Creator for truth, and
in the absence of truth it ceases to
live. When it refuses its assent to
truth it is either because the truth
has been travestied and made to
appear as false, or because it is
seen through a colored medium.
For the intellect is powerless to
reject the truth when seen as the
truth. It is not in the search after
truth, but in the tranquil possession
of truth and appropriation of it by
contemplation, that man finds the
fullest and purest joy. Man craves
to know the enigma of life, and
until this is known his intelligence
cannot be wholly content with the
investigation of bugs, or baffled by
a word which contains a sound and
nothing more the "unknowable."
Moreover, the American mind in
one aspect is unlike the European,
in that infidelity, scepticism, mate-
rialism, and atheism cannot find a
lodgment in it. for any length of
time. Their minds, like the native
soil of their country, have some-
thing virginal, and furnish no
nourishment for these poisonous
weeds, which, failing to take root,
soon wither. There is a profound
reason for this, and it will bear ex-
planation. The reason may be
found here : the denial of any one
truth, carried out to its logical con-
sequences, involves the denial of all
truth. The so-called Reformers of
the sixteenth century began by de-
nying the supernatural origin of the
divine institution of the church,
and by force of logical sequence
proceeded to the denial of its di-
vine authority, and thus by pro-
gression to the denial of all su-
454
The Catholic Church in the United States.
pernatural truth ; thence the denial
descended to philosophy, to poli-
tics, to the entire natural order of
truth, and finally to the denial of
Him from whom proceeds all truth,
ending in its logical termination
atheism. The dominant intellec-
tual tendency of Europe has, dur-
ing these last three centuries, fol-
lowed the law of negative sequence
of error to its ultimate logical con-
clusion.
On the other hand, the affirma-
tion of any one truth, logically fol-
lowed out, leads to the knowledge
and affirmation of all truth. The
American republic began afresh in
the last century by the declaration
of certain evident truths of reason.
The law of its progression consists
in tracing these truths out to their
logical connection with all other
truths, and finally coming to the
knowledge of all truth, both in the
natural and supernatural order,
ending in the affirmation of univer-
sal truth and the union with the
source of all truth God. The do-
minant tendency of the American
people is towards the law of the
positive sequence of truth. The
course of Europe was that of ne-
gation ; the course of the United
States was that of affirmation. The
first was destructive, the second
was constructive. The one was
degrading, the other was elevating.
That bred dissension, this created
union. Europe, under the lead of
the religious revolution of the six-
teenth century, turned its back on
Catholicity and entered upon the
downward road that ends in death;
the republic of the United States,
in affirming man's natural rights,
started in the eighteenth century
with its face to Catholicity, and is
in the ascending way of life to
God.
From this point of view the
Declaration of American Indepen-
dence has a higher meaning, and it
may be said to be the turning-point
in history from a negation to an
affirmation of truth : interpreting
democracy not as a downward but
as an upward movement, and plac-
ing political society anew on the
road to the fulfilment of its divine
destiny.
Christianity, like republicanism,
has in the last analysis nothing
else to rely upon for its reception
and success than reason and con-
science and the innate powers of
human nature, graciously aided as
they always are; and let it once
be shown that the Catholic inter-
pretation of Christianity is conso-
nant with the dictates of human
reason, in accordance with man's
normal feelings, favorable to the
highest conceptions of man's dig-
nity, and that it presents to his in-
telligence a destiny which awakens
the uttermost action and devotion
of all his powers, and you have
opened the door to the American
people for the reception of the
complete evidence of the claims of
the Catholic Church, and prepared
the way for the universal accep-
tance of her divine character.
The study of Zoroaster, Pytha-
goras, Brahma, Buddha, Confucius,
Plato, Cicero, Aristotle, Marcus
Aurelius, and other seers and sages
of the human race, and the admi-
ration excited by the wisdom and
virtues of the most illustrious
pagans, is a healthful exercise for
such minds as have not been alto-
gether emancipated from a creed
which taught that the heathen were
God-forsaken, and insisted that
their virtues should be " looked
upon as so many vices." It may
be said: What Plato did not know
of the ancients was little worth
knowing. Yet Justin the Philoso-
The Catholic Church in the United States.
455
pher, who was a devout student of
Plato's writings and disciple of the
doctrine of this prince of philoso-
phers, on his becoming a Christian
said : " I abandon Plato, not that
his doctrine is contrary to truth,
but because it is insufficient and
fragmentary. " This, too, will be the
final verdict of all earnest and
honest seekers after truth among
the ancient sages and philosophers;
and if they have the courage to
conquer their prejudices and the
earnestness to pursue their studies
and make an impartial investiga-
tion of the Christian religion in the
light of the Catholic interpretation
of its doctrines, their intellectual
eyes will be opened to see that in
Christianity are all the fragmen-
tary truths which they found, after
diligent and laborious search, scat-
tered among the ancients, reinte-
grated in their general principles.
For Catholicity affirms the convic-
tions and traditions of the whole
human race, and all the truths of
every system of religion or philoso-
phy are contained in her absolute
synthesis. Catholicity means uni-
versal truth, after the knowledge of
which all noble souls aspire natur-
ally. One of the distinctive and
essential marks of true religion is
this : it grasps concretely what-
ever truth has been held always
and everywhere and by all men.
All truth is catholic.
There is a general conviction
abroad that the people's share in
the government of a nation ought
to be enlarged. It must be admit-
ted that the American republic has
contributed not a little to form and
support this conviction. But the
principles of the republic are not
like those of an Utopia in the air ;
they are fixedly rooted in the
ground of reason and revealed
truth. If the framers of the repub-
lic set aside certain privileges and
institutions inherited from pagan,
barbaric, or feudal times, it was
not to break with the past, but be-
cause these things were unservice-
able to a people with the spirit and
in the circumstances of the colo-
nists. Besides, they were no less
inharmonious with the more ration-
al ideas of equity due to Christian
influences ; and by their omission
the founders of the republic provi-
dentially advanced political gov-
ernment, at least for a people
situated as the American people
were.
When the nature of the Ameri-
can republic is better understood,
and the exposition of Christianity
is shaped in the light of its univer-
sal principles so as to suit the pe-
culiarities of the American mind,
the Catholic Church will not only
keep her baptized American chil-
dren in her fold, but will at the
same time remove the prejudices
existing in the minds of a large
class of non -Catholics, and the
dangers apprehended from the
influence of republicanism will be
turned into fresh evidences of the
church's divine character.
To sum up : He who does not see
the hand of Divine Providence
leading to the discovery of the
western continent, and directing its
settlement and subsequent events
towards a more complete applica-
tion to political society of the uni-
versal truths affirmed alike by hu-
man reason and Christianity, will
fail to interpret rightly and ade-
quately the history of the United
States. It is also true that he who
sees Heaven's hand in these events,
and fails to see that Christ organiz-
ed a body of men to guard and
teach these universal truths to man-
kind, with the promise of his pres-
ence to the end of the world, will
456
Pearl.
fail to interpret rightly and ade-
quately the history of the Catholic
Church, and is like a man who sees
the light but has his back turned
to the sun. But he who sees all
this will not fail to see that the
republic and the Catholic Church,
under the same divine guidance,
are working together in the United
States, forming the various races of
men and nationalities into a homo-
geneous people, and by their united
action giving a bright promise of a
broader and higher development of
man than has been heretofore ac-
complished.
PEARL.
BY KATdLSEX O*M3.\RV, AUTVIOX O? U IZ\'S STORY," " A SALOX IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE EMPIRE,"
* 1 ARE YOU MY WIFE?" ETC.
CHAPTER XVI.
DIPLOMACY ALL ROUND.
PEARL, in spite of her promise,
did not sleep much that night.
Neither did Mrs. Monteagle. She
was up at cock-crow, and drove the
servants wild, scolding and fidget-
ting, and wanting her tea an hour
before the natural time. She had
taken energetic steps last night,
and made it pretty certain that the
duel should not take place at once,
if, indeed, the two men had intend-
ed to meet, which, after all, was
pure conjecture so far. But Cap-
tain Leopold was coming to break-
fast with her, and she would find
out the truth, let him try to hide it
as he might. She expected him at
twelve. At half-past eleven the
bell rang and Mme. Leopold walk-
ed in. Mrs. Monteagle saw at a
glance that there was war in the
air.
" Chere niadame, I am come to
take counsel with you. Your judg-
ment is so good you will advise
me better than any one. I am
anxious about our dear Fearl."
" Ha ! What's amiss with her ?
I thought she was looking very
well last night.*
" It is precisely about last night
that I want to speak to you. First,
I must tell you that the marriage
of my Blanche is nearly arranged.
The young people are charmed with
one another; he is quite enchanted,
and to-morrow evening they are to
meet and dance together at the
Austrian Embassy."
"Well, it is a good thing that is
off your mind," said Mrs. Mont-
eagle ; " but what has Blanche's
marriage to do with Pearl Red-
acre ?"
" You took her to the theatre
last night, and my son spent the
evening in your box. Chere ma-
dame, was that wise, was it a right
thing to do ? I speak to you with
the feelings of a mother."
" About what ? About my tak-
ing Pearl to the play ? I can't see
what your feelings as a mother have
to do with that, my good lady."
" How literal you are !" And
Mme. Leopold pretended to laugh.
" I mean was it right to let my son
stay there talking to Pearl all that
time ?"
" Did you expect me to order
Pearl.
457
him away ? What a good joke !
Really, you must excuse me, but I
am not your son's nurse, and I
should say he was big enough boy
to take care of himself."
" I have no anxiety on my son's
account," said Mme. Leopold, pro-
voked out of her sweetness by Mrs.
Monteagle's good-humored chuck-
ling ; " my concern is for Pearl. I
am responsible for her to a certain
extent, as it was I who placed her
with Mme. Mere."
" So far you have no reason to
regret' it. No harm has come to
the child yet ; but of course one
can't tell what may happen from
one day to another. I have been
foreseeing mischief to her all along.
It was against my will that she
went there."
" Nay, madame, my son has com-
mitted many follies, but he is in-
capable of so grievous an indiscre-
tion as that !" said Mme. Leopold,
bridling.
" I wish you would not be so
enigmatical," said Mrs. Monteagle.
" You have learned to read cipher,
I suppose, at the Foreign Office,
but I have not. I can only read
plain writing, and I don't take
crooked roads, as you diplomatic
folks think it clever to do ; I take
the straight one."
"The straight road is generally
the shortest in the end."
"Yes, there is less traffic on it at
any rate. Suppose you take it
now, and tell me in plain words
what you want me to understand ?
Or shall I tell you ? Your son has
fallen in love with Pearl Redacre,
and he wants to marry her, and
you want to prevent it."
" Marry her ! Ah ! mon Dieu "
She started to her feet, and then
dropped back into her chair, white,
horror-stricken. "Marry her!"
she repeated. " Never ! My son is
not capable of such an inconve-
nance; he has too much self-respect,
and he knows his duty to me ; he is
not capable of breaking my heart."
Mrs. Monteagle was too indig-
nant to answer. She looked at the
infuriated mother, contempt and
disgust written on every line of her
face.
"Ifcette petite has been laying
a trap for my son she shall be foil-
ed," continued Mme. Leopold. "I
will stop it and expose her as she
deserves. She shall be turned out
of my mother-in-law's house on the
quarter of an hour. I will telegraph
to Mrs. Redacre that her daugh-
ter has been dismissed, and that
she had better come and fetch her
home. That girl will end badly ; she
is a born intriguante /"
This was too much.
" That will do, madame," said
Mrs. Monteagle. " You have been
very explicit ; I have nothing more
to complain of in. that respect.
And now I will be equally frank
with you. First let me put one
question : Disparity of fortune is
the only obstacle you see to a
marriage between your son and the
daughter of Colonel Redacre, is it
not?"
" Disparity ! That is a mild way
of putting it. A girl who hasn't
a penny !"
" Who hasn't a penny, then. But
the want of pennies is her only de-
fect ; you admit that ?"
" It is a defect that nothing can
atone for."
" But it is the only one ? You
can't deny that, for not many
months ago you were as eager for
this marriage as you are now op-
posed to it."
" Everything is changed since
then."
" Nothing is changed, except
that Miss Redacre has lost her
458
Pearl.
fortune. Now let me set your
mind at rest on the point. She
will not marry your son. He is at-
tached to her, and, to his credit be
it said, he would overlook the ob-
stacle which in your eyes is insur-
mountable, and marry her with-
out a penny; but she will not ac-
cept him. She does not love him,
and she has told him so. I am sor-
ry for your son, for he has proved
that he has a heart and that he is a
gentleman ; but I heartily congratu-
late Miss Redacre on escaping the
reception she would have met with
from his family. Your son, how-
ever, will not bring the disgrace
upon you of marrying a charming,
accomplished young gentlewoman
without a dot ; he is free to go to
Algiers and bring you back an Afri-
can Jewess for a daughter-in-law."
*' My son has made her an offer of
his hand, and she has refused it !
Refused to marry him !" said Mme.
Leopold, absolutely aghast at this
information.
" It is an extraordinary fact, but
it is true. I refer you to Captain
Leopold himself for confirmation of
it."
But Mme. Leopold needed no
confirmation. Mrs. Monteagle was
a terrible woman, but she never
told lies ; her word was gospel to
those who knew her, and there was
the impress of truth, simple and un-
exaggerated, on every word she had
just said.
"I am bewildered," said the
Frenchwoman. "I know not what
to think. I feel as if I were in a
nightmare."
" Wake up from it," said Mrs.
Monteagle, still too much in ear-
nest to chuckle. " You are not on
the edge of a precipice ; there is no
mad bull running after you and
your son ; you are both safe from
Miss Redacre."
Mme. Leopold rose to go. " I
wish I had known sooner how mat-
ters stood," she said. " I would
have been spared a good deal of
anxiety on Pearl's account. I have
always had a great regard for her,
and it was real pain to me to think
that she should do anything un-
worthy of it. But her conduct un-
der this trying ordeal proves that
she has great nobility of soul. It
was heroic of her to refuse my
son !"
"Oh ! dear, no. It was nothing of
the sort," retorted Mrs. Monteagle.
" She refused him simply because
she doesn't care for him ; the hero-
ism would have been to have ac-
cepted him."
Mme. Leopold smiled, and, with
an imperceptible shrug of her fat
shoulders, " I confess that that in-
terpretation of heroism is beyond
my apprehension ; but I fully ap-
preciate the self-respect and deli-
cacy that actuated Pearl. At the
same time one must remember how
very mortifying it would have been
for her to enter a family like ours
in her present condition, destitute
as she is of even the means of pro-
viding herself with a trousseau !"
" We would have managed to
give her decent clothes," said Mrs.
Monteagle. "We might have con-
trived even to give her a few dia-
monds ; I happen to have some
trinkets at my own disposal that
would not have been a disgrace to
Mme. la Baronne Leopold. Ha !
ha ! But there is no need to discuss
that now. There is an end of the
matter, and your mind is at rest, I
hope, as regards Miss Redacre?"
" She has a rare friend in you,"
said Mme. Leopold.
"When I like people, I like
them," was the sententious rejoin-
der. " And now will you oblige
me by looking on all that we have
Pearl.
459
said on the subject as confiden-
tial? Your son would not care to
have the affair belled about, neither
would Pearl."
^ Just so, chere madame ; then
let it rest between us," replied
Mme. Leopold, who felt small so
small that Mrs. Monteagle began to
pity her.
" I am expecting Captain Leopold
to dejeuner," she said, as a ring
sounded; " I dare say this is he."
Leon's mother composed her
countenance with a facility that
spoke volumes for her diplomatic
aptitudes and her ability to steer
safely through the dangerous wa-
ters of the Foreign Office. She had
a pleasant greeting for her son, and
took leave of Mrs. Monteagle as if
they had been interchanging the
tenderest effusions of friendship
during the last half-hour.
While Pearl had been thus under
discussion she herself was busy
reading a letter from Polly. This
is what Polly said :
" BROOM HOLLOW, May .
" DEAR OLD PEARL : I wish you would
not be so long without writing. Mamma
gets into the blues when we are a week
without a letter, and papa fidgets till
Balaklava and he quarrel, and you may
remember the delightful state of things
which follows in this family when the
peace is troubled between those two he-
roes.
" Pearl, I have a great piece of news for
you. I am engaged to be married to
Percy Danvers. I wonder whether you
are much surprised, as I want you to
be? I'm afraid you guessed from the
first what was going to happen. He
says you did, and that you didn't like
him. Of course I protest that is only a
fancy of his about your not liking him.
Don't imagine from this that I am in the
seventh heaven of adoration, and that I
expect everybody to think my Percy the
most adorable of men. I suppose I am
a little in love. I try to believe I am,
and I partly succeed, for I am very hap-
py and content, and I expect to be a
great deal more so when I am married ;
but that is not to be for some time. Our
engagement is a secret just yet ; so don't
breathe a word about it to any one. not
even Mrs. Monteagle. And still I
don't know if it would not be better to
tell her, and secure her help in some-
thing that is of great importance. I
don't wish Percy to know that you are
in a situation, and if he goes to Paris,
and that Mrs. Monteagle is not warned,
the chances are she will let the murder
out the first time she sees him. He
thinks you are on a visit to her all this
time. He knew you were in the begin-
ning, and as nobody thought it necessary
to enlighten him on the point, he still
thinks you are staying at his aunt's.
There is no harm in leaving him under
that impression. You are always with
her on Sunday, and we see him at lunch
here that day, so I can with a clear con-
science speak of you as with Mrs. Mont-
eagle, for you are sure to be there when
I am saying it. I know you will ex-
claim against this as deceptive, but I am
not so squeamish as you, and I see no
reason why I should risk my earthly
happiness and prospects for the sake of
a quibble. Percy is devotedly in love
with me, but he is a thorough man of
the world, and with his principles pre-
judices you would call them, I suppose
it is natural he should have a horror of
his sister-in-law's being in the position
of an upper servant, and amongst people
where it is sure to get known. If you
really love me, Pearl, now is the time to
prove it by giving up your absurd craze
and coming home. Percy need never
hear of this ridiculous episode of your
stay in Paris ; it would be forgotten by
the time he returned there. People for-
get everything, I notice. We can't be
married for a year it is a question of
property that he has to settle unless
his uncle dies before then, in which case
we could be married at once.
" Papa was saying only this morning at
breakfast that he wondered how you
were getting on, and whether it was pos-
sible you would stay away much longer.
He can't make you out at all. No more
can I. Mamma is the only one who
takes your part ; but I don't believe she
approves of your behavior a bit more
than the rest of us. It seems Captain
Darvallon is gone back to Paris. So
Percy told me yesterday. I hope you
460
Fearl.
won't confide my secret to him. He
would consider it his duty at once to in-
form Percy of your noble defiance of
your family and society, and thus show
his contempt for worldliness, and for
persons who made themselves the ac-
complices of worldly-minded people.
" The country is looking lovely. This
is a heavenly day ; the scent of the
syringa and the lilacs is overpowering
as I write by the open window, and
there is a nightingale singing away in
the sycamore tree to that pink rose by
the gate. You never heard anything so
delicious in your life ; all the other birds
have shut up to listen to him. Even
Fritz is listening ; I wish you could see
him sitting on his tail, looking straight
up at the sycamore, and pricking his
ears, with a little twitch of his head, as if
the trills tickled him. He has been in
trouble lately, poor Fritz ! Wolf (the
new gamekeeper's dog) and he don't hit
it off, and they have been having words
lately whenever we met on the road ;
but the day before yesterday they met,
and 'twas not in a crowd, but ' by moon-
light alone, love,' and there was evi-
dently a terrible row, for Fritz came
home late at night, more dead than alive,
with a piece of his back torn off, and
half his tail gone, and his head all
bloody. Jacob Mills put him into a bath
of warm water, and we all assisted at the
ceremony of the washing of his wounds.
It was very affecting, for he kept lick-
ing Jacob's hand and making the most
pitiful eyes at us all out of his tub. The
new calf is tumbling about the lawn on
its rickety legs, and making moans for
its mother that would move the heart of
a stone. There is a brood of fifteen new
chickens this morning, and the interest-
ing family are doing well in a basket
before the kitchen fire.
" Now I have told you all the news.
Come home come home come home !
Your affectionate sister,
" POLLY."
Mrs. Monteagle and Captain
Leopold ate their breakfast while
Pearl digested this letter. Leon
ate with a very good appetite. And
yet he had been very much disturb-
ed by last night's episode, and it had
rather added to his irritation than
calmed him to learn that morning
that Darvallon had been despatched
at an hour's notice on a mission to
Vienna some confidential message
which the emperor thought fit to
send by him instead of entrusting
it to the ordinary channel. It was
a relief to him to vent his feelings
in complaint and surprise to Mrs.
Monteagle, who was very sympa-
thetic, and full of wonder and con-
jecture about the strange proceed-
ing. She forbore introducing the
subject of Pearl, waiting for Leon
to do so ; but he had his own rea-
sons for avoiding it for the present.
" Do you know who is here ?" he
said, when they were fairly under
way with the pate de foie gras.
" Kingspring ! He arrived by the
mail last night, himself and his
friend Danvers."
" The wicked pair, not to have
come at once to see me!" said
Mrs. Monteagle.
" They will be here presently, no
doubt. Indeed, Kingspring in-
formed me, with \\\ai franchise bru-
tale that he prides himself on, that
it was not for my beaux yeux he
was in such a hurry to come to me;
he wanted me to get invitations for
himself and Danvers for the ball at
the Metternichs' to-night."
" It is rather late, is it not ?"
"My father will manage it; they
are coming to dine with me at the
club, and we will go from that to
the Foreign Office and start in his
excellency's train."
" I am glad Mr. Kingspring is so
far consoled for his loss as to be in
a mood to care for balls," said Mrs.
Monteagle.
"The ball is perhaps part of the
consolatory system that enables
him to bear up. One must take
the blessings that Providence gives
us, and be thankful," said Leon.
"At this moment, madame, I am
deeply sensible of the blessing
which is bestowed upon me in this
Pearl.
461
excellent dejeuner. [I never ate
anything better than this salade a
la creme. I know you will be glad
to see me return to it."
Mrs. Monteagle was not glad.
She was hospitable; it was a sat-
isfaction to her to see the dishes
cleared off and the wine flow free-
ly from the decanters. She was not
one of those who watch the jelly
go round, and shudder when the
first spoon is put into it, and who
feel relieved when you answer "No,
thank you," to their invitation to
another glass of wine. She was
the last person to grudge anybody
their food at her table, and yet it
made her positively angry to see
how unimpaired Leon's appetite
was by last night's catastrophe.
Was it possible that any man who
had an aching heart could attack
his food with such gusto ? And if
his heart did not ache, his love for
Pearl had been a contemptible ca-
price that never deserved a spark
of the interest Mrs. Monteagle had
wasted on it.
" Fanchette is proud of her sal-
ade a la creme," remarked the vex-
ed hostess. "I shall tell her you
have paid it a compliment. It is a
favorite dish of mine ; but I am not
in good appetite this morning. I
can never eat when I am worried."
" Madame, that is bad philoso-
phy ; one should eat double when
one is worried."
"If one could it might be bet-
ter ; but if one can't ? Has anx-
iety or emotion never spoiled your
appetite ?"
" When I was young I have expe-
rienced that weakness ; but I have
outlived it."
"What nonsense you talk! How
old are you ?"
" Alas ! madame, I am thirty."
" Goodness me ! Thirty ! You
are hardlv a bov vet."
" Nay, madame, I am a man.
There lies the difference. Up to
twenty one dreams ; from twenty
to thirty one loves ; after thirty
one dines."
Leon heaved a sigh and helped
himself to Sauterne.
Mrs. Monteagle* could not but
laugh, and yet she was puzzled and
vexed.
"One dines," continued Leon,
"and sometimes one dines too well,
and then one experiences that re-
morse of the stomach called indi-
gestion. Was it not a compatriot
of yours who defined remorse as
an indigestion of the conscience ?"
" No compatriot of mine ever
said such a thing; if anybody said
it before you it was a Frenchman.
It is just like you French to make
a jest of sacred things."
" Nay, madame, you do us
wrong; we have the deepest re-
spect for the digestive organs.
Voltaire said that perfect happi-
ness consisted in a bad heart and
a good digestion."
"It was like the wicked old
cynic to say that ; but I should
not have expected any man in his
right mind to quote it. I wonder
whether you have a bad heart or
no heart at all?"
"You have a bad opinion of us,
I know, madame," said Leon, de-
liberately draining his glass of Sau-
terne; "but it is a mistake. We
are frivolous, we talk lightly of
sacred things, of the stomach, of
love ; but it is often only a mask
to hide our emotions. When a
man feels that his heart is getting
the better of him, he rebels and
turns round upon the tyrant, and
strikes at him, and tries to carry
off defeat as if it had been a victo-
ry. Our vanity sometimes makes
us appear worse than we are."
There was an undertone of feel-
4 62
Pearl.
ing in this persiflage, Mrs. Mont-
eagle thought. She was at a loss
what to make of him ; but be it as
it might, she was thankful that
Pearl did not love him and was not
going to marry him.
The ball at the Austrian Embas-
sy was expected to be very bril-
liant; the emperor and empress
were going, and the cream of the
empire was to be there to meet
them. But this was not what pre-
occupied Blanche Leopold most
when she was "combining" her
dress for the occasion. This even-
ing she was to meet the man who
was to be her husband ; all the es-
sentials were arranged, and it only
remained for the two human be-
ings, whose happiness had been
contracted for by their respective
family lawyers, to come together,
and look into each other's eyes,
and hear one another's voices be-
fore they joined their destinies for
good or ill. The die was not yet
cast, but the hour was at hand, and
Blanche, with all her prosaic edu-
cation, and despite the worldly
maxims, traditions, and principles
on which she had been fed, was a
young girl, and the girlhood in her
vindicated itself to-night. She was
fluttered as she came and went in
her pretty blue room, dressing for
the ball.
The beautiful white dress, to
which she and her mother had given
much thought, was tossed out on
the bed, its delicate flowers nestling
in soft folds, peeping from under
transparent loops and flounces
" line toilette comme on en reve,"
Adele, herfemme de chambre, said.
Blanche stood looking at it, and
then turned to look at herself in
the long mirror opposite, and her
heart misgave her. Had she done
wisely in choosing those flowers ?
Would not blue have suited her
complexion better than this pink
May? Her hair was dressed, and
the garland of May was very effec-
tive in the soft brown curls, so
wonderfully twisted and coiled;
but would not those azure myosotis
that she hesitated about have shown
off the creamy whiteness of her
skin better? It was an anxious
moment ; but Blanche was too
practical to wrinkle her brow with
regrets over the irreparable. She
held out her foot for Adele to draw
on the dainty satin slipper with the
sprig of pink May on its toe, and
then she threw off her dressing-
gown, and stood up to be clothed
in the toilette comme on en reve.
But just as Adele was about to
fling it over her head Mme. Leo-
pold, half-dressed, burst into the
room with a letter in her hand.
" I want to speak to mademoi-
selle. Wait in my room a mo-
ment," she said, and the maid went
out and closed the door. .
"What is it, mamma?"
" My child, kneel down and
make an act of thanksgiving: the
Marquis de Cholcourt asks you in
marriage."
"Oh!"
Blanche clasped her hands and
sat down on the edge of the bed.
" Here it is : a letter from Dar-
vallon to your father, saying M. de
Cholcourt has charged him to make
the demand."
" Est-ce possible !" murmured
Blanche, her hands locked togeth-
er on her knees, and her eyes fixed
in happy bewilderment on her mo-
ther's face.
" My child, the bon Dieu is very
good to us !" said Mme. Leopold,
embracing her with emotion.
Blanche could not speak ; she
held her face to take her mother's
kiss, and listened to her rapturous
Pearl.
463
congratulations as if she were in a
dream. Could it be all real ? Mar-
quise de Cholcourt, with the noblest
fortune going, one of the proudest
names, a queen in the Faubourg
all this was to be hers ? The ideal
that she had beheld from afar,
floating on the misty hilltops of
imagination, was a reality within
her grasp !
"What answer has papa sent?"
she said at last, when her power of
speech returned.
" I have not seen him yet; he is
engaged, but he sent me in the let-
ter at once. My child, you don't
think he can hesitate that there
can be any answer but one to such
an offer ?"
" Oh ! of course not, mamma."
"Then what is it?"
" I am thinking what we are to
do about the other. I suppose
there is no use in our going to this
ball now?"
" It will be awkward. And, as
you say, there is no longer any ob-
ject in our going."
Blanche thought for a moment,
and then, looking up, "After all,"
she said, "one never knows what
may happen. I think we had bet-
ter go."
" Cherie ! you are a wise little
woman. Then let us go."
And they finished dressing and
went to the ball. M. Leopold was
detained so long that they could
not wait for him, but set off to-
gether, leaving the minister to fol-
low when he could with Leon and
his two English friends.
Blanche walked on air. The
echoing music, the scent of the
flowers, the festal splendor of light,
the brilliant crowd she glided
through it all like one in a dream,
intoxicated with the sense of com-
ing triumph, borne on the waves
of Strauss' melodious rhythm, as
if the music were a live thing, a
strong west wind chasing her be-
fore it, and constraining her feet to
keep time to its exulting harmo-
nies. All this delirious gayety
seemed like the natural outcome of
the shock ; all the world was gone
a-dancing and a-merrymaking since
it heard that she, Blanche Leopold,
was to be Marquise de Cholcourt.
Then Blanche remembered that
the great news was still a secret;
no one present knew of it but her-
self. The vicomte came up and
was presented, and petitioned for
the honor of a dance, and she grant-
ed it with studied dignity, but feel-
ing kindly towards the poor delud-
ed young man, who had so little
idea of his defeat.
It seemed a long time till M.
Leopold and his train arrived.
Blanche was impatient to speak to
her father. It was so wonderful,
this great news that lifted her to
the seventh heaven, that she was
nervous and eager for fuller con-
firmation of it. But the minister
had no leisure at an hour like this
for paternal Jpanchements j he was
surrounded at once by his col-
leagues, by courtiers and ambassa-
dors, and Blanche was fain to con-
trol her impatience and wait for
a more fitting time to question
him.
Mr. Kingspring and Percy Dan-
vers found her out soon, and she
danced with them in turns.
" I have been staying down in
the country near your old friends
the Redacres," said Mr. Danvers
during the pause of a quadrille.
" They charged me with a heavy
budget of messages to Mme. Leo-
pold and you. They talk of you
all often." '
" I wish they had not gone away,"
said Blanche. "We miss them
dreadfully. How they must bore
464
Pearl.
themselves down there after being
accustomed to Paris !"
" They don't seem to find it dull,
there are so many things that one
gets interested in in the country.
The colonel is wonderful; I am
sometimes amazed to see how con-
tented he is."
"And Balaklava?" said Blanche,
laughing.
" It has taken to the change of
climate very cheerfully on the
whole."
" And Polly ? I can't conceive
Polly being happy in such a dull
life, seeing nothing and going no-
where. Does she not look misera-
ble ?"
" Not the least. She is in great
beauty and apparently in excellent
spirits."
Mr. Danvers said this with an
emphasis that made Blanche look
at him ; but his handsome counte-
nance betrayed nothing.
" I hope to see her sister to-
morrow," he continued. " I called
at my aunt's this afternoon, but
they were neither of them at
home."
" Neither of whom ?"
11 My aunt and Miss Redacre."
" But Pearl is no longer at Mrs.
Monteagle's. Did they not tell
you ?"
" No ; I understood she was still
on a visit at my aunt's. She was
there last Sunday. Where is she
now ?"
" At my grandmother's," said
Blanche.
" Oh ! Is she going to remain
long away?"
" My grandmother is in Paris at
present. But Pearl will soon be
going to the country with her."
"I wonder they said nothing
about that to me. I thought Miss
Redacre would have been thinking
of going home now ; they are com-
plaining very much of her long
absence. I was in hopes that I
might have met her here to-night.
Is she here ?"
" Oh ! no ; she never goes out of
an evening," said Blanche, who no\v
understood that the Redacres had
been intentionally silent about
Pearl's position in Paris. She was
not going to inform Percy Danvers
of it. Why should she ? It was
only natural that Pearl's family
should not have confided a fact so
mortifying to a recent acquaintance
who might never find it out. But
Mr. Danvers took a provoking in-
terest in Pearl, it seemed, and
would not let the subject drop.
" She is nqt in delicate health, is
she?" he inquired, looking straight
at Blanche, who began to feel con-
fused, not having her mother's
diplomatic talent for " making a
countenance."
" No ; she is in very good health,
but she does not care for going out.
Pearl never did care for tlAt sort
of thing as much as Polly. Is not
that my brother ? Whom is he danc-
ing with, I wonder ?" Of course
Mr. Danvers could not enlighten
her on the point. The quadrille
was over, and he conducted her
back to her mother. Mother and
daughter were soon conversing in
animated whispers, Mme. Leopold's
soft face expanding in a smile of
malicious satisfaction.
" It is just like. their intriguing,
underhand way ; I shall not be a
party to such deceit. They may tell
lies, if they choose, but I will not
be made an accomplice in them."
4< There is no need for us to
tell lies," pleaded Blanche. " I will
only tell bonne maman to avoid say-
ing anything to compromise Pearl ;
there is no harm in that."
u Compromise her ! She will do
that for herself," said Mme. Leo-
Pearl.
465
pold. " He says they want her to
go home ? The best thing she
could do. But don't you meddle in
the affair; it is no concern of ours."
Blanche did not insist further ;
but she was sorry for Pearl, and
just now she was so happy herself
that she wanted every one else to be
happy. It had struck her, more-
over, that Mr. Danvers' manner had
something suspicious in it when he
spoke of Polly. She wished her
mother were not so unsympathetic
about it. It was odd that she
should be; but Blanche could never
quite make out what her mother felt
towards the Redacres, she changed
her tone so often about them.
Leon and his two English friends
joined the ladies, and the conversa-
tion became general.
" Look at De Kerbec expounding
the political difficulties of Europe
to the Turkish minister," said Mr.
Kingspring.
" Et le Capitaine Jack, est-il ici ?"
said Le"on, looking round for M. le
Kerbec's jewelled commander.
" She is not here ; it would have
made a revolution in the Faubourg
if she had come to meet the empe-
ror and empress."
" Who is le Capitaine Jack ?" in-
quired Mr. Danvers; whereupon
everybody began to laugh.
" It is a sobriquet which these
naughty gentlemen have given to a
most excellent woman," said Mme.
Leopold, smiling a bland rebuke at
Mr. Kingspring and Leon.
" Nay, ma mere, don't steal Red-
acre's thunder; it was he who gave
her the nickname, and it stuck."
" Did Colonel Redacre never
speak to you of Captain Jack ?"
said Mme. Leopold.
But before Mr. Danvers could
answer, Blanche, who did not want
the Redacres brought on the tapis,
called out :
VOL. xxix. 30
(< Here comes M. de Kerbec
himself. He will give us the last
news from Turkey."
"And who is M. le Kerbec?" in-
quired Mr. Danvers.
" Le mari du Capitaine Jack,"
said Le"on.
" C'est un homme tres comme-
il-faut," said Mme. Leopold.
" Ah ! ma mere, voila qui est
sanglant. I never would have said
anything so bad of poor De Kerbec
as that," protested Leon.
"Yes," said Mr. Kingspring, " he
had better go and hang himself. De
Kerbec is a poor creature, but I
should not have said he was as bad
as that."
While this persiflage was going
on the object of it advanced with
his hat under his arm, and with that
air of happy self-importance which
he always wore when his wife was
absent. Mme. Leopold took advan-
tage of the new current which M.
de Kerbec brought to the group
to turn to Mr. Danvers and enter in-
to conversation with him. Blanche
could not catch all they were
saying, for Mr. Danvers was on the
other side of her mother; but an
occasional lull in the music enabled
her to hear snatches of the conver-
sation, and made her aware that
Mme. Leopold had lost no time in
clearing herself from any suspicion
of connivance at the duplicity of
the Redacre family.
"Poor child! it is very brave of
her, is it not ? She feels the hu-
miliation dreadfully, but it would
be wiser as well as worthier if her
mother and sister confessed the
truth instead of making a mys-
tery of it. Besides, there is no
use trying to hide it. Polly, I be-
lieve, thinks of going out as music-
teacher, or something of that sort,
by and by. She would make a for-
tune singing at concerts. Will you
466
Pearl.
give me your arm into the gallery ?
The heat is rather too much for
me here."
Percy Danvers gave her his arm
and conducted, or rather suffered
her to conduct him to wherever
she wanted to go. The moment
he could make his escape he did
so, seizing Mr. Kingspring on his
way.
" My dear fellow, what is all this
about?" he said, as they emerged
into the balmy starlight and walk-
ed on arm-in-arm.
" I thought you knew it," said
Mr. Kingspring when he heard of
the shock his friend had just re-
ceived.
" How the deuce should I know
it ? You never said a word about
it ; no more did they. It places
me in a horrible predicament,
can't you see ?"
" No, that I can't, for the life of
me."
" Why, I have proposed to her
sister?"
"Well? And she has accepted
you, and I have congratulated you
on that fact ; and I tell you again
now that I think you are the luck-
iest dog alive, and the most to be
envied of any man living, except it
might be "
"Who?"
" The man who had been accept-
ed by Pearl Redacre."
" That's it, is it ? Then there is
no use discussing the case, with
you ; it is a foregone conclusion.
All the same it's deucedly awkward
for me. I'm very fond of the girl;
she's asplendid creature, and it would
go hard with me to give her up ;
but it's too bad to have been taken
in like this. You ought to have
told me how things were."
" What had I to do with it ? You
would have told me to mind my
own business, if I had come to you
with a warning not to fall in love
with the prettiest girl in England ;
you were quite able to look after
yourself. Besides, the Redacres
are very old friends of mine, and
there was no reason why I should
have informed you of their private
affairs. But, looking at the matter
as it stands, I can't see what there
is in the discovery of Pearl's conduct
to prevent you marrying her sis-
ter ; and if you back out of your en-
gagement on account of it, you're
not the man I have always taken
you for."
Percy Danvers felt Mr. King-
spring's arm slacken its grip of his,
and there was a ring in his friend's
voice that was not consolatory.
" It doesn't follow that I am go-
ing to back out of it because I have
come upon a very unpleasant fact
in connection with it," he said. "I
have a right to feel amazed at be-
ing kept in the dark about what
Pearl was doing ; they should have
trusted me. It is the deception
that I can't get over."
This was putting the grievance
on higher ground, and Mr. King-
spring at once conceded that Dan-
vers had just cause of complaint
here.
"I own it surprises me that Red-
acre should have let things go so
far without mentioning it," he said.
" Between me and Polly, you
mean ? Oh ! Redacre knows no-
thing about that, except what he
may have guessed ; we agreed to
say nothing to any one until I
have made all this other business
straight with Sir Archiduke. U
might involve me in endless dis-
agreeables with him just now, you
see."
"So the matter is entirely be-
tween Polly and you ?"
"Yes. That makes it more deli-
cate for me. It would be easier if
Pearl.
467
I could have it out with a man.
But I can't say what I feel about it
to her. And yet she is the only
one I have a right to reproach.
My dear fellow, I arn horribly put
out by this business. If she de-
ceives me like this beforehand
how will it be afterwards? How
can I ever trust her ?"
" Pshaw ! nonsense ! You are
talking like an ass, Danvers. It
was the most natural thing in the
world the girl should have kept it
dark from you that her sister was
a governess. Remember she is in
love with you; everything is fair
in love."
"That's just where I'm hit. I
don't believe she is in love with
me ; if she were she would have
trusted me. And if she does not
love me, what sort of a life are
she and I going to have of it to-
gether ?" m
They were at the door of the
hotel now, and Danvers stood for
a moment ; the gaslight was shining
down on him, and Mr. Kingspring
could see that he was agitated.
" Kingspring," he said, " I don't
know what to do. I am very fond
of her. It would cut me up awfully
to give her up ; but would not that
be better for both of us than to
repent when it was too late ? I'm
not sure if I ought not to write to
her to-morrow and break it off."
" If you do that," said Mr. King-
spring, " you are the greatest scoun-
drel alive."
This was their last "good-night,"
as the two men walked in together
and parted under the porte co-
chere.
Percy Danvers had not opened
his mind wholly to Mr. Kingspring.
He had not told him of certain
insinuations that Mme. Leopold
had whispered in his ear concern-
ing Pearl not a word that he
could lay hold of as an accusation,
but remarks that pointed to self-
evident conclusions : It was so
spirited, whatever the real motive
was ; of course people would talk,
the world was so sceptical ; no one
believed a girl of Pearl's birth and
education would run away from
home to earn money for her pa-
rents ; they would insist that there
was an attraction at the other
end ; she, Mme. Leopold, stoutly
denied this, and never would ad-
mit if only for her dear friend
Mrs. Redacre's sake that Pearl
was capable of conduct so bold
and unmaidenly as to cross the
seas to set her cap at any man ;
of course the dear girl was to be
pitied, for one is not always mis-
tress of one's heart, and Pearl had
been brought up with romantic
notions about love, and so on ; but
all this was strictly confidential;
Mr. Danvers was not to breathe a
word to any one, above all to Mrs.
Monteagle, lest she should men-
tion it to Le"on ; there was no know-
ing what might come of that, for
Le'on was so chivalrous, so delicate,
and had such a brotherly regard
for Pearl, that it would make him
furious to hear her name coupled
Mr. Danvers understood; ma-
dame spoke to him, knowing he
was a friend of the Redacre family,
and for their sakes he should use
his influence to get Pearl called
home . . .
It was bad enough to find out
that his intended sister-in-law was
earning her bread somebody's
bread as a paid companion
amongst people so prominently be-
fore the world as these Leopolds
now were, that the idea of keeping
it a secret was out of the question;
you might as well have posted it
up on the parish cross. But this
was not all. Pearl was talked
468
The Holy Maries of the Camargue.
about as having flung herself into
the adventure out of love for Cap-
tain Leopold, who evidently did
not mean to requite the sacrifice,
though he was a gentleman, and
refrained from amusing himself or
his friends at her expense. It cer-
tainly was not an inviting prospect
to enter a family where sentiment
took such forms as this, making
one sister a dissembler and a hypo-
crite with the man she was going
to marry, and prompting the other
to wild and unmaidenly escapades.
If Percy Danvers had been pro-
perly in love perhaps he would
have seen all this differently ; but
it may be that, in spite of his
declaration to the contrary, his
state of feeling had not yet gone
beyond what is flippantly defined
as spooney.
He was sufficiently disturbed,
however, not to be able to sleep
comfortably that night, and before
the day broke he had made up his
mind to go back to England at
once, without seeing Mrs. Mont-
eagle or Pearl, and, if possible,
without again alluding to the sub-
ject with Mr. Kingspring. It was
clear he could get no sympathy in
that quarter, and he would rather
bear his friend's contempt and re-
proaches than justify himself by
exposing all his motives, and there-
by inflict pain on the man who
loved Pearl loved her hopelessly,
chivalrously, looking neither for
return nor reward.
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE HOLY MARIES OF THE CAMARGUE.
Benedicta Villa Mans,
Quam thesauri's tarn praeclaris,
Rex dotavit gloriae .
ANCIENT LITURGY.
MISTRAL, the Provenal poet, in
his charming pastoral of Mireio,
makes young Vincen, the basket-
maker, while mending crates at
Master Ramon's on the Crau for
harvesting the olives and almonds,
tell the beautiful Mireille, the far-
mei;'s only child, among other mar-
vels he has seen in his wandering,
gipsy-like life, of the Great Saints of
the Camargue the shrine of the
Three Maries on the sea-shore,
where there is such divine music,
where all the people of the country
around bring their sick to be cured,
and the blind come to receive their
sight. " Ah ! damoisello," he cries,
" should misfortune ever befall you,
Courre's, coin-re's i Santo ! aures leu de soulas !
run, run to these Saints ; there
you will find solace !" And when
the hour of sorrow comes to the
young heiress, who has been wooed
among the mulberry-trees only
to find the marriage forbidden
by her parents, she remembers the
counsel and flies across the burning
desert of the Crau beneath the hot
June sun, carrying Vincen in her in-
flamed heart across the salt mar-
shes of the Camargue, where there is
" Ni d'aubre, ni d'oumbro, ni d'amo,
f no tree, or shade, or living soul
The Holy Maries of the Camargue*
469
till the fiery sun pierces her brain
as with arrows, and lays her death-
stricken on the scorching sands.
Already she has caught sight of
the white church of the Great
Saints on the far-off billowy sea,
looming up like a vessel making
for the shore. She is only able to
crawl along till she reaches its
threshold. At the upper end of
the church are three altars, three
chapels, built, one above the other,
out of blocks of live rock. In the
underground chapel is St. Sara,
venerated by the brown Bohemians.
Higher up the second contains
God's altar. Resting on its pillars,
the mortuary chapel of the Holy
Maries lifts its arches to heaven
with its relics sacred legacy from
which grace flows down like rain.
Four keys fasten the shrine the
covered shrine of cypress-wood.
Once in a hundred years it is open-
ed. Happy, happy he who can
see and touch it when it is uncover-
ed ! Serene weather his bark will
have ; a fortunate star to guide it.
His trees will bud and give forth
baskets of fruit. . . . His soul, for
believing, will have eternal riches !
Mireille crawls over the sacred
threshold. There she falls on the
pavement and cries :
" O Holy Maries, who can change the
bitterest tears into smiles, . . . I love him
as the brook loves to run, as the bird
loves to fly ! ... And they would have
me put out the fire I cherish. But it will
not die. They would have me uproot
the blossoming almond-tree ! O Holy
Maries, who can change one's tears into
flowers, quick, listen to my grief !"
And while thus lying, thus pray-
ing, with her large black eyes wide
spread, the heavens open, and along
the pathway strewn with stars she
sees three women, divinely beau-
tiful, descend in shining mantle
whiter than the snow on the moun-
tains : one, whose brow of light can
only be compared to the silvery
star that guides the herdsman's
way in the gloom of night, holds
against her breast a vase of ala-
baster closely pressed ; the second
modest moves with palm-branch in
her hand, her fair tresses floating
at the wind's will ; the third, still
young, lets her mantle, white and
pure, fall a little over her dark face,
out of which her black eyes like
diamonds shine.
" Comfort, Mireille," they say. " We
are the Three Maries of Judea. We are
the patron saints of Baux. . . . Your
prayer afflicts us. You would drink,
foolish one, at the fountain of love before
death. Where have you seen such joy
on earth ? Man forgets that death alone
gives life by opening the way to the true
Love. O Mireille ! if you could see how
full of suffering is the world below, how
vain and foolish your love of the creature,
your fear of the grave, you would, poor
lamb ! cry for pardon and death. The
sown wheat must decay before it shoots.
That is the law. We, too, had our share
of the bitter cup before we were given
these rays of glory."
And then the Three Saints of the
Sea tell the history of their coming
to this desert shore while the peo-
ple of Judea were still mourning
for the carpenter's Son of Galilee
Him of the long blond hair how
they were cast into a boat with
Lazarus, over whom Jesus had wept ;
Mary, who had sat at his feet;
Martha, who had served him ; Si-
don ius, who had been born blind;
St. Maximinand St. Trophime, who
belonged to the seventy-two disci-
ples, etc., and set afloat without
sail, or oar, or rudder, according to
the old prose :
41 Sine remo, sine luce,
Sine velo, sine duce,
Fluctibus expositi.
u Sed Maria maris Stella
Naufragantes in procella
Dirigit cum Filio."
^ 470
The Holy Maries of the Camargue.
Thus happily guided, they came
to the mouth of the Rhone and
landed at the ancient Pagus Pelagi,
where is now the village of the
Saintes Maries, and here formed
an altar out of the earth, at which
they offered a sacrifice of thanks-
giving, and sang hymns never be-
fore heard on these shores. It was
- this ship-load of saints that brought
all Provence and Languedoc to the
true faith. The Maries, with Sara,
their attendant, chose to remain on
the lonely island where they were
cast, that they might end their
days in the sweetness of the con-
templative life. Beside their cabin
sprang up a fountain of sweet water
from the brackish soil, and close
by they built an oratory in honor
of Our Lady, in which they de-
posited the head of St. James and
three of the Holy Innocents they
had brought with them. Here
they lived, reverenced by the peo-
ple around, and when they died,
one after the other, their tombs
were guarded with jealous care,
their cabin was converted into a
chapel, and the village in time as-
sumed their name.
The curious village of the Saintes
Maries is at the very southern ex-
tremity of the Camargue, about
twenty-five miles from Aries. Be-
fore it is the Mediterranean Sea,
and behind is a desert of appalling
sterility. As far as the' eye can
see there is nothing but sand-beds,
pools, and marshes that give out
poisonous exhalations fatal to stran-
gers, and a source of fevers to the
Saintins, as the people are called.
The Camargue is the delta of the
Rhone, formed by a division of the
river near Aries, the stream flow-
ing to the westward being known
as the Petit Rhone. It is believed
to be the largest of the ancient
Sticados, or Stcechades, where the
Phoceans of Marseilles are said to
have founded a colony and, accord-
ing to Strabo, built a temple to
Diana, perhaps still standing when
the Judean Maries established
themselves here, as her image was
at Aries that fell from its pedestal
at the mere name of Christ when
St. Trophime arrived. Geologists
have tried to do away with the
ancient tradition concerning these
holy women by asserting that the
place where the village now stands
was under water in their day; but
though the delta in some parts is
gradually encroaching on the sea,
this portion is now thought to be
very much as it was at the begin-
ning of the Christian era. Some
ancient inscriptions have been
found proving it was inhabited in
the time of the Romans.
The Saintes Maries is at certain
seasons quite inaccessible except
by boat or on horseback, but in a
dry time may be easily visited
from Aries in a carriage. At such
seasons the mail is carried in a
small diligence, which we took ad-
vantage of, leaving Aries at six
o'clock in the morning. The road
is good at first, and the land culti-
vated, and there are poplars, wil-
lows, and clumps of live-oaks. But
in proportion as the Alps of Dau-
phine fade away behind the hori-
zon widens, the trees diminish in
number and size, low bushes at
length cover the vast plain, pools
and marshes appear, a forest of
pale, slender reeds rustles drily in
the hot sun, the soil, impregnated
with sea-water, is crusted over with
salt, looking like a hoar-frost on
the low, sun-bleached herbage and
lifeless-looking marine plants, such
as saltwort, glasswort, etc. Now
and then there is a tamarisk-tree,
or a lofty umbrella-pine, tall and
stately as a palm, lifting its island
The Holy Maries of the Camargue.
471
of verdure into the clear heavens,
giving a still more Oriental look to
the strange, weird landscape. The
whole region assumes an aspect of
incomparable sadness. The pale-
ness of the vegetation, the faint
yellows, greens, and browns, and
the subtle hues of the ash-colored
wastes are dreary to the last de-
gree. And yet there is a singular
charm about the island with its
monotony of plain and sky, its
neutral tints, the gray sands and
gleaming salt crust on the flats, the
broad horizon that gives a sense of
infinitude, the long flights of wild
fowl on their way to their favorite
haunts or hovering over the sullen
pools, the strange insects that dart
to and fro among the tall, spear-
like reeds, and the awful silence
that broods over the whole scene.
You begin to perceive the flavor of
the sea, and soon come in sight of
it. The mirage blends earth and
sky and sea together in a dreamy
atmosphere, so that the vast plain,
under the blaze of the sun, seems
to rise and fall, and wave to and
fro, like the flashing billows of the
Mediterranean. What peace and
sense of freedom come over you
in the boundless space of this great
solitude ! The nomadic life seems
natural here as in the Oriental
deserts, and the interior of the isl-
and, in fact, is only peopled by
gipsies and herdsmen, who lead a
wild, almost lawless, life. Hunters
and sportsmen, too, come here in
the season. And it is a very para-
dise for the naturalist who, Egyp-
tian-like, adores coleopterous in-
sects, whose name is legion.
On these marshes are flocks of
sea-birds, cranes, wild ducks, the
albatross, the mystic pelican, seve-
ral species of the heron remarkable
for height and variety of color, and
the ibis, revered by ancient Egypt.
Great flocks of sea-gulls wheel lazi-
ly through the air, or float about
like soft cloudlets, or soar away
with stately grace, displaying the
stainless purity of their pearly
wings against the sapphire heavens.
There are superb flamingoes, also,
with their wings of flame, from
which they derive their name.
They flock here in November espe-
cially, and maybe seen in a long row,
looking like a line of soldiers, on
the borders of the pools seeking
their prey, while others, like senti-
nels, keep watch. Their bodies,
covered with white plumage, are
supported by long legs terminating
in palmated feet and surmounted
by a long, slender neck, at the end
of which is an enormous beak. At
a warning from their sentinels they
start up, spread broad their red
and black wings, and betake them-
selves elsewhere with sad, monoto-
nous cries. It is 'difficult to ap-
proach them except in cold wea-
ther, when they are killed in great
numbers. The flesh is used for
food, and is regarded by many as
an exquisite dish, but it has a wild
flavor and is rather tough. The
tongue is the most delicious part,
and considered worthy of the pa-
late of kings. It was a favorite
dish at the table of Heliogabalus,
but then it was prepared according
to the directions of Apicius. These
birds do not invariably migrate in
winter, but sometimes even breed
here. They make a cone of sand
with a hollow on the top, in which
they deposit their eggs ; and here
they sit, their long legs hanging
down the side of the hillock.
There are herds of wild bulls
and cows and horses on the Ca-
margue, that roam about with un-
restrained freedom and add to the
uncivilized aspect of the island.
They are not pleasant to encounter.
472
TJie Holy Maries of the Camargue.
Only the herdsmen are able to cap-
ture and subdue them, and it is cu-
rious to see these fearless men, with
their long, three-pronged forks like
a trident, on the bare back of the
wild horses, galloping across the
plains, spearing the cattle on before
them.
The horses of the Camargue are
said to be of Arabian origin, de-
scended from those introduced by
the Crusaders, or, as others will
have it, brought here by the Pho-
ceans. They are mostly white, and
are small and slender, but vigorous,
swift, graceful in their movements,
and, though they subsist on very
little, are capable of enduring great
fatigue. They might be regenerat-
ed and made valuable, for they are
intelligent and not difficult to train ;
but they live in a wild state, graz-
ing in herds among the marshes,
spending the whole year in the
open air, for the 'most part receiv-
ing no care, and scarcely used ex-
cept for treading out the huge
sheaves of grain in the threshing-
floors. Veran, one of Mireille's
suitors, has a hundred white mares
in the great salt marshes, feeding
on the rank sedges, with unshorn
manes that flow in the wind. They
might be taken for some of the
brazen-footed horses escaped from
the car of Neptune with manes of
flowing gold :
" For when the sea moans and scowls,
When ships part their cables,
The horses of the Camargue neigh for joy,
And smack like whipcord
Their long, hanging tails,
And paw the ground,
And feel within their flesh
The trident of the terrible god
Who raises the tempest and the flood,
And stirs from top to bottom the depths of
the sea/'
The wild bulls of the Camargue
are often taken to the Arenes at
Nimes and various other places on
the local festivities, for bull-fights,
that are kept up more or less in
the south of France. Their hair is
black and shining, their horns long
and slender, their limbs muscular
and active. One of the most curi-
ous sights in the Camargue is the
ferrade, or the process of branding
the cattle so they may be recogniz-
ed by their owners. The herdsmen
the day before go out on the plains,
armed with their long forks, and,
cautiously encircling the wary
beasts, drive them into the brand-
ing-field. At an early hour in the
morning this space is surrounded
by carts and all kinds of country
vehicles, full of spectators, for the
occasion is one of great festivity
and as exciting as a bull-fight. At
one end of the ring is a large bra-
sier where the branding-irons are
heating. One by one the young
bulls are forced by means of the
long pike to enter the enclosure.
A bold herdsman seizes him by the
horns, another by the tail, and a
third thrusts a pole between his
legs to overthrow him. The touca-
dou, or brander, runs with the hot
iron and applies it to the thigh of
the animal, which utters a fright*
ful roar, and, being released, dash-
es furiously at his captors. They
dexterously evade him, and he
rushes forward through the opening
made for him and disappears in a
cloud of dust. Several hundred a
day are thus marked, but not with-
out great risk, on the part of the
herdsmen, though they are brave
as they are fierce. Their life,
though full of danger and fatigue,,
has a wild, gipsy-like charm about
it, and they have something of the
nature of their wild bulls, born and
brought up as they are among them.
This was the case with Ourrias, an-
other suitor of Mireille's a mighty
brander, who is represented as like
his oxen in shape and movements,
in the savageness of his eye and
The Holy Maries of the Camargue.
473
the blackness of his skin. He has
a scar between his eyes, got in
wrestling with a wild bull at a great
branding not yet forgotten in the
Camargue. He comes to the Mas,
or farm-house, on his swift white
horse, armed with his long goad, to
pay court to Mireille, the loveliest
maiden in the Crau. He finds her
at a cool spring, her sleeves and
skirts tucked up, washing the earth-
en curd-jars.
u Saints of God ! how beautiful she is,
Dabbling the clear water with her little feet !"
" Mireille," says the black brander,
"if you would come to Sylva-Real, with-
in the sound of the sea, you would not
have this trouble, for there the black
cows run wild and free, and are never
milked. The women lead pleasant
lives. . . . Under the pines you may sit
for ever."
" Sooner," cries Mireille, " will your
pronged spear put forth flowers, and
these hills grow soft as wax, sooner
shall I go by water to the town of
Baux."
Ourrias gallops away in fierce
ire. He could fight the rocks on
the Crau. He could assail the sun
in its course. In this mood he
meets young Vincen, and on him
vents his rage. They fly at each
other like two wild bulls of the
Camargue. The earth trembles be-
neath the shock. The stones fly.
You would take them for Hercules
and one of the Ligurians, or two
heroes of the grand Oumero. When
the mighty Ourrias falls beneath
the subtle blows of the infuriated
basket-maker, it is like the crash-
ing of a tower. A deep hush falls
over the whole land. But he re-
gains his trident, and, basely using
it against young Vincen, leaves
him on the ground, he believes as
a feast for the wolves.
Towards noon, looking across
the great salt pool of Valcaires, we
caught sight of battlemented walls,
as of some old castle. It was the
church of the Holy Maries. Be-
fore long we came to the village.
It is inhabited by fishermen, wreck-
ers, and herdsmen, amounting to
about a thousand souls. But the
men are generally absent on the
sea or in the fens. There are no
trees, or gardens, or regular streets;
nothing but whitewashed cottages
huddled around the time-stained
church, with a burning sun over-
head, and only some low sand-
dunes and a broad beach to sepa-
rate it from the sea. It is almost
cut off from the rest of the world.
The sand-banks prevent the near
approach of any vessels, and its
only intercourse with other places
is by the post from Aries and a
telegraph office at the mouth of the
Petit Rhone.
The church of the Saintes Ma-
ries has the aspect of a citadel, and
is one of the most striking exam-
ples of the old fortified churches
to be seen at Narbonne, Agde r
Maguelone, and all along the shore
of the Mediterranean. They date
from the Carlovingian epoch, and
were intended not only as strong-
holds of prayer, but as fortresses
for the defence of the coast, ex-
posed in those days to frequent at-
tacks from the Moors and corsairs.
The general shape is rectangular,
with strong buttresses, arched ma-
chicolations, and battlements around
the top. That of the Saintes Ma-
ries has turrets at the corners, loop-
holes in the lofty, massive walls, a
flat roof paved with stones, with
ramparts around it, and once con-
tained everything necessary to sus-
tain a siege. There is no attempt at
decoration. Any play of the fancy
would be out of keeping. All is
severe and stern as a military hold.
In time of danger the women and
474
The Holy Maries of the Camargue.
children and the sick used to be
shut up in the nave to pray, while
the men on the top fought behind
the battlements for the defence of
the place.
The diligence set us down at the
lateral door of the church. At the
sides are two lions of Parian mar-
ble, corroded by time and the salt
air, set in the wall. They are evi-
dently very ancient, and are be-
lieved to have belonged to a far
older church. Some go so far as
to say they are from the old temple
of Diana, but they have their sym-
bolic prey in their mouths, after
the manner of so many lions watch-
ing at the church portals of Italy,
and are, no doubt, of Christian ori-
gin. The church is a vast basilica
without any aisles, and as yet un-
spoiled by restoration, though on
the list of the historical monuments
of France, which, in itself, is an in-
dication of its ultimate fate. It is
bare, gaunt, and weather-stained,
but grandiose and impressive. It
is lighted by a few small windows
cut high up in the thick walls. A
banner of the Holy Maries is sus-
pended over the old stone stoup as
you enter. Rude benches fill the
upper part of the nave, in the cen-
tre of which is the well that sprang
<up at the prayer of the Saints, with
a railing around it. The water is
considered efficacious for hydro-
phobia. On the walls are the Sta-
tions of the Cross rudely engraved,
a great crucifix with a bleeding
side, and a few paintings, such as
the " Death of St. Joseph," after
Carlo Maratta, and a copy of Mig-
nard's Assumption. In a niche is
a boat with effigies of the Maries
standing erect, and over it is a
modern picture of the Sacred
Heart. Set in the southern wall
is a marble slab called the coussin
des saintes, because one of those
found under the heads of the Holy
Maries when exhumed in 1488, in-
scribed with their names. It has
been hollowed out by the peasants,
who mix the/ powder with water
from the holy well and take it as a
remedy. A pagan altar of Roman
times, but now marked with the
cross, stands in the nave. The
high altar is in the choir, which is
higher than the body of the church.
It is a semi-rotupda supported by
eight Corinthian columns with capi-
tals, on which are carved the An-
nunciation, the Angel appearing to
St. Joseph, the Visitation, the Sa-
crifice of Abraham, rams, satyrs,
acanthus leaves, etc. These storied
columns form a kind of arcade
around the apsis. The altar has
two fronts, and on grand festivals
the priest officiates with his face to
the congregation, as in the great
basilicas at Rome.
Beneath the choir is the small
crypt built by King Rene. You
go down by stone steps through a
low, broad archway. It was here
the cabin of the Holy Maries stood,
and here they lay buried for cen-
turies to save them from the Sara-
cens. There is still a hollow rock
in which, says tradition, they cook-
ed their food. In a wooden coffer
are the bones of St. Sara, the at-
tendant of the saints, or, as some
of the Saintins will have it, Pilate's
wife, who escaped with the Maries.
The gipsies, who are numerous in
the Camargue, honor her with a
devotion quite apart.
" Dins la capello sous terrado
L'a Santo Saro, venerado
Di bruns Boumian."
The apsis of the church is unique,
with its three altars one above the
other. For over the choir is an-
other chapel high up on the roof,
secluded and' mysterious. Here is
the shrine of the Holy Maries. It
The Holy Maries of the Camargue.
475
cannot be reached from the inte-
rior of the church. A door opens
in the outer wall, and you go up
by a spiral staircase in the buttress,
lighted by loopholes. The cure
keeps the key, but kindly gave us
access to this singular chapel. The
staircase continues to the top of
the church, where you can walk
along the battlements, and look off
over land and sea, and hear the
murmur of the waves. Here, be-
tween two immensities the fathom-
less sea and the boundless heavens
you feel the sublimity, the fasci-
nation of this melancholy, desolate
shore. A profound peace seems to
reign over the broad wastes. You
half envy the lot of the Holy
Maries, and begin to think it would
be no misfortune to live here in
the sands, in the smiles of the whis-
pering, caressing sea, beneath so
glorious a sun, free from the re-
quirements of conventional life, re-
stored to the freedom of nature, to
pass the remainder of your days
under the protection of the Saints
of the Sea,
"In dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell."
The moonlight nights are espe-
cially delightful on this lonely shore
the gleaming white village, the
pale sands, the strange charm of the
immense solitudes, the silence bro-
ken only by the lulling sound of
the waters, the moonlit air, the
wonderful white glory spreading its
radiance over the moorland flats,
giving beauty even to the black
marshes, streaming out over the
most beautiful of seas, and bathing
with all its fulness the tower where
hangs the shrine of the Holy Ma-
nes in its secret chapel.
This chapel is hung with the
simple offerings of the poor, but all
the more affecting for that. There
are a profusion of little boats given
by fishermen saved from the quick-
sands, crutches and models of
limbs from the once infirm, votive
pictures and tablets-, ornaments of
crystal, and rows of silver hearts.
Against the front wall, in an alcove,
is the ancient shrine of cypress-
wood, on which the Holy Maries
are painted in their bark, and at
one end is a windlass by means of
which it is let down to the choir
three times a year viz., May 25,
October 22, and December 3. The
May festival that of St. Mary
Jacobe is the most popular, for
then the days are longer, and the
roads dryer than after the autumnal
rains begin. An immense crowd
assembles on the eve, coming from
Aries, Nimes, Marseilles, etc., so
that tents have to be set up on the
sands where the people can pass
the night. A vast number of sick
and infirm persons are brought to
be healed by the Great Saints. The
church is filled at an early hour in
the morning. At length the priests
come in their choicest robes. The
door over the choir is opened.
There is an intense feeling in the
expectant crowd. They all kneel
with torches in their hands, gazing
up at the open door. The Salve
begins :
" Salve Mater inclyta
Jacobi Minoris ;
Ave, Parens optima
Jacobi Majoris."
The shrine appears, lowered by
ropes and chains. A thrill, a tre-
mor passes over the breathless
multitude, pale, palsied hands are
lifted in supplication, a perfect wail
of sorrow rises. The shrine comes
slowly down, down. " Grdce !
Grace!" is heard on every side.
There is a terrible cry and a sway-
ing to and fro of the crowd. The
shrine at length rests on an estrade,
adorned by flowers and surrounded
47 6
The Holy Maries of the Camargue.
by lights, where it remains all day
with a throng of votaries before it.
At a later hour the people go in
procession down to the sea-shore
with relics, banners, and the old
bark, and there the cure blesses
them with the silver arm given by
King Rene, containing a bone of
the Saints. Then they return to a
cross set up in the sands, where a
sermon is delivered. This cross is
of stone, and on it is sculptured the
bark of the Maries, the symbolic
fish and pelican, and the Sacred
Heart.
The church of the Saintes Maries
is variously designated in ancient
documents as Les deux Maries de
la Mer, Notre Dame de la Barque,
Sancta Maria de Ratis, etc. It is
called by the latter name in the
testament of St. Cesaire (early in
the sixth century), in which he
gives it to the nuns of Aries.
Count William of Provence, who
expelled the Saracens from the
country, held the church in the
tenth century, perhaps by right of
conquest, but restored it to the
nuns of St. Cesaire. The village,
which is identified with the church
and bears its name, has for its arms
a boat in which the Maries are
standing with the motto Navis in
pelago.
We have no intention of discuss-
ing the delightful old legend of the
bark that brought so many saints
from the East to this happy shore.
It has been a constant tradition
in Provence. M. Faillon has ex-
hausted the subject, and we are
only too willing to accept his con-
clusions that put us at once in har-
mony with the people and their
peculiar devotions.
There is an old religious romance
concerning the history of the Holy
Maries, in sixteen thousand lines,
written in 1365 by Jean de Venette,
a Carmelite monk, but it is full
of fictitious incidents. He makes
them the daughters of St. Anne,
who, according to him, had three
husbands Joachim, Jacob, and
Salome by whom she had respec-
tively three daughters called the
Three Maries, two of whom added
the name of their fathers to their
own.
On leaving Jerusalem at the per-
secution of St. Stephen's time, he
supposes them to go to Veroli,
in Italy, accompanied by Sarette,
their servant. Here they lodged in
the house of a good Christian
dame named Eve de la Ruolle,
where they were taken ill and died.
Veroli being in after-times gallant-
ly defended by a Provencal knight,
the religious and civil authorities
testified their gratitude for his ser-
vices by giving him the bodies
of these holy women, which he
brought to France and buried be-
neath the church of Notre Dame
de la Mer through fear of the Sara-
cens.
" You go straight into Provence,
Where they're held in reverence,
Three leagues from St. Giles' town."
But the generally-received tra-
dition is that Mary Jacobe was the
daughter of Matthan, of the tribe
of Levi. Her mother was the
sister of St. Anne and of Sobe, the -
mother of St. Elizabeth, of whom ,
was born the Baptist. Mary Jaco-
be married Cleophas, the brother !
of St. Joseph, and is often called ,
by his name. She had four
James the Minor, Jude, Sim-'j
eon (bishop of Jerusalem), and Jo-
seph, surnamed Justus, spoken of im I
the Acts of the Apostles. Mary,,|
daughter of Salome, married Ze-
bedee and became the mother of
St. James the Major and St. Johnll
the Evangelist. They were so
nearly related to the Blessed Virgin
The Holy Maries of the Camargue.
477
that they formed part, as it were,
of the Holy Family, and the chil-
dren are called the brethren of our
Saviour. There is a painting in
the museum at Marseilles by Peru-
gino, representing them all togeth-
er, which is something unusual.
In the centre is the Madonna en-
throned, with the Child on her
knee. St. Anne, dressed in green
and purple, stands behind, with her
hands resting on her daughter's
shoulders. On the steps below are
the children Thaddeus and Simeon.
At the right stands Mary Salome,
with St. John in her arms and St.
James the Major (a little boy with
a green scarf) at her side. St. Jo-
achim is behind her with a green
robe and yellow mantle. St. Mary
Jacobe is on the other side in a
pale green dress and lilac veil, with
St. James the Minor in her arms
and Joseph Justus at her side.
Behind her is St. Joseph.
Mary Jacobe is said to have died
first. St. Trophime came down
from Aries to administer the Holy
Eucharist, and she was buried near
the miraculous fountain. Salome
lived a few months longer. Sara
soon followed, and was buried
near her mistresses, and became
inseparably connected with them
in the devotions of the people. A
few centuries after, while the lord
of the country (some say the king)
was hunting in the forest of the
Saintes Mariesdoubtless the Pin-
ede, a remnant of the Sylva-Real
he met the hermit who watched
over the tombs of the holy women,
and ordered a church to be built
to enclose them.
Gervase of Tilbury, marshal of
the kingdom of Aries in the time
of the Emperor Otho IV., speaks
of the tradition of the Holy Maries
as handed down from remote anti-
quity. He says :
" The Narbonnese province includes
the Sticados isles, commonly called the
Camargues, in the place where the Rhone
empties into the sea. There on the sea-
shore is to be seen the earliest church
on the continent in honor of Mary, the
holy Mother of God, consecrated by sev-
eral of the seventy-two disciples, driven
out of Judea and exposed on the sea in
a bark without oars, such as Maximin
of Aix, Lazarus of Marseilles, brother of
Martha and Mary Magdalen, Eutrope of
Orange, George of Velay, Trophime of
Aries, in presence of Martha, Mary Mag-
dalen, and several others. Under the
altar of this basilica, made by them out
of baked earth and covered with a tablet
of Parian marble bearing an inscription,
there are, according to an ancient tradi-
tion worthy of full credence, six heads
of holy bodies placed in a square. The
remainder of the bodies are buried in a
tomb, and among the number, we are
assured, are the two Maries who, the
first day after the Sabbath, came with
perfumes to visit the tomb of the Sa-
viour."
No one was better able than Ger-
vase of Tilbury to know the pre-
vailing opinion in the province as
to the Holy Maries, and his testi-
mony that they had been venerat-
ed here from time immemorial by
the people of Aries and the whole
country around is of weight. He
shows himself well informed as to
the Camargue and the church, as
though he had visited them in per-
son.
William Durandus, the Specu-
lator, Bishop of Mende, and one of
the most learned schoolmen of the
thirteenth century, alludes to the
altar of earth in his Rationale. He
says that "altars, according to the
general custom of the church,
should be of stone, though that
made by the Israelites was of se-
tim wood, which was incorrupti-
ble. That of St. John Lateran is
also of wood. And in the coun-
try of Provence there is an altar
of earth in the town of Sainte Ma-
rie de la Mer, erected in that place
478
The Holy Maries of the Camargue.
by Mary Magdalen, Martha, Mary
Jacobe, and Mary Salome."
This great doctor of the church
was a native of Provence, but had
studied at Bologna, been a profes-
sor at Modena, auditor of the sa-
cred palace at Rome, legate to the
Council of Lyons (1274), and was
in relation with all the learned men
of his time. His opinion may
therefore be supposed to be that
which was generally received.
This altar was so holy that, ac-
cording to Jean de Venette, no one
was allowed to officiate thereat but
bishops and religious.
" Nul n'y doit celebrer messe,
Soit basse ou haute, a note expresse,
Fors prelats et religieux :
Tant est le lieu trfes pr6cieux."
And no one was ever buried in the
church out of respect to these holy
women. Even when it was served
by monks they had their cemetery
without the walls.
In the middle ages people of all
conditions came on pilgrimages to
the Saintes Maries, even from re-
mote provinces. Jean de Venette
relates how a bishop of St. Pol de
Leon, having suffered for years
from the gout, and to such a de-
gree that he had lost the use of his
limbs, and could not even turn in
bed, being given up by the physi-
cians, made a vow to go on a pil-
grimage to the church of the Holy
Maries, if they would enable him
to make the journey, and forthwith
began to compose a hymn in their
honor, beginning Nobile Collegium.
It was hardly completed before he
fell into a sweet slumber, and to-
wards the middle of the night he
saw, either in a vision or with his
natural eyes, the two Maries ap-
pear, who, after anointing him, as-
sured him he was healed. When
he awoke in the morning he found
it was true, and at once set forth
to accomplish his vow. He arriv-
ed safely at the church, difficult as
it was of access, related his cure,
and made rich offerings. He after-
wards founded three chapels in
honor of the Saints. One of these
was in the church of St. Pierre
at Nantes, which he adorned with
their statues in alabaster. Another
was in the Carmelite church at
Paris, where he hung up a tablet
on which was graven his hymn,
Nobile Collegium.
At St. Paul's Church, Lyons,
there was a chapel of the Trois
Maries, and the chasse containing
holy relics was suspended behind
the high altar, after the manner of
that in the Camargue, and let down
on grand occasions.
Foulques de Chanac, Bishop of
Paris in 1347, in consequence of
the marvels wrought at the shrine
of the Holy Maries, ordered their
two festivals to be celebrated in his
diocese, apd granted indulgences to
all who would keep them. On
these days their lives were read
or made the subject of a discourse.
But the great veneration in which
this church was held throughout
the country was shown in 1448,
when Rene of Anjou, after a ser-
mon on the Holy Maries, conceiv-
ed the design of exhuming their re-
mains, which still lay buried beneath
the church, and applied to Pope
Nicholas V. for permission, begging
him to appoint some one to superin-
tend the solemn translation. The
pope appointed the bishop of Mar-
seilles and the archbishop of Aix.
They proceeded to the Camargue,
and a Provencal knight named
Jean d'Arlatan, the king's chamber-
lain, directed the excavations, and
the king's bailiff and the syndic of
the town kept guard to see that no
one touched the works. They first
excavated the site of the ancient
The Holy Maries of the Catnargue.
479
oratory, and near the well they
found the head of St. James, bound
with strips of lead. Then they dug
beneath the choir, where stood the
ancient cabin. Here they found
coals, ashes, and some domestic
utensils, and finally the Three
Saints with the remains of the Holy
Innocents, laid in the form of a
triangle.
King Rene, to whom the dis-
covery was at once announced,
came to the Saintes Maries with
Isabella of Lorraine, accompanied
by a brilliant train, in which were
Frederic de Lorraine, the king's
son-in-law, Tanneguy Duchatel,
seneschal of Provence, Elie, lord of
Montfaucon, the lord of Clermont,
and three hundred other people of
distinction. At the head of the
clergy were Cardinal de Foix, the
papal legate, twelve bishops, several
mitred abbots, such as those of St.
Gilles, Psalmody, and St. Victor at
Marseilles, and many deans, pro-
vosts, doctors of the law, canon
and civil, prothonotaries, and no-
taries public. On the 3d of De-
cember Cardinal de Foix ponti-
fically celebrated the Mass of the
Holy Maries, attended by all the
bishops, abbots, and priests in
splendid attire. The church was
magnificently adorned and crowd-
ed with people holding torches in
their hands. The relics were laid
before the high altar, where the
king and clergy went to venerate
them. The legate, aided by the
bishops of Marseilles and Couse-
rans, took the sacred bones, wiped
off the dust, washed them in white
wine, and placed them in a double
shrine of cypress-wood lined with-
in and without with rich silk em-
broidered with gold. Then the
chasse was carried forth into the
open air to allow the people to have
freer access, and there Dom Ad-
hemar, the king's confessor, pro-
nounced a panegyric.
The next day the other remains
were duly enshrined, and the chasse
of the Holy Maries was solemnly
raised in presence of the king and
people to the upper chapel of St.
Michael the Archangel, where the
cover was fastened down by means
of four locks. Two of the keys were
given to the king, and two to the
abbot of Mont Majour.
King Rene afterwards painted a
triptych for the church. The cen-
tral panel represented the Virgin
and Child on a throne, and on the
wings were the Maries with their
vases. This picture was engraved
at Paris some time last century.
He also gave silver vessels for the
altar, vestments wrought with sil-
ver and gold, and rich stuffs to
cover the shrines.
A solemn festival, called the RJ-
vttation, was established on the 26.
of December to commemorate this
translation.
In 'September, 1596, the people
of Aries, after successful recourse
to the Holy Maries in a time of
public calamity, sent their church,
as offerings of gratitude, a cross of
silver gilt, and a piece of orfevrerie
representing the city of Aries in
relief, and the three Saints appear-
ing in the heavens. The preben-
daries of St. Trophime, the civil
authorities, and a great number of
nobles and people went to the
Saintes Maries to present the offer-
ings. A Mass was solemnly sung,
and, in honor of the occasion, the
chasse was opened by the prior of
Mont Majour and the delegate of
the king.
At the Revolution all the silver
vessels and ex-votos were carried
off. Tli ere was no danger of the
wooden shrine's exciting the cu-
pidity of any one, but to prevent
480
The Holy Maries of the Camargue.
the relics from being profaned the
cure had them taken out, wrapped
in stout cloth, and buried. The
silver reliquary in the form of an
arm, given by King Rene, was
also saved. The coussin des saintes
was taken to plant a liberty-tree on,
but when that was overthrown the
people came with great joy to see
the stone taken up, and accompa-
nied it to the church, where it was
reset in the wall, every one kissing
it with respect and declaring that
it gave forth a sweet odor as of vio-
lets. The relics of the Maries were
also restored to the upper cha*pel,
where they are still kept.
It is to the chapel of St. Michael
in the upper air that Mireille is ta-
ken that she may die before the
shrine of the Holy Maries, and
there, as the setting sun casts its
last beams across the long waves
that are slowly breaking against
the shore, the priest administers
the last solemn rites. Her parents
are there : " O Saints ! let her
live. Take my life instead !"' Vin-
ce"n, too, rushes wild with grief
across the salt marshes : " My love,
my blossoming almond-tree, sun of
my life ! Shall it be said that you,
great Saints, have seen her embrac-
ing your sacred altar in vain ?
Queens of heaven, the only help
now, take the very eyes orhny head,
but give her back to me." The
Saints breathe over the dying girl.
It gives her a little strength. Her
face flushes with sweet joy at the
sight of young Vincen : " You told
me to come to the Holy Maries.
With solace, with solace my heart
is running over." She extends her
hands to them all. " The time of
parting has come," she says ; " the
light deepens on the Maries' brows.
They beckon me to come. They
whisper I need not fear. I shall
go to Paradise in their bark. They
know the pathway through the
stars. Now they are on the prow
awaiting me. In a moment, dear
Saints. I cannot go fast. I am too
weak. . . . I mount. Adieu ! adieu !
We are on the sea, the beautiful
sea. Over its soft billows we go to
heaven. The blue sky meets the
waters."
Her voice dies away like the
sunlight from cloud to cloud of
gold. " Saints, is that an organ I
hear fn the distance ?" she mur-
murs, and turns her face with a
smile, and is gone.
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
481
THE REALITY OF THE SUPERNATURAL ORDER.
THE Supernatural Order, in re-
spect to the human race during its
existence on the earth, subsists in
the Catholic Church. It is a so-
ciety having the principle of its
organic unity and life, in faith in
divine mysteries above the sphere
of reason, believed on the veracity
of God who has revealed them ; in
hope of a sovereign good above
any attainable by natural develop-
ment of the human faculties ; in
love to God in a personal, filial
relation of equality. Its existence
springs from and is founded upon
the great Fact of the Resurrection
of Jesus Christ.
In regard to this great Fact, Mr.
Alger, who is an extreme rational-
ist, remarks :
"Of all the single events that ever
were supposed to have occurred in the
world, perhaps the most august in its
moral associations and the most stupen-
dous in its lineal effects, both on the out-
ward fortunes and on the inward expe-
rience of mankind, is the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead. . . . If God
is in history, guiding the moral drift of
human affairs, then the dazzling success
of the proclamation of the risen Re-
deemer is the divine seal upon the truth
of his mission and the reality of his
apotheosis."*
The Catholic Church is a living,
continuous, universal witness to
the fact of the Resurrection ; and to
its significance, which lies in the
nature of the Redeemer who died
and rose again, and the purpose
for which he submitted to death
and triumphed over death. It is
the medium which places us in
* Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future
Life, pp. 346-353. The whole of this chapter is
well worth the study of every rationalist and
sceptic.
VOL. XXIX. 31
direct contact with the great fact
and illuminates it, so that its real,
intrinsic character is made visible
and intelligible. And in this fact,
thus made intelligible, is contained
the complete revelation of the se-
cret mystery of human destiny im-
pervious to reason ; and the full so-
lution of the difficulties which phi-
losophy, left to itself, is unable to
explain. The knowledge of the
person and purpose of Jesus Christ
is derived from himself, through
the testimony of the apostles, per-
petuated in the Catholic Church.
The sum of the testimony to his
person is expressed in the words
of St. Augustine, " Persona Christi
mixtura est Dei et hominis " " The
person of Christ is a mixture of
God and man." This personal
subsistence of a human nature in
the divine nature is an elevation
to that hidden life in the infinite
intelligence and love of the divine
essence, which constitutes the pure
entelecheia or absolute act in which
God exists. The sublime philoso-
phy of Aristotle penetrates so far
as this into the essence of God,
that He is the infinite knower and
known, lover and loved. Active
intelligence, the intelligible, and
the desirable or object of compla-
cency, present three terms of rela-
tion within the divine being. Be-
cause God is absolute act, infinite
being, whose essence is to exist,
the term of his act is real being in
perfect, complete subsistence, or
personality. His intelligent con-
sciousness with self-dominion and
independence, the ego of his com-
plete actuality, is in act in a three-
fold manner, because of the three
482
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
necessary terms of relation in his
inner life, which have each its dis-
tinct reality. Within his individ-
ual and indivisible unity of essence,
there is communication, fellowship,
an eminent mode of the society
and mutual love which in finite
beings springs from a multiplica-
tion of persons with distinct na-
tures. The human nature of Jesus
Christ, having been taken up into
a mode of subsistence in the per-
son of the Divine Word wholly
above its natural exigency, was
made to participate in a grade of
cognition and love equal to that
which essentially belongs to the
divine nature. This is a true
apotheosis, in the literal sense of
the word, and the Resurrection was
its manifestation, the taking full
possession, and exhibiting before
the world as an accomplished fact,
of that which existed before in
right, the privilege of a divine
sonship.
The purpose of Jesus Christ in
dying and rising again, we know
from his own testimony, was to re-
deem his brethren and give them
an adopted sonship similar to his
own. The original destination of
human nature is proved, therefore,
from the personal quality and pur-
pose of the Redeemer as manifest-
ed in the Resurrection, to have
been absolutely supernatural.
It is necessary to define here
more precisely what is meant by
this term " supernatural," for it is
the pivot upon which the whole
exposition of Catholic theology
turns.
" Supernatural " does not denote
simply what is above sensible na-
ture, the laws of the visible uni-
verse, and the temporal order of
this present world. The realm of
nature is co-extensive with the
creation. It includes the world of
spirits, the entire intelligible order,
all the relations of created beings
to God which spring from the crea-
tive act. The human soul is na-
turally capable of knowing God
and naturally subject to his domin-
ion. It is naturally immortal, and
has a natural exigency of its own-
perfection in a future state of end-
less existence. T^he providence of
God over ail his creatures as the
creator, the conservator, the con-
current first cause of all effects, the
consummator of his own plan, so
far as known and knowable by the
natural light of intelligence, is
within the natural order. The
supernatural is something above
the plane of all effects produced
by creation. It is a communica-
tion of -that which naturally be-
longs within the divine essence, to
a term which is without. The na-
tural interval between the divine es-
sence and the highest created spiri-
tual essence is infinite. The creat-
ed spirit can only have cognition
by becoming, ideally, what is cogniz-
ed through representative species.
He must take into his own being
the form of his object of cognition.
The essence of God infinitely tran-
scends this finite capacity. The
intelligent creature can only know
God as he sees Him by a diminuted
image in himself, in other spirits,
in the intelligible universe. The
works of God do not image his
intrinsic essence as it subsists in
Three Persons. They are the un-
divided works of 'the wisdom and
omnipotence of God, which are es-
sentially and identically the same
in the Three Persons. It is im-
possible to know or even to guess
that God can or will elevate any
creature by union with his own
essence, so that he can see God in
and through God, as He sees him-
self, and in this contemplation
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
483
possess a sovereign and divine
beatitude ; unless God reveal his
purpose to do so, and disclose the
mystery of his interior life. He
has done so in Christ, in whom the
human and the divine are hypo-
statically united. And in Christ,
as the head of the human race, the
Adam of the order of regeneration,
the destination of man is made
known as absolutely supernatural.
In this supernatural order, the
entire human essence, including the
body, was destined for a state of
glorification to succeed the present
state. The body, naturally cor-
ruptible and mortal, was destined
to a transformation into an incor-
ruptible state. In the state of ori-
ginal innocence and justice, the
graces and gifts with which the
first parents of men were invested
threw a glory over the body which
covered its natural deficiency, har-
monized it with the spirit, and pre-
vented the innate corruptibility
from taking effect in any disorderly
appetites, in disease, decay, or dis-
solution. Immunity from death
was promised on the condition of
obedience to the law of God, and
this earthly life was ordained as a
peaceful and happy preparation for
the apotheosis by which the sons of
God should be finally translated to
the highest sphere among beatified
spirits.
The disobedience and fall from
grace of the first parents of the
human ^race changed the human
species into something worse than
God had made it; the despoiled
nature was transmitted to their pos-
terity, with its inherent corruptibil-
ity ; and death became the common
doom. The Redeemer restored
the race, fallen from its destined
end, by a better and more perfect
way, through his own death and
resurrection. The divine revela-
tion and the divine religion before
his coming were a preparation for
him, the Catholic Church is the
complement of his work. In the
inchoate society which preceded the
foundation of the Catholic Church,
before the Resurrection ; in the per-
fect society of the Catholic Church
since that epoch ; all men who have
divine faith and persevere until
death in acting upon its dictates are
prepared for the state of everlasting
glory in the society of the holy
angels, under Christ as the univer-
sal head ; which is the consumma-
tion of the entire plan of God.
All things and events in the natural
order are subordinated to this su-
pernatural order. This is the sum
of the principal and substantial con-
tents of the divine revelation which
the Catholic Church has received
from Jesus Christ through the apos-
tles, and teaches, by authority dele-
gated from him, with unerring cer-
tainty ; and it is all concentrated,
manifested, and marked with the
seal of divine truth in the one con-
crete fact of the Resurrection.
The mode of teaching by a di-
vine revelation, received by faith
in the divine veracity and attested
by miracles, is rendered necessary
by the supernatural order in which
the destination of the human race
is constituted. In this order, the
human intellect and will are placed
in relation with that which is natu-
rally unknowable except to God
himself. The essence of God in
the Trinity is thus made the ulti-
mate intelligible and desirable ob-
ject of the human aspiration. This
is a mystery above all created intel-
ligence, which can only be clear-
ly seen by supernatural intuition.
There is a sufficient reason for dis-
closing it in an obscure manner by
revelation, because it is the ulti-
mate term of the elevated and di-
484
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
vinized intelligence and will. The
Incarnation is a mystery even more
inscrutable and impervious to hu-
man reason, and the inferior but
similar filiation of the adopted sons
who share with the Only-Begotten
in his privilege of primogeniture is
likewise a secret of God, which can
only be believed on faith in the di-
vine word. Other revealed truths
and facts are secondary and com-
plementary to these primary mys-
teries. From the beginning of the
world, the substantial revelation
was made, and was expanded and
completed by degrees until the
end of the mission of the apostles.
Since that time, there has been no
addition made to the sum of reveal-
ed truths. The Catholic Church,
by her judgments and definitions
respecting dogmas of divine faith,
only makes .the obscure clearer, or
determines what lias been revealed,
or explicates the implicit concepts
contained in revealed truths.
The supernatural faith, hope, and
love by which men are raised to
the same plane in which Jesus
Christ exists by virtue of his divine
personality, are gifts of divine grace,
infused virtues which elevate human
nature above itself. Human reason,
and rational free-will to choose the
desirable good and use the natural
faculties for its attainment, do not
suffice even to initiate a movement
toward the supernatural end, much
less to accomplish the transition by
which the term is reached. Never-
theless, it is not a new intellect or a
new will which is produced in man
by regeneration. Nature is not su-
perseded but augmented and ele-
vated and subjected to a new force
in the supernatural order. It is
the natural capacity for knowing
the intelligible and knowing God
which is iurned toward the mys-
teries of the divine essence, as
its supernatural object. The natu-
ral and necessary love of the uni-
versal good, and of God as its
source, is turned and determined to
the beatific contemplation of the
divine essence as its specific and
supernatural term. In the medi-
um or way appointed by God for
conducting the rational creation to
its end, all natural means are inter-
laced with the supernatural and
combined in one harmonious whole.
There is an aptitude and an atti-
tude of the intellectual and moral
nature of man toward the divine,
which makes him a fit and compe-
tent recipient of the illuminations
and inspirations of divine grace.
Under the influence of these il-
luminations and inspirations, the
natural activity of the mind and
will remains unimpaired. Revela-
tion is not philosophy or science,
but it is compatible with both. A
very large part of what has been .
handed down and taught by reli-
gious tradition, in connection with
the articles and dogmas of faith
which are made known exclusively
by revelation, is also the object of
purely natural and rational know-
ledge, and is provable by historical
and philosophical evidence. The
mysteries themselves, although ob-
scure and inevident in respect to
natural reason, are intelligible, and
their harmony with rational truths
is partially provable. The unity of
God, the unity of the human
species, the immortality of the
soul, the obligations of juftice, the
right of property, the facts related
in sacred history, and similar mat-
ters, can be known and proved in-
dependently of sacred Scripture
and sacred tradition, by metaphy-
sical or moral evidence. The
Trinity of Persons in God cannot
be demonstrated metaphysically,
because it is impossible to discover
The Reality of the Supernatural Order,
4 s 5
a necessary connection in the dis
tinct concepts enunciated in the
statement of this article of faith.
The compatibility between the dis-
tinction of natures and the unity of
person in the Son of God cannot
be demonstrated, and the actual
union of the two natures in him
was not physically evident to those
who saw him in the condition of a
human life like our own. Never-
theless, the meaning of the terms
Trinity, Incarnation, and the like
is intelligible by analogies drawn
from known objects and rational
concepts. There are numerous
and copious arguments of proba-
bility, by which it is not only shown
that these mysteries are not con-
trary to reason, but that they have
even a rational verisimilitude.
Moreover, the ground and motive
for giving a firm and nndoubting
assent to these articles of faith and
all else which is revealed, as well
as to all conclusions logically de-
duced from revealed truths, is and
must be a rational motive. An act
of reason is presupposed by the
act of faith. By faith we believe,
on the authority of God revealing,
whatsoever is sufficiently presented
to the mind as a revealed truth.
The object of faith does not of it-
self determine and compel assent
as self-evident. Faith is voluntary,
free, and meritorious. It is an act
of supreme homage and submission
to God which has a moral as well
as intellectual virtue in it. It is
the will which determines the intel-
lect to give undoubting, irrevocable
assent to the word of God. This
act of the will would not be pru-
dent and reasonable, unless it pro-
ceeded from a rational judgment
that it is really the word of God
which demands assent. It is re-
quisite, therefore, to know the exis-
tence and veracity of God, and to
know that the proposed object of
faith is revealed by him, on suffi-
cient reasons which are at least
simultaneously presented with the
instruction given by the authorized
teacher of revealed truth, before a
real and certain assent of divine
faith can be given. One who has
had faith, therefore, from the first
beginning of the use of reason, and
has never doubted, if he possesses
sufficient capacity and learning,
can apply the internal and external
criteria of certitude by a reflex ex-
amination of the rational grounds
of the Catholic doctrine. He can
have a scientific, philosophical,
theological, critical, and historical
certitude of the entire Catholic re-
ligion and all its parts, a Christian
demonstration equal though not
precisely similar to that which he
may have of the best known and
most constant laws and facts of na-
tural science. The demonstration
is not directly founded through-
out on metaphysical but on moral
evidence. It is, therefore, proper-
ly called a moral demonstration.
Nevertheless it is reducible indi-
rectly to a demonstration which
may be called strictly metaphysical.
The whole is contained in the syl-
logism :
Whatever God reveals is certain-
ly true ;
God has revealed all which the
church proposes as a divine revela-
tion ;
Therefore, all this is certainly
true.
The major premise is meta-
physically certain. The minor pre-
mise is morally certain, and proved
by the whole mass of the motives
of credibility. The conclusion is
contained in the major premise,
and therefore has all the intrinsic
and objective truth of that premise.
But, subjectively, and in respect to
486
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
our apprehension, our mind is
placed in adequation to this objec-
tive truth only in proportion to the
quality of the moral evidence of the
minor premise, by which the con-
clusion is proved to be contained
in the major. By the logical rule,
consequently, that the weaker pre-
mise qualifies the conclusion, the
conclusion is for us only morally
certain, by the direct force of the
argument. Yet it is reductively
metaphysical. For, it is demon-
strably incompatible with the attri-
butes of God that he should per-
mit any religion to be invested
with the credibilily of the most
complete moral evidence, except
that which is absolutely true and
revealed.
Children, and the simple, unlearn-
ed people, have enough of this
kind of knowledge for a reasonable
certainty of all which is necessary
for them as a condition of believing
and practising the essential part of
the Catholic religion. They have
it, just as they have the implicit,
substantial philosophy which suf-
fices for the ordinary purposes of
common life. Those who are ig-
norant of the Catholic faith, and
who are incapable of the amount of
study and thought which are neces-
sary for a complete and extensive
understanding of an historical,
philosophical, and theological de-
monstration of the Catholic religion,
like that which sufficed for convinc-
ing minds of the order of Stolberg,
Newman, and Brownson, can never-
theless attain a rational conviction
by a short and easy process. Any
one who has the use of reason, rec-
titude of will, a sincere desire for
truth, and who is not so preoccu-
pied by the prejudices of education
as to be in a state of invincible
ignorance, if he has the opportu-
nity of proper instruction can learn
enough in a month, to give him a
reasonable certitude thai the Ca-
tholic Church has a divine and in-
fallible authority to teach the truth
necessary to salvation. This is all
he requires, for he has only to re-
ceive on this authority whatever
is taught him, by the way of faith.
But if we suppose a man to possess
the maximum of intellect and hu-
man science, yet to be ignorant of
the faith and to apply himself to
acquire all the knowledge of the
greatest possible theologian, the
Catholic demonstration is adequate
to give him rational and certain
science and conviction, co-exten-
sive with his capacity of apprehen-
sion. Satan has all this science
with a perfection far beyond what
is possible for a human mind in
virtue of its natural faculties. And
although such a man as we suppose
should deliberately determine to
adhere to Satan, with full know-
ledge of the truth, it is abstractly
possible that he might retain his
intellectual conviction of the abso-
lute certainty of all Catholic doc-
trine undiminished. If he is sup-
posed to be wavering and undeter-
mined, it is much more conceiv-
able that, while his decision is in
abeyance, he should attain such a
clear, intellectual conviction. It
is not, however, in accordance with
the ordinary character of men that
they should be so nearly assimilat-
ed to demons.
Rarely will a man follow his in- .
tellect with such determined au-
dacity on the road of despair, un-
less he is an apostate priest who
has become obdurate in his rebel-
lion. One who has been hitherto
following only the natural light of
reason will not usually set himself
to seek after the truth of the super-
natural order, unless he has at least
an incipient disposition to embrace
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
487
it, with the full consent of his will,
for his own good, after he has found
it. If he cherishes this disposition,
and permits the new light which
gradually dawns on him to influ-
ence his will, the grace of God will
enlighten him and stir his heart to
embrace the truth with love, so
that his conviction will not long
precede the full act of divine faith.
But if he falters and draws back,
he will almost surely shrink from
facing the responsibility of openly
and avowedly violating his con-
science, and will seek rather to de-
fraud it by some plausible pretext.
Even apostates ordinarily do the
same, and not only openly deny
and disown the faith, but inward-
ly seek to sophisticate their own
minds, and to persuade themselves
that their heresy or infidelity has
a rational ground. Seldom, if
ever, is a complete and permanent
intellectual conviction of the truth
of the Catholic religion found dis-
sociated from faith, unless in
some cases where it exists as a dead
residuum of the faith which has
been once had. The evidence of
the truth of the total sum of Ca-
tholic doctrine does not of itself
necessarily compel assent. The
mind has a tendency to fall off at
least into doubt, respecting an ob-
ject of intelligence which is wholly
above reason and supernatural, and
is made certain only by the vera-
city of God revealing, unless it is
strengthened and steadied by su-
pernatural light. The capacity of
apprehending the evidence depends
in a great measure upon the moral
rectitude of the individual. Moral
turpitude, even of that more sub-
tle and refined sort which does not
make the mind gross and stupid,
pride, self-love, vain-glory, attach-
ment to temporal interests, dims
and perverts the faculty of ap-
prehending the highest order of
truth. Great voluntary effort is
necessary in order to get posses-
sion of the complete evidence and
to keep the attention fixed upon it
steadily. It is possible to wilfully
ignore, forget, or distort the rea-
sons and motives of credibility.
Therefore, although the will can-
not absolutely command or pro-
hibit assent by despotic caprice,
according to the passions and de-
sires of the individual, its influence
is very great in determining the in-
tellect this way or that, when the
object of intellectual apprehension
does not irresistibly force itself up-
on the attention and extort the as-
sent of the intellect. Most persons
have enough of ignorance, preju-
dice, and an illogical habit of ar-
guing, to be able to deceive them-
selves with some sort of sophistry,
when they have a strong motive
for doing so. Even the few who
know so much and think so clear-
ly, that they cannot deceive them-
selves by vulgar errors and illu-
sions, can find some recondite loop-
hole of escape from unwelcome
truth of the divine order. We
find, therefore, instances of men
who admit the whole chain and
series of arguments and facts by
which the Catholic religion is de-
monstrated, except some one nec-
essary link, the want of which is
fatal to a complete and fixed con-
viction. Proudhon, for example,
clearly saw and vehemently assert-
ed, that if you admit the reality of
the supernatural order the Catho-
lic conclusion must be drawn by
the force of an irresistible logic,
yet he denied the supernatural.
We can understand, therefore,
how it is that the Christian and
Catholic motives of credibility,
without prejudice to their demon-
strative character, are not effica-
488
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
cious to prevent numerous aposta-
sies among those who have receiv-
ed a Christian education, or to
convince the greater number of
those who have been brought up
in error or unbelief. The real and
intrinsic cause for rejecting or re-
fusing to accept the revealed truth
of God when sufficiently proposed
by the Catholic Church, is a secret
antipathy to God, and not a ra-
tional judgment that the motives
of credibility are insufficient. This
antipathy puts in a plea in bar of
all the rational evidence and argu-
ments which the advocates of the
true and divine religion can pre-
sent. Antipathy to God as the
most perfect being and sovereign
good is, indeed, impossible to a ra-
tional nature. It is only a negative
aversion, or want of inclination to
seek for his supreme good in a su-
pernatural union with the divine
essence, which constitutes the " vis
inertias " of human nature when left
in its native state, and places an
obstacle which can be overcome
only by divine grace. There can
be, however, a positive antipathy
to that renunciation of the sensible
good toward which the soul has a
natural inclination, which is re-
quired as the condition of attaining
its supernatural end. When this
repugnance dominates and over-
comes the impulse of grace, the
soul turns away from God with a
positive aversion, and rejects the
sovereign good for the sake of that
inferior good which it has chosen.
Thus it was that the majority of
the human race, casting themselves
impetuously upon the current which
carried them into the external life
of the senses, and seeking to work
out for themselves an earthly and
temporal destiny, lost the truth and
grace of the primitive revelation.
This is the origin of the false reli-
gions of antiquity. In the new
world of Christendom, as soon as
the great struggle of religion and
the church had ended in a triumph,
the great mass of Christians, with-
out renouncing faith or openly re-
volting against the Christian law r
abandoned the practical observ-
ance of religious maxims, and gave
themselves to the pursuit and en-
joyment of temporal goods. The
revolt of heresy was the conse-
quence of this outbreak of moral
corruption, and the infidelity and
atheism of the present age are the
logical, necessary consequence of
this heretical revolt. Their root
and reason are not in science but
in sin, estrangement from God in
Christ, who is offering to the world
a reconciliation with himself which
the great number^ of men who are
in revolt against his law will not
accept. The argument against re-
ligion is a plea in justification of
this alienation from God, an at-
tempt to make out a case for the
claim of independence and self-
sovereignty.
The substance of the plea, which
is thus placed in bar of all evi-
dence proving the credibility of the
Catholic religion, as a revelation
from God demanding an unquali-
fied assent and submission of the
mind and will to its doctrines and
precepts, may be stated as follows.
A creator and ruler of infinite wis-
dom, power, and goodness ought
to govern the universe and bring
all rational creatures to perfection
and happiness, through constant
and invariable natural laws. The
operation of these laws ought to
produce the maximum of natural
good in all creatures, especially
those who are rational. But the
Catholic theory of the dealings of
God with men represents him as
establishing an order which inter-
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
489
rupts the course of nature, and
produces, or at least does not pre-
vent, the maximum of natural evil
in the case of the great majority of
the human race, while the smaller
number can only hope for the good
proposed to them in a future life
by sacrificing that of the present
life.
This plea is deprived of all the
plausibility which it may have in
the face of the distorted, incohe-
rent perversions of Christianity
which have sprung from heresy, by
the clear and simple presentation
of the true idea of the supernatural
order. We may admit that in an
order purely natural, the infinite
goodness and almighty power of
God might reasonably be expected
to produce the relative maximum
of universal good by purely natural
laws, without suffering any evil or
pain to disturb the order and feli-
city, everywhere reigning with a
necessary and immutable continu-
ity. But the actual order is super-
natural, and by the very essence of
nature it is wholly insufficient for
the attainment of its end in this
order, by natural means. This
order is infinitely better than any
maximum of natural good, and
reason alone suffices to show that
all nature must be subordinated to
it. This sweeps away the puerile
objections against the possibility
of miracles and of the revelation of
mysteries. Moreover, the moral
order of free will, probation, and
merit, gives a sufficient reason for
placing rational creatures in that
imperfect state in which they are
obnoxious to error and evil. Tem-
porary evils which are incidental
to those conditions upon which the
attainment of the ultimate maxi-
mum of supernatural good is de-
pendent, are not worthy of any
consideration in view of the end.
The martyrs, and the King of mar-
tyrs, suffered the maximum of tem-
poral evil for a time. The King of
martyrs chose this supreme natural
evil, death on the cross, for him-
self and his most favored compan-
ions, when he need not have done
so. What is this crucifixion now
to those who for the joy set before
them endured the cross, despising,
the shame, and have inherited a
name above every name, arid a
glory which is ineffable ? There
is only one evil worth consider-
ing, namely, that which is eternal.
When we consider this eternity of
evil as a preliminary objection to
the credibility of the Catholic
faith, it is necessary that we
should eliminate all adventitious
notions and accretions by which
the Catholic dogma is perverted
and exaggerated, and regard sim-
ply what must be taken as certain-
ly revealed truth by the certain
teaching of Catholic authority.
Not only should perversions and
exaggerations be put aside, but ex-
planations, deductions, and inter-
pretations which are only private
theological doctrine, and even the
arguments adduced in proof of
Catholic doctrine, are to be distin-
guished from that naked, substan-
tial truth which pertains to faith or
Catholic doctrine. Concepts of
the imagination by which poets or
sacred orators or popular writers
endeavor to represent in a concrete
form the realities of the world
which is at present to us invisible,,
must likewise be relegated to their
proper place as similitudes, whose
actual resemblance to the things f
of which they are images must be
judged by the rational concepts of
the things themselves, and not
taken as a measure of the rational
concepts, or a medium of appre-
hending the same.
490
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
The repugnance which is so
commonly felt toward the idea of
-evil existing at all, but especially
in perpetuity, in a universe created
by infinite wisdom and goodness,
springs chiefly, in upright minds
and good hearts, from the imagina-
tion and the sensitive nature, op-
pressed by the notion of evil as some
horrible substantive being invading
the realm of good being and swallow-
ing up a great part of it. Reason
strives to free the imagination from
the horror of this apparition. How
can the archetypal ideas of God
contain the type of evil; or love,
which is diffusive of the good of
being in its very essence, diffuse
evil ? How indeed ? God forbid
that they should ! It is an axiom
in Catholic philosophy and theolo-
gy that every being is good in so
far as it is substance and positive
reality, that evil is a negative quan-
tity, and sin a privation of the
plenitude of being due either to
rational nature as such, or as su-
pernaturally elevated above itself
by grace. The evil of penalty is a
privation which is the consequence
of sin. Free and responsible be-
ings are placed by the Creator in
the way to attain their end by their
voluntary action. There is a fixed
term to this way for each one, and
one common final term to the
whole order of probation for the
total multitude of such beings.
Those who fail of attaining super-
natural beatitude at the end of this
term, are deprived for ever of the
means of regaining it. Their es-
sential state, involving the privation
of that sanctity which is necessary
for the fellowship of the blessed, and
as an inevitable consequence the
privation of the proportionate good,
is unchangeable and eternal. The
privation of natural good, due ac-
cording to retributive justice to
actual sins, is proportioned to the
deterioration of nature caused by
these sins, and to the violation of
the natural order which follows
from the wilful turning away from
the supernatural end to follow an
inferior good. The celebrated
Roman Jesuit, F. Taparelli, in his
great work, Saggio Teoretico di
Dritto JVaturale, defines this retri-
bution in the natural order as fol-
lows :
" II bene retribuito a chi ben fece suol
dirsi ricompensa, premio, mercede, ec. ; il
male a chi mal fece pena, gastigo, puni-
zione, ec. Quindi apparisce che il gas-
tigo e, non un dolore, un tormento dell'
uom sensitive, ma una reazione dell'
ordine contro il disordine, e che nel
mondo morale come nel fisico questa
reazione conservatrice e uguale ed op-
posta all' azione distruttiva. La giusti-
zia vendicativa dunque, lungi dall' es-
sere un cieco impeto di passione, e fon-
data in quella essenziale tendenza al
vero, all' ordine che forma la natura
stessa dell' umana intelligenza. Ogni
disordine essendo una disposizionedelle
cose contraria alle vere loro relazioni,
eppero essendo una falsita, ripugna es-
senzialmente alia mente, onde essa do-
manda un violento ritorno air ordine per-
turbato, e questa violenzo e il gastigo."
" The good awarded to one who has
done that which is good is wont to be
called recompense, reward, wages, etc. ;
the evil to the evil-doer penalty, chastise-
ment, punishment, etc. Whence it ap-
pears that chastisement is, not a suffering,
a torment of the sensitive man, but a
reaction of order against disorder, and
that in the moral as in the physical
world this conservative reaction is equal
and opposed to the destructive action.
Vindictive justice, therefore, far from
being a blind impulse of passion, is
founded in that essential tendency to
truth and order which forms the very
nature of the human intelligence. Every
disorder being a disposition of things
contrary to their true relations and con-
sequently a falsity, is essentially repug-
nant to the mind, which demands there-
fore a violent return to the perturbed
order, and this violence is the chastise-
ment.
* Dritt. Nat., vol. i. diss. i. n. 134.
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
49 1
This passage is quoted with ap-
probation by Liberatore in his
Ethics, one of the text-books pre-
scribed by Leo XIII. for use in
the Roman colleges. It may be
accepted, therefore, as agreeing
with Catholic faith and doctrine,
though it is a purely philosophical
statement, based on reason and not
on revelation.
The dogma of Catholic faith is
theologically denned by Perrone as
follows : ft t ^s ;
" Ut autem et in gravissimo hoc argu-
mento, quae de fide sunt, ab iis secerna-
mus, quae eamdem non obtinent certitu-
dinem, dicimus, duo tantum definita ac
defide credenda circa infernum proponi ;
ac primo quidem inferni existentiam ;
secundo, asternitatem pcenarum. Cae-
tera vero omnia, quae sive ad locum
spectant, sive ad pcenarum positivarum
naturam ac qualitatem, intensitatem,
etc., nullo umquam ecclesiae decreto
sancita sunt, ac plures etiam variaeque
olim viguere sententiae, uti ostendit Pe-
tavius, De Angelis, lib. iii. c. 5, cui alii
adstipulantur " " In order that in such
a very grave subject we may separate
those things which are of faith from those
which do not possess the same certainty,
we say, that only two things have been
defined and proposed to be believed as
of faith : first, the existence of hell ; sec-
ondly, the eternity of its penalties. All
other things, relating either to the place,
or to the nature, quality, intensity, etc.,
of the positive punishments have never
been sanctioned by any decree of the
church, and, moreover, many and vari-
ous opinions have formerly prevailed, as
Petavius shows, with whom others con-
cur."*
The best theologians concur in
stating as a common and certain
doctrine expressing the tacit sense
of the church founded in the Holy
Scripture, that the term " Eternal
Fire" is not a merely metaphorical
expression but one which denotes
a physical reality. But, beyond
this, they do not profess to give
a certain explanation. Bonal, an
* Compendium Theol., art. " De Inferno."
author whose work passed through
a careful revision by the consultors
of the Congregation of the Index,
and is used in thirty seminaries
in France, says : " Qu&ritur. Qua-
lis sit ignis inferni ? Resp. Non
consentiunt auctores " " Of what
nature is the fire of hell ? Authors
do not agree." The learned Arch-
bishop Kenrick, of Baltimore, says:
" Quse autem supplicia ignis nom-
ine in Scripturis designantur, non
satis feliciter quis explicuerit "
" No one has satisfactorily explain-
ed what those punishments are
which are designated in Scripture
by the name of fire." He says,
further, that it is sufficient to main-
tain that the punishment arises
" ex ipsa peccatorum conditione
quum procul sint a regno ccelor-
um " " from the very condition of
sinners as far from the kingdom of
heaven." Again, the same prelate
says : " Necesse non est Deum con-
cipere pcenas irrogantem " " It is
not necessary to conceive that God
actively inflicts punishments." Bo-
nal also states that there is a
difference between the essential
and the accidental punishment, the
first, by the essential relation in
which the reprobate stands toward
God, constant and eternal, the sec-
ond capable of variation from ex-
trinsic and accidental circumstan-
ces : " Some have thought that
the punishments of the reprobate
can be mitigated, either in the
sense that in the particular judg-
ment God does not condemn the
reprobate to the full degree of pun-
ishment which they deserve ; or in
the sense that after the particular
judgment, at certain intervals of
time, he diminishes the punishments
of the damned, although they re-'
main eternal. No one of these
opinions is considered by theolo-
gians as contrary to Catholic ver-
492
The Reality of tJie Supernatural Order.
ity." And he goes on to say that,
according to St. Thomas, this mi-
tigation, if it occurs after the judg-
ment, must be in respect to the ac-
cidental punishment.
The modern atheists say that the
evils of human existence prove
that the first cause, whatever that
unknowable power may be, is piti-
less. There is nothing to be ex-
pected but the everlasting conti-
nuity of evil or annihilation. The
modern rationalists make the ulti-
mate term of sin to be annihilation,
or else they argue a possibility, a
probability, ora certainty of progres-
sion in the line of improvement and
amelioration in the condition of the
sinner hereafter. They generally
agree that souls which have become
voluntarily debased and degraded
by vice in this life go into hell after
leaving the body. They do not all
agree in affirming that it is prova-
ble from any source, that the final
attainment by all of perfect holi-
ness and felicity is certain. Those
who believe positively in a heaven
differ among themselves on the
question, whether all men are sure
of attaining it sooner or later after
death. Some assert boldly that it is
certain that they do. Others say it is
to be hoped that they do. Others
venture only to assert that they
certainly or probably can if they
will. If they can prove by probable
rational arguments, without contra-
dicting what is certainly taught in
the Scripture, that an amelioration
of this sort within the limits of na-
ture may be produced by the reac-
tion of the violated order according
to the laws of nature, they will not
thereby contradict any dogma of
Catholic faith. Theology and phi-
losophy, as human sciences, have
an authority and a certainty only
co-extensive with the evidence and
the reasons on which their conclu-
sions are based. Within the do-
main of probability, opinion enjoys
her liberty ; and the field is open
for argument or even conjecture.
But there is no foundation for pro-
bability or hypothetical possibility,
except from the starting-point and
under the directive regulation of
absolute and certain truth. It
is absurd and immoral to make,
a priori, a plea in bar of the evi-
dence of the Catholic faith, on ac-
count of difficulties, obscurities, ig-
norance, respecting matters which
are revealed in part and known
in part only, and which immense-
ly transcend our present degree
of intelligence. The atheist re-
nounces his rational nature, when
he denies the existence of God, be-
cause of the evils which he permits
to exist; and abandons everything
to the universal sway of evil, that
is, privation of being. The ration-
alist goes contrary to reason, when
he refuses assent to the same evi-
dence, because God reveals that
Hell is an eternal state; and throws
a mist of confusion over the whole
idea of the future destiny of man.
This plea in bar of the credibili-
ty of revelation could only be valid,
if some self-evident rational truth
were contradicted by the dogmas
proposed to faith as revealed. The
permission of evil, for the sake of
a greater good than the exclusion
of evil by an exercise of omnipo-
tence, is not contrary to any self-
evident truths ; and those who put
in this plea in bar not only of re-
vealed but of all natural theology,
do not hesitate to assert numerous
contradictions to the most primary
self-evident truths. The eternal
privation of that good for which
free and responsible beings have
voluntarily rendered themselves un-
fit, is not contrary to any self-evi-
dent rational truth. The wisdom
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
493
and goodness of God produce the
maximum of good in the rational
universe by the supernatural order.
To this maximum of good, proba-
tion, involving an inchoate condi-
tion of those placed in the way to
the end, obnoxious to error and
sin, is necessary. From the evils
which are caused by actual sin,
though these are not necessary to
the end or directly ordered for
that end, God, nevertheless, draws
a still greater amount and higher
quality of good than would result
from his efficaciously preventing
their occurrence. Their disturb-
ing effect on the order of nature is
counteracted by the reaction of
this violated order in which con-
sists the eternal penalty of the vio-
lation, a penalty exactly equal to
the offence and therefore just.
The revealed dogma adds nothing
to the conclusion of rational ethics
except- this. It discloses that the
privation of the attainment of the
end is the privation primarily of
the supernatural good. This good
is not due to nature, but purely
gratuitous. The loss of it does
not necessarily cause a privation
of natural good, and therefore
this natural good is only so far de-
stroyed or impaired, as the volun-
tary depravation of rational nature
by the abuse of liberty deprives it
of the capacity of enjoying this
good. The Eternal Hell of Ca-
tholic faith is therefore, in its es-
sence, the state of final privation
of the supernatural beatitude of
Heaven ; together with the natural
consequences which follow from
this privation, according to the
moral quality and condition of each
individual who has sinned during
his probation and thereby missed
1m end. The obscurity which en-
velops our partial knowledge of the
Siiuernal and infernal states of ever-
lasting existence in the endless fu-
ture, is an obscurity which envel-
ops all things whatsoever which
are known by any kind of science.
It is a part of our moral discipline
to submit to this condition of igno-
rance, and trust absolutely to the
incomprehensible wisdom of God.
Some remarks of the very modest
but thoroughly scientific author of
a work on astronomy, concerning
the nebular hypothesis and similar
speculative views of the past and
future of the solar system, are ca-
pable of application in a wider
range : " God's ways are not our
ways, nor are his thoughts our
thoughts. The laws of nature, to
which our thoughts are confined,
are necessarily mere fragments of
the great order of nature, which
exists, as we hope, by the authori-
ty of an infinite Creator, to whose
wisdom and goodness we may
trust."*
The trivial and superficial ob-
jections so often made against
Christianity on account of the
many evils and miseries existing
in nominal Christian society are
swept away in a word, by the ap-
plication of the same truth which
has been the topic of our exposi-
tion thus far. It is not the prima-
ry and direct object of the Catho-
lic Church to produce on earth the
maximum of temporal good, but to
bring men to the highest possible
supernatural virtue and future bea-
titude. The temporal good is only
a means, it is only a medium and
not a maximum good which is pos-
sible in our present state, and this
is only produced in so far as the
free-will of man co-operates with
the divine order of nature and
grace. The power of Christianity
* Outlines of Astronomy, by Arthur Searle,
A.M., Assistant at Harvard College Observatory,
p. 384.
494
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
is not mechanical but dynamic.
The sins of men, and not the fail-
ure of Christianity, are the cause
of all the evils and miseries of the
world, except in so far as the con-
dition of human nature in its pre-
sent state is essentially imperfect
and incapable of perfectibility.
With all these antecedent objec-
tions which constitute the plea in
bar of the credibility of the Catho-
lic faith, the science of physics has
nothing to do. It is not science
but unscience which is hostile to
Christianity and rational theism.
Some men who have a great amount
of knowledge of physical facts, in-
vent hypotheses which are not prov-
ed by induction, by which they
slide over into the region of the
higher philosophy of which they
are profoundly ignorant, and make
their worthless, absurd assertions
or denials pass with the ignorant,
unthinking multitude for science.
The same is true in the field of
history and criticism. The line
followed is that of hypothesis, scep-
tical criticism, the collecting of ob-
jections, of difficulties, of logical
sophisms, of evasions and special
pleadings, and of the continual
vaunting of the authority of wri-
ters belonging to the sceptical par-
ty, and of their conjectures and as-
sertions, under the assumed and
illegitimate title of scientific men
and science. The refutations and
arguments of the other side are
steadily ignored. There is no se-
rious and thorough argument against
the minor proposition of the Ca-
tholic syllogism, which respects the
motives of credibility. The ra-
tional and historical demonstration
of credibility, by which the Catho-
lic Church proves the obligation
of undoubting assent to the faith
of her Lord, Jesus Christ, remains
unanswered and unanswerable. A
repetition even in a condensed
form of this demonstration would
not be possible without adding a
volume to this series of brief es-
says, and is not at all requisite,
since the work has been done so
often and so well. The small vol-
ume of F. Jouin on the evidences
of revelation, and Archbishop Gib-
bons' little book on the evidences
of the Catholic faith, really suffice
for gaining a competent knowledge
of these subjects. And if any de-
sire to study them more extensive-
ly there is a whole library of works
of consummate learning and ability
in all the principal modern lan-
guages.
The sum of the whole mass of
evidence is a conclusion, which
completes the exposition of the
reality of all objects of human cog-
nition which we have presented.
The real world includes the order
of divine providence in respect to
the human race. Following that
rational process which is based on
first principles and experience, we
argue that the actual order is true
and divine. This universal order
is religious and supernatural. The
reality of knowledge includes the
reality of the universal religious
convictions of mankind. The cri-
terion of certitude, both the inter-
nal and external, verifies the re-
vealed religion by the measure of
metaphysical, physical, and moral
evidence. The reality of the suf-
ficient reason and first cause mani-
fests that God alone can be the
author of revelation as well as of
the rational nature ; of the order
subsisting in the Catholic Church,
as well as that which governs the
visible universe. The reality of
the soul p.nd its endless future des-
tiny manifests the need of a dis-
closure of the final end and of the
way, and the necessity of an unerr-
The Reality of the Supernatural Order.
49$
ing rule to direct the intellect and
will to their supreme good, which
reason and rational science do not
sufficiently furnish, and which must
be recognized in that divine faith
and divine law which are promul-
gated by the infallible authority of
the Catholic Church. The church
stands as a great fact, present be-
fore the mind as the sun is pre-
sent to vision, exhibiting and giv-
ing evidence to itself as true by its
unity, sanctity, and universality,
whose divine origin cannot be de-
nied without denying the principle
of causality. By the continuity of
its existence and the immutability
of its testimony, in which it is his-
torically proved that no sensible
change has occurred, and rational-
ly evident that no insensible change
was possible, it bears witness to its
Founder, who gives testimony to
his own divinity, which testimony
is ratified by the Father in heaven
through the divine works wrought
by the Son.
As the Triumphal Arch closes
the vista which is open before the
eye of an observer at the palace
of the Tuileries, so the long vista
through the centuries of the Chris-
tian period from the Catholic
Church of the present, is terminat-
ed by that monument of the tri-
umph of humanity, the sepulchre
of the risen Christ. Changing a
little the passage already quoted
from Mr. Alger, by dropping that
hypothetical form which is more
worthy of an Academic than of a
Christian believer, it is the state-
ment of an indisputable fact and
an irrefragable argument, in which
the truth of Christianity and the
divine authority of its Founder,
exercised through his church, is so
clearly manifested, that no mists of
sophistry can ever shroud it in ob-
scurity. " Of all the single events
that have ever occurred in the
world, undoubtedly the most au-
gust in its moral associations and
the most stupendous in its lineal
effects, both on the outward for-
tunes and on the inward experience
of mankind, is the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead. God
is in history, guiding the moral
drift of human affairs, and, there-
fore, the dazzling success of the
proclamation of the risen Redeem-
er is the divine seal upon the truth
of his mission and the reality of
his apotheosis." The Catholic
Church makes this proclamation,
by her this dazzling success, this
conquest and triumph in the re-
generation of humanity, was achiev-
ed, which is therefore the divine
seal upon the truth of her divine
legation, and the reality of her di-
vine and infallible authority.
496 A Prayer for Lady Poverty.
A PRAYER FOR LADY POVERTY.
BY ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI.
FROM THE FRENCH OF A. F. OZANAM.
O LORD, thy mercy give to me
And unto Lady Poverty,
Who doth a queen o'er every virtue reign :
Behold her miserable state,
Upon a dunghill sitting desolate,
Contemned by all with undeserved disdain ;
To thee, O Lord, she looks and cries,
Her friends all grown her enemies.
O dearest Lord, give ear unto her cry ;
Remember, from the angels' home
Thou didst to earth unthankful come
To wed this holy Lady Poverty ;
To take her for thy spouse most dear,
That unto thee her love might bear
Sons, without number, who should be
Perfect for ever in thy charity.
She was it who did thee receive
In heedless Bethlehem's midnight cave,
She in the manger made thy infant bed :
Thy whole life long she walked with thee,
Her care was it that thine should be
No place on earth to lay thy sacred head.
When our redemption's war of woe
Thou didst begin for our love's sake,
Dear Lady Poverty her place did take
As faithful squire a righteous lord beside,
There ever in most loyal love to bide,
Willing no hour of combat to forego.
E'en when thy dear disciples fled,
By her, of soul unterrified,
Still wert thou not abandoned.
A Prayer for Lady Poverty. 497
Still, even when thy Mother pure,
Who all thy dolors did endure
With transfixed heart thee following to the end
When to such Mother was denied
To rest her head thy Heart beside,
Because of thy dread cross's height,
Then Lady Poverty did most befriend,
Clasping thee tighter and more tight,
Closing fond arms in strong embrace, %i
The fulness poured of her love's grace, x .
Her cheek love's pillow for thy suffering face. >'*
Willed not dear Lady Poverty
Thy cross should smoothly fashioned be,
Nor willed she that each cruel, piercing nail
A point fine-wrought and sharp should wear.
And would she for love's purpose spare
Three nails alone, these must in sum avail
That so each rude- wrought edge might be
Weapon more fit of cruelty
In thine appalling agony,
As willed thy perfect chanty.
Her care was it that unto thee,
When thy parched tongue in anguish cried,
With mocking pity was denied
A drop of water's charity.
She reached to thee the bitter draught of wine,
She with the sponge touched those dry lips of thine,
Dear, faithful Lady Poverty !
So was it in the firm embrace
The clinging arms no man could loose
Of this undaunted, loyal spouse,
That yielded unto none love's place;
In those dear arms' constrained abode,
Thy wounded Head in anguish boned,
Thou gavest up thy soul to God.
Who would not wed this spouse so fair,
Whom God in dying held so dear ?
What heart is there that would not truly love
Dear Lady Poverty all things above ?
VOL. XXIX. 32
49 8
Bore en"
BOREEN."
CHAPTER I.
A TALL, powerful-looking young
man, attired in a rough suit of gray
Waterford tweed, stood opposite
Morley's Hotel, Trafalgar Square,
London, one glorious morning in
the June of 1874. In his ungloved
hand he carried a ragged black-
thorn, and at his heels lagged a
wiry, bandy-legged Irish terrier.
Pausing awhile to gaze around him,
Walter Nugent for this was his
name after a brief glance at the
lion over the gateway of Northum-
berland House, at the superb fa-
fade of the National Gallery, and
at " Big Ben " high up in the dis-
tant clock-tower attached to the
Houses of Parliament, crossed the
square in the direction of White-
hall, and, turning into the Horse
Guards, passed beneath the arch-
way on to the park. He was no
diligent student of landscape or
color, yet the beauty of the sun-
lighted foliage, the keen, translu-
cent green of the young lime-trees,
the golden yellow of the laburnum,
the cream white of the chestnuts,
and the rose pink of the red haw-
thorn smote his senses as do sweet
chords of music, till he inad-
vertently exclaimed, " How exqui-
site!" as he stopped short to quaff
to the very dregs this goblet filled
to the outer brim with radiant color-
glory.
As Nugent stood gazing, one
hand in the pocket of his loose,
coarse trousers, the other shoulder-
ing his blackthorn, a gentleman
whose glossy silken hat glittered in
the dayshine, and whose varnished
boots almost emitted reflected rays,
languidly approached. This man r
upon perceiving him of the dog
and stick, adjusted a rimless glass
to a very vacant eye, and, having
satisfied himself of the identity of
the stranger, extended a limp hand,
exclaiming as he did so in a life-
less sort of way :
" You here ?"
" Halloo, Buncombe," cried Nu-
gent, wringing the dead, fish-like
fingers.
"When did you arrive?"
" This morning. I left Dublin
last night."
"Come to stop?"
" A few days. I am here on
don't laugh, old man professional
business."
"So glad! You'll dine with
me ?"
" Con amore."
" What are your opens ?"
"I am all opens, Buncombe. "
"Then let me see. I'm free
to-day. Come and dine at the Carl-
ton. Or stay; hadn't you better
come to Berkeley Square and see
my people ? You won't mind the
nuisance of dining enfamille, though,
by Jove, I believe there are some
outsiders entered for the race. I'll
take you to hawf a dozen dawnces
awfter, if you care for that sort of
lunacy. Say hawf-pawst seven,
ninety-one, the Square." And wav-
ing two fingers daintily encased in
delicate lavender gloves, Mr. Bing-
ham Buncombe lazily sauntered
on his way.
"I'm awfully sorry that I ac-
cepted Buncombe's invitation,"
muttered Nugent. " It means
" Screen:
499
choker and conventionality. Be-
sides, one never gets a dinner at
these swell places, and, Deo gratias !
my jaws are as muscular as that
venerable lawyer who disposed of
the goose, body and bones." And
Nugent, cutting at the daisies with
his blackthorn, gaily warbled :
" ' You are old,' said the youth, ' and your jaws are
too weak
For anything tougher than suet ;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and
the beak.
Pray, how did you manage to do it ?'
" l In my youth,' said his father, 1 1 took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife,
And the muscular strength which it gave to my
jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life.' "
Walter Nugent owned the last
plank of a property that was wreck-
ed in the famine of '48. His fa-
ther, Virschoyle Nugent, had kept
the Kildare hounds, a stableful of
hunters, a racing stud, and a house
and cellar open to all comers, and,
ere his only son reached the age
of manhood, had mortgaged a
princely estate, acre over acre, till
nothing remained of Kihernan but
the house and lawn. With fading
fortune came the bottle, and then
the end, and the unhappy man
died in the ghastly consciousness
of having sacrificed his wife, his
son, and his daughter to a reck-
lessness as idiotic as it was cri-
minal.
Mrs. Nugent, upon the death of
her husband, let Kilternan, and,
accompanied by her two children,
went to reside in a little cottage on
the outskirts of the picturesque vil-
lage of Rathfarnham, situated about
six miles from the city of Dublin.
Her sister, a nun in the adjoining
convent of Loretto Abbey, under-
took the completion of the educa-
tion of Kate Nugent, while Walter
proceeded to read for the Irish
bar, to which he had been called
at the Michaelmas Term prior to
the opening of this story.
The young barrister was pos-
sessed of one of those open, frank,
and fearless natures that woo con-
fidence and win friendship. He
was truth and honor personified.
To him a mean or shabby action
was simply unaccountable. He
was simple as a child in the world's
ways, but as a scholar he was both
well read and distinguished. He
had hot Irish blood in his veins,
that at times lashed fiercely through
his heart when he came face to face
with his hard fortune, but a sooth-
ing word from his mother or sister
calmed him, and Hope never blos-
somed more brightly or whitely
than in the heart of Walter Nugent.
When Boreen, the terrier, found
himself in the open, he resolved
upon making the very most of his
opportunities, and with a joyous
barking set off at a mad pace in
eccentric circles, now bounding
across the grass, now running
fiercely after his own tail, now
springing into the air after vicious
and perplexing flies, and otherwise
disporting himself after the fashion
of the light-hearted of the canine
race. Boreen was no beauty; on
the contrary, he was a mean-look-
ing dog, of a dirty-white hue, and
one eye was covered with a mourn-
ing-like patch of black that impart-
ed a roue air of dissipation to his
whole appearance. He had not
been foxed, so that his ears were
totally out of proportion to the re-
mainder of his body, while they
hung loosely and as if broken, like
those of a lop-eared rabbit. His
tail was long and turned upwards,
his legs were complete semicircles,
and his feet were doubled up as
though he had a preference for
walking on his heels. But Boreen
was as brave as Brian Boroihme,
5oo
"Boreen"
and would cling to death to any
object if his master said " Hold
on " ; and as for rats, he had " done "
his sixty in as many half-seconds.
The dog when a puppy was given
to Walter Nugent by a faithful
follower of the family, who had
shared its downfall, as he had
shared its prosperity Andy Gavin,
the late Virschoyle Nugent's hunts-
man. Andy, for whom the Nu-
gents could obtain no suitable em-
ployment in Dublin, resolved to
seek his fortune in the far West,
and it was on the morning of his
departure for America that he pre-
sented his young master with the
pup.
" Keep him, Masther Walther
jewel," said Andy; "he's not a
beauty for to luk at, but he's av
as fine a breed as there's in all
Ireland. His father it was, ' Pau-
dheen,' that pinned a hocusser be
the leg the night afore Flyin' Tom
won the Conynghame cup at Pun-
chestown races ; the hocusser bruk
into the roof, an' only for the dog
the horse wud have been dhrug-
ged. It's all I have for to give ye,
Masther Walther. If I'd 'a had
any sinse I could have saved lash-
ins; but I was always a gom, an' it
all wint. Plaze God I'll do betther
beyant, an' if I do I'll see yez all
back at Kilternan afore I die ; ay,
an' I'll give the view-halloo whin
you, sir, will be leadin' the Wards
over Malowney's Meadows."
Boreen remained, and Andy
Gavin crossed the broad Atlantic.
Walter loved his father's huntsman,
and loved the dog because it came
from him. Boreen was his con-
stant companion, and with the
hard-favored terrier at his heels he
had traversed every inch of the
Dublin and Wicklow Mountains,
and every road and laneway around
the capital. How the attached
and intelligent animal came to be
ensconced beneath the seat of the
railway carriage at Westland Row
Nugent had yet to learn; there re-
mained nothing for it but to fetch
him along. And thus was Boreen
smuggled up to London ; and, as if
the brute was aware of the financial
penalties imposed upon travellers
discovered in the act of convey-
ing dogs in first-class compart-
ments, he rolled himself up into
the smallest possible compass, giv-
ing no sign of vitality until his
master dug him out of a remote
corner upon the arrival of the train
at Euston Square depot.
Boreen was in exuberant spirits
this glorious June morning, and,
having violently assaulted every
Saxon cur who came within a ra-
dius of a quarter of a mile, frisk-
ed on the green and dappled grass
as his master sauntered leisurely
along, flicking the heads off inno-
cent daisies, or whirling his black-
thorn round his fingers after the
fashion of stage Irishmen at Donny-
brook Fair.
Nugent was in the best of pos-
sible spirits. But who is out of
spirits on a June morning if the
conscience be clear, the health
good, and the age twenty-four ?
The senior member for the County
Kildare was interested in a railway
bill that was to come before a com-
mittee of the House of Commons.
To support his locus standi it was
necessary to employ counsel. The
case merely required to be stated,
and "Mr. Le Fanu bethought him
of the son of his dear old friend
Virschoyle Nugent. He wrote to
Walter, and through his attorneys,
Messrs. Fitzgerald & Son, retained
the services of the young barrister ;
hence this visit to Babylon.
Walter was about to mow down
an intrusive tuft of coarse grass
Bore en.'
501
when an object at his feet caused
him to stop short. This object
had been triumphantly deposited
there by Boreen, who stood over his
loot, eyes sparkling, tongue lolling
half a yard out of his mouth, and
tail wagging like mad. At first
the barrister thought it was a baby
from its mass of white and lace
and insertion, but upon adjusting
the disordered draperies the prize
proved to be a doll, or rather the
remains of one, for Boreen had
worried the delicate waxen face, and
pulled the tow hair, and tugged at
the costly garments as though each
and every one of them had been at-
tached to the person of a recalci-
trant cat.
" Hut tut, Boreen ! Drop it, sir !"
The terrier still held one of the
legs, and was chucking at it for the
bare life. " Drop it, Boreen !" And
Walter, disengaging the limb, from
which the sawdust was now pour-
ing copiously into Boreen's eyes,
looked around to ascertain if the
luckless owner of the doll was any-
where in sight.
A little lady of about six years, a
ball of pink and white, with lustrous
golden hair brushed down to her
blue eyes, came running towards
him.
" How dare that dog touch my
darling pet?" she cried, her haugh-
ty, short upper lip quivering with
anger. " I'll get papa to to kill
him, and and you too, you hor-
rible big man !" Then, snatching
her mangled and tattered favorite
from the barrister's hand, and dis-
covering the truecondition of affairs,
the poor little maid rent the air
with the most heart-breaking sobs.
"Don't cry, my little lambkin,"
said Walter, stooping and tenderly
caressing her. " I'll get you another
doll. Upon my honor I will. A
nicer one, a larger one."
"Will she open and shut her
eyes ?" sobbed the little maid.
"She will, she will."
" And cry ' ma ' and ' pa ' when I
pull a wire ?" sob, sob, sob.
" As often as you like."
" She'll never, never, never be
such an angel as Maudie," hugging
the battered effigy to her frills and
tucker, and bows and laces.
" Wait till you see her, my little
bird," soothed Walter.
" Is she dressed ?"
"Oh! certainly."
"Who dressed her? Worth
dressed Maudie."
"Well, Monsieur Worth dressed
Estelle," baptizing the new doll.
" Is that her name ?"
"Yes."
"Estelle what?"
" Estelle Lafarge," replied the
barrister, highly amused at the
child's inquisitiveness.
" Is she French ?"
"She's French."
" I'm so glad, for do you know
t\t Trixy Ogilvie's new doll is
French, and she abused my poor
dear Maudie because she was Eng-
lish. What'sjy<?&rname ?" By this
time the little maid was smiling
through her tears like a sunbeam
in showers.
" My name is Nugent Walter
Nugent."
" I like you, Walter," she said,
putting her plump little hand in
his. " Come over to auntie ; she's
reading German under that big
tree."
" Some old-fashioned frump, a
weather-beaten she-dragon like
Mrs. Malaprop," thought the bar-
rister, as his little guide tugged him
in the direction of the umbrageous
foliage of a gigantic elm.
" Aunt Hester, here's a gentleman
has a dog, and the dog ran away
with Maudie, and ate her nose off,
502
" Boreen"
and tore her clothes most awfully,
and he beat the dog, and is going
to get me a new doll, and she's
French, and her name is Estelle La-
farge, and she opens and shuts her
eyes, the dear ! and says ' pa ' and
* ma 'as often as Hike. His name is
Walter. Walter, this is Aunt Hes-
ter." And the little maid paused
only for want of breath to enable
her to go on.
Nugent bowed to a young lady
attired in a plain, tight-fitting, tight-
sleeved dress of unrelieved black,
her only adornment being some
bands of big amber beads worn
loosely round the neck. He had
never seen hands so small and so
white. She looked up from the
book that lay upon her lap, and in-
dolently stared at him. The gaze
was not haughty, nor was it inso-
lent, nor was it curious. It was
cold, and indifferent, and lazily
questioning. Her eyes were of
dark gray, heavy lidded, and fring-
ed with long, black, sweeping lashes.
They were soft eyes enough and
capable of intense expression. Her
nose was delicately chiselled, while
the curves of her mouth were
modelled on the most perfect lines.
She was a girl that no ordinary
man could pass without paying an
involuntary tribute of thought to.
She waited for the barrister to
speak.
"I have a vagabond dog," he
said smilingly, " who ran away
with this dear little girl's doll and
made sad havoc with it: This is
the dog," kicking towards Boreen,
who stood panting at a short dis-
tance, well out of boot-range. " I
am bound to replace the doll, and
if"
" There is no necessity," this
coldly.
"Yes, but there is, auntie,"
chimed in the little maid. " If I
don't get Estelle Lafarge I shall
die."
" You have too many dolls
already, Ethel."
" They are all English. Walter's
doll is French. She will teach me
French, and I'll teach her English,
auntie."
il I am greatly afraid," said Nu-
gent, " that this is a case which
lies outside of your jurisdiction,
madam, and it only remains for
my young friend here to give me
her name and address in order to
have the grievous wrong done by
my dog set to rights."
" My name is " commenced the
child.
" Ethel !" her aunt drawing her
close.
" I will tell him my name boo !
hoo ! hoo !" And pink, chubby
knuckles dabbled themselves in
diamond-drop tears.
Walter Nugent stood his ground,
uncertain as to what course he
should adopt. It was quite evident
to him that this coldly aristocratic
girl had resolved upon having no
intercourse whatever with a stran-
ger. He chafed under the conven-
tional ice, resenting it hotly. He
felt injured, aggrieved. His dog
had worried a costly doll prized
beyond all price by its patrician
owner. It was his duty as a gen-
tleman to make good that doll by
substituting another in its stead.
" Had I been a cad," he thought,
" I would have whistled to Boreen
or pretended not to own him, and
have sneaked off; but here I act as
a gentleman towards a lady, and
this girl will have it that I belong
to the canaille, or worse."
Addressing himself to the sob-
bing child, he said : " Never mind,
little birdie, you shall have that
doll, I pledge you my word of
honor." And without so much as
" Bore en"
503
casting a look at the coldly star-
ing occupant of the seat, he gruffly
lifted his hat and strode angrily
away.
When he had walked some lit-
tle distance he espied a park ran-
ger.
" This man may be able to tell
me who the child is," he thought,
and he went over to him.
" Do you see that lady in black
seated under that elm-tree?"
" The nuss as is a-flirtin' with a
gawdsman ?"
" No, yonder." , .
" With the little girl ?"
"Yes."
"I see her, sir."
" Do you know who she is ?"
" I do, sir."
" Who is she ?"
" She's Miss Branscombe, the
banker's daughter, the richest young
lady in all England, sir."
" Whose is the child ?"
" Her little niece, the daughter
of her sister, the Marchioness of
Pomfret. They comes in 'ere every
mornin', Miss Branscombe and the
child, as reg'lar as if they was com-
mon working-people."
" Where does the child live ?"
" Why, over there, of course,"
pointing to the palatial buildings
a wing of which is dedicated to
the Secretary of State for War.
" What is the family name of the
Marquis of Pomfret ?"
" Branscombe, sir."
" Thanks."
" I wonder wot the dickens is he
up to ?" soliloquized the ranger, as
he gazed at the barrister's retreating
figure. " He an't a beggin'-letter
himpostor. Oh ! he's some feller
a-lookin' for a place and wants to be
up in the details of the family."
As this wooden-headed official
crossed the park Miss Branscombe
beckoned to him.
" I saw you speaking to a per
gentleman just now."
" Yes, miss," lifting his hat.
" Do you know who he is ?"
" No, miss."
" Ah !" and she took up her book.
"What was he saying to you, .
Parker," eagerly demanded the lit-
tle Lady Ethel.
" He was a-talking about you, my
lady."
" Did he tell you he was going
to send me a doll, a real French
one, Parker ?"
" No, my lady, but he was a-ask-
ing of where you lived, and I sup-
pose "
" Did you tell him, Parker ? Oh !
I hope you told him."
" I told him, my lady."
'* Oh ! you are a nice man, Par-
ker, and I'll introduce you to
Estelle Lafarge, and "
"Ethel, that will do." And Miss
Branscombe, rising, took the child
by the hand and swept away.
If the barrister had been there
to see he would have intensely ad-
mired the easy grace of that girl,
for a graceful carriage possessed a
subtle attraction for him, as, in-
deed, it does for most men. Wal-
ter Nugent crossed over to Pall
Mall, having ascended the steps at
Carlton House Terrace, where he
stumbled against Mr. Gladstone,
and, passing up St. James Street,
struck Piccadilly, and turned into
the first toy-stand in the Burlington
Arcade.
" What can I do for you, sir ?"
demanded a pert, flippant sales-
woman, impatiently tapping the
nail of the forefinger of her right
hand with a pencil.
" I want to buy a doll."
" What price ?"
" A doll that squeaks I mean
that cries ' pa ' and ' ma,' and all that
sort of thing. It must open and
504
" Boreen"
shut its eyes, and be awfully well
dressed."
In a few minutes the flippant
young lady produced a doll as
large as a full-grown child, with
very staring blue eyes, the lashes
picked out, as is the fashion with
some of the living dolls of the pre-
sent time, vermilion lips shaped
like Cupid's bow, and the hair, of a
pale gold, in flowing ringlets.
" Does she squeak ?" asked Wal-
ter.
A gentle pressure in the region
of the chest extracted the desired
sounds, while the eyes, when the
young lady was placed in a recum-
bent position, closed dreamily.
" This is just the thing ; but she's
not dressed," observed the bar-
rister.
" I'll have her in any dress you
may select by four o'clock, sir
bridal, ball, matinee, or morning
dress, in-door or out-of-door, and
in the prevailing mode."
" Which would a little nymph of
six or seven prefer, do you think ?
She's not my child," he added with
a smile.
" Little girls are very strong on
brides, sir, as they can marry them
every day or ten times a day."
" A wedding trousseau has al-
ways an attraction for even the
smallest daughter of Eve," laughed
the barrister, whereat the flippant
saleswoman vouchsafed to smile
too.
" Where shall I send the bride,
sir ?"
"To Lady Ethel Branscombe,
Horse Guards. I wish to pay you
now. How much?"
" Will you have Honiton or Val-
enciennes trimming ?"
"You needn't put me through
my facings, for I'm not up in this
sort of thing," he laughed.
"Well, let me see," tapping
her teeth with the pencil-point.
"White satin, orange blossoms
um um um Honiton. I'll send
her home for five pounds."
This staggered Nugent, whose
ideas upon the subject of the ex-
pense of dolls had not soared above
thirty shillings. Could he afford
to pay five pounds for a doll, see-
ing he could purchase a much
cheaper one, and possibly just as
attractive ? Then the icy stare of
the banker's daughter smote him.
" I'll show her that I can do the
correct thing," he muttered, as he
drew the crisp Bank of England
note from his pocket-book.
" You will be sure to send the
doll home to day ?"
" It shall be delivered at four
o'clock, sir. Anything more I can
do for you ?"
" Thanks, no. I have purchased
my first, and probablymy last, doll."
CHAPTER II.
BINGHAM BUNCOMBE was in the
House. He sat for the pocket-
borough of Skipton-cum-Fodlum,
in Derbyshire. He graduated for
senatorial honors by accepting the
post of assistant private secretary
to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,
an office created by the Earl of
Spencer to oblige Sir Dudley Dun-
combe, Bingham's father. It was
while he occupied this humble
and unobtrusive post that Walter
Nugent encountered him. Dun-
combe was a first-rate cricketer, a
hard hitter, and a splendid wicket-
keep. Nugent belonged to the
Phoenix Club, whose first eleven
was ever engaged in bowling out the
"Boreen"
505
Viceregal eleven on the bit of green
velvet lawn close to the Viceregal
Lodge in the Phoenix Park. The
young barrister was the best
round-hand bowler in the Phoenix,
and his twist and swiftness played
havoc with wickets that had stood
the test of the wickedest men in the
All-England eleven. On one occa-
sion Buncombe received a ball from
Nugent in the knee instead of on
his bat, and he was laid up on a
sofa for weeks, during which period
the barrister walked out to the
Lodge day after day to sit with
and chat to him. An intimacy
sprang up between the two young
men, and the assistant private sec-
retary, who had charge of the list
of invitations to the Viceregal
dances, took especial care to have
Walter Nugent bidden to all ordi-
nary court gayeties, the extraordi-
nary being exclusively reserved for
the crime de la crime of Swelldom,
or for people who had struggled to
the front in the fight for name and
fame.
Bingham Buncombe was really
glad to meet the barrister, and
paid him the highest compliment
that lay in his power namely, that
of asking him to meet his mother
and his sisters. A man will ask you
to a hotel, to his club, but when
he is thoroughly desirous of show-
ing you the greatest attention he
will invite you to his home. Rely
upon it, he thinks well of you
when he intends to present you to
his sister. A brother is ever on
the watch, on guard as it were,
against the men who are introduc-
ed to his sister. He knows who
and what they are, when pater f am-
ilias will take them on trust.
" I've asked a young Irishman to
dine to-day," he announced.
"An Irishman?" exclaimed his
eldest sister, Kate.
" I like Irishmen," chimed in
Miss Isabella Buncombe. " They
always say what they like, and it's
very refreshing. What is he like,
Bingham ?"
" He is very handsome, and thor-
oughbred, and always in earnest."
" Is he anybody ?" languidly de-
manded Mrs. Buncombe.
"No."
" Ah ! the table will be spoiled
as usual."
The Buncombe mansion in Berke-
ley Square was a ponderous-looking
house, with ponderous doors and
ponderous knockers. Ponderous
balconies ran along the windows
of two stories, and a ponderous
coping completed the fagade sky-
wards. The hall, fitted up with a
cavernous fireplace like a family
vault, was ponderous and gloomy.
Ponderous tables and chairs and
pictures furnished it, while a pon-
derous-looking servant with pon-
derous gilt buttons opened the
door.
" Why didn't I run down to the
Star and Garter at Richmond?"
muttered Nugent as he pulled at
the ponderous bell-handle.
The barrister's silver watch, a
hunter belonging to his father, was
fifteen minutes fast, and when the
servant announced " Mr. Nugent,"
it was to rose-colored satin and
white lace, and statues, and pic-
tures, and flowers, and the thou-
sand-and-one costly knick-knacks
that constitute the charming ensem-
ble of the drawing-room.
"I couldn't have mistaken the
hour," said Walter to himself. " I
suppose these swells ask you at the
half-hour for the quarter to." And
dropping into a caressing arm-chair
which concealed him almost to the
top of his head, he took a photo-
graph-album from an onyx table,
and soon became absorbed in the
506
Bore en"
counterfeit presentments of fair
women and brave men. He was
turning over the leaves rather rap-
idly, as the faces were all unknown
to him save that of Bingham's,
when he suddenly stopped short,
and, binding the book forward in
order to obtain better light, con-
tinued to gaze long and earnestly
at the photograph of a young girl.
" It's rather like me, Bingham, is
it not ?"
Walter Nugent started to his
feet. Opposite to him stood .Hes-
ter Branscombe.
He bowed haughtily, and, closing
the book, moved in the direction
of one of the other drawing-rooms.
He would be even with this girl
use the same weapons. He wanted
no speech of her. Let her remain
within the arctic circle she had
drawn round herself and her hun-
dreds of thousands. He would
none of her.
If he had been an older man,
had seen more of the world, he
would have acted otherwise; but
his heart was young and hot, and
his blood was red and warm, and
he was barely four-and-twenty. It
was a silly thing to resent the man-
ner of a total stranger, and this
strangera woman. It was eminent-
ly ridiculous, and, knowing this, he
felt a stubborn pride in playing out
the rdle he had so foolishly, and
with such utter disregard of the
unities, created for himself.
" Let me present you to my
mother," said Buncombe, and Wal-
ter bowed to a pair of gold-rimmed
eye-glasses surmounting a black
satin dress.
"Very cold in Ireland now, I
suppose ?"
" Oh ! dear, no, not yet."
" Ah ! Your first visit to London,
Mr. Mr. "
" Nugent."
" Nugent. First visit, of course ?"
"Why of course, Mrs. Dun-
combe ?" he laughed ; but the lady's
attention was diverted from him by
the arrival of an old gentleman all
forehead and shirt frills, and an
antique lady hung in diamonds like
an Indian idol.
" My sisters Mr. Nugent," said
Buncombe, moving over to where
Miss Hester Branscombe was pick-
ing a yellow rosebud, a glorious
Marechal Niel, to pieces. Miss
Buncombe didn't think it worth
while ^o waste her time upon the
un-illustrious Irishman, but Isa-
bella, the second sister, of sweet
seventeen, made up for all deficien-
cies, and was soon in the hunting
field, " fetching croppers " and be-
ing pounded to Walter's unmitigat-
ed pleasure and satisfaction. He
took her down to dinner, and it
was only when his eyes met those
of the banker's daughter earnestly
fixed upon him that he recalled
the fact of her existence.
I have already mentioned that
he was but four-and-twenty, and
at four-and-twenty the appetite is
in thoroughly good form. Walter
applied himself vigorously to pheas-
ant soup and chicken turbot, and al-
though between entrees snatching
gentle converse with his neigh-
bor while toying with his dinner-
roll, his honest appetite bade him
not lightly say no to any of the se-
ductive offerings made by confiden-
tially-whispering servants.
Miss Branscombe had been tak-
en down to dinner by a pink-faced,
pink-headed for his yellow hair
made no show young baronet : a
heavy dragoon with ten thousand
a year, whose staple commodity in
the shape of small-talk consisted in :
" Have you seen me on my black
chawgaw? No, not seen me on my
black chawgaw? Bless my spurs!
" Boreen"
507
you shall see me on my black chaw-
gaw."
This sort of thing, very clever and
entertaining in its way, failed to in-
terest the banker's daughter, who
relapsed into complete silence, only
relieved by an occasional yawn de-
livered either behind her menu or
her fan. Right opposite to her on
the table stood a rare orchid, upon
which she occasionally feasted her
eyes, and farther still in the same
direction sat the individual whose
ill-favored cur had "knocked saw-
dust" out of her little niece's doll.
This young gentleman was appar-
ently upon the defensive, for when-
ever his glance would fall in her
direction he either instantly avert-
ed it or treated her to a haughty
or a defiant stare.
It was before the ladies rose
that Miss Duncombe said to Nu-
gent :
" You are acquainted with Miss
Branscombe ?"
" I have not the honor," was his
stiff reply.
" I heard her tell my brother
just now that she had met you."
" She is laboring under a mis-
take."
" She is very pretty, is she not ?"
"Yes, she's pretty," sipping a
glass of claret.
" She's uncommonly wealthy.
She has an estate in Devonshire,
and another in Yorkshire. She's
awfully peculiar asks the queerest
questions and in the most brusque
way. She offends a lot of people.
/ like her, because I know her.
She's very truthful and, as you
gentlemen say, straight."
" I hope your brother may find
favor in her eyes, if he likes it."
"We should be all very pleased.
It would be a very good thing for
Bingham, and the Pomfret interest
in the House of Commons is im-
mensely strong. Have you been
presented to her?"
" No," almost gruffly.
" I shall present you with plea-
sure."
" Thanks, no. I keep out of
the way of heiresses. The fierce
light that beats from the three per
cents dazzles me."
At this moment Mrs. Duncombe
nodded to a lady in ruby velvet
with a bird of paradise, nest and
all, on her head, who responded by
whisking off a glass of claret, and
then came the rustle of female dra-
pery, and the ladies passed out.
"I'm glad to hear that you are
going in for Miss What-you-call-
her, Duncombe," said the barrister,
applying himself to the Chateau
Lafitte.
" Miss Branscombe ?"
"Yes," nodding, and peeling the
first peach of the season.
" It would suit me admirably,
Nugent, if it would suit the young
lady. With the Marquis of Pom-
fret at my back I'd hope for a
junior secretaryship and then the
government benches."
"Then ask and have."
" I can ask ; but as to the having,
cela depend. Half the swells in the
peerage are soupirant. She refused
the Earl of Forsythe last week, and
on dit the Duke of Charlton has
shared the same fate. Forsythe told
us at the club,plumply and plainly."
The two young men chatted over
souvenirs of the Viceregal court
until coffee, and then arm-in-arm
ascended to the drawing-room.
Duncombe lounged over to Miss
Branscombe.
" Bring Mr. Nugent here and
introduce him to me," said that
young lady, very much in the im-
perative mood.
" You're in luck, old man. Miss
Branscombe wishes to know you."
508
Bore en."
" How do you mean ?" asked the
barrister, reddening violently.
" I mean that she has just this
moment, of her own free-will, com-
manded me to bring you up for
that purpose."
" I don't want this thing, Dun-
combe. She treated me like a cad
this morning." And Nugent in a
few words narrated the circum-
stances connected with Boreen, the
doll, and the little Lady Ethel.
"What a green twig you are,
to be sure!" laughed Buncombe.
" Do you mean to say that you re-
fuse to be presented ?"
"I do."
" But, my dear fellow, this will
never do."
" It must do."
" What shall I say to Miss Brans-
combe ?"
"You may tell her the truth."
And Walter, feeling himself consid-
erably aggrieved, cast a defiant
glance in the direction where stood
Miss Hester Branscombe.
With an amused yet perplexed
expression upon his face Duncombe
went back to the heiress, and laugh-
ingly told her how the land lay.
"What a boy!" she exclaimed,
shrugging her white shoulders.
Presently Miss Branscombe glid-
ed to the piano, and, sweeping her
fingers across the keys, played one
of those marvellous bits of Chopin
which dazzle the ears. Then, ere
the brilliant flush of the music had
passed away, she sighed, as it were,
into the symphony of " Savour-
neen Deelish " till the melody
came softly as the murmur of sum-
mer seas. She sang the song.
She had not much voice, it is true,
but it was exquisitely trained, and
she sang with a tenderness and ex-
pression that brought the moisture
into the honest eyes of Walter Nu-
gent.
"I didn't think she could do
that," he said in alow, subdued tone
to Miss Belle Duncombe.
At this moment the heiress ap-
proached to where the barrister
stood, languidly drawing on a
glove.
"So you refuse to know me?"
she exclaimed, her eyes on a re-
fractory glove-button.
This advance was so sudden, so
utterly unexpected, that the bar-
rister stammered, shifted his feet,
grew very red, and made no reply.
"Sit down, Mr. Walter Nugent,"
she said, pointing to a gilt gimcrack
that passed muster for a chair,
while she drooped I have no other
word to express the grace of the
motion into a caressing fautcuil.
"What is your case against me?
You are a barrister. You will
please address the court," gravely
and earnestly.
" I suppose that is "
" Ah ! I see ; like many an Irish
grievance, there is nothing but sen-
timent at the bottom of it," she in-
terrupted. " You said to Mr. Dun-
combe that I treated you like a
cad. In what way ? You were a.
stranger ; you "
" But the dog ?" pleaded Walter.
" The dog was equally a stran-
ger," with a light laugh. " It is
not the habit for young ladies to
be addressed in the parks by stran-
gers. And you may not possibly
be aware that," here she flushed a
rosy red, " I have been persistently
followed by a person who wanted
to marry me. He was insane, and
is now under surveillance."
" I suppose I am a fool," said
Nugent in an abject tone.
" \Vhy, of course you are," she
exclaimed. " You must be very
young."
" I am four-and-twenty."
" Then you are very young for
" Boreen"
509
your age." This in the coolest
and most dogmatic manner possi-
ble. " There was something so
unique in your refusal to be pre-
sented to me that it piqued my"
curiosity. However, that is all
over, and on the part of my niece,
little Ethel, let me thank you for
the beautiful, blushing, and exqui-
sitely trousseaued bride that ar-
rived to-day."
" I hope it's all right," growled
Walter, very dissatisfied with him-
self.
" She's a downright beauty, and
already have heart-burnings, recri-
minations, and jealousies sprung up
amongst Ethel's friends anent Es-
telle Lafarge. You see I have not
forgotten her name."
There is a subtle ecstasy in the
thought that a young and lovely
girl remembers some trifle uttered
by you that you have totally for-
gotten.
Nugent blushed as he laughed.
" What a memory you have, Miss
Branscombe !"
" Quelquefois"
There was a silence, during which
the heiress gazed calmly and com-
placently at the barrister.
" How gloriously you sing !" he
blurted.
" I have no voice ; the melodies
seem to come to me, as they only
require to be breathed."
At this moment Mr. Duncombe,
Sr., a pompous, bald-headed, dou-
ble - chinned, portly - stomached,
white-waistcoated, hard-breathing
gentleman, approached.
" My dear, I want you to sing
me a song. If I dare urge a pre-
ference, I should ahem ! ask for
something ahem ! French."
" I never refuse you, Pere Dun-
combe," laughed the girl, as, draw-
ing off her gloves, she returned to
the piano and warbled with deli-
cious naivete ' :
" Dans un delire extreme
On veut fuir ce qu'on aime,
On pretend se venger,
On jure de changer,
On devient infidele,
On court de belle en belle,
Et 1'on revient toujours
A ses premieres amours.
" Ah, d'une ardeur sincere
Le temps peut nous distraire,
Mais nos plus doux plaisirs
Sont dans nos souvenirs ;
On pense, on pense encore
A celle qu'on adore,
Et 1'on revient toujours
A ses premieres amours."
"Did you like that song?" she
asked of the barrister.
" Not so well as the Irish me-
lody."
" Ah ! on revient toujours a ses
premieres amours" she laughed.
And the party broke up. Car-
riages were announced, and grave
thanks for a most delightful even-
ing were solemnly uttered. In the
hall Nugent encountered Miss
Branscombe.
" Had you not better call and see
your bride?" she said, extending
her hand as she spoke.
"I should be delighted," mur-
mured the barrister.
" Don't bring Boreen," she laugh-
ed, and, curtseying deeply, she was
escorted to her brougham by Bing-
ham Duncombe.
Nugent walked dreamily to the
Tavistock. A joyous bark reach-
ed his ears as he entered the corri-
dor upon which his room was sit-
uated.
" Poor Boreen !" he said. "Come
out into the moonlight, my poor
doggie." And the day-dawn was
strong upon the cabbages, and tur-
nips, and green peas, and market
carts in Covent Garden when man
and dog returned to the hotel.
" A strange girl," he murmured,
as he flung himself upon his bed.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
5io
On Evil.
ON EVIL.
IS EVIL OPPOSED TO THE WISDOM
AND GOODNESS OF GOD ?
IN our former article * we arriv-
ed at the conclusion that evil is
the product of the free-will of a
finite and created person, and that
God is nowise to be held respon-
sible for it, or be accused of cruelty
for the misery which evil entails on
man, and which he simply permits,
not to deprive man of the great
boon of liberty which his intelligent
nature demands.
Yet an objection may be raised
against this doctrine, which we
must put in all its light, as upon it
hinges the whole question of evil.
It is as follows : Either God can
or he cannot prevent his intelligent
and free creatures from committing
evil. If we answer that he cannot,
then we must conclude that evil is
an absolute necessity of creation, a
thing beyond the control of the
universal Cause, another God, and
therefore we fall into the theory
of the Manicheans, admitting two
principles, one an infinite principle
of good, the other an infinite prin-
ciple of evil.
If we answer that he can and
will not, then it is apparent that he
contradicts all his infinite perfec-
tions, especially wisdom and good-
ness his wisdom by letting the
action of his creatures disarrange
the order and harmony of his plan ;
his goodness by suffering his crea-
tures to be overwhelmed by such
an enormous mass of misery and
evil of every kind which he could
easily prevent. And truly, in con-
templating the magnificent and
* THE CATHOLIC WORLD for April, 1879.
sublime plan of the universe, it
seems astounding how God could
have permitted created spirits to
interfere in his system, and to bring
to naught all the order and harmo-
ny which it was destined to pos-
sess. For what can be conceived
more beautiful than the whole cre-
ation elevated in the human nature
of Christ to the dignity of a divine
personality, thus manifesting in the
highest possible manner all the in-
finite attributes of God, and ren-
dering him at the same time a
homage and adoration absolutely
worthy of him ? What can be con-
ceived grander or more sublime
than the destination of all created
persons to union with Christ, in
order to extend the manifestation
of God's attributes and the ac-
knowledgment of his infinite excel-
lence; and by means of that union
to bring all human personalities to
the intimate society of the three
divine Persons by endowing the
former with new and higher nature
and faculties, and making them
partakers of the perfections and
attributes of Christ, causing them
to live of his life by prayer and
communion, by which they could
assimilate themselves to the life of
Christ, and could bring their
supernatural essence and faculties
to their full completion in bliss ?
What more beautiful or captivating
than the sight of all created persons
forming one society with Christ,
and through him and in him hold-
ing sweet and loving intercourse
with each other, aiding and help-
ing each other until their society
could be transplanted into the
highest and supreme expression
On Evil.
of association, the beatific em-
brace of the Trinity ? What more
attractive, more majestic and wor-
thy of the Infinite, than such a
plan, the utmost expression of
God's excellence, a very harmony
and a very music of the most sub-
lime and divine character music
and harmony which appear not
only in the whole plan, all the
different parts of which are gov-
erned by the laws of variety, uni-
ty, proportion, and communion,
laws which constitute the beau-
tiful but in the veriest trifle, if
we may so speak, of every one of its
details ? What more worthy of di-
vine goodness than this grand ele-
vation of creatures, than this mag-
nificent destiny of finite spirits,
even to the intimate society of the
interior life of the Godhead, attain-
ed without struggle, without strife,
without pain or sorrow in a word,
without evil? On the other hand,
let God permit evil, let this baneful
agent enter the system of his works,
and what is the consequence ?
Created persons, who alone were
able to appreciate this grand mani-
festation of God, who should have
rendered him the homage of their
adoration, their obedience and love,
who should have sung to him the
hymn of thankful lays for his
unutterable benefits created per-
sons turn against him and refuse to
acknowledge him as their Creator
by an act of independence and
rebellion which asserts their will
against his. In consequence of
this rebellion all order and har-
mony are lost in man and the world.
Man's natural faculties are weaken-
ed and degraded, a horrible strug-
gle and warfare begins to rage in
his inmost nature, the harmony
which reigned in his double nature
and their respective faculties is
broken asunder, the peace which
prevailed between him and all in-
ferior creatures is dissolved, and
man, once the king and lord over
all creatures beneath him, has be-
come the most helpless of their
slaves. All his faculties are con-
demned to this thraldom, his intel-
ligence, his will, his body. His
intelligence is steeped in sensible
things, and has become a prey to-
every error and absurdity. His
will is drawn away by the most de-
basing tendencies. His body is
subject to an overwhelming mass
of suffering. Who can read histo-
ry and not shudder with horror at
the recital of the unutterable woes
therein made ? Who can go over
without a pang of sorrow the cata-
logue of such miseries ? The fam-
ines, plagues which have so often
afflicted mankind ; the wars of ex-
termination, the wholesale slaugh-
ters, which we find at the founda-
tion of every empire ; the human
hecatombs so much in vogue among
nations ; all the manifold institu-
tions of tyranny and oppression ;
slavery, with its thousand surround-
ing trials; the helots, the gladiators,
the degradation and oppression of
woman, the feeding of beasts with
living human flesh all this forms
an accumulation of woes appalling
the stoutest heart. Add to this
the pain, the torture, the lingering
and excruciating death of all hu-
man persons who have suffered
from the day of man's rebellion
down to our time, and who will go
on suffering until the end of the
world ; all the anguish and sorrow,
of every kind and description, at-
tached to human life and its vicissi-
tudes and changes ; add again the
doom of an eternal 'death hanging
over man as the crowning misery,
and we may well exclaim : Could the
God of heaven and earth, the wise,
the good, the holy, the merciful, per-
512
On Evil.
mit such an accumulation of woes,
such an overwhelming mass of mis-
ery ? Could his wisdom permit all
this ? Could his goodness take
pleasure in torturing the work of
his hands ? In one word, can all
this be reconciled with God's attri-
butes ? If he could not prevent it,
how is he omnipotent ? If he could
and would not, and let such a mass
of misery fall on mankind, how is
he wise, and good, and merciful,
and commiserating?
It will not do to say that God
does not interfere because he
would leave his creatures free and
untrammelled in their operations ;
for this answer evades the ques-
tion rather than solves it. It is
admitted that God could not and
sWuld not destroy his creatures'
free-will in order to prevent evil.
But is this necessary to obtain such
result ? Could not evil be pre-
vented, and at the same time the
free-will of created persons be kept
untouched ? Catholic philosophy
and theology admits such a thing
as an action of God upon his
creatures of such efficacy as to ob-
tain invariably and infallibly what
God wants the creature to do,
and at the same time leave the
free-will of the creature perfect-
ly untrammelled. To say, there-
fore, that God could not inter-
fere to prevent evil, in order to re-
spect the free-will of his creatures,
is no answer to the difficulty. God
could interfere by his efficacious
grace, and such a grace would
obtain what it wishes the creature
to do, and at the same time main-
tain the freedom of the latter. Why,
then, does not the Almighty inter-
fere with such .a grace and prevent
evil ? If he cannot, then he is no
longer almighty ; if he can and
will not, then he is cruel, inhuman,
and barbarous.
We think we have stated the ob-
jection with all fairness, having en-
deavored to make it lose none of
its native force in the handling.
This may be an earnest to our rea-
ders that we do not fear it, but are
fully prepared to meet it. We
would only remark once for all
that such questions as we are treat-
ing of must be decided by reason,
and not by the manner according
to which they may affect the feel-
ings. Feeling is blind and igno-
rant, and can never be the judge of
anything, much less of questions
which demand the greatest atten-
tion and the nicest discernment
of the most dispassionate reason.
" Sapiens operator perficit opus
suum breviori via qua potest."
St. Thomas.
The solution of the above diffi-
culty depends absolutely upon the
nature and requirements of the
supreme law which must govern
the providence of God in the rul-
ing of his creatures. We do not
attempt here to prove the existence
of Providence, as the objection it-
self admits it, its attacks being di-
rected against the mode but not
against the existence of God's gov-
ernment. Let us, therefore, in-
quire into the nature of the su-
preme law of God's providence
The elements of Providence are
as follows :
1. An end to be attained; be-
cause any one attempting to gov-
ern must know what is the object
he wants to secure by that govern-
ment.
2. An intellect which contem-
plates the end and seeks for the
means conducive to the end.
3. An act of the will resolved to
attain the end by way of the means
discovered by the intellect. That
these three elements are necessary
is shown by the very definition of
On Evil.
513
Providence, which is the reason or
cause of the government of the uni-
verse eternally existing in the mind
of God and by him carried out j in
other words, Providence means,
Why is the world governed so ?
Now, this why or fitness between
the means and the end implies
the three elements above mention-
ed : an end to be attained by the
government, an intellect contem-
plating the end and discovering
means conducive to the end, and a
will carrying out the means to at-
tain the end.
Now, an intelligence which adapts
means to an end is called wise,
and a will which conforms itself to
the dictates of a wise intelligence
is called good j wisdom, therefore,
and goodness are the two supreme
elements of Providence, and in or-
der to find out the law of Provi-
dence we must inquire into the law
of wisdom and goodness.
The law of wisdom is as follows :
An intelligent agent cannot act with-
out a sufficient reason for his opera-
tion. This principle is evident.
To act intelligently implies, in force
of the very term, the acting for a
reason, and a reason sufficient to ac-
count for the action ; because if the
reason did not///y account for the
action, the action would be rea-
sonable only as far as accounted
for by the reason, and unreasonable
in that element for which the rea-
son failed to account. This prin-
ciple, therefore, is founded on the
principle of contradiction. To act
intelligently means to act for a rea-
son sufficient to account for the
action. To suppose, therefore, an
intelligent being, as such, acting
without a sufficient reason is to
affirm him intelligent and non-in-
telligent at the same time and in
the same breath.
It may often occur that finite in-
VOL. xxix. 33
telligent beings act without suffi-
cient reason, and the possibility of
such fact is found in the necessary
composition of finite beings, which
are not pure intelligences, but in-
telligences wedded to feelings and
passions. But even this exception
proves the rule, because when
finite intelligences act without suf-
ficient reason they do not act as
intelligences. However, this can
never take place in the Infinite,
who is pure intelligence, and whose
nature and intelligence are abso-
lutely identical, and who must al-
ways act as intelligence, and there-
fore for a sufficient reason. The
law of wisdom, then, demands that
an intelligent being should always
act for a sufficient reason.
What is the law of goodness ?
The same as the law of wisdom,
because the will, to be morally
right, to be good, must follow the
dictates of wisdom. No intelli-
gence can be called wise unless
it can discover the essential and
objective relations of things, and
hence the essential and objective
relations of means to an end. Now,
the will, to be right, to be morally
good, must observe practically the
essential and objective relations of
things, for in that consists the su-
preme principle of morality. The
supreme principle of morality so-
called because you cannot go be-
yond it, because you cannot find
another principle more universal
or imperative is expressed in this
formula : Acknowledge being as it is
in itself and its objective relations.
When you act in accordance with
it you conform yourself to the es-
sences of things and the relations
between them, and you act rightly
and morally. Consequently the
laws of wisdom and goodness are
identical, or rather one simple law.
Goodness depends on wisdom; the
On Evil.
intelligence discovers the essential
relations of things which form the
sufficient reason for acting, and the
will conforms itself to the intelli-
gence. The one apprehends, the
other carries out. The former, ap-
prehending the essential relations
of things, is a wise intelligence; the
latter, acknowledging practically
those relations, is called good will.
Hence that profound saying of St.
Augustine : Recta ratio ipsa est vir-
tus*
This metaphysical reason is con-
firmed by the testimony of man-
kind, which calls folly but not
goodness whatever is done with-
out observing the essential and ob-
jective relations of things, against
the fitness of things, without pro-
per reason.
PROPER END OF PROVIDENCE.
Having seen what is the law of
wisdom and goodness, the two su-
preme elements of Providence, be-
fore resolving the objection we
must determine another most im-
portant element, which is : What is
the end which God proposes to
himself in the government of the
world ?
Now, this end is the highest pos-
sible moral good of created persons.
The proof of this lies in the ex-
planation of the terms. We have
proved that the end of the external
action of God is the highest possi-
ble manifestation of his infinite ex-
cellence. But when ^.nd how is
this really attained ? Not, certainly,
in the creation of beings which
cannot apprehend either the Crea-
tor or his works. It can only be
attained in the creation of beings
which not only can apprehend the
Creator and his works, but acknow-
ledge both by a deliberate act of
* Right reason is itself virtue.
their will that is, by created per-
sonalities. The end, therefore, of
the external action is attained in
the creation of persons who can
apprehend and acknowledge the
Creator and his works. But to
acknowledge the Creator and his
works is to act morally, as we
have said that the supreme prin-
ciple of morality consists in ac-
knowledging being in itself and its
relations. The end of creation,
therefore, can only be attained by
supposing moral good. And as the
end of the external action is not
any kind of manifestation of God's
infinite excellence, but the highest
possible, it follows that the highest
possible theoretical and practical
acknowledgment by created per-
sonalities of God and his works
will attain the end of the external
action, or, in other words, the high-
est possible moral good of created
personalities will attain the end of
the universe. God, therefore, in
governing the world, must have in
view the highest possible moral per-
fection of his intelligent creatures.
And should God fail in procur-
ing the highest moral perfection of
his intelligent creatures in his "gov-
ernment of the world, he would not
only fail in attaining the general
end of creation, but also cease to
provide for the particular end of
his intelligent creatures, as the end
of intelligent creatures is in uni-
son with the end of the universe.
In the reason above given we have
merely put the catechism in a phi-
losophical form. God created the
world to be known and to be loved.
To know and to love God is moral
perfection. The highest know-
ledge and love of God, therefore, is
the highest possible attainment of
the end of the world.
When intelligent creatures ar-
rive at the highest possible know-
On Evil.
515
ledge and love of God, then not
only is the end of the universe at-
tained, but their own peculiar end,
which is also to know and to love
God.
In the government of the world,
therefore, God must have in view
the highest possible moral perfec-
tion of his intelligent creatures.
SOLUTION OF THE DIFFICULTY.
Come we now to the objection.
It will be remembered that evil is
possible; in other words, that a
finite agent may fail in his action,
and that consequently the action
of such an agent may be deprived
of the perfection which it ought to
have just what is meant by evil.
Now, suppose that a finite moral
agent, because free, chooses to fail in
his action, would God be obliged to
interfere and by his power prevent
him from failing? Whatever the
adversaries of God's government
may think, they must admit that
if God is to interfere at all he must
be guided in this interference by
the law of wisdom. They can ad-
mit nothing less, if they do not wish
God to use his power without rea-
son, and make God act foolishly
and without law or principle. The
law of wisdom, therefore, should
guide God in this desired inter-
ference in the actions of his free
creatures ; the law of wisdom which
should guide his divine intellect
in selecting and adopting the best
means to attain the end, means best
adapted to the case in hand. Now,
when we ask God to interfere by
his omnipotence in the action of his
free creatures to prevent them from
failing, his wisdom must consider
and ponder over the following pro-
blems before his power can act :
i. Is this interference of pow-
er, to prevent moral agents from
failing, necessary to the highest
possible moral good of the uni-
verse, which is the end of divine
Providence ?
2. Is this interference useful to
the highest possible moral good of
the world?
Now, according to the various
solutions of these two problems,
divine wisdom can pronounce
whether God can interfere or not
in the action of his creatures. For
if both problems be answered in
the affirmative, if the interference
is necessary or useful to the high-
est possible moral good of the uni-
verse, it is evident what the dictate
of wisdom would be : let God inter-
fere by his extraordinary power to
attain the end of his government.
But if the problems be answered
negatively; if the interference is
neither necessary nor useful ; if, on
the contrary, it is unnecessary, in-
jurious to attain the end proposed
to itself by divine Providence, it is
evident that divine wisdom would
reject all such interference and al-
low the free failing of moral agents
to have full play ; because if the in-
terference were not necessary or
useful to attain the end aimed at,
God by his interference would act
without a reason, without principle
or law that is, unwisely and unin-
telligently. Keeping these princi-
ples in view, we can answer the ob-
jection. It runs as follows : Either
God can prevent evil or he cannot.
If he cannot, then he is no longer
omnipotent ; if he can and will not,
then he is cruel and barbarous.
We are free to admit that God can
prevent evil by his own absolute
power that is, a power considered
independently of all relation to his
other attributes. But if we con-
sidered God's omnipotence not
exclusively and independently, but
in relation to his other attributes
5 r6
On Evil.
such as wisdom, for instance then
the answermust be different. God's
omnipotence thus considered can
prevent evil if his wisdom demands
or advises the doing so ; it cannot
if wisdom should otherwise decide.
Those who are clamoring for God's
power to interfere are always con-
sidering it independently of all re-
lation to wisdom, as if God' could
ever act without following the dic-
tates of his wisdom, as if the two
attributes could ever be separated,
as if God could act unwisely, blind-
ly, and foolishly. Before we say
whether God can or cannot prevent
evil we must decide whether his
wisdom will permit the interference
or not consistently with the end
aimed at in the government of the
world. If wisdom should demand
or advise the interference, then God
must and will interfere; if wisdom
should forbid interference, then
God cannot interfere, not for lack
of power, but in consequence of
the absolute simplicity and oneness
of his nature, which absolutely de-
mands the perfect harmony and
concord of all his attributes when-
ever he acts. As we have already
remarked, we creatures can act
foolishly and unwisely, because our
activity is not our intelligence,
because they can be separated ; but
if our activity were the same as
our intelligence, one thing with it
and both identical with our nature,
we could no more act without rea-
son than we could change our na-
ture. Such is the case with God ;
power and wisdom and goodness,
etc., are identical in him, and all
must act harmoniously, and God
can no more act unwisely than he
can cease to be God. When, there-
fore, our objectors say if God can-
not prevent evil he is no longer
omnipotent, we answer, if wisdom
forbids this interference he can-
not prevent evil, exactly because
he is omnipotent that is to say,
an infinite power ; and an infinite
power would no longer be such
if it were not identical with other
attributes, infinity implying not
only mere physical, blind activity,
but wisdom, goodness, etc.
It is evident, also, that if God
does not prevent evil because such
prevention is excluded by infinite
wisdom, he would not be cruel but
infinitely good, because we have
proved that the law of goodness is
the same as the law of wisdom.
For if we call wise him who adapts
the means to an end, we call good
a will which adopts and carries out
such adaptation. This true nature
of goodness must be well under-
stood and weighed if we would have
a proper idea of our present subject.
The enemies of God's providence,
by working on the blind feelings of
mankind, have oftentimes succeed-
ed in leading them into error.
They insinuate that goodness con-
sists in doing good wisely or un-
wisely, reason or no reason, than
which there is no more erroneous
or absurd idea. Even the com-
mon sense of mankind admits that
the doing good, the preventing
man from suffering, must be gov-
erned by certain principles ; if the
doing good, the preventing of phy-
sical pain, should interfere with a
higher good, a higher boon aimed
at, all admit that the doing what is
erroneously called good in such a
case would be folly and real cru-
elty, and not good at all. Good-
ness, therefore, is the handmaid of
wisdom, goes hand-in-hand with it,
and is governed by the same law ;
whatever is foolish cannot be good,
and vice versa.
Now, we contend that such is the
case in our great question of the
evil of the universe. We hold and
On Evil.
517
shall demonstrate that if God, by
an extraordinary intervention of
his power, had prevented the com-
mission of moral evil, he would
have gone counter to his wisdom,
and consequently acted unwisely and
cruelly. We prove our statement
by the following syllogisms : It is
the law of wisdom to select the
best means to the attainment of an
end ; and it is the law of goodness
to adopt and carry out such means.
But if God Almighty, by an extraor-
dinary exercise of his power, had
prevented the commission of moral
evil, his wisdom would not have
chosen the best means for the at-
tainment of the end of the universe,
and his goodness would not have
followed the best means to such an
end. Therefore if God had pre-
vented the commission of evil, he
would not have acted either accord-
ing to the law of wisdom or that of
goodness, and would have been
neither wise nor good.
The minor of this syllogism,
which shall form the whole burden
of these articles, is proved by the
statement, which we merely point out
here, that the prevention of moral
evil would have greatly diminished
the moral good of the universe in-
stead of increasing it, and that,
therefore, in this case, if God
had interfered to prevent evil, he
would have employed an extraor-
dinary amount of action to effect
a lesser good than if he had with-
held it and allowed the free agen-
cy of his creatures to have full
play.
We put these statements in yet
clearer light. God possessed the
plan of the universe as we have de-
scribed it in our former articles. In
investigating all the forces and ac-
tivities composing the whole plan
he foresees that some of the free ac-
tivities would commit evil. Here
is a new element coming into play
among the cosmic forces. *How is
God to deal with it? What, is the
principle which must guide him in
disposing of it ? The object and
end of the whole universe is the
highest possible manifestation of
his infinite grandeur by the highest
possible moral good of the uni-
verse. This end must be attained
at all hazards ; and with this prin-
ciple in view God must consider
the question of evil. Two prob-
lems present themselves to his
mind :
1. Suppose he should prevent evil
by an extraordinary employment of
power, what would be the final
result in reference to the highest
possible moral good of the universe
which must be attained by his pro-
vidence ?
2. Again, suppose he should not
interfere, and suffer evil to have free
scope, what would be the final con-
sequence in reference to the same
end to be attained?
It is evident that God must weigh
and calculate the result of either
supposition before he determines
upon any plan of action. Now,
suppose the calculation has been
made, and that the result is summed
up and is as follows : God finds
that if he intervenes by his extraor-
dinary power to prevent evil, the
sum of moral good of the universe
is much smaller than the sum of
moral good of the universe in the
case of his not interfering and al-
lowing evil to have full scope.
What line of action must he adopt ?
What would wisdom dictate ? As-
suredly to let evil have full play
and gain the greater final result.
By adopting another line of con-
duct, by interfering with his power
to obtain a lesser good, he would
certainly act against his wisdom
without reason, contrary to all rea-
518
Annie Keary.
son, as he would employ an extra-
ordinarj amount of power to pro-
duce a lesser result that is, throw
away power without reason, which
it is impossible for a wise intelli-
gence to do. " Sapiens operator
perficit opus suum breviori via
qua potest."* But is the result of
moral good in the supposition of
moral evil greater than in the other ?
In other words, is the minor of
our syllogism true ? The answer
will be given in the succeeding
articles.
ANNIE KEARY.
WHEN a loving and beautifully-
endowed soul is withdrawn from
our circle of friends, we feel our
lives so irreparably impoverished
that we are apt to think the loss is
entire, and that nothing remains to
us but the pains of absence. And
yet this is never true, for there
always survives a portion of the
life of such souls that can never
die, and which we need never lose
if we are only faithful enough to
hold it. The same consolation ap-
plies to those unknown friends
whom an author makes through
his books, and who have a special
preciousness of their own. There
is no surer test, it is said, of the
sympathetic power of a book than
when it makes us love the writer.
This is a triumph quite apart from
literary success, which may exist in
a high degree without command-
ing the other ; but when the two
are combined an author tastes
the most perfect reward that can
crown his efforts. It was given to
Annie Keary to enjoy this reward
more abundantly than many whose
books stand far higher on the roll
of fame. No one who has read
Castle Daly can have laid it down
without tender sympathy for the
writer, who reveals herself uncon-
sciously in every page of that de-
lightful story, where the faults, the
humorous follies, the virtues and
charm of Irish character are drawn
with such a vivid and sympathetic
touch. But it is of herself rather
than of her books that we are
tempted to say a few words to
those friends across the Atlantic
who knew her only through them.
She coveted an American au-
dience, and once said to a friend
whom she called a " sister wor-
ker," " I envy you having an au-
dience amongst the Americans ;
they are so young, so genuine !"
Her novels f are the best known
of Miss Keary's books, although her
historical works have a distinctive
merit of their own which has secur-
ed them a position amongst educa-
tional books in her own country.
The Heroes of Asgard, the joint
work of herself and her sister, has
been pronounced by high author-
ity " the best epitome we have of
Northern mythology." Early Egyp-
tian History is a charming and use-
ful book, and The Nations Around^
* St. Thomas.
^Janets Home \ Oldbury, Clemency Franklin
Castle Daly.
Annie Keary.
a_ description of the neighboring
heathen peoples with whom the
Israelites came in contact, contains
a rare amount of conscientious re-
search combined with much imagi-
native power in the realization of
ancient Oriental life and scenery ;
her tales for the young are delicate
and bright, and very popular with
their special public. Miss Keary's
name has been of late years con-
stantly before the reading world in
Macmillan's Magazine, where "A
Doubting Heart " is at present ap-
pearing. The MS. of this story
was finished a few weeks only be-
fore her death, and, apart from its
intrinsic merits, it will come to us
in its complete form invested with
that pathetic interest which gilds
the last work of a well-known and
accomplished author.
Annie Keary's was a very quiet,
uneventful life, full of helpfulness
for others, of active sympathy, of
wise guidance for many a life of
constant, unwearying self-devotion.
One instance amongst many will
suffice to exemplify the spirit of
self-sacrifice that animated it. She
and her sister were living in a
quiet little home, with no luxuries
but that of the delightful, society of
a circle of friends who gathered
round them as to a living centre,
when they were requested by the
foundress of a home for young ser-
vants to assist her by taking the
place of her matron, who was sud-
denly invalided. No one else
could be found at the time to
manage it ; an interregnum might
have perilled the success of the
undertaking. The going there in-
volved the breaking up of their lit-
tle home and their withdrawal from
the society so pleasant to Annie;
but she never hesitated about mak-
ing the sacrifice of herself and her
time, and without delay she and
her sister took up their abode in the
" Home" at the other side of the city.
The company with which they
had now cast in their lot was com-
posed mainly of poor girls recruit-
ed from the lowest class, sometimes
picked up from sadder depths than
poverty and ignorance. The sis-
ters came amongst them, not as
benevolent patronesses standing
on a high altitude of Christian vir-
tue, but as friends whom a kind
Providence had sent to help their
poor little sisters on whom the
storms of life beat too rudely.
They shared their lives in the true
sense of the expression, and felt it
a privilege to be allowed to do
so, bringing all the energies of
their warm hearts and cultivated
minds to the task of helping and
instructing and ameliorating the
lot of the poor outcasts. Annie's
days were entirely taken up by the
claims of her charges, but she was
very far from being oppressed by
any sense of pettiness or dulness
in the society of her new com-
panions. On the contrary, her fine
sense of humor found much to feed
upon in the curious social ex-
perience, and many a droll story
she had to tell of the " Guy
Fawkes " who was to disport him-
self for her especial amusement, or
of the girl who felt he^r prospects
brightened by the promise of a
relation who trundled a fruit-cart,
that she should never want for a
" happle or a peer " whilst he had
one to spare.
One of her old friends who was
frequently with her in this new
life, whom we may call Emilia,
mentions a characteristic incident.
A girl was going off to see about a
situation, and Annie, after seeing
that her hair was brushed and her
hands washed, and giving her some
520
Annie Keary.
last injunctions as to how she was
to behave, was sending her away,
when suddenly she called out :
** My dear Jane ! what do* I see ?
You have a great hole in your
stocking that shows above your
shoe ! Just fancy if the lady saw
that ! Slip it off, and I will mend
it in a minute."
Jane slipped off her stocking,
and the authoress got her needle
and drew her white hand through
the uninviting hose; the disrepu-
table hole disappeared, and Jane
was sent on her way.
" And if you could but see
Annie!" wrote Emilia. " You can
have no idea of the simplicity, the
utter unconsciousness with which
she does all this."
The six months came to an end,
and the sisters, very much ex-
hausted, were obliged to go to re-
cruit their health in the south of
France. The dear literary work
was now resumed, and the sense
of rest aftd freedom amidst the
olive groves and flowers and all
the luxuriant nature of the land of
the sun made this winter a time
of delightful enjoyment to both of
them.
But they were not likely to
be satisfied with taking their rest,
however well earned, or with mere
personal work, however worthy.
They soon found plenty of other
work to do amongst the simple vil-
lage folk round about them. There
were children to be taught, and
sick people to be nursed, and suf-
fering ones to be comforted, and
there was everybody to make
friends with.
At Christmas-time a feast was
prepared for all these friends ;
there were games out of doors and
merry-making for old and young,
the two English ladies making
themselves the centre of it all,
and taking great pains to instruct
the young folk in the mysteries of
" prisoner's bar " and " oranges and
lemons." This last seems to have
had great success, for a week later
Annie wrote : " I think they all
enjoyed the sport, and our little
maid tells me that a whole troop
of boys and girls are practising
' oranges and lemons ' in the village
this morning." We can readily
believe that " the people were very
sorry " when their kind English
friends sai'd good-by to them and
the sunny shores of the Mediter-
ranean.
During the years that followed
this interval of seclusion and rest
Annie kept up a constant inter-
course with the young girls in
whose lives she had become inter-
ested during her residence at the
"Servants' Home." Her love for
each girl was peculiar and unfail-
ing; her sympathy was ever ready ;
her hope, even for the most hope-
less of them, was Christ-like in
its power, giving strength to the
faltering, courage to the feeble,
guiding the double-minded into
straighter paths, drawing out the
best in all. Her belief in goodness
seemed almost to create it in those
whom she so perseveringly tried to
help. Her memory will long be
held in loving remembrance by the
poof to whom she ministered ; for,
with her limited store of gold and
silver, she gave what was more pre-
cious than either sympathy and
love. And not to the poor in this
world's possessions only did Annie
Keary give of that spiritual abun-
dance; her sympathy was ever es-
pecially drawn out towards young
writers, many of whom sought
counsel and help from her in the
beginning of a literary career.
From no one of these did she turn
away uninterested, often finding
Annie Keary.
521
some little service that she could
render, and never failing to speak
a word of encouragement to the
traveller on that uphill road which
she had often found difficult to
climb in her own early years- She
had that rare and gracious gift of
discerning the precious ore amongst
the dross, and where many a less
sympathizing counsellor would
have found nothing to praise she
was able to draw one or another
good point forward into the light
and show the young beginner how
to do the best that was in him.
If we might dare to lift the curtain
of her own home a still more
beautiful picture would greet us :
the young came there to be direct-
ed and cherished; aching hearts
came to be comforted; "doubting
hearts " to be uplifted and strength-
ened ; selfish hearts to be made
ashamed of their discontent, and
sent away cheered and infected
with the brave, sweet spirit of the
counsellor. Joubert says some-
where in his Pens/es, " II y a des
esprits ou il fait clair; il y en a
oti il fait chaud." Annie Keary's
mind was one of those where the
light is inseparable from heat, and
its glow was felt like a benign and
blessed influence by those who
came near it.
She took great pleasure in her
literary work, and was gratefully
alive to the interest it added to
her life; and yet she wrote with
great difficulty. She said once to
that sister worker whom we have
mentioned : "It is laborious to me
as a birth. It is only by prayer
that I can get on with it; but when
I find the difficulty too great I lay
down my pen and pray, and some-
how, little by little, it becomes
easier, the ideas and the words
come to me, and I go on." Once
again she said : " Let us make a
service of our pen. I think work
of every sort, but more especially
ours, ought to be a kind of wor-
ship. Do not you ?"
We can read this idea between
the lines of every book Annie
Keary has written. No breath " of
the earth, earthy " has tarnished
the purity of a single page, and we
may apply to her Lamartine's tri-
bute to Walter Scott, whose ro-
mances, he says, the young girl
may read without hiding from her
mother :
" Elle peut te lire devant Dieu, comme toi-meme
tu ecrivis."
Early in March last year Miss
Keary discovered that a terrible
disease had laid its hand upon her.
Her faith rose bravely to meet the
cross.
" Her sweetness and resignation
are too beautiful to be described,"
wrote Emilia. "She has always
dreaded this malady above all
things, and so dreaded physical
pain ; but she says her terror of it
is gone, and when she woke the
first night (after seeing the sur-
geons) the first words that came
to her with the thought were, ' Ac-
cepted in the Beloved.' The ope-
ration is to be performed on Mon-
day. I tell you, because she longs
for prayers to help her."
The prayers were asked in. every
direction, and many a fervent one
went up from pure and ardent
hearts, Carmelites and Poor Clares,
Sisters of Charity, priests arid little
children, and toilers in the great
city.
When the terrible Monday was
over Emilia wrote : " All your pray-
ers have been answered. It is just
wonderful how she has been sup-
ported through her sufferings ! Her
look of calm and perfect peace I
shall never forget, and there is not
522
Annie Keary.
the slightest effort or ' exaltation ' ;
it was just as if it were the most
natural thing in the world to lie
still in a Father's arms."
It seemed for a time as if prayer
and love, added to skill and sci-
ence, were going to work a mira-
cle. She went on wonderfully well,
and when a month later she was
moved to Eastbourne her strength
rallied, and hopes of recovery re-
vived with it. But it soon became
apparent that it was only a passing
improvement, and that the sands
were running down. Yet even
now her life was full of interest
and enjoyment. She would sit in
the sunny eastern window, looking
out upon the sea, and correct the
proofs of" A Doubting Heart "; then
came endless conversations, and
reading and work ; in the evening
she would read aloud for a couple
of hours; so the days sped peace-
fully within and without.
" These dear ones infect me with
their intelligent cheerfulness," wrote
Emilia, who was herself dwelling
under the shadow of a great sor-
row, upborne only by the hope of
the day of resurrection.
Towards the end of February
another friend went to see the sis-
ters at Eastbourne, and, writing
from that sanctuary of patient suf-
fering, said : " Annie is more beau-
tiful than any words can say. It
is absolutely wonderful to see how
entirely free from self she is. In
the midst of her grievous suffering
and bodily distress of so many
kinds she is full of interest in the
lives of others, in their plans, and
work, and anxieties ; standing on
the very brink of another world,
and yet so keenly alive to all that
is worthy of interest in this. She
said to me yesterday morning : 'I
must tell you a scheme for a story
I have in my mind ; it may be of
use to you.' I replied that, please
God, she would use it herself some
day. Eliza was near, so Annie
pressed her head against mine and
whispered, * I shall never write any-
thing again.' In the afternoon she
called me to her side and said :
' Now let us talk about this story/
And she would have me get a pen-
cil and paper and take down notes,
and all this as eagerly, and appar-
ently as disengaged in spirit, as if
she had no more pressing concern
on her mind. There is an inde-
scribable grace in the way she suf-
fers always with such a sweet
smile on her face, as if she were
taking each pang, as it comes,
straight from the hand of God.
Never once has she talked to me
of her sufferings. When I inquire
how the night has been (sometimes
they are full of suffering !) she will
say with her angelic smile, * I am
feeling better since I came down.
The sun is so cheery!' or some
such cheerful answer that seems
to shut the door on self so com-
pletely that you dare not force it
open. And yet who ever valued
sympathy more than that sympa-
thetic heart that gave it so abun-
dantly to all who needed it!"
This friend wrote again on leav-
ing Eastbourne :
" I left Eastbourne yesterday.
Before bidding good-by to Annie
we said the Magnificat together.
Then Eliza and Emilia came in,
and I embraced her and left the
room. I was on the stairs when
Eliza ran after me and said, ' Come
back; she is calling you.' I went
back into the room, and Annie fix-
ed those large, liquid eyes of hers
on me with a wistful look that went
through me, and said, ' I wanted
to look upon your face once again.
We shall meet, dearest ; we shall
meet.' She had been overcome
Annie Keary.
523
with emotion a moment before, but
she seemed to have risen above
all weakness, and said this with
a solemnity that impressed me
strangely."
Even at this extremity, when the
sufferer realized her own position
so clearly, her sister continued
blinded by hope. This blindness
was no doubt one answer to the
prayers that were sent up for Annie,
for it robbed that time of trial of
half its pain, sweetening the days
of the watcher with hope, and
sparing the other the sight of
a grief that might have been fatal
to her peace. This peace, which
to the last remained undisturbed,
was one of Annie Keary's most
blessed and characteristic gifts.
She possessed in a singular de-
gree that joyous tranquillity of
spirit that is so restful to others,
and which would seem to be an
essential condition for all persever-
ing effort and enduring work.
It was arranged that a novena
should be offered up for Annie's
recovery, to begin on the nth of
March, to end on St. Joseph's feast.
Friends, known and unknown, were
written to far and wide ; one kind
American gentleman got three
thousand Catholics of the United
States to join ; it was to be such a
loud clamor of supplication as the
Heart of Jesus should not be able
to withstand. Hope beat high in
many hearts. And they were not
disappointed. Before the novena
began the answer came in a more
magnificent mercy than the healing
of the poor suffering body. On
the 3d of March came the tidings,.
"It is too late! Our angel has-
left us."
And so the novena was said for
her who remained behind, and for
the faithful soul that had passed
from its ordeal of pain to the light
of its Redeemer's presence.
Under the old law Israel had
its prophets and angel heralds, and
they came, one by one, charged
with a summons, a warning, or a
divine call, and delivered their
message to the people, and passed
on. And we, too, have ours. Every
elect soul is a heaven-sent messen-
ger, an utterance of the Word at
whose bidding the darkness vanish-
ed ;.and they come to us wtlh light
from him, if we will but open our
shutters and let it in ; they come
to us with tidings, and promises,
and admonitions, with blessed gifts
of love and hope ; and even when
they have delivered their message
and passed on their voice con-
tinues speaking, an eternal echo of
the Word that can never pass
away. Their life lives after them,
beckoning us along the road that
they have trod, cheering us when
we are foot-sore, shaming us when
we grow faint-hearted, a Surgite
eamus! that will go on resounding
till the end of time. And thus we
who have never known them are
richer and stronger because they
have lived before us, and toiled,
and died, and gone to their re-
ward.
524
Origin and History of the Christian Liturgy.
ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN LITURGY.*
REVIEW OF FATHER O'BRIEN'S "HISTORY OF THE MASS."
THE Christian liturgy is pro-
perly the order of rites pertaining
to the celebration of the Holy
Eucharist, and taken more exten-
sively embraces all the order of the
administration of sacraments and
rites, and of the celebration of
public worship.
It is only the Quakers who have
no liturgy at all, though even these
have certain forms which they ob-
serve in their religious meetings.
The Presbyterians and Puritans,
whose forms are the most simple
and denuded of ritualistic observ-
ance among all those retained in
the Protestant churches, have,
nevertheless, their liturgy. One
important part of public worship,
psalmody and the singing of hymns,
absolutely requires set forms of
words and musical notes. Scrip-
ture Lessons, also, must be read
from the Book of the Scriptures.
Sermons are frequently read, and
are at least premeditated and pre-
pared, unless the preacher is a
genius, or a mere ranter. The
idea that worship must be wholly
an extemporaneous effusion, with-
out any prepared form of words, is
therefore, by common consent, a
mere notion of superstition and
fanaticism. Outward ceremonies
are also necessary and universally
observed. And visible elements
are likewise essential and actually
used by all who retain baptism and
the Lord's Supper among their re-
ligious observances. In baptism
* A History of the Mass and its Ceremonies in
the Eastern and Western Church. By Rev. John
O'Brien, A.M. New York : The Catholic Publica-
tion Society Co. 1879.
there is a fixed manner of applying
the water, and a fixed form of
words, prescribed in every sect.
In the administration of the Lord's
Supper, certain words are always
used, the bread is broken, the wine
poured out, and the elements are
administered by the deacons, with
great solemnity of demeanor and
according to an established man-
ner. The baptismal ewer, and the
table with its proper service of
vessels for the Lord's Supper, are
as handsome and costly as the
congregation can afford, and are
specially sacred to the religious
use. In Presbyterian and Congre-
gational churches, the ordinary
way of celebrating the Lord's Sup-
per and administering communion,
though simple, is exceedingly sol-
emn and impressive. The most
important words and actions of
the minister are similar to those
prescribed in the .Catholic liturgy.
However studiously certain terms
which denote the sacrificial nature
of the action are avoided, it is im-
possible to exclude from the whole
transaction the manifest idea and
intention of an act of worship to
God by means of visible things,
viz., bread and wine, with which a
commemoration is made of the sac-
rifice which Jesus Christ made of his
Body and Blood. This is a commem-
orative oblation from the very
nature and obvious import of the
whole ceremony.
Those Protestant churches which
have retained a considerable part
of the ancient liturgy are more
distinctly and formally similar to
Origin and History of the Christian Liturgy. 525
the Catholic Church in their doc-
trine and practice respecting the
Eucharist and in their methods of
conducting their divine service in
general. It is well known how
general and marked the tendency
has become in modern times among
P^testants, to depart from the
rigorous simplicity of their more
ancient customs and to introduce
more ritualism into their worship.
The specific difference which
marks the Catholic doctrine and
liturgy from those which are un-
catholic, is the recognition of a
real and mysterious change in the
very substance of the bread and
wine of the Eucharist, produced
through the instrumental action of
a duly consecrated priest, in virtue
of which the Body and Blood of
Christ are made really present
under the sacramental species, and
truly offered to God in the sacrifice
of the Mass. The history of the
rites and forms which are or have
been used in the liturgical service
of the church has its chief value,
therefore, from the evidence which
it furnishes of the ancient and
apostolic origin of the Catholic
doctrine respecting the divine sac-
rifice and sacrament of the Holy
Eucharist, and of the practice
founded on it.
Besides this primary value and
interest which belong to liturgical
history, it has also great worth and
attractiveness for Catholics, because
it makes them better acquainted
with a sublime and beautiful part
of the religion which is so sacred to
their minds and so dear to their
hearts. Those who are desirous
of knowing something about the
Catholic religion and its rites and
customs, so different from those
to which they have been used, must
be likewise interested in reading
an explanation of the origin and
meaning of the ceremonies and
forms of Catholic worship. For-
merly, Protestants were contented
to take for granted that the Catho-
lic liturgy and ritual were deli-
berately invented or adapted from
Pagan rites, during some dimly de-
fined period after the cessation of
the great persecutions and before
the epoch in which even they have
always been compelled to admit
that all Christendom had become
what the Catholic portion of it still
remains. At present, those who
are so entirely Protestant that they
discard even what the Episcopa-
lians have retained of the external
Catholic order, and believe that
the apostles founded Presbyterian
or Congregational churches having
the same kind of government and
worship as exists in these respecta-
ble modern societies, are obliged to
seek for the period of the supposed
change in the century which elapsed
between the dates of A.D. 100 and
A.D. 200, or thereabouts. The
form which the Christian Church
presents during the period between
A.D. 200 and the date of the First
Nicene Council, A.D. 325, is ob-
viously and confessedly sacerdotal,
sacramental, and liturgical. Not
only Catholics, but all separated
Eastern Christians and those Episco-
palians who hold even moderate-
ly High-Church principles, believe
that this form was not an alteration
of the primitive, apostolical Chris-
tianity, but its continuation. We
do not care at present to discuss
any points of difference with these
two last-mentioned parties, or to
assert anything more than that
which they hold and defend, often
with great learning and ability, in
common with ourselves. That the
great act of Christian worship is
the Holy Eucharist, that the apos-
tles received from the Lord and
526 Origin and History of the Christian Liturgy.
by ordination transmitted a mystic
power to consecrate and offer this
heavenly gift, the Body and Blood
of Jesus Christ, to their successors
in the priesthood of the New Law,
that the sacraments are efficacious
instruments through which the ef-
fects which their forms symbolize
are really produced in fit recipients,
that the apostles ordained the ob-
servance of the essential rites and
forms, and established the general
rules and customs, which are the
foundation of Catholic liturgy and
ritual, is a thesis quite sufficient for
our present purpose. The proof of
it overthrows that notion which
Calvinists and their so-called Evan-
gelical congeners, as well as all
others who hold the same Low-
Church principles, have formed of
the apostolical and primitive cha-
racter of Christianity. As for the
formal proof of the thesis, we might
refer to the many books written by
High-Church Episcopalians, which
have never been and cannot be
answered. At present, we content
ourselves in respect to the argu-
ment of the question, on our own
part, with a few general considera-
tions, very briefly proposed, reserv-
ing a more thorough discussion of
the fundamental thesis to a more
convenient opportunity.
None of us really derive our idea
of apostolical and primitive Chris-
tianity, at first hand, either from
the New Testament or from his-
tory. We take it from the objec-
tive appearance which our own
church, in which we are born and
bred, presents to our imagination
and to our mind, and the instruc-
tion given to us in childhood.
Through this medium we look at
the history of early Christianity
presented to us in the New Testa-
ment and in other historical rec-
ords of the first age of the church.
It is very hard to get rid of this
first imaginary and intellectual con-
ception, by means of the reason,
if we find good grounds for the
conviction that it is more or less
false. A thorough-going Protestant,
whether Evangelical or Unitarian,
comes to the examination of the Ca-
tholic idea of the church as founded
by the apostles, with his mind and
imagination pre-occupied by what
he considers as the true conception
of real and genuine Christianity.
He finds that no such conception
is embodied in the Christianity of
the fourth and third centuries.
The faint and few outlines of the
actual Christianity of the first cen-
tury given in the Acts and Epistles
of the apostles he has already filled
up by his own imagination accord-
ing to the impressions received
from his own familiar form of reli-
gion. He infers that an alteration
took place during the second cen-
tury, because he has already deter-
mined that it must have occurred
at some period, it could not have
occurred later than the beginning
of the third, and the obscure period
between the death of St. John and
the year 200 is the only space left
in which his imagination can locate
the change. There was a change
doubtless, the change of growth,
expansion, and progress. But it
was a development, not a transfor-
mation of species. If primitive
Christianity had been a type of
which New England Puritanism is
a correct representation, it could
not have changed into something
even like a mere model of the ideal
Catholic Church as an Anglican
conceives it to be, any more than a
young poplar could develop natu-
rally into an elm. A quiet, insen-
sible, universal change of this kind
is a natural absurdity and impossi-
bility. Such a change implies a
Origin and History of the Christian Liturgy. 527
revolution which must have been
sensible and violent. No one pre-
tends that a sensible revolution
did take place. Consequently,
there was no alteration which was
essential and substantial, but only
an accidental change and a regular
development from the principles
deposited in the original germ.
Nicene Christianity was therefore
by historical and vital continuity
the identical Christianity of the
apostles, not only, as all orthodox
Protestants hold, in respect to the
substance of the Christian dogmas
of faith, but in respect to the sacer-
dotal, sacramental, liturgical cha-
racter which was visibly impressed
upon its exterior surface.
Another consideration, more doc-
trinal than the former. Although
many things in the New Testament
are obscure and indistinct, one of
those things in it which are very
plain and clear is, that all merely
shadowy, symbolical, and ineffica-
cious ordinances were abolished
with the Jewish Law. The Pres-
byterian Sabbath and sacraments
are denounced and condemned by
St. Paul. An inefficacious baptism
and a merely figurative Eucharist
are out of keeping with the Pres-
byterian and Puritan conception of
religion, which is one of pure spiri-
tualism. They are like an apple-
core which could never have come
in its bitten-down condition from
a tree, or a denuded skeleton to
which no animal could have given
birth. Their proper conception of
a church is a mere assemblage of
believers gathered for social prayer,
reading the Scriptures, singing
hymns, and receiving instruction
from one or more of their number,
whom they have chosen to preside
and act as teachers and exhorters.
The first day of the week is merely
a convenient time for such assem-
blages. When the day is made sa-
cred, the ministry made a sacred
order, and sacraments are celebrat-
ed by men acting as ministers of
God in holy things, there is in-
troduced a foreign, un-Protestant,
Catholic element into their system,
a remnant and shadow of the prim-
itive, sacerdotal, sacramental, litur-
gical religion of the ancient church
which they have renounced. What
little they have retained of the lit-
urgy is an incongruity, and hence
they have made the celebration of
the Lord's Supper only an oc-
casional, infrequent observance.
Their habitual public worship is
merely extemporaneous prayer, with
a little singing, and nothing can be
imagined more bald, jejune, and
repulsive than the "Sabbath-ser-
vice " of the sects which have no
Book of Common Prayer, except-
ing in so far as fine singing and
fine sermons make it interesting and
attractive. Such a service was
never known or heard of in Chris-
tendom until the extreme Protes-
tant sects produced this skeleton of
dry bones. It is ridiculous to think
that Orientals, that Jews, could
ever have so completely abjured
and renounced all their immemo-
rial ways and customs, as they must
have done, in order to invent such
a style of public worship. Com-
mon sense teaches us that the way
to find out what Christian worship
was in the East, at the beginning
of Christianity, is to trace up the
Eastern liturgies and rituals, and
observances, to the earliest sources
accessible, and to judge of their
origin by their history.
There are many excellent works
in the English language, both Ca-
tholic and Anglican, treating of lit-
urgical history and cognate top-
ics. Father O'Brien has compiled
the one which for the practical use
528
Origin and History of the Christian Liturgy.
of Catholics, and also of non-Cath-
olics who wish to understand our
rites and ceremonies, is the best
and the most interesting. The
Catholic liturgy, in all its various
forms in several authorized lan-
guages, which are in use in all
parts of the Catholic Church and
in all sects, though in a few in-
stances somewhat corrupted by
time and heresy, which have pre-
served the episcopal succession, is
an outgrowth from the original
apostolical liturgy, which was sub-
stantially one, yet having several
varieties of accidental form. The
essential parts of Catholic order
are of divine institution. The ac-
cidental modifications were left to
the determination of the rulers of
the church from the apostles down.
The norm or germ of the liturgy is
of divine and apostolical origin,
but this normal germ has grown
and fructified in a luxuriant man-
ner into the Catholic liturgy as it
exists in its present state, wherever
there is a true priesthood and a
true sacrifice. By one of those
strange accidents to which lan-
guage is subject, an insignificant
name, endowed with meaning by
usage and hallowed by time, has
become attached to the Sacrifice of
the New Law in the Latin and
other Western languages. It is
called, in accordance with this an-
cient and general custom, the Sac-
rifice of the Mass. The history
of its external environment of set
forms, rites, ceremonies, vestments,
sacred vessels, etc., whatever be-
longs to sanctioned and establish-
ed ritual observance in connection
with its celebration, is what Father
O'Brien has undertaken to set
forth. In a critical notice prepar-
ed after examination of the first
proof-sheets of the work, we said
all that is really necessary concern-
ing the merits of the work accom-
plished by the learned Professor of
Liturgy in the Seminary of Em-
mittsburg. We need not no\v
repeat what we have already said,
or add more than a few words of
explanation regarding the topics
treated. The author prefixes to
the regular series of chapters in
which the contents of his treatise
are comprised a Brief Dissertation
on the Principal Liturgies in the
East and West at the present day.
He then proceeds to explain the
origin of the word Mass, the vari-
ous kinds of Masses, the author-
ized languages in which it is said,
and the reason for using ancient
rather than vulgar languages. Af-
terwards, in due order, the vest-
ments, the sacred vessels, the ap-
paratus of the altar, the reservation
of the species, the music and musi-
cal instruments employed during
the celebration of the Mysteries,
and the varying rites used within
the church are described. The
altar, the lights, incense, crucifixes,
tabernacle, and missal, the use of
bells, etc., next receive due atten-
tion. The second half of the vol-
ume is taken up with an analysis of
the separate parts of the Mass it-
self, with a full and detailed expla-
nation of each one, by itself. We
miss a Table of Chapters with their
topics, which should by all means
be added to the General Index.
We have also to find fault with the
author's use of the word '* sacro-
sanct," which does not belong to
the English language.
In conclusion we renew our cor-
dial and earnest recommendation
of this valuable and accurate work
to all Catholics, not only of the
United States but of all countries
where English is spoken. It is
really unique in our language, and
the only work which answers the
A Borroived Thought. 529
purpose for which it was written, out the domain of the English lan-
We trust that it will receive due guage. They will find it to be one of
attention from the periodicals of the most instructive as well as inter-
England and Ireland, and be thus esting and edifying volumes which
made known to Catholics through- our Catholic literature possesses.
A BORROWED THOUGHT.
FROM B. ALPHONSO RODRIGUEZ.
THINK not life's burden thou dost bear alone.
No sorrow thine but that its keenest dart
Lies in the depths of One most sacred Heart
No penance thine but that God makes his own
Its loneliest thought, its bitterest tears of brine,
Unto thy weakness lends his strength divine.
So, when thou tremblest 'neath the cross's weight,
When sharp-edged stones beset thy bleeding feet,
And shadows of strange shapes about thee flit,
He, who hath hallowed suffering's sad estate,
Shareth thy body's woe, thy spirit's pain,
The cross, for thee, up Calvary bears again.
" My yoke is sweet." Ah ! wherefore did He call
A " yoke " his law, that is so light to keep,
But that thy wondering heart should thrilling leap
With such sweet yoke-fellow to wear the thrall
Of bondage blessed? self-binding thy free will
The fields he consecrates, with joy, to till.
For thinkest thou, O soul, that one, alone,
Shall bend 'neath that which fashioned is for two ?
Making that drag, with balance all untrue,
Which else were light, with even burden thrown.
How shalt thou falter, how discouraged be,
When Jesus stoops to bear his yoke with thee !
VOL. xxix. 34
530
Congal.
CONGAL.
IT is now some forty years or
more since Christopher North read
admiringly at one of the symposia
of the Nodes Ambrosiancz a poem
entitled " The Forging of the An-
chor," and said that it was written
by Samuel Ferguson, an Irishman.
The poem at once took a vigorous
hold upon the imagination of the
world, and has been ever since one
of those vital pieces of poetry that
are not only admired and read, but
are chanted in the mind and live
in their metrical form as well as in
their intellectual spirit. Such po-
ems are rare, and indicate a pecu-
liar felicity of language and metre
which catch the ear of the mind
and impress it to persistent and
almost unconscious repetition, as do
certain melodies the musical sense.
Cowper's " Loss of the Royal
George," Campbell's " Ye Mariners
of England," and others might be
mentioned as having this peculiar
felicity, but none has it in a more
striking degree than " The Forging
of the Anchor." It is not always
accompanied by the highest pro-
duct of poetry in the thought, but
in this instance the broad imagina-
tive treatment of the theme and
the powerful pictures of the crea-
tion and life of the great anchor
are worthily embodied in the bold
and happy diction and the heroic
rhythm of the verse to make a com-
plete poem, of which may be truly
used the hackneyed quotation that
" it will live as long as the English
language." None of Sir Samuel
Ferguson's other productions have
reached the popularity of " The
Forging of the Anchor," and they
are singularly little known in pro-
portion to their intrinsic value.
They are also much less in quan-
tity than could have been wished.
A small volume, Lays of the West-
ern Gael, and Other Poems, contains
the poetic labor of a life, with the
exception of the poem that gives
the title to this article ; and these,
with a prose volume or two, com-
prise all that he has given to the
world. Students of ancient Irish
literature, however, recognize him
as one of the finest translators of
the lyrics of Carolan and other
bards, and his paraphrases have a
vigor and boldness in which the
spirit of the ancient harp-strings is
heard again. In the Indian sum-
mer of his intellectual life he has
now given us a specimen of the an-
cient narrative verse, an Irish epic,
as perfect as his reproduction of
the lyrics, and one which gives a
still higher idea of his poetical
genius from the greater grandeur
and magnitude of the task.
The poem of " Congal " is found-
ed upon the Irish bardic romance
called Cath Muighe Rath, or the
battle of Moyra, with its introduc-
tory "Pre-Tale" of the Fieadh
Ducrnia n' Gedh, or banquet of
Dunangay, which have been col-
lected and published by the emi-
nent Irish scholar, Dr. John O'Do-
novan, under the auspices of the
Irish Archaeological Society. The
events and principal characters are
historic, and it is an authentic ac-
count of the last struggle of the
pagan and bardic party in Ireland
against the Christian dominion, and
its final overthrow at the battle of
Moyra, A.D. 637, with such addi-
tions, conceptions, and episodes as
Congal.
531
would naturally be invented by the
bards who composed it and their
successors. Congal, Sweeny, Kel-
lach, and others were as real as
Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hector,
but the tale of their exploits is as
imaginative as the Iliad. In re-
producing the Irish originals Fer-
guson has been obliged to take the
same course honestly which Mac-
pherson did with the Ossianic re-
mains dishonestly, and give them a
form of his own, while retaining
the spirit and air, the characteristic
phrases, and the historic truth of
persons and events as far as possi-
ble. It was the great error of Mac-
pherson that he did not claim to
have created the poems, which he
gave to the world as those of Os-
sian, out of the corrupt fragments
which he obtained, instead of in-
sisting that they were exact tran-
scripts of originals which he was
unable to produce. By this means
he discredited both himself and the
poems, for the world is naturally
unwilling to admit that a cheat and
a charlatan can be a man of gen-
ius, and is inclined to despise the
poems on account of the author.
Nevertheless, the harsh judgments
of Johnson, Macaulay, and other
English Philistines will not stand,
and the wiser criticism of Hazlitt,
that Ossian, imperfectly as he is
visible, is one of the four great
poets of the world, will be accepted
by all true lovers of poetry. The
spirit of Macpherson's Ossianic
fragments is the genius of the an-
cient Irish and Scotch bards ; the
form and expression were his own,
but he injured both himself and
the originals by a needless attempt
at deception. It is impossible in
the corruptions that have inevita-
bly been mingled in the remains of
the Celtic bards, existing for so
long only in tradition and in the
peculiarities of expression, the allit-
erations, the compound adjectives,
and the various repugnances be-
tween their form and diction and
that of the English language, to
translate them literally with any
grace or ease of reading, or with
any close idea of their frequently
involved and obscure meaning.
The only way to reproduce them
as living forms and not as archceo-
logical mummies is to preserve as
far as possible their spirit, their
phraseology, and their historic
truth, with the essential end always
in view of making a living and in-
teresting poem which would not
require exceptional study in the
modern reader to appreciate. Thus
the genius of the ancient Irish bards
can be best made known to the
world, while otherwise it would
only be appreciated by the very
few who have devoted a lifetime to
study. Such a task, however, re-
quires no less genius than a poem
which claims to be entirely origi-
nal. Chapman's original genius
was made known by his translation
of Homer, from the strength and
vividness with which he wrought
out the pictures from Greek sharp-
ness of outline to English fulness
of color, and much greater would
have been his credit had he been
obliged to create them from cor-
rupt and obscure originals. Fer-
guson, who more than rivals Chap-
man in the peculiar felicity of his
descriptive epithets and the sonor-
ous spirit of his rhythm, has had
the latter task, and it would be
mere hypercriticism not to admit
" Congal" to the honors of an ori-
ginal poem, although in fact and
purpose it is a cento from the an-
cient bards.
" Congal " is in five books, nnd
relates the life and deeds of Con-
gal Claen, or Claon, as it is various-
532
Congal.
ly spelled in the originals, the
pagan prince, who, after being kept
out of his full inheritance and pur-
posely or inadvertently insulted by
Domnal, King of Ulster, goes to
Scotland, England, and Brittany,
raises a hot>t of his kindred
and allies, and invades Ireland, to
be defeated and to perish at the
battle of Moyra. Although it was
fated and for the best that he
should be defeated, Congal, like
Hector and Turnus, is of heroic
character, and sympathy is very
strongly with him, as with his pro-
totypes against Achilles and ^Eneas,
who are victors by the help of the
gods, and not great in heroic de-
fiance of fate. This element of
fate, which is so conspicuous in
Greek poetry, is also a ruling ele-
ment in the ancient Irish epics,
pervading all the scenery like the
shadow of a thunder-cloud. The
poem opens with the departure of
Congal and his following to par-
take of a feast of amity with Dom-
nal at Dunangay. The opening
will give an idea of the spirit and
metre of the poem :
'The Hosting here of Congal Claen : 'Twas loud-
lark-carolling May
When Congal, as the lark elate and radiant as the
day,
Rode forth from steep Rath-Keltar gate ; nor mar-
vel that the king
Should share the solace of the skies and gladness of
the spring,
For from her high sun-harboring bower the for-
tress gate above
The loveliesc lady of the North looked down on
him with love."
He rode with his brother-in-law,
Sweeny, destined to the most cruel
fate that could befall an Irish hero,
until they came to the boundaries
of Mourne, where they were met
by the arch-bard of his uncle, Kel-
lach the Halt, who invites them to
turn aside and share his master's
hospitality. As they approach his
hall they pass a rugged tract
" With barren breasts of murky hills and crags en-
compassed round,"
in which the bards, banished by
the decree of Drumkeat, dwelt in
shelter and protection furnished by
Kellach, and sang among them-
selves their ancient songs. At the
banquet of Kellach three bards
sing in honor of Congal. One poet,
pale and gray, prophesies that in
him shall return the dead and great
Slanga. Another bard tells of tho
herdsman, Borcha, who keeps the
score of Ulster's kine from the
mist-covered top of Mount Bingiair,
and how, as Congal came through
the glen,, he was visible in joy
counting the score for each re-
conquered land. The third makes
a direct appeal to the pride and
spirit of Congal to recover his he-
reditary lands by force. Congal is
confused and moved, but refuses to
abandon his visit of amity to Dom-
nal.
The second book relates of the
feast at Dunangay. On their way,
at the fords of the Boyne, they
come upon Ere, the hermit, who
has been despoiled of the store of
eggs which the wild geese have
supplied him for food, to furnish
the ill-omened feast. Congal re-
fuses to listen to the hermit's com-
plaint, and rides up to the castle
of Dunangay, where the aged Dom-
nal receives him with much show
of affection, and desires that he
will sit at his left hand, as next the
heart, at the banquet. Congal says
that the highest privilege is at the
right, but it shall be as Doni-
nal's love prompts. But after the
guests are seated a herald an-
nounces the King of Ernan Macha,
and proud Malodhar, who is in
possession of much of Congal's in-
heritance, strides up the aisle and
takes the place of honor. Congal
does not resent it, but after grace
the eggs on which to begin the
feast are passed around, and Con-
Conga!.
533
gal's are served upon wood, while
the rest are on silver. He no lon-
ger doubts but that he is being
purposely insulted, smites down
the table, and in a speech in which
he recounts how he won Domnal's
kingdom for him by slaying Sweeny
Menu in the midst of his royal
guard, he announces battle and
departs, refusing to listen to ex-
cuses. As they ride furiously back
Ere is found in the way at the
ford of the Boyne, and Sweeny
smites him so that he falls into the
river and is drowned. For this he
is cursed by Konan Finn, Dom-
nal's household chaplain, who has
followed Congal to persuade him
to peace. Congal is welcomed with
stern joy by Kellach, and the bards
hail him with blazing torches -and
loud exultations. Borcha, the
phantom herdsman, signifies his ap-
proval ; for
4 ' Lo, a rushing sound,
As of immeasurable herds a-droving all around,
Was heard ; and presently was heard to fill the
mountain hall
With hollow clamor, far and wide, a whistle and a
call."
Congal bids farewell to Lafinda,
his betrothed, and sails to Alba,
where he is welcomed by his grand-
sire, Alban Eochaid, and his four
sons, who make his quarrel their
own. Drostan, the bard, prophe-
sies evil omens, which are so often
to be repeated and unheeded be-
fore Congal has "dreed his weird."
At the hall of Eochaid Congal
shows his wisdom by fixing on a
true heir in spite of the falsehood
of the rocking stone, which is sup-
posed to move only at the finger of
truth. The one that answers him
that he will make the gate to his
royal fort of the lordly hearts of
men, and not of yellow gold or of
stout oak, is regarded as of the true
heroic strain.
The third book relates the land-
ing of the allied fleet at Ulster.
The fleet takes fire from a flash of
lightning and is burned; but the
allied chiefs, who were dismayed
by the evil omen, are reassured by
Congal and Kellach the Halt, who
convince them by historic authori-
ties that it is a sign that they are
to conquer. But the evil omens
multiply. They could not sleep
that night, for all around their
camp was heard the echoing sound
of giant footsteps.
" None saw the Walker save the king. He, start-
ing at the sound,
Called to his foot his fierce red hound ; athwart his
shoulders cast
A shaggy mantle, grasped his spear, and through
the moonlight passed
Alone up dark Ben-Boli's heights, toward which,
above the woods,
With sound as when at close of eve the noise of
falling floods
Is borne to shepherd's ear remote on stilly upland
lawn,
The steps along the mountain side with hollow
sound came on.
Fast beat the hero's heart, and close down-crouch-
ing by his knee
Trembled the hound, while through the haze, huge
as the mists at sea,
The week-long sleepless mariner descries some
mountain cape,
Wreck infamous, rise on his lee, appeared a mon-
strous Shape
Striding impatient, like a man much grieved who
walks alone
Considering of a cruel wrong ; down from his
shoulders thrown,
A mantle, skirted stiff with soil splashed from the
miry ground,
At every stride against his calves struck with as
loud rebound
As makes the mainsail of a ship brought up along
the blast
When with the coil of all the ropes it beats the
sounding mast.
So striding fast the giant passed."
Congal demands of him why he
keeps such guard around their
camp.
" The Shape made answer none,
But with stern wafture of his hand went angrier
striding on,
Shaking the earth with heavier steps. Then Con-
gal on his track
Sprang fearless. u Answer me, thou churl !" he
cried. " I bid thee back !"
But while he spoke the giant's cloak around his
shoulders grew
Like to a black-bulged thunder-cloud ; and sudden
out there flew
From all its angry, swelling folds, with uproar un-
confined,
Direct against the king's pursuit a mighty blast of
wind.
534
Con gal.
Loud flapped the mantle tempest-lined, while flut-
tering down the gale,
As leaves in autumn, man and hound were swept
into the vale.
And heard o'er all the huge uproar, through star-
tled Dalaray,
The giant went with stamp and clash, departing
south away." *
Congal seeks a bard to learn the
meaning of the apparition, and is
informed that lie who questions
the Walker without receiving an an-
swer is doomed to die within a
year. To which Congal makes an-
swer with high and heroic heart :
" To die is soon or late
For every being born alive the equal doom cf fate.
Nor grieve I much ; nor would I grieve if Heaven
had been so pleased
That either I had not been born, or had already
ceased,
Being born, to breathe ; but while I breathe so let
my life be spent
As in renown of noble deeds to find a monument."
But this is not the last nor the
most terrifying of the apparitions.
As the army approaches the fords
at Rath more :
" When, lo ! a Spectre horrible, of more than hu-
man size,
Full in the middle of the ford took all their wonder-
ing eyes.
A ghastly woman it appeared with gray, dishevelled
hair,
Blood-draggled, and with sharp-boned arms, and
fingers crooked and spare.
Dabbling and washing in the ford, where mid-leg
deep she stood
Beside a heap of heads and limbs that swam in
oozing blood,
Whereon, and on a glittering heap of raiment, rich
and brave,
With swift, pernicious hands she scooped and
poured the crimson wave.
And though the stream approaching her ran tran-
quil, clear, and bright,
Sand gleaming between verdant banks, a fair and
peaceful sight,
Downward the blood-polluted flood rode turbid,
strong, and proud,
With heavy-eddying, dangerous whirls and surges
dashing loud."
Congal demands of her who she
is, and she replies :
" ' I am the Washer of the Ford,' she answered ;
1 and my race
Is of the Tuath de Danaan line of Magi ; and my
place
* It may be interesting to those who like to trace
the resemblances in the folk-lore of different nations
to know that the Sac and Fox Indians of this coun-
try have a malignant demon, who is known as
Kiichi-pa-mortha, or Big Walker.
For toil is in the running streams of Erin ; and my
cave
For sleep is in the middle of the shell-heaped Cairn
of Maev,
High up on haunted Knocknarea ; and this fine
carnage heap
Before me, and these silken vests and' mantles
which I steep
Thus in the running water, are the severed heads
and hands,
And spear- torn scarfs, of these gay-dressed gallant
bands
Whom thou, O Congal, leadst to death. And this,'
the Fury said,
Uplifting by the clotted locks what seemed a dead
man's head,
v Is thine head, O Congal !' "
Then she vanishes in air, but
Congal springs into the ford and
defies her malignant influence.
He is joined by the gallant Conan
Rodd, the youth whom he had pre-
viously shown to be a true heir,
and the army is shamed from with-
drawal. But it moves on in dread,
which is increased by the appear-
ance of Lafinda in her car, driven
by one who seems her aged nurse.
She warns Congal of a vision of his
destruction and begs him to turn
back, but he declines, and Kellach
insults her with unaeemly banter;
whereupon the nurse rebukes him
and reveals herself as St. Brigid.
The chariot glows with radiance,
and as it moves off Congal impious-
ly strives to seize the maiden, but
is flung from the chariot by the
starting steeds, who vanish with
their freight. On this there is a de-
bate by the chiefs, which is again
carried for an advance by Conan
Rodd's brave eloquence, and the
hosts pour out upon the plains of
Moyra.
The fourth book gives the mus-
ter of the hosts of Congal.* A
mustering of the hosts of Domr.al
as they are arrayed for battle fol-
lows. Among the rest Clan Conail
thus boasts itself:
" Clan Conail for the battle
Never needed other prompting
* Those who wish to compare Ferguson's style,
spirit, and accuracy with others may find this
translated into octosyllabic verse by Mr. W. H.
Drummond, M.R.I. A.
Congal.
535
Than the native manly vigor
Of a king-descended people,
Whose own exulting prowess,
Whose own fight-glorying valor,
And old ancestral choler,
And hot blood overboiling
Are war-goads self-sufficing.
Wouldst see them war-excited ?
Wouldst see the clans of Enna
Let loose their native fury ?
Wouldst see the sons of Conang
How they look in time ox* slaughter ?
Sil-Angus at their spear-sport,
Sil-Fidrach at their sword-play,
Sil-Ninid rout enforcing,
Sil-Setna panic pouring ?
Set before them then the faces
Of foemen in their places,
With lances levelled ready.
And the battle, grim and bloody.
Coming onward o'er the tramp-resounding plain ;
But insult not Conal's nation
With a battle exhortation
When with battle's self their hands you entertain."
The battle is joined, and Sweeny,
with the curse of Ere upon his
heart-strings, is smitten with fear
and flies, to be a wandering phan-
tom of shame for the rest of his
days. The chiefs of note engage
individually with various success,
and Congal advances :
" As when a grampus makes among the ripple-rais-
ing shoals
Of landward-coasting ocean fry, the parted water
rolls
Before the plunging dolphin, so the hosts on either
side
Fell off from Congal, as he came in swiftness and in
pride.
On each hand scattering death he went ; with sword-
strokes some he smote
In handed fight ; with javelin-casts he others slew
remote."
He breaks the head of the col-
umn of Clan Conail, and many vain-
ly engage him in single combat
until he and Kellach, a nephew of
Domnal and the chief warrior of
his army, who has slain Con an
Rodd, meet and are parted by the
pressure of battle.
In book fifth Cuanna, Ultan's
heir, an orphan and an idiot, is re-
proached by his cruel stepmother
with folly and cowardice, and seiz-
ing a bill-hook for a spear and the
brazen cover of a caldron for a
shield, he goes to where he hears
the roar of the distant battle. He
meets Congal in the full career of
victory, and smites him in the
side with the bill-hook. It is a
fatal wound, although he still rights
on until he sinks ; and as he does
so a thunder-storm bursts from the
sky and overwhelms his host, who
are broken in hopeless flight. Con-
gal has been snatched from the
field by his bard in a chariot, and
wakes from his swoon in sight of
his former home. He is moved to
tears of despair arid remorse when
Lafinda, now a nun, comes from
St. Brigid's hospice hard by to
comfort and to reconcile him to the
Christian faith. His heart is suf-
fused with tenderness and repent-
ance.
" No longer soiled with stain ef earth, what seem-
ed his mantle shone
Rich with innumerable hues refulgent, such as one
Beholds, and thankful-hearted he,'who casts abroad
his gaze
O'er some rich tillage country-side, where mellow
autumn days
Gild all the sheafy, foodful sboolcs ; and broad before
him spread,
He looking landward from the brow of some great
sea-cape's head,
Bray or Ben-Edar, sees beneath, in silent pageants
grand,
Slow fields of sunshine spread o'er fields of rich
corn-bearing land ;
Red glebe and meadow margin green commingling
to the view
With yellow stubble, browning woods, and upland
tracts of blue ;
Then, sated with the pomp of fields, turns seaward to
the verge,
Where mingling with the murmuring waste made
by the far-down surge
Comes up the clangorous song of birds unseen, that
low beneath,
Poised off the rock, ply underfoot, and 'mid the
blossoming heath
And mint, sweet herb that loves the ledge rare-
aired, at ease reclined
Surveys the wide, pak-heaving floor crisped by a
curling wind ;
With all its shifting, shadowy belts, and chasing
scopes of green
Sun-strewn, foam-freckled, sail- embossed, and
blackening squalls between,
And slant cerulean-skirted showers that with a
drowsy sound,
Heard inward, of ebullient waves, stalk all the hori-
zon round,
And haply being a citizen just 'scaped from some
disease
That long has held him sick indoors, now in the
brine-fresh breeze,
Health-salted, bathes, and says the while he
breathes reviving bliss,
' I am not good enough, O God ! nor pure enough
for this.' "
Congal passes peacefully, and
536
To Cardinal Newman.
four monks bear him into the con-
secrated close of St. Brigid.
Such is the poem of "Congal."
On its historical aspects, amply elu-
cidated in valuable notes, there is
not space to dwell. As a poem it
is unquestionably one of the finest
products of Irish genius. For the
fire and spirit of its battle-scenes
it has not been surpassed since
Scott. In the curious felicity of
its diction without rudeness, and
in the swing of sonorous verse with-
out artificiality or affectation, it has
no rival since Chapman's " Homer."
Frequent passages might be select-
ed as graphic as the famous de-
scription of the camp before Troy,
and epithets as happily bold and
inspired as Chapman's best. The
comparison is very obvious, and in
a manner forced by the close re-
semblance ; but, as has been said,
Chapman had a complete and co-
herent original, while Ferguson had
to construct as well as translate.
His task was greater and his work
is finer, while equally strong and
broad. If the spirit of the ancient
bardic poetry of Ireland is to live
at all to the general reader it will
do so in the poem of "Congal,"
and Sir Samuel Ferguson has wor-
thily crowned a literary life, so bril-
liantly begun, with a noble and
conscientious work, which will il-
lustrate his country's genius as well
as his own.
TO CARDINAL NEWMAN.
FATHER for loftier titles cannot hide
The tenderness of thy paternity
From eyes that turn with filial gaze to thee
Sons of thy faith, across the ocean wide,
Led of thy light from paths tmsanctified,
Thine own begotten, though unseen, are we.
Thy loss, thy gain, we count our own to be :
And now our hearts, exulting in the tide
Of favor shed upon thee from that hand
Whose grace outgrows its giving, fondly glow
With more than silent syllables express.
Oh ! westward, as the sunshine, to our land
Still let thy love, a light perpetual, flow,
Thy children, bowed in reverence, to bless.
AN AMERICAN CONVERT.
A Legend of the Weilden.
537
A LEGEND OF THE WEILDEN.
There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased ;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life."
SHAKSPERE, "Henry IV.," Part II.
DURING the centennial year of
our country's freedom it so hap-
pened that we paid visits to many
friends in various parts of the " Far
West." Whether it was that the
reawakened patriotic fervor called
forth by that year of grace caused
a new raking up of old family le-
gends and eastern country-side tra-
ditions, or that the self-exiled com-
munities among whom we sojourn-
ed cling far more tenaciously to
records borne with them from older
States than those who remain in
them, it is certain we heard more
of our ancestors in New England
in a few months than we had gath-
ered through the course of over
threescore years passed among the
scenes to which those records re-
lated. These scattered shreds of
social, domestic, and political his-
tory were often fraught with thrill-
ing incident and adventure, and
not unfrequently reached back to
stirring events in the Old World as
well as the New.
In 'the restless and constantly
changing features of society in
our oldest States, produced by the
steady outflow of emigration and
enterprise to new regions, there is
small chance for any settled local
traditions ; but the current carries
them like golden grains along with
it, and deposits them fondly in the
new homes, so that you shall hear
by many a lonely fireside in the
western backwoods tales of eastern
events which were forgotten long
ago in the places where they oc-
curred. That they lose nothing by
the transfer, but rather hold their
own with increase, none will doubt
who know the tendency to reckless
statement and highly-wrought nar-
rative which prevails among our
western cousins.
Some such thoughts as these we
were expressing to the friend who
was our host at the time, when he
gave an account of an interview he
had enjoyed very highly not long
before with a railway comrade,
which we found interesting enough
to write out afterwards, as nearly as
possible in his own words, and it
is here given as an illustration of
those reflections which may pos-
sess some interest for others.
In the course of an excursion
undertaken a year or two since
from my present home to that of
my childhood in the goodly com-
monwealth of Massachusetts, I
chanced to form a railway acquain-
tance witli a fellow-traveller from
California. He was past the mid-
dle age, of remarkably attractive
person and manners ; had been an
extensive rambler in our own coun-
try as well as almost every other
in the known world ; was a clever
judge of men and things, and pos-
sessed a happy knack of imparting
the results of his observations and
amusing incidents of his travels for
538
A Legend of the Weilden.
the entertainment of his compan-
ions.
When we reached St. Albans,
Vermont, we found that, owing to
heavy fall rains, the bridges south
and east were so damaged by fresh-
ets as to require the delay of our
journey for a day either at that
place or Burlington while they
were being repaired. We decided
to stop off where we were.
" How unfortunate !" I exclaim-
ed, as I stepped into a carriage at
the station, " when I expected to
be with my friends before to-mor-
row morning!"
" Sued is life !" remarked my
new acquaintance, preparing to
follow me, when the lettering on
the vehicle caught his eye. " Wei-
den House Carriage," he said, as
if to himself, while we moved off at
a rapid pace. " True enough, this
is St. Albans ! I should have for-
gotten the fact but for that name;
and it seems they have perpetuated
the memory of its earliest settler in
this noble pile of brick and mor-
tar," he continued as we alighted
before that fine hotel. " Rather
too noble for its village quarters, it
seems to me. Jesse Welden cer-
tainly never dreamed of being so
enshrined."
"Who was Jesse Welden, and
what do you know of him ?" I in-
quired.
" Thereby hangs a tale," he re-
plied. " Perhaps when we have
taken our supper its recital may
serve to while away the long even-
ing for us. If you think so, I am
at your service for the story."
I was, of course, but too glad to
accept his offer. Accordingly, when
we had done the justice of hungry
travellers to the excellent supper
prepared for us, we settled our-
selves in the cosey parlor into
which our two comfortable bed-
rooms opened, and he began by
saying that he must go a long jour-
ney into the past to find the first
threads of a narrative which he had
gathered from various sources, and
mingle scraps of Indian legends
with its warp and woof.
" For," said he, " I am persuad-
ed that there is not a village or
rural hamlet in our country where
one who indulges a. pleasant fancy
for 'building castles in Spain'
might not find ample material for
the exercise of his craft at his own
door. It is true our people are
so swallowed up in the maddening
pursuit of wealth and pomp, no
matter by what dishonest means,
in these days, that widows and or-
phans stand small chance of escap-
ing from their merciless clutches
with the * skin of their teeth ' left
intact, and the ghost of an honest
grandsire dare no longer walk
among us until he has arranged
with his militia of the table-tipping
fraternity for safe conduct and pro-
tection ; while ' angel visits,' al-
ways, alas ! ' few and far between '
in the best of times, have now ceas-
ed entirely. Still, I firmly believe
that one who would step aside from
the tumult of the frenzied crowd,
and listen to the 'still, sad music
of humanity ' ever floating through
the ages and breathing gentle in-
spirations into loving hearts, might
select from unheeded traces,, left,
through the length and breadth of
our boundless domain, by succes-
sive hordes of our migratory peo-
ple among the mines, with the fur-
traders, at the mineral springs and
health resorts studies for pictures
equal in graceful outline and use-
ful lessons to any old-world sketch-
es, though different in character-
like that famous window in Lincoln
Cathedral which was said to have
been composed by an ingenious an-
A Legend of the Weilden.
539
prentice from the scraps of stained
glass thrown away by his employer,
and which so far excelled all the
others that their fabricator died of
vexation, or, as the story goes, took
his own life in a fit of mortifica-
tion. But to my own story, which
opens on the wilderness shores of
Lake Champlain in the early part
of the eighteenth century. And,
indeed,
' Where could you find in foreign land
So lone a lake, so fair a strand ?'
" A few years before the discon-
tent of the colonists which led to
our war for independence had ri-
pened into any open acts of hos-
tility against the 'mother coun-
try,' so-called, there rested upon
the deeply-wooded shores of Bella-
maquean Bay, about three miles
west of this village, a little cluster
of wigwams occupied by the native
Abnaquis from regions east of the
Green Mountains. Less warlike
than their friends and allies, the
Montagnais of Montreal and vici-
nity, who were of Algonquin de-
scent, they preferred the seques-
tered eastern shores of the beauti-
ful lake named by the good Cham-
plain to those of the St. Lawrence
River, which were more exposed to
the ravages of the Five Nations
or Iroquois, as they were called by
the French the terror of all peace-
ful tribes.
"Along the borders of that lake
no place could have been found
more charming for its quiet beauty
than the Bay of Bellamaquean.
Aside from its beauty, the advan-
tages of abounding game in the
dense surrounding forests, of fish
in great abundance, variety, and of
the best quality in its pure waters
all features dear to an Indian's
heart the controlling reason for
their choice had been security from
the dreaded foe, bands of whom
sometimes dashed across the lake
in their canoes from the region of
the Adirondacks, and made merci-
less havoc among their harmless
neighbors on its eastern shores.
The deep indenture of this bay af-
forded such an unobstructed view
lakeward for many miles that an
approaching hostile party could be
seen afar. A creek which emptied
into it from the north furnished a
secure hiding-place for a fleet of
canoes and a way of escape, in
case of an attack, for the women
and children up its sluggish waters
through an almost impenetrable
swamp which entirely concealed
the creek from all but those most
familiar with the country to a short
distance from Maquam Bay, whence
an easy carrying-place across to
that bay gave free passage to the
mouth of Missisque River, and ac-
cess to many places of safety.
"During the season of peace in
that part of New England which
elapsed between the close of the
Indian War in June, 1725, to the
beginning of our struggle for inde-
pendence in 1775, this little village
had been planted, as well as other
settlements of natives on the isl-
ands, at Maquam Bay, on the Mis-
sisque River, and on both sides of
the northern end of Lake Cham-
plain who did not join in the last
French and Indian war, that ended
when Canada was ceded to the
British in 1763.
" Here they cultivated their corn-
fields, prepared their wealth of furs
taken in the chase, improved their
homes, and enjoyed a high degree
of thrift and comfort in their simple
way. Here the young braves ex-
ulted in treasures won from the
woods and waters for the support
and adornment of life, content
though no steam-whistle awakened
540
A Legend of the Weil den.
the echoes, no newspaper or chain-
ed lightning brought tidings from
the world outside ; and, monstrum
digito monstratum, the foolish In-
dian maiden rejoiced in the simple
tunic with its gay fringe furnished
forth by the wild-wood birds, and
pantalets broidered with porcupine
quills and moose-hair in gorgeous
colors, though not even a ' pull-
back ' solaced her heart or fetter-
ed the freedom of her untutored
limbs !
" In these beautiful haunts the
little Indian children merrily sport-
ed, performing such feats among
the trees of their natural gymna-
sium as would astonish trained
operators of the circus and tight-
rope, and proving themselves very
water-fowl in their surprising ex-
ploits at diving and swimming, un-
til the tiny flock seemed more like
a crowd of elfin wood and water
sprites than beings of flesh and
blood. Each settlement had its
Lodge of the Prayer, and was visit-
ed at regular intervals by mission-
ary priests from Montreal, who
celebrated Mass, explained the
Christian doctrine, and adminis-
tered the sacraments to these do-
cile children of the wilderness.
Each one was also organized after
their manner, by choice of a lead-
er to conduct defence or retreat
when necessary, and to decide
any disputes which might arise.
'Young Eagle/ of the Abnaquis,
held this position at Bellamaquean.
To his pleasant lodge on its shores,
in the first days of the settlement,
he brought his young bride, the
* Snow-Drop ' of tire Algonquins,
from Montreal. Gifted beyond
the daughters of her race with
beauty and intelligence, she had
been educated and prepared for
eminent usefulness among her peo-
ple by the good Sisters of the Con-
gregation of Notre Dame, whom
she surprised by her eager desire
for knowledge, her progress and at-
tainments under their instruction.
" She soon became a successful
teacher in her new home, and spar-
ed no pains in training the children
to the practice of religion and vir-
tue, in which efforts her husband
assisted and sustained her. He
was in turn greatly assisted by her
wise counsels, which were also
sought in their doubts and difficul-
ties by all her people, who held her
in great veneration. Traditions of
her beauty, wisdom, grace, and
gentle piety lingered long among
the scattered remnants of her tribe,
and were recited by the Indians of
St. Regis in the early part of this
century. She died young, leaving
a daughter, who inherited her mo-
ther's remarkable beauty and ad-
mirable qualities of mind and heart^
and who was placed by her discon-
solate father under the charge of
the same sisters who had educated
her mother.
" To step from this retreat of syl-
van tranquillity in the forests of
America, across the ocean to scenes
of turbulence and bloodshed in the
Highlands of Scotland, seems a
long stride, but it often happens
that the contingencies of nations
and their conflicts become connect-
ing links between the most widely
separated realms, and weave the
strangest webs of destiny to twine
around the most unlikely subjects.
" Conspicuous among the devoted
adherents of the house of Stuart
in Scotland was the Highland clan
of MacDonald Maclan, as they
styled themselves inhabiting the
gloomy and almost impenetrable
recesses of Glencoe. When news
of the approaching conflict in Ire-
land reached its aged chief in 1690,
he gave permission to one of his
A Legend of the Weilden.
541
sons to join the forces in that coun-
try with a chosen band of follow-
ers. They were all ardent and
impetuous young men, animated by
the loyalty to their king, perfect
fidelity to the cause of the Catholic
religion, and burning detestation of
its enemies which always followed
every current of the pure Celtic
blood, and was sustained by that
inherent sense of justice and duty
inseparable from the race.
"In that disastrous struggle of
James against his base son-in-law
which ended when William with his
Dutch troops crossed * the Boyne
water ' and completed the ruin of
hapless Ireland, this band of High-
landers fought with the courage and
ferocity of tigers. When all waso\;er
a few returned, defeated and morti-
fied, to the dark and barren hills
and ravines of their native Glen-
coe, while the remnant stood firm-
ly by the young Maclan, whose
proud spirit revolted at the thought
of returning to tell the tale of de-
feat and ruin to his clansmen. They
joined the Irish under the gallant
Sarsfield, embarked for France, and,
with their dauntless comrades of
the Irish Brigade, redeemed on
many a hard-fought battle-field of
the Continent the renown and
prestige so cruelly wrested from
them in the battle of the Boyne.
" Two years later Maclan heard
of the horrible massacre of Glen-
coe, in which his aged father was
slain, and resolved never again to
set foot upon his native heath. A
proclamation had been issued by
William that all the clans must take
an oath to keep the peace, before a
sheriff, on or before the 3ist of
December, 1691. The old chief
supposed that the oath would be
administered at Fort William, In-
verness-shire, erected the year be-
fore to keep the Highlands in sub-
jection, and but a short distance
from Glencoe. On the 3ist he
went to the fort, and to his dismay
found that the nearest sheriff was
many miles distant. The most
rugged part of that rugged country
had to be traversed at a season
when the roads were blocked with
snow to a degree which made them
almost impassable. Making all the
haste the state of the roads and his
advanced age would permit at that
inclement season, he arrived six
days too late. The sheriff too
humane for the savage government
under which he acted consented
to administer the oath, and made
every explanation possible to move
his superiors to clemency in con-
sideration of these exceptional cir-
cumstances. In vain ! Orders
were issued that all belonging to
the clan who were under seventy
years of age should be killed, and
King William set out very oppor-
tunely for the Continent. Happily,
the humane intentions of his highly
civilized government towards the
Highland ' kernes ' were not fully
carried out. The discharge of fire-
arms by the murdering detachment,
in the dead of night, upon the un-
suspecting clan whose hospitali-
ties the murderers had been enjoy-
ing for twelve days, in a series of
banquets and convivial meetings,
to lull all suspicions of their foul
purpose gave a warning to their
victims, by which some escaped,
among them the oldest son of the
chief. But the carnage was so
shocking and indiscriminate that
even Macaulay the warm admirer
and apologist for William, his gov-
ernment and adherents, and the
sneering contemner of all * Celtic
kernes,' whether Irish or Scotch
cannot find words bitter enough to
express his horror of the foul and
treacherous plot, or his condemna-
542
A Legend of the Weilden.
tion of its shameless concoctors and
perpetrators. It is recorded in his
Life and Letters that his re-
searches for the sickening details
of the massacre of Glencoe among
the documents of the period, while
preparing that chapter of the His-
tory of England, completely un-
nerved him, and affected his health
so seriously as to compel him to
desist for a time from the labor.
To the average Englishman, how-
ever, as the historian himself ad-
mits, this affair was no matter of
regret, but rather of exultation.
For of what consequence was the
betrayal and slaughter in cold blood
of a few dozens of unbelieving Pa-
pists, who had been guilty of the
heinous crimes of loyalty to their
king and fidelity to their religion,
who would not swear allegiance to
a usurper held in place by foreign
mercenaries, or embrace the pure
religion as * by law established.'
The sole cause for regret was that
one of the clan escaped.
" The fugitive Maclan married in
France ; his oldest son went, when
quite young, to live with his friends
in Scotland, and never returned to
France. So in the course of time
it befell that a young grandson of
this fugitive, and great-grandson
of the murdered chief, fought by
his father's side for the last Prince
of the house of Stuart on the fatal
field of Culloden in 1745. The fa-
ther was slain ; the son escaped and
assisted in rescuing that ill-fated
prince. Perfectly familiar from his
childhood with all the gloomy re-
cesses and nooks of that wild glen
now famous in story so fitly nam-
ed the Glen of Weeping, which
its Gaelic name signifies he con-
ducted the prince to a cave on the
bank of a stream which issues from
a dark pool in the ravine of Glen-
coe, and flows into an arm of the
sea at no great distance from its
source, and an eddy from which
set into the centre of the cave,
forming a deep whirlpool that gave
the name of the Weilden* to the
cavern. Here he concealed his
royal charge until means could be
procured for conveying him safely
to a vessel bound for France, when
he accompanied him to that coun-
try.
"The terrible cruelties and slaugh-
ter inflicted upon the defenceless
Highlanders by the Duke of Cum-
berland, the entire suppression of
the clans, the religion, the language,
the costume, and the very names
of that hapless race, are matters of
history, and form, with the massa-
cre of Glencoe, the malignity of
her exterminating policy and grind-
ing tyranny for centuries in Ireland,
indelible blots upon the pages of
England's record as a nation.
" In requital to the young Mac-
Ian for his timely services and for
the proscribed name which he had
forfeited ,by his loyalty, it was said
the prince conferred knighthood
upon him, under the title of * Sir
David of the Weilden/ and he
never resumed the family name.
Soon after the flight to France he
joined a party of emigrants for
Canada, where he engaged largely
in the fur trade with the natives.
In Montreal he saw and was cap-
tivated by the charms of the
daughter of Young Eagle called
by her people the * Water-Lily of
the Lake' then a pupil at the
Convent of the Congregation of
Notre Dame. He sought her fa-
ther and obtained his consent to
their union. They were married
by the venerable missionary who
had baptized the bride in her in-
fancy, in the old church of Notre
* Weil.is the Scottish'name for whirlpool.
A Legend of the Weilden.
543
Dame in Montreal. Soon after the
ceremony they returned with her
father to his home at Bellamaquean,
of which she took charge until her
death, which occurred a short time
before that of her father. Their
only son, Jesse, was placed in
school at Montreal after his mo-
ther's death. His father went to the
far-off northern wilderness, where
he established a trading post of the
Northwest Fur Company, and died
there.
" When Jesse left school, not long
after the British took possession of
Canada in 1763, he wandered into
Connecticut, where he remained
several years ; thence he came to
Salisbury,Vt., and finally returned to
the home of his childhood now
a solitude, forsaken by the former
native inhabitants and remained
the sole occupant there until the
war of the Revolution broke out,
when he joined the Continental
army. At the close of that struggle
he came back and made very stren-
uous efforts to have the village es-
tablished at the bay a situation
far more beautiful and favorable
for it, in many respects, than its
present site, which is three miles
distant from the lake and up rug-
ged hills. The committee appoint-
ed to select a position for the
county buildings at the bay, failing
to obtain a suitable location for
them from the farmers whose land
covered the proper territory, de-
cided to accept an offer made by
the proprietors of the present village
of a donation of that beautiful park
upon the north side of which this
memorial house of Jesse Welden
fronts, and the county buildings
were soon erected on its eastern
margin.
" That intrepid pioneer, the first,
and for some years the only, white
settler in the town of St. Albans,
came from the bay to the village
very early in this century. Some
years later he was drowned when
returning from one of his annual
Easter visits to his old friends in
Montreal.
" It was from a descendant of his
in California, whom I happened to
meet on one of my frequent jour-
neys, that I heard a large portion
of this account of his great-grand-
father's parentage and adventures.
The Highland Scotch exiles of
Upper Canada and the St. Regis
Indians also furnished their quota
to fill up the outline."
544
The English Press.
THE ENGLISH PRESS.
THERE is no country where the
press has greater sway of indepen-
dence than in conservative yet
democratic England. It is true
that the press is severely censored,
but it is censored by the people,
not the government. And it will
often happen that in England a
newspaper which goes wrong is
roughly handled by some virtuous
contemporary, which lashes its
vices, or its foibles, or its falla-
cies with unmerciful though pure-
ly assumed authority. Thus the
English press keeps itself in order.
Each newspaper is in awe of every
other ; so that in religion, in poli-
tics, in social morality, there is a
sort of interjudicial arbitrament.
And it must be allowed that the
system works well. A certain
level of propriety is secured and
continued by the amour propre or
esprit de corps of the whole press ;
and though occasionally there may
be hideous impropriety, the de-
parture is spasmodical, not lasting.
Perhaps the oddest anomaly of the
institution, the English press, is
the way in which it teaches and is
taught. It leads, but it is led ; it
initiates, but it follows ; it is plain-
tiff, but it is defendant and judge.
The explanation of the anomaly is
this : The English people, not ac-
cepting any living, divine authori-
ty, nor, indeed, any living authori-
ty whatsoever, upon the dogmata
of faith or of morality, but rather
preferring to constitute themselves
the interpreters of the whole doc-
trine and the whole spirit of the
New Testament, are necessarily
driven both to elect their own
teachers and to judge the teaching
of the teac.hers they elect. This
is true both of religion, so-called,
and of all principles which are al-
lied with religion. Wherever a
religious principle is at stake and
such principle must be continually
at stake in both the political and
the social spheres of life there is
no common arbiter whose authori-
ty is accepted as settling the divi-
nity of any principle ; and conse-
quently all politics, all social and
ethical questions, must be adjudi-
cated by private estimation. Yet
since every one, no matter what
his views, desires to have a com-
petent advocate not a teacher
possessing authority, but a pleader
possessing ability every one se-
lects what he calls the organ of his
party, whether in the religious or
in any ethical sphere. It follows
that the press, being instituted by
the public, is at once its responsi-
ble counsellor and its slave. It
undertakes to teach, but it does
so in due submission to the pupils
who have given it authority. In
short, a newspaper occupies much
the same position in society as a
nominated preacher in a conventi-
cle. So long as his teaching is
acceptable to his hea'rers he may
be permitted to mount the pulpit
stairs ; but should he be guilty of
unpopular teaching he is told to
make room for another. This
being the case with a newspaper,
two alternatives of necessity pre-
sent themselves: the one is to
unite consistently for one party ;
the other, to veer about so as to
please all parties. The Times is
the principal organ of the latter
class ; for it takes any or every or
The English Press.
545
no side. Thus for this reason the
Times suits a multitude who are
guided rather by expediency than
principle. Yet the Times is per-
haps, for this very reason, the tru-
est exponent of the principle of the
English press. That principle, as we
have said, is the substitution of ad-
vocacy for final or " catholic !' arbi-
trament ; it is the preferring a plead-
er before a judge, a jury which is
the public before both. It is the
invention of a most perfectly suc-
cessful compromise. For no one
can complain of the stout advoca-
cy of an adversary when his own
counsellor is allowed to advocate
quite as stoutly ; nor can any one
care a straw for the judicial utter-
ances of an authority whose verdict
can be quashed by his own court.
The fiction of press authority, while
satisfying each party, gives no of-
fence, because it cannot proceed
to execution; so that the institu-
tion, the English press, has a sort
of Catholic character, its Catholi-
city being most equitably subdi-
vided. " My authority is final, so
is yours ; neither my authority nor
yours affects its dissidents ; you
and I elect our own private autho-
rity, and we accept it, condemn it,
or fling it over. The ultimate judge
in such authority is each English-
man. What more equitable arbi-
trament could we invent ?" And
so it comes to pass that Catholicity
in true sense being repudiated in
the judgment upon principles, Ca-
tholicity in private sense most
comfortably takes its place, and
every man teaches his teacher.
With all it's faults, there is much
to be said in favor both of the
principle and the working of the
English press. We leave out the
anomaly, the very real, mortal loss,
of the rejection of divine authority
as to principles; and we speak only
VOL. xxix. 35
of the national benefits or the in-
dividual advantages which accrue
from " an enlightened, free press."
It is manifest that where every
newspaper must stand solely on its
own merits, and either sink or sur-
vive by its own consistency, there
is a motive for appearing superior
in the esteem of its readers, and of
at least seeming to be guided by
high principle. It is perfectly true
that groove, or school, or party
must involve the constant minister-
ing to prejudice ; but since the
same news-vender who hands you
your Standard hands you your
antidote, the Daily News; or, while
offering you your Record or your
Rock) offers you your Church Times
or Church Review, you know that
if your favorite organ makes mis-
takes you can catch him out by the
additional investment of one penny.
It is perfectly true, no doubt, that
the advocates of any one school
do not busy themselves with the
advocacy of its opposite school ;
but the leaders of all schools are
obliged to practise a caution which
their followers feel dispensed from
gravely cherishing. Thus a student
of the Rock, the lowest of Low-
Church papers, will not permit the
Church Times to lie on his table ;
but every preacher and public
polemic knows that he runs the
risk of 'being taken to pieces by
the organs which on principle op-
pose him, and he further knows
that the profane or worldly news-
papers will make capital out of the
grist of his mistakes; so that the
very wideness of the freedom of
the press acts as its own corrective
or antidote. This is also true of
all political papers, and even of all
social and domestic papers. It is
true even of the funny or comic
papers. For example, poor old
Punch used at one time to be pas-
546
The English Press.
sionately given to writing blasphe-
mous twaddle against Catholicism :
but another of the comic papers
came down upon him, and has
taught him to curb his fatuity.
And it is observable that even the
TYw^has learned critical cautious-
ness in all such advocacy as might
offend important sections, since the
growth of counter-organs has be-
come sufficiently recognized to
command a certain respect for their
pleadings. Nor can it be denied
that to the advocates of the truth
there is immense advantage in the
publication of error. When you
know all that your adversary has to
say, you can meet him with his own
chosen weapons ; and this is better
than fighting in r the dark, or against
shadows or reports or broken argu-
ments. The Saturday Review, the
most caustic and the most cautious
of all the papers which commonly
cut at Catholic principles, can be
now taken to task by such high-
class publications as find their way
into drawing-rooms and clubs. If
Mr. Gladstone may write on Vati-
canism in the Nineteenth Century,
Cardinal Manning may reply to him
in the next issue ; and though the
same magazine may contain an
article which is rationalistic and
an article which might be compos-
ed within the Vatican, the readers
are at least invited to read both
and to compare them, which is an
advance on the old exclusive sys-
tem. There is scarcely a news-
paper, a magazine, a review, any
weekly or monthly publication,
which does not contain at least one
contribution on some more or less
quasi-religious topic. Even Fraser,
a statistical magazine, must have
an article on " The Church of the
Future";- nor can Mr. Gladstone,
the most versatile of writers, help
favoring us with a polemical trea-
tise on " Probability as the Guide
of Conduct." That the Church
Quarterly should discuss " Petrine
Claims," and discuss them unfavora-
bly to Catholicism, may be regard-
ed as a matter of course ; but the
notable thing is that the most secu-
lar periodicals go out of their way
to drag in controversy. The points
of contact between divinity and
science require judicial authority
for their definition ; but in the
absence of such authority any
ordinary "literary man" supplies
what is wanting out of his own
head.
It would be difficult to draw a
line between newspapers and maga-
zines, or to say where one ends, the
other begins ; for a newspaper which
comprehends a dozen or twenty
pages, and has articles on almost
every subject, becomes, to all in-
tents and purposes, a magazine.
Take the " society papers," as they
are ostentatiously called the White-
hall, the World, Vanity Fair; their
object is to supply the omnigenous
pabulum which a variety of readers
may desiderate; and they are is-
sued in such bulk, with so many
noble columns, that they would
be more handy if they appeared
in octavo form. The " society
papers " are professedly gossipy,
and they care less to impress their
own views on society than to re-
flect society's fashionable failings.
They assume, of course, a lofty
moral tone; they are most indig-
nant if accused of any levity ; yet
they appeal rather to the educated
listlessness of May Fair than to
the deeper current of superior as-
piration. They take society as it
is, on the surface, not as it might
be, or ought to be, or can be made ;
and seek rather to flatter what is
small than to build up new ob-
jects and ambitions. The success
The English Press.
547
of any newspaper must depend on
the interest which it can excite in
the class for which it writes ; and
a little "buttering," or courting, or
titillating is more agreeable to
most readers than improvement.
Hence the general tone of the socie-
ty papers is drivel, educated, witty,
newsy drivel, but stopping short just
where high aim and noble purpose
might be taught if the writers had
the mind. Perhaps, as Dr. Johnson
said to Bosweli who fancied that
he might imitate Shakspere's style,
"if only he had a mind" to make
the attempt " the only thing that
is wanting is the mind." Yet this
is not the whole of what is wanting.
It is certain that English society
that is, fashionable society is as hol-
low and superficial as it can be ; it
is conventional, groovey, even cow-
ardly ; its canons are formed sole-
ly to secure propriety, or to hedge
round rank and income against in-
trusion. Just as respectability is
the divinity of the middle classes,
so fashion is the divinity of the
higher classes ; but aspiration does
not rise proportionately with grade,
either in the intellectual or the
philanthropic sense. It may be
replied, Why should it do so ?
Rank is no more a pledge of aspi-
ration than mediocrity is a pledge
of humility ; men and women are
much the same in all classes, so
far as personal merit is concerned.
Yet the " society papers," with their
immense opportunities, might cer-
tainly do something to uplift. For
example: the distance between
the higher and the middle classes
ci fortiori between the higher and
the lower classes is so great as to
constitute two worlds. In no one
sense is there social or practical
sympathy, or any link either of
sentiment or interest, between
class number one and number
three, nor even between class
number one and number t\vo.
Each class holds up the hem of
its garment to avoid contact with
the class just below it. This con-
temptible pride the very es-
sence of vulgarity diffuses itself
downward through all the strata,
and both produces and is produc-
ed by bad manners, disrespectful
and discourteous intergreeting.
Impertinence in the superior, and
obsequiousness in the inferior,
make manners to be as injurious as
they are comic ; so that a rich man-
will not raise his hat to a poor
man, and a poor man looks to be
snubbed by a rich man. English
manners are undoubtedly better
than they were since intercourse
with other countries has been made
easy ; but even now one may
know an Englishman almost any--
where by his graduated homage or
rudeness. It has been well said
that a true gentleman is distin-
guished from a conventional gen-
tleman by his having precisely the
same manners for all classes ; but
it is as true that an Englishman
may be distinguished from, say, a
Frenchman by his being polite
only to those who are not below
him. Now, this ridiculous code of
manners interferes, in a practical
way, with the good which the rich
should do to the poor, because it
both cuts off the poor from the
rich and makes the attentions of
the rich to be offensive. The rich
give their checks to the poor, and
possibly a patronizing nod ; but as
to sympathy, friendly service, so-
cial intercourse, the thing is un-
known save exceptionally. Re-
turning, then, to the " society
papers," here is a great work for
them to do ; but they never even
touch it, they dare not approach
it, they prefer to minister vulgarly
543
The English Press.
to vulgarity. They will tell you
minutely of Lady Snobbington's
ball, of the Duchess of Fitzpoodle-
dog's garden party, but they will
instinctively avoid any allusion to
that rottenness which underlies
fashionable ethics, fashionable can-
ons. Their mission is to reflect
what is ordinary, not to attempt to
infuse what is superior. They
may preach morality (fashionable
morality), and they may affect to be
mightily scandalized by scandal;
but as to pointing out the fallacies
which lie at the root of superficial-
ity, they do not see their way to
make money by it. The general
aim of the society papers is rather
to lower virtue to a "propriety,"
and high example to a worshipful
serenity, than to cut into the roots
of gilded selfishness and vanity
and expose the disgraceful sham of
" society." It may be replied that
in all classes the same sham exists ;
but then the higher classes must
necessarily set the fashion. It is
because Lord Broadacres does not
visit the poor that Mr. Neatvilla
turns up his nose at them ; and it
is because Mrs. Consols prefers the
front seat in a church that the oc-
cupants of the middle seats hate
the back seats. It is because ex-
clusiveness is the Catholicism of
the rich that inclusiveness seems a
heresy to all classes. It has been
said by a good writer that when
we get into the next world our
earthly cowardice will shame us
like sin ; and certainly the coward-
ice of nineteenth-century conven-
tionalism is the bane both of
enjoyment and of virtue. If we
all adopted our own standards of
what we know to be admirable, we
might all of us be kings in mag-
nanimity ; whereas, adopting the
standards of society and of the
press, we remain puny and servile
all our lives. The press pats so-
ciety on its back, and society most
graciously returns the compliment;
hence the interchange of fatuity or
unreality, which goes on till our
end opens our eyes. The press,
which esteems itself " free," is the
veriest slave of conventionalism
and cowardice, not daring to lift
the veil from that prophet of Kho-
rassan which is euphoniously and
mendaciously called Society.
The two best weekly papers in
England are the Spectator and the
Saturday Review. By "best" we
mean simply the most "educated."
Of the Spectator it is sufficient to
say briefly that it is a slightly
liberal but most cautious periodi-
cal, always written in grave and
thoughtful tone, and generally free
from the faintest tinge of ill-tem-
per. But of the Saturday Review
it may be permitted to speak at
length, for it is in itself a compen-
dium of the English mind. It was
the first "newspaper" ever started
which was designed to comment
upon news while strictly ignoring
news itself. And for forty years it
has run a brilliant course. It con-
tains articles on every conceivable
subject, suggested by the changes
of the hour. From the severest
researches of intellect and indus-
try, down to the most ephemeral
caprices of playfulness, it handles
every subject with a" pen-and-ink
despotism compared to which Rus-
sian czarodoxy is childish. It is
assumed to be a Church of Eng-
land organ ; that is to say, it picks
holes in the Church of England
till the institution is perforated like
a pepper-cruet. It is proverbial-
ly cold-blooded in criticism, and
more than chemically exact in an-
alysis ; so that the sensation af-
ter reading it is like that of hav-
ing assisted at one's own or at
The English Press.
549
somebody else's vivisection. Insti-
tutions may be supposed not to
feel ; but bishops and clergy pro-
bably do feel, and the poor Church
of England, like every other re-
ligious system, is treated like a
child's box of bricks, which, if it
be used for the creation of an edi-
fice, is used equally for the delight
of knocking it down. Nor is there
ever any invidious distinction.
The Catholic Church and all Ca-
tholic subjects are manipulated
with unsparing disintegration. To
take one more bit of imagery from
the nursery: Catholic teaching is
treated like a puzzle which is
chiefly interesting from the multi-
tude of the pieces; the imagery
failing in this, that a child loves
the entirety, but the Review loves
to prove that there is none. Still,
the Catholic religion can have no
right to complain, for it shares
the common fate of all "subjects."
Given, theoretically, the institution,
critical paper, it follows that there
must be sufficient victims for each
week; and if we multiply, say,
twenty critical articles by fifty-two
not to speak of the criticism of
books or plays, of the fine arts, or of
exceptional grooves we find that
more than a thousand different
subjects have to be taken to pieces
every year. It is all very well for
the Review to assure us : " It is
the business and, as it were, the
duty of the critic to give counsel,
which it is not the business of the
author to attend to "; for the au-
thor, whether it is his business or
not, is made to suffer in many ways
by hostile criticism, and especial-
ly by such hostility as seeks to
veil its own malice by the pro-
fession of disinterested probity.
But " reviewing," in the book
sense of the word, is only one
department of this journal, the
whole iniptrium of the Review com-
prehending the universe, in its ori-
gin, its purpose, all its details. Now,
the drawback to such imperiwn is
that the very magnitude of its as-
sumption leads the public to place
confidence in its authority; so that
because the Review says "This
is," the public likes to infer that, in
all probability, " it may be/' And
since no reviewer signs his name
in the Review, whether he writes on
the Vatican or on May Fair, there
is an imputation of efficiency to the
reviewer, for the simple reason that
he is not known to be inefficient.
" Have you seen the Saturday on
Brown's book?" or, "Have you
read that scathing article on rit-
ualism ?" is a question which im-
plies in the mere fact of the put-
ting it an ardent acceptation of
literary worth. Who wrote the ar-
ticle nobody knows ; that the arti-
cle is published is its authority, the
neatly printed lines giving a toilet
of hant ton to an individuality which
one might perhaps not care to
contemplate. Yet the Saturday
Review 'only differs from many oth-
er critical papers in the fact that
it is exceptionally cold. It has no
pulse, no enthusiasm, no pity. It
is a caustic which burns, yet not
to heal. It treats the mind as if it
were a machine, which a watch-
maker could put in or out of order.
It certainly has the merit of never
" gushing," but then it has the de-
merit of appearing not to be able
to gush. The most fascinating wri-
ters are those who curb an ardor
which you can see in every sen-
tence might be indulged ; but there
is seldom fascination about writing
which is a mechanical, if a mental
or thoughtful, production. And
just here it is that one may hazard
the observation that the English
press is generally marred by its
550
The English Press.
limitation ; certain regions of know-
ledge, of aspiration, even of senti-
ment, being terra incognita to most
journalists. May it not be said
that, just as natural high breeding
gives a literary tone to a man's
writing, and a naturally good heart
gives it sweetness, so the posses-
sion of sublime faith gives a grasp
and a sphere which must be want-
ing in the ordinary, educated world-
ling? Cardinal Newman is an ex-
ample of the perfectness of a " lite-
rary " writer, because he has all
three of the requisites referred to.
As a gentleman he will never of-
fend ; as a true poet he is always
enchanting; and as a Christian,
both intellectually and practically,
he balances every sphere of legiti-
mate thought. But those epheme-
ral writers who know the classics
and books of science, but who are
as babes in the immense world of
"faith," can only teach us frag-
mentarily within the confines of
" humanities," and stop short where
expatiation begins.
We may well despair of success
in making any attempt to define
what is meant by the ''authority
of the English press." We might
as well try to define that nebulous
anomaly which in England is call-
ed " church authority." Both au-
thorities are but swung in mid-air.
Ego is at the foundation of them
both ; but since ego may be always
changing his personality or, as
Cardinal Newman says, may " put
on a new religion every morning "
it comes to this, that to-day's ego is
to-morrow's tuj and thus the church
and press have no ego* We do not
know how to reconcile those obvi-
ously conflicting principles pri-
vate judgment and authoritative
institution. It is of the press that
we are speaking at this time ; and
we have often marvelled how the
English people, sensible as they
are, can lend themselves so obe-
diently to their journalists. Pro-
bably the most outrageous of the
anomalies of journalism is the in-
stitution, " our own correspon-
dent " ; for this emissary is bound
always to discover what is unknow-
able, or, conversely, to know what
is undiscoverable ; and upon his
invented dictum more ben trovato
than vero the leading articles of
the paper have to be grounded.
Thus, the emissary of the Standard^
whose assumed lodging is at Rome,
sends continually the most astound-
ing intelligence, penetrating by
his spiritual force into the very
penetralia of the Vatican, and di-
vining even what the Pope has se-
cretly thought ; and so pervading
is his bodily presence or rather his
menta&cience that he can always
tell us what all the Jesuits have
been thinking in their inmost souls,
and what the Pope has secretly
thought of their secret thoughts.
The Times' Roman correspondent
laughs this gentleman to scorn, and
amuses his readers by contradict-
ing, point-blank, the flights of fancy
of his rival " theologian." We may
have no means of comparing the
relative science of these two gen-
tlemen, nor would it be of prac-
tical utility to do so. Yet we
always notice that there is some
sympathy between the " news " of
the " our own " and the political
and "pious" bias of a newspaper.
Hence we assume that, before quit-
ting Britain's shores, " our own "
has been instructed as to his " line ";
he has been well coached in the
stamp of news he is bound to send,
and equally in the stamp of news
he must avoid. He has to cherish
the supreme art of not knowing at
least as much as the supreme art of
divining; nor can his pillow be
The English Press.
always easy in the night, from the
fear of having not been eclectic.
So long as there is no principle
involved a little . freedom may
be harmless enough ; but since at
Rome it is difficult to ignore prin-
ciple, almost every daily telegram
must be risky. The same risk
must be incurred at other pla-
ces, but not to the same extent
as in Rome. In Mr. Martin's plea-
sant Life of the Prince Consort he
tells us of the surprise of the
French emperor in reading detail-
ed accounts of what did not hap-
pen, and of the mingled wonder
and pleasure which royal persons
experience in perusing circumstan-
tial inventions. Yet so long as the
inventions are kindly they need
not of necessity be sins ; it is only
when they throw charity to the
winds that we sniff the painful
u odor of odium." As Dr. Pusey
has recently written in a letter to
a friend on the occasion of the honor
rendered to Dr. Newman : " For my
part, in early life I learned how all
reports are either untrue or had
just enough of a basis of truth to
make them the more noxious ; so I
believe no reports if they have any
unkindness in them, but turn away
from them as one should from
something putrid." Happy he who
is so philosophical, so Christian, as
to turn away from all words that
are unkind. Yet if we were to
adopt this salutary principle when
perusing the English newspapers,
we might have to turn away from
more columns than would fill a
page. It is not that the press-
writers intend to be unkind, but
that to be judicial is their habit
and their gain ; and how a man is
to be always critical, both on the
good and the evil, without some-
times offending against charity
especially when he must be pun-
gent and entertaining it may be
difficult to resolve in definite terms.
We have to fall back, then, on
the explanation which we have of-
fered more than once that a free
press, without authority, must be
hazardous. Religious principles
being free, social ethics being elas-
tic, even natural justice being
weighed in private balance, free-
dom in the press must be often
mentally licentious, if not so in
a moral signification. When it
is permitted to publish reports of
filthy scandals, to comment on them
with a thin robe of propriety not
opaque enough to obscure their
nude loathsomeness, and, under
cover of moral teaching, to teach
immorality by euphemistic preten-
sion to high tone, it is absurd to
say that the press is strictly moral
because it puts on full dress to
discuss dirt. There may be a
positive gain in saying, " Do not
sin," but there is a positive loss in
saying, " This is the way it is done."
The English press is most morally
immoral. It is exoteric with esoteric
particulars. A diligent student of
the newspapers has no need to ex-
perience evil in order to derive the
fullest science of its detail.
Yet abuse it as we may and it
abuses us to suit its purpose the
English press is the greatest power
in England. And if that power is
not always well used, neither is the
House of Commons nor the police
force. Probably the worst influ-
ence x of the daily press is the im-
mense amount of time which it
wastes. Instead of reading im-
proving books, the vast majority of
Englishmen read positively noth-
ing but the newspapers ; and the
dissipation of such study, its su-
perficial range of interests, make
most men to pass their lives outside
themselves. We can well imagine
552 To Whom Comfort.
that before the invention of print- knowledge of evil. It is too late
ing the world had more interior to speculate on such issues. In
repose, or that at least, before England the daily press is now a
the introduction of newspapers, "sort of reflection of the daily life of
there was less of intellectual re- the majority of Englishmen the
volt. It is probable also that there occupying the mind with every
was more domestic happiness, be- variety of passing interest, without
cause there was much more simpli- gathering much fruit from the oc-
city and less wandering after fitful cupation.
temptations, because there was less
TO WHOM COMFORT.
ABOVE the purple hills of Palestine
The morning rose in splendors slow and cold ;
Its pale and chilly gleams to amber shine,
Then deepen to a heart of burning gold
That opens wide a dazzling pathway large-
For what is yet a reddening crescent's marge.
Those crowning beams fall on the drooping head
Of one who lies upon the glistening grass,
Till, startled by the swift and careless tread
Of some who by that lonely wayside pass,
She lifts a face all pale with watches drear
And worn and dim with many a scalding tear.
On the rich lengths of her neglected hair
Unheeded lie the dews of that long night ;
As cast-off gems those dew-drops sparkle there
Like jewels flung aside by beauties bright
When midnight feast and pageant all are o'er ;
No other gem shall deck for ever more
Those streaming tresses nor that lovely brow,
Nor star her sweeping vesture's silken grace
For her life's feast indeed is ended now.
One sunbeam falls on her uplifted face,
And, lighting all her wasted brow, it dies
In the dark depths of her sad, hopeless eyes.
To Whom Comfort. 553
The passing Hebrews, that tool-laden go
To seek their morning toil, look back and turn,
And turning look again and whisper low,
"The Magdalen !" whose very glance would burn
Each Hebrew maiden's cheek with shrinking shame,
An insult in the utterance of her name !
What was the wondrous story Rumor, spoke ?
That with her alabaster vase's sheen
It chanced her proud heart, too, the woman broke
Before his feet the prophet Nazarene !
But now, they say, her last fond hope is fled ;
Betrayed, condemned, the Nazarene is dead.
And so they pass, and whisper as they walk
With louder words of daily mingling cheer :
The murmur of their broken, careless talk
Unheeded falls upon her deafened ear,
As rain-drops, falling soft on moistened ground,
No echoes wake in weeping woods around.
She turns her bending head to earth again
Kind earth that holds her Friend and hears her moan,
And has no shame responding to her pain;
Of all the passers, pauses One alone :
Severe and cold the tone wherein he speaks,
And bids the woman say what there she seeks.
The eye is blind without the heart's swift aid,
And dull the ear no listening thoughts control ;
Her heart and treasure are together laid,
And deadened senses barely touch her soul ;
Her hasty glance the stranger but revealed
To be, perchance, the master of this field.
The hand that struggles in the wreck at sea
Each broken spar and raft will madly grasp
With all the latent force despair sets free :
Her desperate hopes this floating chance now clasp,
And close upon it with that clinging hold
Which gives dismay the strength that makes it bold.
A kindling trust is in her earnest gaze
Love keeps some hope that grief itself must spare ;
The soft and early breezes gently raise
Her shining hair from blue-veined temples fair,
And touch her tear-wet cheek with rose-leaf shade ;
Her pale and slender hands are meekly laid
554 To Whom Comfort.
In prayerful clasp upon her panting breast,
And her imploring eyes are lifted till
The heavy lashes on the eye-lid rest :
The sun stands full behind on Calvary's hill ;
" O sir ! where hast thou taken Him, I pray,
That I may go and carry Him away ?"
A silence fell upon the spring-time air;
That she might hear, her pulse kept silence too ;
And stillness gathered round them everywhere :
When, softer than from Heaven drops the dew,
More thrilling than the sigh of midnight seas,
An accent tender pierced the listening breeze
The accent of that sweet and solemn voice
By which alone God spake to wearied man,
And bade the long-expectant earth rejoice
Beneath a fadeless rainbow's perfect span:
" Mary!" and at the sound of her own name
Swift joy shoots through each fibre of her frame ;
Not earth's poor troubled joy, but that deep peace
Wherein the soul breathes forth, in calm divine,
All worship knowing not a break nor cease
In one sweet word: " Rabboni! Master Mine /"
It was enough ! From Him, from her one word !
Enough ; for Jesus spoke, and Mary heard.
O found again ! O won by patient tears !
She falls, just at the pity of his tone,
And with her fall her anguish and her fears.
. . . Her only friend her Lord, her very own ! . . .
She finds her place, the place for her most meet,
For ever hers low at the Master's feet !
Sad souls, take cheer ! raise self from self's own scorn ;
Look up ! an Easter sun your brows may touch
In the sweet wonder of some perfect morn.
Arise, O much offending, grieving much !
The Risen shall come to meet the risen's claim
And call each soul her own peculiar name.
DETROIT, March, 1879.
The Drift in Italy.
555
THE DRIFT IN ITALY.
GARIBALDI AND THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE CONSERVATIVES RO-
MAN ITEMS.
ROME, May 16, 1879.
"AGITATE, agitate," was the watch-
word of Giuseppe Mazzini to the Ital-
ians when the dethronement of the petty
princes of Italy was his object. " Show
the people their strength," he would say
on other occasions. And what with
constant agitation and a demonstration
of their strength on the part of the peo-
ple, with the encouragement and ulti-
mate military action of the Piedmon-
tese government superadded, the seven
principalities of Italy finally merged into
the single fabric known to-day as United
Italy. But the maxims of the great
agitator did not expend all their force
upon, and subside permanently in, the
formation of national unity under the
jegis of the monarchy of Savoy. They
have become heirlooms among the rest-
less Italians, as such designed by Maz-
zini, to undermine the house of Savoy
as they did the duchies, the kingdom of
Naples, and the States of the Church.
For Mazzini proposed to himself and
followers not monarchical but repub-
lican unity in Italy. In his programme
monarchical unity was but the necessary
intermediate between the old principali-
ties and the republican goal only a bait-
ing-place by the way. The elimination
of this intermediate he very wisely com-
mitted to time and to the restlessness
produced among the masses by his own
doctrines.
The epigraphists of the monarchy, in
the bombastic emanations which glare
upon the stranger from the walls at
Porta Pia, from the municipal residence
on the Capitoline, nay, even from the
base of the monument which the glorious
Pius IX. erected in the Campo Varanoto
the memory of his brave soldiers who
fell at Mentana, tell you that the " desire
of centuries " was consummated Septem-
ber 20, 1870. It is a special mercy for
truth that epigraphists are not always
historians ; else in this instance how
explain the " agitation " which has gone
on uninterruptedly and with a gradual-
ly increasing intensity since that year
of so-called redemption? No sooner
had Piedmont established its lares in
the palace of the Quirinal than repub-
lican organizations, either dependent
upon those already existing in other
cities of Italy or racy of Rome itself,
began to pullulate and agitate. The
Italian Revolution had not ceased to
exist when the Duke of Sermoneta hand-
ed the famous Roman Plebiscite to Vic-
tor Emanuel, nor had the Mazzinian
agitation settled into quietude. Alberto
Mario qualified the one last fall by
eliminating its first, Garibaldi the other
when he recently described a circle of
legality around it. Thus we have evolu-
tion and legal agitation at work in Italy,
and, in the ultimate analysis, to the self-
same end and purpose a republic.
I would invite your attention to a
phase or two of this legal agitation, de-
veloped of late under the auspices of
Garibaldi and affecting universal suf-
frage. The object of his arrival in Rome
in the early part of last April was a ques-
tion that for a time agitated the press
of every color. The plea of change of
air was accepted with diffidence, albeit
the general was suffering intensely from
his arthritics before leaving Caprera and
on his arrival in Rome. He was in turn
identified with the intended expedition
of Italian colonists to Africa, with the
still active movement in behalf of "un-
redeemed Italy," and with certain proxi-
mate "foreign complications" to which
he had alluded in some of his letters.
But, if we are to judge a man by the
company he frequents, Garibaldi's inten-
tions were certainly not compatible with
the spirit of the oath which he swore to
the dynasty of Savoy when he was elect-
ed member of Parliament in the winter
of 1875. The most notorious Repub-
licans of Italy, Mario, Bertani, Cavallotti,
Canzio, Campanella, Lemmi, and others,
either preceded his arrival in Rome or
followed in his wake, and a series of in-
terviews began with these men. The
object was no longer a secret when Gari-
baldi convoked a republican congress
556
The Drift in Italy.
in Rome on the 2ist of April. He had
already written a letter to the democratic
Bovio, commending him for his dis-
courses on universal suffrage. In the
course of the letter he said : " I believe
it is the strict duty of the republican
party to assemble all its forces in the
field of legal agitation, in order to arrive
progressively at those ordinances which,
tempering themselves to the character
and historic office of the Italian nation,
will ensure for it liberty as an unassail-
able right, because at present it depends
upon the humors of a minister or the
programme of a ministry, and will place
it in a condition to promote all its activ-
ity and develop its wealth towards heal-
ing the deplorable wound of misery.
The dreaded clerical phalanx in Parlia-
ment is rather desirable, as something
which, establishing the antithesis of two
principles, would raise it up from the
languor which now renders it an invalid,
would excite the energies of which
Italy is capable, and bring on fertile and
vital discussions."
The discourse pronounced on the
day mentioned before sixty-four of the
choicest spirits of the Italian republic
explains more fully Garibaldi's inten-
tions : " Dear friends, I have called you
to organize the scattered forces of the
republican and parliamentary demo-
cracy of Italy towards a common work
and a common purpose. Hence we must
not occupy ourselves with those things
on which we disagree, but with those on
which we are unanimous. I believe that
we all agree in recognizing the profound
discontent of all Italy discontent on ac-
count of economical, political, and moral
causes. I believe that we all agree in
admitting that, to remove it, all interests
must be represented in public govern-
ment ; in desiring, therefore, universal
suffrage and the abolition of the oath, in
order that all opinions may have a voice
in Parliament ; in desiring the suppres-
sion of the Guarantees (Papal), the offi-
cial form of worship being abolished
and the sovereignty of the state remain-
ing undivided ; the reorganization of the
tributary system, so that they only and
progressively shall pay who are able ;
the abolition of centralization and a sys-
tem of decentralization promoted ; the
arming of the nation, in order to be able to
liberate the unredeemed provinces ; the
ploughing and cultivating the two-fifths
of uncultivated and marshy Italian terri-
tory, fertilizing it with the 150,000,000
of unsold ecclesiastical possessions ;
utilizing in favor of the poor the 1,500,-
000,000 of the Opere pie, enjoyed for the
most part by the administrators, the
monks and nuns ; healing by all the
means which love can inspire and science
suggest the great wound of misery ; the
authority of the legislative to be render-
ed proportionate to that of the execu-
tive power. And to obtain these results
it is necessary to revise the constitution,
which is insufficient and inferior to the
new wants of the country, in order that
it may govern itself, not by a document
given to one of its provinces thirty years
ago, but may plant itself and stand
upon a national compact.
" It seems to me that these are the
principal ideas upon which we do not
differ. Let us begin by procuring the
triumph of the one which contains all,
and from which all spring universal suf-
frage and the abolition of the oath.
" Hence I propose the following order
of the day :
" The Assembly resolves to determine,
as the common object of labor for the
republican and parliamentary demo-
cracy, the agitation by the press and by
popular meeting? in favor of universal
suffrage and the abolition of the oath,
having in mind that the country can be
established and solidified by a national
compact.
"A committee of persons is
nominated, whose central seat shall be
in Rome, and charged with the execu-
tion of the present deliberation."
Citizen Federico Campanella, proba-
bly with a view of giving a tranquilliz-
ing sop to the monarchy, proposed the
addition of the words " voted by a
sovereign constituent" to the terms
" national compact." The amendment
was rejected, nominally because it was
more amply expressed in the words na-
tional compact, but really because it show-
ed a deference to the monarchy utterly
incompatible with the object of the con-
gress and the character of its members.
It is needless to observe now that not
all the desires of the Italian people were
consummated September 20, 1870. Much
remains to be agitated for, and that, too,
to the exclusion of the house of Savoy.
Universal suffrage in itself can bode no
good to the monarchy, because universal
suffrage to wit, the masses is tired of
the monarchy. It eats up fifteen million
The Drift in Italy.
557
francs per annum. The abolition of the
oath is a direct blow against the dynasty,
and a blow eminently merited. Has not
the dynasty subscribed to the elimina-
tion of all that is sacred from. public
government? Did it not endorse the
abolition of the name of God from the
Parliamentary oath ? It has sowed a
tempest. The harvest of whirlwinds is
fast ripening, and the reapers have al-
ready girt themselves.
Soon after these deliberations were
passed Garibaldi addressed himself to
the whole nation in a solemn manifesto.
It is of sufficient importance to be quot-
ed entire : " To the Italians : The bond
of the Italian democracy is formed. I
rejoice that this important fact, desired
and studied for a long time, and hitherto
attempted in vain, was accomplished
under my eyes on the 2ist of April.
Conspicuous patriots of all classes, no-
ble minds, the glory of our country, who
distinguished themselves in preparing
and composing the unity of the Italian
nation from 1821 on, are fighting in the
field of the democracy, as also the gen-
erous youth. And as the democracy
will succeed in spreading its influence
by the agitation which it will promote
for the revindication and effective exer-
cise of the national sovereignty, for the
less intolerable life of the unendowed by
fortune, for social justice, for inviolable
liberty, a multitude of distinguished citi-
zens, who witness, distrusting and incre-
dulous, the government of the minorities
which have succeeded each other and
exhausted themselves during the last
twenty years, will certainly and quickly
join its ranks.
"The democracy is to-day a force of
the first order among the forces which
constitute the nation ; it is a power with
which those minorities, either willingly
or unwillingly, must settle accounts.
Its various schools are colleagued and
confirmed in an order of common ideas
and purposes, and they agreed in the
adoption of the same manner of aposto-
late, of the same means of agitation,
open, sincere, and within the juridical
orbit whence their strength and they
founded the League of the Democracy.
" The committee to which the high of-
fice was entrusted is composed as fol-
lows [here follow the names]. This
committee nominated within its ranks
the executive commission residing in
Rome : Garibaldi, Aurelio Saffi (Triumvir
of Rome in 1849), Campanella, Canzio,
Bertani, Cannetto, Castellani, Alberto
Mario, Bovio, and others.
" The congress of April 4 did not
celebrate a political league alone, but
dissipated misunderstandings, renewed
or strengthened friendships.
" Every school of the democracy pre-
serves its own individuality in the de-
velopment and in the propaganda of its
respective doctrines, and to each belongs
the choice of the inherent initiatives, but
each must answer for them. Still, I am
certain that all, animated by a lofty sen-
timent of love of country, and guided by
that civil wisdom which even other na-
tions recognize in the Italians, will
co-ordain their particular and specific
work, and temper it with the general
work of the committee of the League.
"And since the League of the Demo-
cracy has proposed to circumscribe its
labors within the limits of right and by
peaceful means, let it warn those who
govern Italy that when that right is con-
tradicted, or impeded, or manumitted in
any way, the responsibility before the
nation and before history will be entirely
their own, if in defence or the revindi-
cation of that right the League of the
Democracy, with the consciousness of
legitimate defence, will have recourse to
other means than those determined.
" G. GARIBALDI.
" ROME, April 26, 1879."
The Republican Circle of Rome was
the first to adhere to the deliberations of
April 21. Its example was followed by
the Republican Federation of Naples,
which gave the proper interpretation to
the words "national compact" when it
declared: "We will keep our flag in
mourning untilthe day when the people
shall have sealed the new national com-
pact." The authorities, too, both in Na-
ples and in Florence, gave ample and
significant importance to Garibaldi's " le-
gal agitation " by causing his proclama-
tion to be torn down from the street-
corners. Meanwhile (it was on the 2yth
of April) Garibaldi retired to Albano to
observe the effects of his movement.
The organs of the Moderates were howl-
ing with indignation. A voice reached
him that displeasure reigned supreme at
the Quirinal. The Radicals, on the oth-
er hand, were jubilant. He wrote to
General ..Thurr that the democrats were
the best friends of King Humbert ! It
558
The Drift in Italy.
should not be forgotten here that Gari-
baldi receives one hundred thousand
francs yearly from " the government of
the king."
The question, however, is rolling, and
Parliament has taken it up. Victor Em-
anuel, in his last address to Parlia-
ment, promised something in the shape
of" electoral reforms," and so did Hum-
bert I. in his first discourse. It formed
a substantial feature in De Pretis' cele-
brated programme of Stradella, and in
those of Cairoli and Zanardelli. A com-
mittee was appointed last week to ex-
amine the project of law affecting the
reforms. Strange to say, the two men
who, apart from Garibaldi, were the
prime movers in, and are the most ar-
dent patrons of, the electoral reforms
Cairoli and Zanardelli were not admit-
ted into the committee, and this, pre-
sumably, in apprehension of the fact that
they would not tolerate limitations in
the law. As it is formulated now it is
far from Garibaldi's ideal. To give Par-
liament a little diversion, and to concil-
iate sympathetic support on this and
other questions of vital interest to his
ministry, the astute De Pretis has caus-
ed to be brought on the table the ques-
tion of obligatory civil marriage before
the celebration of the ecclesiastical rite.
The action was worthy of an Italian libe-
ral. The law will probably pass to
judge, at least, from the discussions thus
far and when the dreaded electoral re-
forms and the everlasting railroad ques-
tions are brought up, De Pretis will al-
ready have posed as a "patriot" by
striking the church of Jesus Christ.
How will this elective-franchise move-
ment affect the Catholic Conservatives
who promise to be ? Briefly, in this
wise : Coupled as it is with the aboli-
tion of the inaugurative oath in Parlia-
ment, it overturns the principal bar-
rier between the Catholics and political
life. Apart from this, the following sta-
tistical items will give the reader a fair
notion of the probabilities of the success,
under actual circumstances, of the Ca-
tholics in the political arena. Italy has
a male population of 13,472,213, of whom
7,615,896 are of age, or are citizens.
According to the actual electoral laws
there were inscribed in 1876, as voters,
605,007, or 2-rVk per cent, of the entire
population of both sexes. But of the
605,007 voters only 368,750 voted that
is to say, 61 per cent, of the electors,
which is equivalent to i ^ per cent, of
the population. The deputies elected
received the votes of -ftfc of the popula-
tion. Now, of these 605,007 electors there
are 33,000 employes actually on duty in
the civil service, not counting supernu-
meraries, servants, etc., who are all
voters. Add 47,000 military and marine
officers, 22,000 civil and military em-
ployes on the retired list but drawing
pensions, hence voters, and 22,000 cus-
tom-house officers, prison-guards, and
guards of public security. Here we have
at once more than 100,000 voters who
must vote with the government. I leave
the conclusion to the reader.
To return to the actual status of the
Conservatives, it may be described in
few words. Shorn of the distinctions
without differences and the officious and
semi-officious (not official, mind) decla-
rations and ratiocinations of different
Catholic papers in Italy, the matter
stands thus: The Catholics are to wait
until Pope Leo XIII. removes that fa-
mous non expedit. For the rest, a com-
mission of cardinals is actually engaged
on the question.
The topic most talked of in the Rome
of the popes is the recent consistory
of the I2th inst. Of the nine cardi-
nals preconized but three are Italians :
Alimonda, Bishop of Albenga ; Mgr.
Giuseppe Pecci, brother of His Holiness ;
and Father Zigliara, of the Order of
Preachers. For the rest a distinguish-
ed compliment was paid by His Holiness
to five nations of Europe in the late
consistory: to Austria and Hungary in
the exaltation to the cardinalate of two
of their distinguished prelates, Mgr.
Frederic, Landgrave de Fiirstenberg,
Archbishop of Olmutz, in Austria, and
Mgr. Ludwig Haynald, Archbishop of
Kolocsa and Bacs, in Hungary ; to
France by the publication of Monsi-
gnori Desprez and Pie, the one Arch-
bishop of Toulouse, the other Bishop of
Poitiers ; to Portugal by the creation of
Cardinal Americo Ferreira Dos Santos
Silva, Bishop of Porto ; to England by
the honor conferred upon Dr. John
Henry Newman, and to Prussia by the
preconization of Dr. Hergenrother, of
Wiirzburg. In her apostasy official
Italy is beyond the pale of a compliment.
A word of explanation concerning Car-
dinal Pecci. His creation was not a
moiu proprio of the Pope, but the desire
of the Sacred College, who formally
Current Events.
559
asked as much from His Holiness. This
is what His Holiness said concerning his
brother: "To the number of these we
also add our brother, Giuseppe Pecci,
vice-prefect of our Vatican Library, of
whom we will say but this much, vene-
rable brothers, that he has discharged a
long course of teaching in letters and
the severe studies, and is bound to us by
an intimate affection and is loved by us
with an equal love, and that in his
election you by your honest judgment
and your unanimous and affectionate
votes in his favor participated ; for
which, as is just, we profess our grati-
tude to you." Cardinal Pecci is the
Pope's senior by two years. He was a
member of the Society of Jesus. He
taught humanities and rhetoric in the
University of Perugia until the expul-
sion of the Jesuits from that city. He
then retired to Rome, where he lived in
the closest retirement until the election
to the pontifical chair of his brother, who
invited him to reside in the Vatican, as-
signing him an office eminently suiting
his tastes that of vice-prefect of the li-
brary.
CURRENT EVENTS.
THE NEW CARDINALS.
IT is only natural that every pub-
lic act of the head of the Catholic
Church should be exposed to the
keenest scrutiny by the world. He
stands in the very focus of " that
fierce light that beats upon the
throne," for his is the throne of
thrones. Other princes and rulers
can afford to make mistakes ; the
Pope cannot. His claim to au-
thority is the most stupendous in
the world. It is natural for men
to look for superior wisdom even
in mundane matters in one who
claims inerrancy and infallibility in
spirituals.
Every public act of Leo XIII.
thus far has been received by the
great mass of those who guide or
manufacture opinion outside the
Catholic Church with what may
be described as reserved approval.
In not a few quarters a warmer
term of commendation might be
used. It is cheering, too, to note
that in a time when the majority of
governments supposed to be Chris-
tian are arrayed against the Catho-
lic Church, the head of that church
is to all appearance making some
impression on them and moving
them to a kindlier attitude towards
their Catholic subjects and the
Holy See.
Leo XIII. has now occupied the
chair of Peter for a little over a
year. On May 12 he performed
what to the outside public will ap-
pear the most significant act of his
pontificate thus far. He filled up
certain vacancies in the College of
Cardinals, and the world cannot
but look on those whom he has
chosen to sit in the senate of the
church and exercise a voice in the
election of his successor as types
of Catholic life, faith, and intelli-
gence, and as men whom it is as
worthy to imitate as to honor. In-
deed, the Pope left no room for
doubt on this point. In his allocu-
tion delivered in the private con-
sistory at the date mentioned, after
referring again to the love and
5 6o
Current Events.
esteem he bears to the " exalted
Order " of the Sacred College, he
added :
" We have determined on this day to
add to your college men of the most
illustrious and proved character, some
of whom by their great zeal, prudence,
and assiduity in the discharge of pastoral
duties, in the care of the salvation of
souls, in defending by their public writ-
ings and discourses the doctrines and
rights of the church ; some by their great
scientific attainments, and the reputation
which they have acquired in discharging
the duty of teaching, or by the publish-
ed monuments of their genius; all by
unchangeable fidelity to the Apostolic
See, by their labors endured in the cause
of the church, by the distinguished
merits of their priestly virtue and con-
stancy, seen and known by many proofs,
have shown themselves altogether
worthy to be distinguished by the title
and insignia of your exalted dignity."
The men thus emphatically
honored by the Holy Father were
Mgr. Friedrich Egon, of the Land-
graves of Fiirstenberg, Archbishop
of Olmiitz; Mgr. Julien Florien
Felix Desprez, Archbishop of Tou-
louse ; Mgr. Louis Haynald, Arch-
bishop of Kalocs, in Hungary ; Mgr.
Louis Francois Desire Edouard
Pie, Bishop of Poitiers ; Mgr.
Americo Ferreira dos Santos
Silva, Bishop of Porto ; and Mgr.
Gaetano Alimonda, Bishop of
Albenga, who were elevated to
the dignity of cardinal-priests ;
and to that of cardinal-deacons :
Mgr. Giuseppe Pecci, Domestic
Prelate and Sub-Librarian of the
Holy Roman Church ; the Very
Rev. John Henry Newman, Priest
of the Congregation of the Oratory
of St. Philip Neri; Mgr. Josef
Hergenrother, Domestic Prelate
and Professor at the University of
Wiirzburg ; and the Rev. Father
Tommaso Zigliara, of the Order of
Preachers. Of these it will be
seen that three are Italians, while
there are seven of other nationali-
ties.
The significance of choice in
this, the first creation of Leo XIII.,
needs no pointing out. We shall
not dwell on it further than to cite
it as confirming what has been
urged on more than one occasion
in this magazine. In commenting
on the elevation by our late Holy
Father, Pius IX., of the Most Rev.
John McCloskey, Archbishop of
New York, to the dignity of the
cardinalate, we said :
" But what moves us most is the sig-
nificance of the act. In the appointment
of an American cardinal in the United
States the wish expressed by the Coun-
cil of Trent has in this instance been
realized. That great council ordained,
respecting the subjects of the cardinal-
ate, that * the Most Holy Roman Pontiff
shall, as far as it can be conveniently
done, select (them) out of all the nations
of Christendom, as he shall find persons
suitable ' (Sess. 24, De Ref., c. i.) Were
this recommendation completely car-
ried out, it would probably be one of
the greatest movements that have taken
place in the Catholic Church for the last
three centuries.
" Suppose, for example, that the great
Catholic interests throughout the world
were represented in that body by men
of intelligence, of known virtue, and
large experience ; suppose every na-
tionality had there its proportionate ex-
pression ; a senate thus composed would
be the most august assembly that ever
was. brought together upon earth. It
would be the only world's senate that
the world has ever witnessed. This
would be giving its proper expression
to the note of the universality of the
Church. . . .
" Who knows but the time has come
to give this universality of the Church a
fuller expression ? . . . Who knows but
the time is near. when the Holy Father
will be surrounded by representatives of
all nations, tribes, and peoples, from the
south as well as from the north, from the
east as well as from the west ; by Italians,
Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Eng-
lishmen, Belgians, Portuguese, Aus-
trians, Irishmen, Americans, Canadians,
Current Events.
5 6i
South Americans, Australians, as well
as by representatives of the faithful from
the Empire of China ? Would this new
departure be anything more than the
realization of the wish expressed by that
great and holy council held at Trent
three centuries ago?" (" The Year of our
Lord 1875," THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Jan-
uary, 1876).
And this idea was still further
emphasized in an article on " The
Outlook in Italy" (THE CATHOLIC
WORLD, October, 1877, while the
late Holy Father was still happily
reigning).
u There were special reasons," it was
there said, "which made it reasonable
that the occupant of St. Peter's chair at
Rome should in modern times be an
Italian. Owing to the radical changes
which have since taken place in Europe,
these causes no longer have the force
they once had. The church is a uni-
versal, not a national, society. The
boundaries of nations have, to a great
extent, been obliterated by the marvel-
lous inventions of the age. The ten-
dency of mankind is, even in spite of it-
self, to become more and more one fami-
ly, and of nations to become parts of
one great whole rather than separate en-
tities. And even if the wheel of change
should, as we devoutly hope, restore to
the Pope the patrimony of the church,
the claims of any distinct nationality to
the chair of Peter will scarcely hold as
they once held. The supreme pastor of
the whole flock of Christ, as befits the
catholic and cosmopolitan spirit of the
church, ma)'- now, as in former days, be
chosen solely in view of his capacity,
fitness, and personal merits, without
anv regard to his nationality or race.
" It must be added to the other great
acts of the reigning Pontiff whom may
God preserve ! that he has given to the
cardinal senate of the church a more
representative character by choosing for
its members a larger number of distin-
guished men from the different nations
of which the family of the church is
composed. This, it is to be hoped, is
only a promise of the no distant day
when the august senate of the universal
church shall not only be open to men
of merit of every Catholic nation of the
earth, but also its members be chosen in
VOL. XXIX. 36
proportion to the importance of each
community, according to the express de-
sire of the holy (Ecumenical Council of
Trent."
The name on the illustrious list
best known to English readers is of
course that of John Henry New-
man. The universal joy with
which the announcement of his
elevation to the highest dignity that
it is in the power of the head of the
church to bestow on living man
was received testifies to the general
esteem in which Dr. Newman is held,
and to the wide-spread influence of
his writings. The new cardinal
received the official announcement
of his creation at the residence of
Cardinal Howard, in Rome. There
were present almost all the Eng-
lish, Irish, and Americans in Rome,
as well as many ecclesiastical dig-
nitaries and members of the Ro-
man nobility. The formularies
having been gone through, Cardinal
Newman delivered the following
reply to the announcement :
CARDINAL NEWMAN'S SPEECH.
" Vi ringrazio, monsignore, per la par-
ticipazione che mi avete fatto dell' alto
onore che il Santo Padre si e degnato
conferire sulla mia persona ; and if I
ask your permission to continue my ad-
dress to you, not in your musical lan-
guage, but in my own dear mother-
tongue, it is because in the latter lean
better express my feelings on this most
gracious announcement which you have
brought to me than if I attempted what
is above me. First of all, then, I am led
to speak of the wonder and profound
gratitude which came upon me, and
which is upon me still, at the conde-
scension and love towards me of the
Holy Father in singling me out for so
immense an honor. It was a great sur-
prise. Such an elevation had never
come into my thoughts, and seemed to
be out of keeping with all my antece-
dents. I had passed through many trials,
but they were over, and now the end of
all things had almost come to me and I
was at peace. And was it possible that,
5 62
Current Events.
after all, I had lived through so many
years for this ? Nor is it easy to see how
I could have borne so great a shock had
not the Holy Father resolved on a second
condescension towards me, which tem-
pered it, and was to all who heard of it a
touching evidence of his kindly and
generous nature. He felt for me, and he
told me the reasons why he raised me to
this high position. His act, said he, was
a recognition of my zeal and good ser-
vices for so many years in the Catholic
cause. Moreover, he judged it would
give pleasure to English Catholics, and
even to Protestant England, if I receiv-
ed some mark of his favor. After such
gracious words from His Holiness I
should have been insensible and heart-
less if I had had scruples any longer.
This is what he had the kindness to say
to me, and what could I want more?
In a long course of years I have made
many mistakes. I have nothing of that
high perfection which belongs to the
writings of saints namely, that error
cannot be found in them ; but what I
trust I may claim throughout all that I
have written is this : an honest inten-
tion, an absence of private ends, a tem-
per of obedience, a willingness to be
corrected, a dread of error, a desire to
serve the holy church, and, through the
divine mercy, a fair measure of success.
And, I rejoice to say, to one great mis-
chief I have from the first opposed my-
self. For thirty, forty, fifty years I have
resisted to the best of my powers the
spirit of liberalism in religion. Never
did the holy church need champions
against it more sorely than now, when,
alas ! it is an error overspreading as a
snare the whole earth ; and on this great
occasion, when it is natural for one who
is in my place to look out upon the
world and upon the holy church as it
is and upon her future, it will not, I
hope, be considered out of place if I re-
new the protest against it which I have
so often made. Liberalism in religion
is the doctrine that there is no positive
truth in religion, but that one creed is
as good as another ; and this is the teach-
ing which is gaining substance and
force daily. It is inconsistent with the
recognition of any religion as true. It
teaches that all are to be tolerated, as
all are matters of opinion. Revealed
religion is not a truth, but a sentiment
and a taste not an objective fact, not
miraculous ; and it is the right of each
individual to make it say just what
strikes his fancy. Devotion is not nec-
essarily founded on faith. Men may
go to Protestant churches and to Catho-
lic, may get good from both and belong
to neither. They may fraternize together
in spiritual thoughts and feelings with-
out having any views at all of doctrine
in common or seeing the need of them.
Since, then, religion is so personal a
peculiarity and so private a possession,
we must of necessity ignore it in the in-
tercourse of man with man. If a man
puts on a new religion every morning,
what is that to you ? It is as imperti-
nent to think about a man's religion as
about the management of his family.
Religion is in no sense the bond of so-
ciety. Hitherto the civil power has been
Christian. Even in countries separated
from the church, as in my own, the
dictum was in force when 1 was young
that Christianity was the law of the land.
Now everywhere that goodly framework
of society, which is the creation of Chris-
tianity, is throwingoff Christianity. The
dictum to which I have referred, with a
hundred others which followed upon it,
is gone or is going everywhere, and
by the end of the century, unless the
Almighty interferes, it will be forgotten.
Hitherto it has been considered that re-
ligion alone, with its supernatural sanc-
tions, was strong enough to secure the
submission of the mass of the popula-
tion to law and order. Now philosophers
and politicians are bent on satisfying this
problem without the aid of Christianity.
Instead of the church's authority and
teaching they would substitute, first of
all, a universal and a thoroughly secular
education, calculated to bring home to
every individual that to be orderly, in-
dustrious, and sober is his personal in-
terest. Then for great working princi-
ples to take the place of religion for the
use of the masses thus carefully educat-
ed, they provide the broad, fundamental,
ethical truths of justice, benevolence,
veracity, and the like, proved experience,
and those natural laws which exist and
act spontaneously in society and in so-
cial matters, whether physical or psy-
chological for instance, in government,
trade, finance, sanitary experiments, the
intercourse of nations. As to religion,
it is a private luxury which a man may
have if he will, but which, of course, he
must pay for, and which he must not
obtrude upon others or indulge to their
Current Events.
563
annoyance. The general character of
this great apostasy is one and the same
everywhere, but in detail and in charac-
ter it varies in different countries. For
myself, I would rather speak of it in my
own country, which I know. There, I
think, it threatens to have a formidable
success, though it is not easy to see
what will be its ultimate issue. At first
sight it might be thought that English-
men are "too religious for a movement
which on the Continent seems to be
founded on infidelity ; but the misfortune
with us is that, though it ends in infidelity,
as in other places, it does not necessari-
ly arise out of infidelity. It must be
recollected that the religious sects which
sprang up in England three centuries
ago, and which are so powerful now,
have ever been fiercely opposed to the
union of church and state, and would
advocate the unchristianizing the mon-
archy and all that belongs to it, under the
notion that such a catastrophe would make
Christianity much more pure and much
more powerful. Next, the liberal prin-
ciple is forced on us through the neces-
sity of the case. Consider what follows
from the very fact of these many sects.
They constitute the religion, it is sup-
posed, of half the population ; and, re-
collect, our mode of government is pop-
ular. Every dozen men taken at ran-
dom whom you meet in the streets have
a share in political power. When you
inquire into their forms of belief, per-
haps they represent one or other of as
many as seven religions. How can they
possibly act together in municipal or in
national matters if each insists on the
recognition of his own religious denom-
ination ? All action would be at a dead-
lock unless the subject of religion were
ignored. We cannot help ourselves.
And, thirdly, it must be borne in mind
that there is much in the liberalistic
theory which is good and true; for ex-
ample, not to say more, the precepts of
justice, truthfulness, sobriety, self-com-
mand, benevolence, which, as I have
already noted, are among its avowed
principles. It is not till we find that this
array of principles is intended to super-
sede, to block out, religion that we pro-
nounce it to be evil. There never was a
device of the enemy so cleverly framed
and with such promise of success. And
already it has answered to the expecta-
tions which have been formed of it. It
is sweeping into its own ranks great
numbers of able, earnest, virtuous men
elderly men of approved antecedents,
young men with a career before them.
Such is the state of things in England,
and it is well that it should be realized
by all of us ; but it must not be sup-
posed for a moment that I am afraid of
it. I lament it deeply, because I fore-
see that it may be the ruin of many
souls ; but I have no fear at all that it
really can do aught of serious harm to
the work of truth, to the holy church, to
our Almighty King, the Lion of the tribe
of Juda, faithful and true, or to his
Vicar on earth. Christianity has been
too often in what seemed deadly peril
that we should fear for it any new trial
now. So far is certain. On the other
hand, what is uncertain, and in these
great contests commonly is uncertain,
and what is commonly a great surprise
when it is witnessed, is the particular
mode in the event by which Providence
rescues and saves his elect inheritance.
Sometimes our enemy is turned into a
friend ; sometimes he is despoiled of
that special virulence of evil which was
so threatening ; sometimes he falls to
pieces of himself; sometimes he does just
so much as is beneficial and then is re-
moved. Commonly the church has no-
thing more to do than to go on in her
own proper duties in confidence and
peace, to stand still, and to see the sal-
vation of God. Mansueti hereditabunt
tertam et delectabttntur in multitudine
pads."
ITS APPLICATION.
It is plain that this speech was
addressed more especially to the
English-speaking world, and it has
had its effect. The drift of it was
flashed across the ocean to us on
the day of its delivery. It was
eagerly caught up and commented
on by the leading English newspa-
pers, and has undergone a similar
process in this country. So that
whatever there is in the speech is
being circulated over the world,
weighed and discussed by the
organs of public opinion and by
every man who lias an interest in
the momentous subjects of which
it treats. The London Times
Ciirrent Events.
speaks of the elevation of Dr. New-
man to the cardinalate as " an
event of much significance." His
speech it calls " remarkable."
" Some five-and-forty years ago," it
says, "a few words spoken, a thrill-
ing line or two written, by Mr.
Newman, of Oriel, were sufficient
to work a ferment and revolution
within many educated Englishmen,
and to mark a new era in their
lives. A barbed winged sentence
in a sermon at St. Mary's, or a
pregnant expression or two in the
pages of the old British Critic,
availed to alter the whole set of
many a man's thoughts."
Times and men and things have
changed much since then, ** but,"
the Times has the courage to
avow, "one thing still stands fast
the magic has not gone out of their
leader's words."
" He speaks to this generation in very
much the same thrilling way as of old,
and it will be nothing but the ordinary
course if single phrases in the speech
which he made on Monday, when the
consistorial messenger was announced,
linger for weeks like a haunting strain
of melody in the minds of many Eng-
lishmen. Somewhere Dr. Newman has
himself disclaimed possessing any apti-
tude for the task of authority or rule, or
the function of initiation. But his mo-
desty overshoots the truth. Within his
own diocese, which is wider than most
that can be named, he has been a ruler
of thoughts ; he has been the intellectual
master of multitudes ; and he has had
crowds of spiritual subjects unknown to
him."
That is a very beautiful and
generous tribute on the part of a
great journal which is of its nature
and office opposed to the whole
current of Cardinal Newman's
speech and to the main effort of
his long and laborious life as a
Catholic and a priest, and the
whole article is written in a similar
strain. Indeed, it is rather a plead-
ing with than an argument against
the cardinal, and wisely so; for
nothing could break the strength
of the cardinal's position. Noth-
ing could surpass the modest dig-
nity and tender touches of the ear-
lier and purely personal portions
of the address. "I had passed
through many trials, but they were
over, and now the end of all things
had almost come to me, and I was
at peace." The peace was broken
in the manner we have seen, and
the honored head that had been
bowed under these many trials,
some of which are known to the
world, was crowned before the end
came. " In a long course of years
I have made many mistakes." How
such words, coming from such a
source, rebuke the hard and asser-
tive spirit of the times ! They are
a stronger condemnation of the
tone and thought of the age than
even his invincible argument.
" I have nothing of that high perfec-
tion which belongs to the writings of
saints namely, that error cannot be
found in them ; but what I trust I may
claim throughout all that I have written
is this : an honest intention, an absence
of private ends, a temper of obedience,
a willingness to be corrected, a dread of
error, a desire to serve the holy church,
and, through the divine mercy, a fair
measure of success."
There is something peculiarly
noble, frank, and Christian in all
this. The privilege of making a
public confession that will be heard
by all the world is given to few
men ; and few indeed could turn
it to the advantage of the world as
Cardinal Newman has here done.
His confession is the very essence
of the noble humility of a great
Christian heart and intelligence.
What a contrast is it, for instance,
to the confessions that have recent-
ly appeared of another very emi-
Current Events.
565
nent man the chancellor of the
German Empire !
Passing from himself, he goes on
" to look out upon the world and
upon the holy church as it is,
and upon her future." And what
does he find there ? The world
possessed by the spirit of " liberal-
ism in religion," that goes under
the false name of toleration. And
what is "liberalism in religion"?
It is and no words could paint it
more simply, truly, and fully "the
doctrine that there is no positive
truth in religion, but that one creed
is as good as another." This is sim-
ply, as Cardinal Newman says and
every word he here utters is pregnant
with force " inconsistent with the
recognition of any religion as true."
The whole story is told there
the story of modern apostasy, its
origin and its drift. Cardinal
Newman's exposition of it is com-
plete and will last. It is hardly
too much to say of that exposition
that it is the very epitome and con-
densation of all that could be said
on this subject to any purpose, and
it is said as only Cardinal Newman
could say it ; for he of all men has
the power of conveying the deepest
truths in the clearest way, and
bringing the results of the widest
observation and knowledge within
the compass of ordinary intelli-
gence so that nothing is obscure or
unexplained. A man may or may
not accept it; he can by no possi-
bility mistake its meaning.
Nor is this doctrine of liberalism
or indifferentism in religion without
its plausible and attractive side,
which Cardinal Newman does not
fail to set forth : " For example, not
to say more, the precepts of jus-
tice, truthfulness, sobriety, self-
command, benevolence, which, as
I have already noted, are among
its avowed principles."
These, of course, sound very well,
and are to a certain extent act-
ed up to by many excellent per-
sons. There is everything that is
good in them, and thousands of
professed Christians constantly fail
before our eyes in these very mat-
ters, thus giving scandal and bring-
ing disgrace on the Christian name.
The evil attached to these princi-
ples is extrinsic :
" It is not till we find that this array
of principles is intended to supersede,
to block out, religion that we pronounce
it to be evil. There never was a device
of the enemy so cleverly framed and
with such promise of success. And al-
ready it has answered to the expectations
which have been formed of it. It is
sweeping into its own ranks great num-
bers of able, earnest, virtuous men eld-
erly men of approved antecedents, young
men with a career before them."
There is the great evil. To
the religious indifferentism of a
people may be traced the chief
evils that afflict that people. No
state is strong at heart that is
built on this indifferentism. " Un-
less the Lord build the house
they labor in vain who build it."
The fairest and highest principles
are nothing better than a bundle
of vagaries, unless cemented, held
together, vitalized, and shaped by
the spirit of Christianity, as with-
out it, too, the highest intellects
fall into the grossest absurdities
and errors. History shows this.
Even the pagan nations that had
reverence for a supreme though
unknown God only fell into cor-
ruption and decay when the spirit
of scepticism laughed their religion
away and left them nothing to
stand on but their animal instincts,
which they proceeded to deify.
The cry of the first French Revo-
lution was a noble cry. Liberty,
Fraternity, Equality in a rational
565
Current Events.
measure what nobler device could
be set on the banners of a people?
But they struck out Christianity,
and their liberty became a terror,
their fraternity a hate, and their
equality a bloody despotism. So
we here : we have all that Heaven
could give us, and in return some
of us would reject Heaven itself.
The dry rot of religious indiffer-
entism is eating its way among us.
The children of Protestant parents
become when they grow up, in
great part, indifferent in religious
matters. Religion to them is, in
Dr. Newman's words, simply a
"personal peculiarity" and a "pri-
vate possession." It is " in no
sense the bond of society."
The result of this we have seen
in our public life here. The man
who is absolutely indifferent about
his God will not break his heart
over his neighbor or his neighbor's
goods. He is centred in himself,
and the world only moves to help
or to retard him. He lives a
merely animal existence that may
or may not be lighted by intelli-
gence and fine aspirations. But
the coherency of the people is thus
destroyed and patriotism itself
slain. It is false to say that this
is not a Christian republic. It is
eminently so ; for we can be Chris-
tian without formal legal establish-
ments. If religion is failing among
us, it is not the fault of the state.
The state gives religion every op-
portunity. It is the fault of the
teachers of religion and of the peo-
ple who profess it. But religion
must continue to fail, if it continue
to be, as Cardinal Newman puts it,
" not a truth, but a sentiment and
a taste not an objective fact, not
miraculous; and it is the right of
each individual to make it say just
what strikes his fancy."
THE NEW ST. PATRICKS CATHE-
DRAL.
No ecclesiastical event in this
country has commanded such gen-
eral attention and been so widely
commented upon as the consecra-
tion of the new cathedral of the
archdiocese of New York. There
is not a newspaper in the land
which has failed to make mention
of this happy, auspicious, and glo-
rious occurrence, and we are glad
to record the fact that the com-
ments upon it, not only in the se-
cular journals but in the non-Ca-
tholic religious newspapers, were
for the most part conceived in a
good and kindly spirit. The splen-
dor of the ceremonial and the
beauty of the edifice itself dazzled
the eyes and led captive the ima-
gination of the numerous non-Ca-
tholic journalists who were pre-
sent, and their descriptions of the
event were transmitted over all the
land. The metropolitan journals
gave many pages to these accounts;
the newspapers of Boston, Spring-
field, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Wash-
ington, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleve-
land, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chi-
cago, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Paul,
St. Louis, Louisville, Charleston,
Savannah, New Orleans, San Fran-
cisco, and many other large and
important cities, were scarcely be-
hind the New York press in their
elaborate, intelligent descriptions
of the consecration, and in their
well-intentioned and good-spirited
comments upon it. Nor was the
intelligence of the event, and the
interest felt in it, confined to this
country. The transatlantic cables
carried full accounts of it beneath
the ocean, and these accounts were
published in Rome, Berlin, Vienna,
London, Paris, Dublin, and Edin-
Ciirrent Events.
567
burgh within a few hours after
the ceremony had ended. It was
a great, glorious, and most sig-
nificant event, and the fame of it
has gone forth to the ends of the
earth.
Among the other significances of
this crowning of twenty years' labor
is the splendid refutation which it
affords of the absurd assertion which
so often falls glibly from the lips
of non-Catholics that "this is a
Protestant country." It is nothing
of the kind. Unhappily the Unit-
ed States are not yet a Catholic
country. But here in its great me-
tropolis is the largest, most noble,
and most costly religious edifice in
the land, planted in the most con-
spicuous portion of the finest tho-
roughfare of the city, and com-
manding the admiration of all be-
holders. It is a Roman Catholic
cathedral, the mother church of
the seventy-five other Catholic
churches which cluster around it
in this city. In comparison with
it the finest of all the non-Cath-
olic churches or meeting-houses
dwindle into almost ludicrous in-
significance. New York is not a
Catholic city, but it is surely not a
Protestant city; and what is true of
New York is true of the nation as
a whole. The Catholic Church is
making steady, constant, and sure
advances all over the country. She
constantly receives accessions by
the natural increase of the families
of her children, by the arrival of
emigrants from foreign countries,
and by conversions. The non-Ca-
tholic sects, on the other hand, are
subject to equally constant disinte-
gration and diminution. There is
a glorious future before the Church
in this our beloved country, so far
as human foresight can predict ;
and the consecration of St. Pat-
rick's Cathedral is and always will
be a notable landmark in the his-
tory of her progress.
CATHOLIC COLONIZATION.
It is with special pleasure that we
record the auspicious beginning in
this city and elsewhere of the work of
the Irish Catholic Colonization Asso-
ciation. Months ago, before this as-
sociation was organized, and while
all that had been accomplished in
the matter of systematized Catho-
lic colonization was the admirable
and successful work of Bishop Ire-
land and his assistants in Minne-
sota, we gave many pages of our
magazine to explanations and dis-
cussions of the colonization and
emigration question. Our readers
will remember the principles which
we then advocated, and the pains
which we took to set forth the
moral, social, economical, and reli-
gious advantages which would re-
sult from the colonization move-
ment if conducted upon sound busi-
ness principles and managed by
thoroughly competent business men.
In these articles, also, we took oc-
casion to expose what we deemed
the fallacy of those who expended
so much eloquence in deploring the
evils which had resulted from the
concentration of our Catholic pop-
ulation in our great cities. We
undertook to show, and believe
that we did show, that this concen-
tration, although not, of course,
unaccompanied by evils, was al-
most necessary, and certainly bene-
ficial, to the greater and higher in-
terests of the church in the United
States. Take our people thirty
years ago. Upon their arrival in
the United States had they been
thrust out into the western portion
of the country, isolated, far from
each other, scattered as sheep
without a shepherd, deprived of the
568
Current Events.
tegular and constant ministrations
of religion and the direction of
their priests, without churches,
without the sacraments, and without
schools, they might perhaps have
earned for themselves a compara-
tively comfortable subsistence. But
that they would have lost to a very
great extent their faith and become
absorbed insensibly by the sur-
rounding non-Catholic populations
is almost as certainly true. But
congregated as they were in great
cities, what have they done ? What,
for instance, have they done in this
great metropolis ? If you seek
their monuments, look at the Cath-
olic directory and read the list of
Catholic churches, asylums, hospi-
tals, convents, schools, academies,
and colleges there given, and you
will find that the island has drawn
around it an almost uninterrupt-
ed cordon of religious, charitable,
and educational institutions, which
have been to a very large extent
constructed by the willing and
unostentatious contributions of
the Catholic working population
of both sexes. They have planted
here institutions which will not
only exist for all time, but from
which are now prepared to go forth
the hosts of well-educated, well-
disciplined, and thoroughly zealous
Catholics, to settle the regions
which are awaiting them in the
great west, northwest, and south-
west portions of the republic. The
daily papers have published full
and admirable reports of the vari-
ous meetings which have been held
in New York at the call of the di-
rectors of the Colonization Asso-
ciation, and the basis upon which
its operations are to be conducted
is too well understood to need any
exposition in these columns. The
meeting preliminary to the great
assembly at Cooper Institute on
Wednesday evening, June 3, was
thoroughly satisfactory. The dis-
position of our rich Catholics to
take stock in the association was
made thoroughly manifest, and at
the large meeting on Wednesday
alluded to the success of the asso-
ciation was placed beyond ques-
tion. While there are tens of thou-
sands of laboring men or small
traders who have managed to save
three or four hundred dollars, there
are comparatively few who have at
their command funds requisite for
the purchase and cultivation of a
farm of one hundred and sixty acres.
The association proposes to come
forward to meet these small capital-
ists, and to advance to them, in the
way of credits, the capital which
they otherwise do not possess. The
ultimate success of the association
can scarcely be a matter of doubt,
and the good results that are to
flow from it can scarcely be exag-
gerated.
ARCHBISHOP PURCELL.
The pecuniary embarrassments
which have overtaken the venera-
ble Archbishop of Cincinnati have
pained every Catholic who has
heard of them ; the statement of
their causes has elicited expres-
sions of regret and sympathy from
many representatives of non-Ca-
tholic opinion throughout the
country. A few and only a
very few Protestant journals, and
one or two infidel prints, have
made certain unkind and abusive
remarks upon the matter; but the
general expression of feeling has
been one of sympathy and regret.
This has been followed by an al-
most universal chorus of praise for
the action taken in the premises
by the hierarchy, the priests, and
the Catholic laity throughout the
Current Events.
569
country. No legal obligation rest-
ed upon any of us to undertake
the task of aiding Archbishop Pur-
cell to discharge the claims made
upon him. In coming to his as-
sistance every one acts purely on
his own motion, without obliga-
tion, and as one who wishes to do
a free act for the love of God and
the greater glory of his church by
aiding one of its prelates to re-
lieve himself from burdens that
crush him, and to prevent other
persons from suffering. In the ad-
mirable address issued by Cardi-
nal McCloskey, the archbishops
and bishops, assembled in New
York May 26, these truths are
clearly set forth. The prelates in-
sist that it is no part of their pur-
pose to pronounce a verdict on the
causes which have led to the em-
barrassments of Archbishop Pur-
cell. They make it very clear that
their action on his behalf carries
with it no recognition of an obli-
gation, no responsibility for the
discharge of the indebtedness, and
no sanction as a precedent. Their
action, they state, " is one of char-
ity, of willingness to assist Arch-
bishop Purcell and to second the
efforts of his own clergy, and is for
the present case alone." They lay
it down and the statement is well
worthy of remembrance that "the
Catholic Church in the United
States forms no corporate organi-
zation ; each diocese is responsible
for its own financial administra-
tion " But while this is all true
most necessarily true and useful
to remember there remains the
fact that Catholics all over the
world are bound together by the
sama invisible but all-powerful tie
which unites them to God, and
which preserves unbroken the mi-
raculous unity of the church. We
are all members of each other,
members of the same body, and
the grief or trouble of one of us is
the grief and trouble, so far as it is
known, of all. In this matter of
Archbishop Purcell there are two
parties who are in trouble and who
are suffering the archbishop him-
self and his creditors. The sum
required to satisfy all the claims is
one and a half million of dollars.
It is a large sum, but already
much has been done toward pro-
viding for its payment. In the
archbishop's own diocese many
large individual subscriptions have
been made; congregational dona-
tions have been numerous and
liberal ; and diocesan debt socie-
ties are being formed in every par-
ish. But these agencies alone will
not be sufficient. The Catholics
all over the land must be afforded
an opportunity to aid in the work,
and invited to do so. The prelates
have -therefore agreed to have sub-
scription-lists opened in every par-
ish for special contributions, to be
paid at once or in instalments run-
ning through five years, and to
have also a collection taken up on
some Sunday before the first of
November next. The twenty-six
prelates present at the meeting
personally subscribed sums amount-
ing to $13,550, and the other mem-
bers of the hierarchy will no doubt
follow their example. Already a
number of large subscriptions from
the laity have been made. We
had thought of using some words
of our own in behalf of this most
commendable and worthy work.
But we could say nothing so power-
ful as are the closing words of the
address of the prelates, which we
here subjoin :
" And to the reverend clergy and the
faithful people throughout the United
States we now jointly address the exhor-
tation which we will urge upon them in
5/0
New Publications.
our respective dioceses, that they enter
' with a great heart and a willing mind '
into this noble work of charity, and that
they spare no effort and stop at no sacri-
fice that may aid to its success. While
again declaring that it is no obligation
of justice that we shall thus fulfil, we do
not forget how sacred are the demands
of fraternal sympathy and charity. In
times of need they have never been thus
far appealed to in vain; and we doubt
not that the special greatness of the pre-
sent need will call forth a special mani-
festation of Christian beneficence which
will give edification to all men and glory
to the Father of Mercies, besides pour-
ing balm into the bruised heart of the
venerable prelate who, during the near-
ly fifty years of his episcopal career in
our midst, has won for himself the ad-
miration and affection of all by the saint-
liness of his life and the self-sacrificing
devotedness of his zeal. May it be our
happiness to bring consolation and
peace to the last days of his earthly so-
journing !"
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
CATHOLICITY IN THE CAROLINAS AND
GEORGIA : LEAVES OF ITS HISTORY. Bv
Rev. Dr. J. J. O'Connell, O.S.B. New
York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1879.
The number of priests and Catholics
in the Carolinas and Georgia has been
and still remains quite small. There is,
nevertheless, a great deal of matter for
very interesting narrative and descrip-
tion, of which the Rev. Father O'Connell
has been able to avail himself in writing
his leaves from the history of Catholicity
in these States. There is more romantic
interest hanging about Carolina and the
adjacent States in respect to political
and social history, from old colonial
times down to the more disastrous epoch
of the late civil war, than belongs to
many of our more populous States.
There is something similar in the Ca-
tholic history of the same region. The
number of remarkable men both among
the clergy and laity of what was the dio-
cese of the greatest among them all, and,
indeed, the one who was at least the
compeer of any man belonging to our
American Catholic annals Bishop Eng-
land is remarkable, considering how
relatively small the whole number of
pastors and people has been. The inci-
dents narrated by Father O'Connell are
likewise interesting to a remarkable de-
gree, and must be especially so to all
those who are familiar with the scenes
and persons described. We have been
told of a remark made by one gentleman,
that he would give $10,000 to be the au-
thor of Father O'Connell's book, and the
fact that a second edition is called for is
a proof of its popularity. It is history
mostly made up of matters of every-day
life, in which a great many living per-
sons find themselves or their relatives
and friends figuring, and many incidents
related with which they have been per-
sonally familiar. In its grand, general
features it is correct, and in many of the
details the author has related things
which fell under his own observation,
and in respect to which he is a witness
of good authority. In other minute and
particular circumstances he is not always
so accurate. For instance, his state-
ment that the publication of the works
of Bishop England entailed a pecuniary
loss on the diocese is so far from be-
ing correct that in fact a considerable
amount of profit accrued from it.
It is mentioned that Father Alfred
Young, C.S. P., who assisted the rever-
end author in dedicating a church while
yet an ecclesiastical student, was or-
dained priest in the Paulist community.
He was really the parish priest of Tren-
ton, N. J., when he became the first no-
vice of the new congregation under Fa-
ther Hecker. The mistakes made about
certain members of prominent Catholic
families who are reported as having aban-
doned their religion or having died with-
out the sacraments are much more se-
rious, because they have given pain to
the surviving relatives. One of these
gentlemen, we have been assured, re-
ceived the last sacraments. Of another,
we have been told, on the best authority,
that on the occasion of his being nomi-
New Publications.
571
nated for an office, and having reason to
expect opposition on the score of his re-
ligion, he made the following terse and
pointed speech : " Fellow-citizens ! I
have heard that some persons are going
to oppose my election on the ground
that I am a Roman Catholic. I have
always heard that an American citizen is
free to profess any religion he pleases.
As for me, I am not a good man, I well
know ! But every drop of blood in my
veins that is religious is Roman Catho-
lic, and I am not going back on my reli-
gion for any thing or person in this world.
And if any man is base enough to oppose
me on account of my religion, I tell you
that I do not want the mean dog's vote !"
This does not look like apostasy !
Some of the most noteworthy persons
in the history of Catholicity in the ori-
ginal diocese of Charleston are passed
over without mention, or a very slight
one. The Burts of Edgefield Court-
house were two of the most remarkable
men we have ever met in any part of the
world, and their history would furnish
matter for several pages equal in roman-
tic interest to any of the most graphic
pages of Father O'Connell's narrative.
The conversion and subsequent career
of their nephew, the Rev. Dr. Merri-
wether, is of the same importance. The
author always was and still remains an
ardent Southerner in his feelings. It
would be most appropriate, in our opin-
ion, if some tribute were paid to the
memory of the amiable and gallant Cap-
tain Sumter Brownfield, a lineal descen-
dant of the famous Colonel Sumter, and
other young men of the Carolinas and
Georgia who fell on the battle-field, and
to others, like Captain Theodore Kana-
paux, still surviving, who distinguished
themselves equally. We belong to the
opposite side. But, like most of those
who were warmly engaged in the cause
of the Union, we have no sympathy with
that narrow and factious spirit of a small
number at the North, who cannot recog-
nize the honesty and the valor of men
who fought for the lost cause. A num-
ber of those who died or gallantly serv-
ed in both armies were our near rela-
tives, our loved pupils in their boyhood,
or our cherished friends. May God give
repose to the souls of those who are
dead, and the surviving be assured of
our undying affection and unceasing
prayers for their welfare ! We have nev-
er ceased to mourn over the calamities
of Charleston, that beautiful city of the
South, and to long for the reflourishing
of the whole region which was desolated
by the civil war. Such are the senti-
ments of Northern Catholics toward
their Southern brethren in the faith and
all their Southern fellow-citizens. The
sentiments of the great majority of all
who are not extremists of the same sort
with the fire-eaters of the other side, are
similar to our own.
Father O'Connell's book will be read
with interest at the North as well as at
the South, and it will remain as one of
our historical documents. It is most
important, therefore, that it should be
corrected and improved with all possible
care. There are numbers of persons
living who can furnish the most authen-
tic information to the author. We hope
he will invite their criticisms, and make
use of them in such a way as to make
his ensuing editions as correct and com-
plete as possible.
PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. By
William Roscher, Professor of Politi-
cal Economy at the University of
Leipzig, etc. From the thirteenth Ger-
man edition. Translated from the Ger-
man by John J. Lalor, A.M. 2 vols.
Chicago : Callaghan & Co. 1878.
Professor Roscher has long enjoyed
a reputation for vast learning on the
Continent of Europe, and especially in
Germany. That he has richly deserved
it the volumes before us would be suffi-
cient to prove, even if the author had
written nothing else, instead of being, as
he is, the writer of some dozen other
works equally learned. Roscher has
projected a work on political economy
which, when completed, will be a cyclo-
paedia of that branch of learning, and the
most comprehensive work on the sub-
ject in any language. Thus far but two
parts of the great work have been pub-
lished in the original, and- the two state-
ly volumes before us are the translation
of only the first part. These volumes,
however, are complete in themselves,
and cover the entire ground usually
covered by English and American works
on political economy. They have no
chapter on the subject of taxation,
but, with this exception, it is safe to
say that the careful student will find in
these pages more information on the sub-
ject of political economy than in any
572
New Publications.
half-dozen works in English on that
science if science it can be called.
The author's style is exceedingly concise.
There is scarcely a superfluous word in
these two volumes of nearly 500 pages
each ; and hence the amount of informa-
tion on a page is as great as can general-
ly be found on a great many pages of
another author. Roscher is not given
to long-winded discussions. He states
principles, and states them clearly, in a
few words, and yet in such a way that
although he does not seem to argue, the
reader proceeds easily and smoothly
from one proposition to another in his
book, and has rarely, if ever, occasion to
find fault with the author's logic. The
notes to the work, comprising over half
the volumes, are a rich mine of learning
such as cannot be found in any other
work in our language, and they are as
interesting as they are learned.
Political economists are not yet agreed
as to whether the branch of learning
which they represent is a science or not ;
and, as a matter of fact, some of them are
just now hotly debating that question.
It seems to us that the question is an
idle one. It matters comparatively little
whether or not political economy is called
a science, provided it give men informa-
tion which may be useful to individuals
or the state ; and that it can and does
give such information political economy
may certainly claim for itself without
any boasting. We may know, and cer-
tainly do know, something about capital
and labor, about wages and interest,
about the nature and functions of credit,
about the effects of free-trade and pro-
tection, about the influence on trade of
paper money, etc., etc. Now, what we
do know on such subjects, the best
known on such subjects, constitutes the
body of political economy, is political
economy ; and that such knowledge is
useful, whether dignified with the name
of science or not, cannot be questioned.
It is useful, nay, indispensable, to our
legislators and statesmen ; and it is de-
sirable, especially in our days, that this
knowledge should be as wide-spread as
possible. We do not believe that any
reasoning of statesmen or political
economists can, by showing the neces-
sary relation and harmony between capi-
tal and labor, successfully oppose the
inroads of infidel communism, for in-
stance, cogent as that reasoning maybe ;
but we believe that such reasoning has
its force, and should, therefore, make it-
self heard, and hence we are disposed
to welcome the appearance of all such
works as Professor Roscher's.
Rjscher has been called the founder
of the historical school in political econ-
omy, and his method has been styled
the historical method. Much has been
written as to his claim to the distinction
of an inventor of a method, and many
have denied the claim. He, however, as
we understand him, opposes his histori-
cal or " realistic " method only to the
idealistic method which has given to the
world such writers as Fourier and Prou-
dhon. He does not oppose it to the " con-
crete deductive, " nor does his method
bring him into conflict with what is uni-
versally recognized by the best writers on
the subject to be true. The word " real-
istic " describes his mode of treatment
of the subject better, perhaps, than histo-
rical, since all he means is that he re-
fuses to build up an ideal system of na-
tional husbandry ; to tell how the world
should be reorganized or made over. He
holds to the real as distinguished from
the ideal in economy ; and what the real
is history past and present informs us.
There is one feature in Professor
Roscher's book which strikes us very for-
cibly. He does not banish God or Chris-
tianity from the subject he treats. He
is evidently not a Catholic, but he has a
profound regard for the teachings of our
Lord, and that appreciation of the ser-
vices rendered by the church to civiliza-
tion which characterizes the best histori-
ians outside the church. Indeed, there
are some things in these volumes with
which a Catholic could justly find fault,
but it is surprising they are so few.
Mr. Lalor's excellent translation has
been enriched by three appendices fur-
nished by the author, on paper money,
international trade, and protective duties
respectively most valuable additions.
We can recommend the work to all who
desire a knowledge of the subject on a
broad and firm foundation.
CONFERENCE PAPERS ; or, Analyses of Dis-
courses Doctrinal and Practical deliver-
ed on Sabbath Afternoons, to the Stu-
dents of the Theological Seminary,
Princeton, N. J. By Charles Hodge,
D.D. New York : Scribners. 1879.
Dr. A. A. Hodge, the son of the late
Dr. Charles Hodge, has prepared these
New Publications.
573
conferences of his late distinguished and
honored father for the press, and prefixed
to them a modest preface which explains
the occasion of their delivery and pays a
filial tribute to the memory of their au-
thor and some of his eminent associates.
The conferences are mere skeletons of
discourses given to the young men of the
seminary on Sunday afternoons and in-
tended for their spiritual profit. So far
as their form and arrangement are con-
cerned, they are very perfect models in
their kind. In substance they are what
might be expected from a man of the
learning, mental culture, and well-known
theological views of the late eminent pro-
fessor of the Princeton Seminary. The
fundamental doctrines of the Nicene
Creed concerning the Trinity and the
Three Divine Persons, the great Catholic
dogmas of the Incarnation, the Redemp-
tion, Sanctification by the Holy Spirit,
and the glorification in the future life of
the saved have always been very distinct-
ly and fully and ably taught and defend-
ed in their most essential parts at Prince-
ton. All these are set forth in the con-
ferences in a convincing and attractive
manner, and with a calm but very ear-
nest spirit of piety. The inculcation of
moral and religious obligations, the
standard of Christian virtue and piety
held up, in short, the entire practical
bearing of the instructions given, are of
a very elevated tone and quality. That
part of the author's theology which is
Catholic is the most prominent, the most
fully developed, and evidently the most
congenial to his own mind and heart.
That part which he had learned from the
school of Calvin is an alloy which is
carefully kept in its smallest possible
quantity. The Catholic doctrines reject-
ed by Presbyterians were very much in
the author's thoughts during his later
years, and he very frequently endeavors
to state and controvert them. It is no
disrespect to him to deny his competency
in regard to an intimate and accurate un-
derstanding of the interior meaning and
spirit of these doctrines. It is obvious
on the surface to any Catholic theologian,
and nearly all his objections are obviat-
ed at once by a simple explanation of
the misconceived doctrines. We do not
question his sincerity, and !no one ever
argued against the Catholic Church or
any other form of religion opposed to his
own convictions with more moderation
and gentleness than Dr. Hodge. In one
passage occurring in the conference No.
xxxiv., on the Presence of Christ with
his Church (p. 51), the attraction which the
very idea of Catholicity must always ex-
ert on a mind of such high order shows
itself in a very pleasing manner :
"The promise is, ' Lo, I am with you
alway, even unto tne end of the world.'
To whom is this promise addressed, and
what is its piirport ? Both the points are
assumed in the Romish theory, which as-
sumes, i. That the promise was to the
apostles and to their successors in the
apostolic office. 2. That it was a promise
to be with them as apostles : a. To im-
part to them the necessary gifts, first, for
teaching, and, secondly, for ruling ; b. To
render them infallible in their official
acts ; c. To enforce their decisions and
sustain their authority.
"This is a beautiful theory. It would
to human view be a blessed thing to have
a succession of apostles, i.e., of holy
men, infallible in their judgments, to
settle all points of doctrine, to remove
all doubts, to solve all questions of con-
science, and to rule with undeviating
righteousness over the whole church.
" And when to this is added on, * the as-
sumed primacy of Peter, and of his suc-
cessor, the Bishop of Rome, as the repre-
sentative of Christ, we have the beau-
ideal of a theocracy for the church and
ultimately for the world." We devoutly
hope that the noble-minded and pure-
hearted man who wrote these words
lived and died in the communion of
saints. We do not think, however, that
there is any salvation for Princeton Or-
thodoxy out of the external communion
of the church. Its Nicene doctrine has
no sufficient basis, because it rejects the
authority of the Nicene church. With
its sound doctrines it combines others
which are evidently contrary to reason
and antecedently incredible. Such good
and learned men as Dr. Hodge have
held them because they had been taught
to believe that they were revealed truths.
This belief has no basis except in human
interpretation of the Bible and human
opinion. We think it is being surely,
irresistibly undermined by the same
power which created it, and with it, the
divine truth is in danger of being also
swept away. Not even the solid and
grand philosophy of the justly eminent
* The printer of the volume has spoiled this
sentence by placing the comma after added.
574
New Publications.
president of the college can suffice to
prevent the lapse into rationalism. We
do not suppose that the Princeton faculty
are now personally responsible for the
Princeton Review. Yet, before the world,
its name and title, together with the fact
that it was once the organ of Princeton
Orthodoxy and is still a vehicle for the
dissemination of the ideas of the Prince-
ton professors, make an appearance of
some sort of alliance between them and
the Review. The extraordinary article
of Mr. Brooks in a late number seems
ominous, therefore, of a coming down from
the high and exclusive attitude which
the ancient and venerable college has
heretofore sustained. Scarcely anything
could have been more damaging to the
influence of the Protestant clergy than
the publication of that article has proved
to be. If its statements, which are very
wide and general, are correct, it is, of
course, much more honest to disclose
the truth in the case than to conceal it.
We respect Mr. Brooks for his candor
and sincerity in avowing his sentiments
plainly. Yet the wavering of so many
of the Protestant clergy in their belief of
doctrines which they have in former times
professed to hold as a part of their fixed
theology is certainly ominous of a still
deeper revolution in the bosom of the
great orthodox denominations. It goes
to confirm the justness of our anticipa-
tion that rationalism will make great in-
roads within a brief period upon Protes-
tant orthodoxy. We sincerely hope that
those who still hold firmly to the doc-
trines of the Nicene Creed will never re-
lax, their grasp on these sacred truths,
and that the sound rational philosophy
so ably presented by Dr. McCosh will
furnish another sheet-anchor against the
tide of doubt on one side and sentimen-
talism on the other, which conflict with
each other, but equally undermine the
bases both of philosophy and of faith.
There cannot be, however, more than
one true religion and one true church,
the one in which Dr. Hodge's "beautiful
theory " is realized, in so far as human
frailty and God's method of moral gov-
ernment make it possible that the real
should correspond with the ideal.
A BENEDICTINE OF THE SIXTEENTH CEN-
TURY. By Georges De Blois. Trans-
lated by Lady Lovat. London : Burns
& Gates. 1878.
This is a life of the celebrated De
Blois, Abbot of Liesse in Belgium, bet-
ter known by his Latin name of Blosius.
He was a man of noble birth, who was
elected abbot of his monastery when ex-
tremely young, and governed it until
his death. He was one of the most
cherished friends of Charles V., and also
on the best terms with St. Ignatius and
many other men of the greatest eminence
in the church and in the state. He
found his monastery and its dependent
houses relaxed in discipline, and restor-
ed a mild and lenient but strict and
truly religious observance of rule. He
was a most holy and also a most prudent
and amiable man, extremely beloved by
his subjects and by all others. His writ-
ings are of a high order of merit in every
sense of the word, and were highly es-
teemed by St. Alphonsus, who frequently
quotes them. The biography is charm-
ingly written and most attractive. The
Rule of Liesse, given in the appendix in
its original Latin, will be interesting to
ecclesiastical readers.
THE SOLEMN BLESSING AND OPENING OF
THE NEW CATHEDRAL OF ST. PATRICK,
NEW YORK, on the feast of St. Gre-
gory VII., Pope and Confessor, May
25, 1879. New York: The Catholic
Publication Society Co.
It was a happy thought to have this
excellent "libretto," as it may be called,
prepared for the occasion to which its
title refers. Those who were wise
enough to buy a copy of it were enabled
to follow the entire services of the day
in an intelligent manner, as it contains
a minute description of all the ceremo-
nies of the blessing in full, in Latin and
English, the Mass, Vespers, and Bene-
diction service, together with the names
of the celebrants and their ministers,
cantors, etc., at these functions, and a
list of all the archbishops and bishops
present at the ceremony. The ritual
portion of the book is preceded by bio-
graphical notices of Archbishop Hughes
and His Eminence the Cardinal, and a
notice of the cathedral, its dimensions,
architectural character, the altars, and a
carefully-prepared description of the
splendid stained-glass windows, from
the pen of the Rev. John M. Farley, the
secretary of His Eminence. It was
widely circulated on the day of dedica-
tion, and is still sought for as a memento
of the great day, and for use as a " Guide
New Publications.
575
to the Cathedral " by the numerous visi-
tors who are constantly inspecting the
building. The book is nicely gotten up
and illustrated with cuts of the cathe-
dral, of Archbishop Hughes, and of the
Cardinal. It is sold for twenty-five
cents, for the benefit of the cathedral. A
few copies of the issue yet remain to be
disposed of.
FAMILIAR INSTRUCTIONS AND EVENING
LECTURES ON ALL THE TRUTHS OF RE-
LIGION. By Mgr. de Segur. Trans-
lated from the French. London :
Burns & Gates. 1878. (For sale by
the Catholic Publication Society Co.)
This excellent work is admirably
adapted for evening reading in Catholic
families or at the meetings of our
various sodalities. Each instruction
would hardly occupy five minutes, and
could not fail to make a deep impression
on a willing soul. This is precisely the
class of works we need at the present
time. Our young people cannot be at-
tracted by long discourses or lectures
on any subject. Instructions should be
short, clear, and practical. There is per-
haps no writer who seems to be more
convinced of this fact than Mgr. de
Segur, and therefore it is that his works
have such an immense circulation and
do an incalculable amount of good.
THE LIFE OF SISTER JEANNE BENIGNE
Gojos, Lay Sister of the Visitation of
Holy Mary. By Mother Marie Ger-
trude Provane de Leyni, Religious of
the same order. London: Sums &
Gates. 1878.
Sister Jeanne Benigne Gojos died in
the odor of sanctity in the Monastery of
Turin in 1692. She was one of those
simple, humble souls whom God places
in the lowly positions and occupations
of earth, whom he sanctifies by many
sufferings and trials, and to whom he is
pleased to reveal the mysteries of his
love. Like Marie d'Agreda, St. Teresa,
St. Catherine, Marie Lataste, and other
saintly souls, Sister Jeanne Benigne
went far into the most mystic regions of
contemplative life, and speaks of its
secrets in a manner not unworthy the
greater masters of mystical theology.
Surely such simple souls as Marie La-
taste and Sister Jeanne Benigne could
have had no other teacher than our
divine Lord revealing himself to them
amid the burning fires of unitive prayer.
An experienced master of spiritual life
once said that he had found in the works
of Marie Lataste passages on the Most
Blessed Trinity and the Incarnation that
might be very well at home in St. Tho-
mas' Summa. The same may be said
of some sayings of this holy lay Sister
of the Visitation. The book is divided
into three parts : her active life, her con-
templative life, her special graces.
There is a simple charm, a quiet beauty
about the style that reminds one of the
holy founder of the Visitation, the
sweet and lovable St. Francis de Sales.
May the simple record of this holy life
add new glory and bring new vocations
to an order which, east and west, is shed-
ding all over this land from the silence
of its cloister the sweet fragrance of its
many virtues and the influence of its
truly monastic spirit !
THE MANNA OF THE SOUL. Meditations
for every day of the year. By Father
Paul Segneri. In four volumes. Vols.
I., II. London : Burns & Gates. 1879.
This is a book of meditations, three
months to a volume. Father Segneri se-
lects some text of Holy Writ for each day,
and elaborates it into three or more
points affording sufficient matter for a
meditation of an hour. " If in preparing
this repast," says the author in his preface,
" I have been at times too lavish of in-
gredients, I have been so rather in the in-
terests of those persons who, like nurses,
nourish themselves in order to nourish
others. You are aware that the manna
accommodated itself to the particular
will of each; it was turned to what every
man liked. . . . To charge the manna
with being insipid or bitter is equivalent
to charging one's self with being in a bad
state of health." We have no doubt that
these volumes will prove a most useful
repertory to those who are accustomed
to mental prayer, and most serviceable to
the preacher.
ROMAN VIOLETS, AND WHERE THEY
BLOSSOM. By Theodora M. L. Lane-
Clarke. London : Burns & Gates.
1879. (For sale by the Catholic Pub-
lication Society Co.)
To older and younger readers we
commend this little volume for its pure
57 6
New Publications.
and tender lessons of charity unobtru-
sively set forth in the simple story, so
gracefully told, of the little Roman boy
transferred, under the rude care of a pa-
drone, from the soft blue skies of his
Italian home, where "it is not so hard
to be poor," to the smoke-darkened at-
mosphere of London, exchanging the
violets of the Villa Borghese for those of
Covent Garden Market, the childish cares
of home for the sorrows of the struggle
for life in a strange land.
Younger readers will follow the course
of Cesare's fortunes with interest, alike
on the Piazza del Popolo, on the rough
sea, and among his countrymen in
London ; Beppo, who has grown rich
enough to own a trained monkey, and
Luigi, who has left his pruning-hook
among the Tuscan vines to master the
art of organ-grinding for the doubtful
delight of barbarian ears. We are sure
there will be some moistened eyes when
the story is read of Cesare's white mice
and his pitiful prayer in the church over
the tame creatures he had trained so
lovingly and bemoans so passionately ;
while older readers will be beguiled by
the slight thread of romance woven
through the boyish life.
Sparkling pictures there are from
Rome and the Bay of Naples, with sad-
der ones from the wards of a London
hospital and the quiet studio of the gen-
tle-hearted Englishwoman who becomes
the guardian angel of the little Roman
exile.
The bright bunch of violets illuminat-
ed on the cover of the book is no false
promise of the pleasant fragrance of the
Roman violets that lie within between
the leaves.
THE CURE'S NIECE. By Maurice Se-
gran. London: Burns & Gates. 1879.
(For sale by the Catholic Publication
Society Co.)
This little volume is certainly very en-
tertaining, and the style in which it is
written, if it be somewhat formal, is very
polished and free from the slightest sus-
picion of bad taste. Although it reads
like a translation, the title-page gives
no indication of its source. The charac-
ters are the cure's niece, a beautiful
orphan of strong will and of a noble
and amiable disposition ; the cure
himself, a charmingly-drawn figure of a
poor priest, a gentleman with aesthetic
tastes, who throws them aside to fulfil
his humble duties ; Mme. la Marquise,
a stern old aristocrat, upon whom the
devil had but one hold her pride for in
all else she was a saint ; finally her
grandson, the marquis, of feeble will, who
is being drawn to perdition at a head-
long pace when he is saved by Mariette,
the cure's niece. The tale is a tragedy,
but as the interest of the story is sustain-
ed until the end, we have no doubt that
its melancholy termination will be for-
given for the pleasure afforded by the
other portions of the work.
HOR^E SACR^E. Preces et Exercitia
Devotionis per diem, aliquotiesque
faciendae, et Speculum Meditantis,
seu Sacerdos sanctificatus. Ad vitam
sacerdotalem pie instituendam Tracta-
tus. Auctore, Georgio Josepho Gow-
ing, D.D., P.P. Londini: Burns et
Gates.
The distinguishing merit of this pious
manual for the clergy is its richness in
quotation from the Holy Scriptures and
the Fathers. The devout and learned
author has brought within a small com-
pass an abundance of the best devotion-
al and ascetic writing upon the subject
of the sanctification of the priest. The
reverend clergy will find here synthetiz-
ed the holy suggestions and methods of
Kerckhove, Hillegeer, Abelleg, Bona,
and other writers who treat of sacer-
dotal perfection ex professo, and whose
books they sometimes find inconvenient
to carry with them as a vademecum; while
there is also an admirable summary of
practical directions and hints for the ad-
ministration of the sacraments, etc. The
meditations are short and pregnant, and,
though they are not supposed to take the
place of the regular meditation, their
suggestiveness and excellent arrange-
ment will prove of much aid in the
spiritual life. The Preparation and
Thanksgiving in the chapters on the
Holy Mass are very full and very tender,
Sto. Bernardo duce. The priest will be
pleased to have just such a book in his
prie-dieu for a help to his meditation, as it
will recall to him in a few words the
great thoughts of Deharbe, Wiseman,
Scaramelli, and other books of medita-
tion that are favorites with the clergy.
The volume, though of five hundred
pages, is small, neat, and well printed.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIX., No. 173. AUGUST, --1879.
PEARL.
BY KAT.-IL-EN o'MEARA, AUTHOR OF " IZA'S STORY," " A SALON IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE EMPIRE,
%1 ARE YOU MY WIFE?" ETC.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.
LADY WYNMERE had not been
taken into Mr. Danvers' confidence ;
that is to say, he had not told her
that he had proposed to Polly, but
he had made no secret that he was
inclined to do so, and she encour-
aged him in the intention by every
means in her power. She herself
had fallen in love with Polly from
the first, and her enthusiasm had
not been chilled by closer acquain-
tance.
" I never saw anything to com-
pare to her in beauty and distinc-
tion, and her accomplishments are
equal to her beauty. I sometimes
tell her it was quite wicked of the
fairies to have lavished such a va-
riety of gifts on one little girl ; but
she laughs, and says nobody sees it
but me. I never knew anybody so
little conceited with all her beauty."
This was the burden of Lady
Wynmere's song every time Percy
Danvers came down to Lamford,
Copyright : Rev. I.
which he was in the habit of doing
every week now, merely running
up to town, in fact, for a couple of
days to keep up appearances. His
trip to Paris had been undertaken
on the spur of the moment, without
a day's premeditation, so that when
he ran down to Lamford the day
after his return to London the
news of the expedition took Lady
Wynmere by surprise and quite
excited her.
" But the idea of your rushing
back in that way without going to
see your aunt or Pearl Redacre !
What will Polly say?" And the
little lady looked very demure and
knowing.
11 It does seem a stupid thing to
have done," said Percy ; " but I
had to be in town by a certain day,
and I made sure I should have met
them both at the ball ; but they
were not there. It appears Pearl
goes nowhere."
T. HECKER. 1879.
5/8
Pearl
" She is very sensible and steady ;
I dare say she does not like spend-
ing money on fine clothes. But
Polly will be very angry with you
for not going to see her ; you may
expect a good scolding, and from
Mrs. Redacre too."
' ; They are very fond of Pearl,
are they not?" inquired Mr. Dan-
vers irrelevantly.
" Of course they are. I never
saw a more united family. They
oil dote on each other."
"I wonder why Pearl stays away
so long? It must be lonely for
Polly without her."
"Polly is never lonely; she is al-
ways occupied. I like that so much
in her ; it is so different from most
girls, who are always bored if they
have not amusements to keep them
in good spirits."
" Then she would not care to go
to Paris if my aunt invited her ?"
"I don't know about that. I
dare say she would."
It was tantalizing, this beating
about the bush. He wanted Lady
Wy nine re to say something that
would open the door to what he
was burning to tell. Did she know
about Pearl or not ? Percy began
to suspect she did, else why this
persistency in keeping the door
shut in his face ?
" I thought my aunt might be
likely to invite Polly, now that
Pearl has left her," he said.
" Has Pearl left her? Then she
is coming home ?"
" No, she is not."
It was quite clear that Lady
Wynmere was not dissembling; her
limpid face expressed nothing but
surprise.
" She is not likely to come home
for a long time," he resumed pre-
sently, and he stood up and plant-
ed himself on the hearth-rug, lean-
ing his back against the mantel-
piece. He was irritated and anx-
ious, and he did not know how to
say what he had got to say. He
had come prepared to speak out to
Lady Wynmere, to tell her every-
thing, and induce her, if possible,
to use her influence to get Pearl
home. But it was not so easy to
speak out ; he could not bring him-
self even to hint indirectly at what
Mme. Leopold had so cruelly in-
sinuated about Pearl, and to reveal
what Pearl was doing in Paris
would be to show up Polly and the
rest of them in what to Percy Dan-
vers now appeared a very ugly
light ; yet he must do one or the
other if Lady Wynmere was to be
induced to stir in the matter.
" I have made a discovery that
has annoyed me a good deal," he
said. u Pearl Redacre is not on a
visit to my aunt or any one else ;
she is in a situation, earning money
as companion to old Mme. Leo-
pold."
Lady Wynmere dropped her tat-
ting, and gave a little jump on her
chair that sent the ball of silk roll-
ing along the carpet to Percy's
feet.
" I was horribly vexed when I
found it out," he continued, pick-
ing up the ball and handing it to
her. " I had made up my mind to
make an offer to Polly; I have
grown very fond of her, and I fan-
cied she rather liked me ; but this
want of honesty has shaken my
trust in her a good deal. I can't
think why she didn't tell me the
truth. She knew very well that I
had a right to know it the moment
things came near an understanding
between us. And, as you know,
they have been coming very close
to that lately. I feel that she has
used me ill."
"I don't wonder you should be
annoyed," said Lady Wynmere.
Pearl.
579
"But it may not have been Polly's
fault ; her mother may have forbid-
den her to mention it."
"Not she! Her mother never
forbids her anything, and, if she
had, Polly should not have minded
it; she had a duty to me as well
as to her mother."
"I certainly think she ought to
have trusted you."
"That is just it! The want of
trust is what I can't forgive," said
Percy quickly.
" At the same time it was na-
tural she should not have liked you
to know it ; it must be very morti-
fying to them all to have Pearl in
such a position. I am amazed to
find that it was necessary for her
to go out. I did not think that they
were so straitened."
" Nor are they straitened. It is
a piece of independence on Pearl's
part ; she might come home to-
morrow if she liked, and she ought
to come home. It is preposterous
of her bringing this discredit on
the rest of them for the sake of
gaining a few trumpery pounds.
You should speak to Mrs. Redacre
about it, and insist upon her call-
ing Pearl home."
"I don't see how I can meddle
in their family affairs until they
consult me," said Lady Wynmere.
" Of course you can't ! I'm a
fool to suggest it or to meddle in
them myself. But what is a man
to do ? I can't go on with Polly
as if nothing had happened. I'm
a bad hand at playing the hypo-
crite. It's a wretched business al-
together."
" It is, perhaps, not so bad as
you think. Don't be too hasty in
condemning Polly; she may only be
waiting for the right moment to
tell you."
" The right moment came long
ago."
" You have actually proposed to
her?"
Percy winced, shifted his posi-
tion on the hearth-rug, and thrust
his hands into his pockets.
"What does that signify? It is
not the mere act of proposing that
makes it a girl's duty to treat one
loyally," he said. " I can't forgive
her for "
" Taking me in," he was on the
point of saying; but he checked
himself, and went to the window
and looked out.
Lady Wynmere was not clever ;
she could not deal easily with prob-
lems whose solution was not to be
found in the Peerage or the Coun-
ty Families, consequently this di-
lemma of Mr. Danvers was beyond
her reach. She was sorry for him ;
she was sorry for Polly. Polly had
not behaved well, but, poor little
thing! one could not be hard on
her ; it was so dreadfully unpleas-
ant to have to make such a confes-
sion to a man like Percy Danvers !.
They were all to be pitied, and
Lady Wynmere pitied them all,
and wished she could help them,
out of their troubles. But no ideas,
came to her, so she took up her
tatting and went on with it.
" I suppose," said Danvers, still,
looking out of the window " I sup-
pose Polly would say I used her
very badly if I were to let things,
drop between us ?"
" I think that would be a great
disappointment to her," said
Lady Wynmere, hesitating what
word to use.
" One gets over a disappointment.
She would easily find a better man
than I ; it would be kinder to dis-
appoint her now than later when
the mischief would be irreparable.'*
" Oh ! yes, certainly," assented
Lady Wynmere.
"You agree with me that it
5 So
FearL
would?" And Danvers turned round
suddenly, like a drowning man to
whom one had thrown a rope.
** You think it would be better, in
the interest of her happiness, that
I should break off the affair now ?
You would not say I was acting a
cruel or dishonorable part?"
" Well, you see I don't ex-
actly know how you and Polly
how she, that is, feels towards you.
If she were very much in love with
you it would be cruel, would it
not ?" And Lady Wynmere sus-
pended her tatting, and looked up
at the strong, handsome man de-
precatingly ; she felt so small and
weak to be his counsellor. He
turned away, and began to walk up
and down the room.
" I'm not such a fop as to fancy
a girl would be in love with me to
that extent. I believe I care ten
times more for her than she does
for me. The cruelty would not be
so great as all that. But would
you call it a dishonorable thing to
do ? Women have a different way
of looking at these things, but a
woman's view is often the surest;
you have an instinct that we men
haven't."
" It depends, as I said before ;
if you had gone so far as to make
an offer of your hand, then I should
say"
" That I was a scoundrel to draw
out of it?"
" I am sure it would be a very
wrong thing to do."
*' More wrong than to marry a
girl with the certainty that you and
she were going to have a miserable
life of it?"
"Why should you have a miser-
able life of it ?"
Why, indeed ? Percy Danvers
could find no answer to this simple
question. He was ashamed to own
to himself the real motive of all his
plausible pleading; he had been
trying to persuade himself as well
as Lady Wynmere that his motive
was a finer one than in his inmost
heart he knew it to be, that his
trust and his affection were deeply
wounded, and that he was consid-
ering Polly's happiness as much as
his own feelings in this contemplat-
ed rupture. But to all this special
pleading that troublesome *' still,
small -voice " kept whispering a
flat contradiction ; it was wounded
vanity and cowardly worldliness that
were prompting and goading him to
a mean and heartless action. He
was ashamed of marrying a girl
whose sister was in a situation, and
in the ** set " where they were all
known. He was angry with Polly,
not so much because she had not
trusted him with the mortifying
secret, but because he might have
prevented it had he known in time,
whereas now it was too late; and
he was angry with her all the more
because he was ashamed of him-
self.
" It is very puzzling to know
what to do," he said, taking out his
cigar-case and examining its con-
tents as a preliminary to bringing
the conversation to an end by go-
ing out for a stroll. " I don't want
to behave badly, but the right and
the wrong of a thing sometimes
get so mixed up together that the
only way out of the mess is to cut
the knot."
" Or tie it !" said Lady Wynmere,
with a little jubilant dance at her
own wit.
" Just so or tie it," repealed
Percy, laughing. And he went out
for his hat, and there was an end of
the conference for that day.
Blanche Leopold's marriage was
the talk of tout Paris. Of course
tout Paris was not sympathe-
Pearl.
581
tic about it. There were disap-
pointed mothers and daughters
who were very angry, and who lost
themselves in endless conjectures
as to what the Marquis de Choi-
court could have seen in the girl
that made him overlook her (com-
paratively) small dot and the dis-
grace of the Bonapartist stain.
There was also the natural anti-
pathy of low to high which found
many voices to give it utterance, to
wonder why some people had such
luck and got all the plums without
in any way deserving them, while
others so much worthier were left
out in the distribution of good
things. But on the whole sym-
pathy predominated, and the name
of those who rejoiced with Blanche
was legion.
She bore her honors very prettily ;
she made no secret of her surprise
at her own good fortune, but took
the congratulations of her friends
as part of the delightful wonder.
How kind everybody was, and how
pleasant to see that they were so
happy at her happiness ! The
trousseau absorbed her, of course,
to the exclusion of all other in-
terests for the time being. It was
to be splendid in proportion to her
husband's rank and fortune, and
she and her mother gave them-
selves up to its creation with a
degree of intelligence and self-de-
votion that could not be too highly
praised.
Mine. Leopold's attention had
been forcibly drawn away from
Leon's concerns by this marriage;
but then she had ceased to tremble
for the dear boy's safety since that
conversation with Mrs. Monteagle
which had revealed Pearl's feelings
and conduct in so unexpected a
light. Mme. Leopold did not be-
lieve that Pearl had refused so
magnificent a chance from the
motives Mrs. Monteagle attributed
to her. Not love him, forsooth !
As if there lived the girl who would
refuse such a match for such a
reason. The fact was, Pearl, being
a girl of spirit, was too proud to
enter the Leopold family under
such humiliating circumstances as
hers now were, so she had sacrific-
ed her interest, and of course her
feelings, to her pride. And very
properly, Leon's mother thought.
But though she inwardly blessed
Pearl for this haughty self-sacrifice,
she had no mind to proclaim her a
heroine, and feed Leon's folly by
throwing a romantic halo round
the object of it. In all that con-
cerned the interests of her children
Mme. Leopold possessed the wis-
dom of the serpent. She had not
said a word to Blanche about her
anxiety concerning Leon, arguing
shrewdly that these things grow by
being talked of, that words some-
times change the shadow into sub-
stance. Mme. Mere so far played
into her hands by never inviting
Blanche and never sending Pearl to
the Champs Elysees, as she was
wont to do on one pretext or an-
other, but in reality to give the
two girls the pleasure of seeing
one another. They had not been
thrown together alone since the
engagement ; but the trousseau,
which absorbed Blanche now com-
pletely, explained herabsence. She
and her mother were flying over
the city from morning till night
amongst the fournisseurs, ordering,
adjuring, trying on. Blanche wrote
occasional notes to Pearl, bewailing
her fate at not seeing her dear
friend.
" Cherie," ran one of the little pink-
paper effusions, " I think of thee all
day, and every day I hope to see thee ;
but it is a guignon, a fatality, and there is
so much to be done and so little time to
582
Pearl.
do it ! The corbeille will be a vision.
... I have seen the jewels, diamonds
and emeralds, and the laces mon bon-
heur est si grand,. que je crois rever.
" Toute a toi
" BLANCHE."
This echo of ideal bliss reached
Pearl as she was reading a letter
from her mother announcing
trouble at the Hollow. The boys
had caught typhoid fever.
" It is of the mildest form, and so far
they go on very favorably," said Mrs.
Redacre. " We have sent Polly over to
Lady Wynmere, and Cousin Bob came
down yesterday and carried off your
papa to London. He positively refused to
go to Lady Wynmere, who begged him to
go with Polly ; but Bob flew down and
bore him bodily away. It is an immense
relief to me ; for he was, of course, of no
use, and a great anxiety lest he should
catch the fever. Don't fancy now, my
darling, that I am forlorn and desolate !
I am nothing of the sort. That dear Bob
brought down a trained nurse to help
me, and she is the greatest comfort, so
kind and skilful ; and the boys have
taken to her in a way that would make
me jealous if I did not feel so grateful to
her, and see how much better she manages
them than I could do. Mrs. Mills is in-
. valuable, too. In fact, it is not possible
for things to be more comfortable than
they are under the circumstances. So
don't worry yourself by exaggerating the
trouble. Above all, don't imagine that
you are wanted, or that you would be a
comfort to your mother. You would be
very much in her way, a burden, an
anxiety, a nuisance ! This is the real
truth, from under the sign manual of
your loving MOTHER."
Pearl kissed the sign manual
and nearly washed it out with tears.
Her mother left in the house all
alone with a strange nurse and the
two sick-beds ! How could Polly
have been persuaded to leave her !
"Cart ropes wouldn't have drag-
ged me out of the house," thought
Pearl; and then she laughed
through her tears as she re-read
the end of the letter : " You would
be very much in my way, a nuis-
ance !" Very likely. But she did
not remain long angry with Polly.
Of course they had insisted on her
going out of harm's way, and she did
well to go. This did not make it
less cruel to think of her mother
all alone with the boys suffering
and in danger. There must be dan-
ger whether the fever was mild or
fierce ; one never could tell what
turn it might take. Suppose her
mother caught it ! Why should
the chance be less for her than for
the others ? Pearl fell on her
knees and prayed. No, God was
good. He would spare her this.
He would not let harm come to
her mother.
Mme. Mere had gone out on
business connected with the trous-
seau, and was not to be home for
an hour to come. Pearl dressed
herself and hurried off to Mrs.
Monteagle. There was something
very invigorating in Mrs. Mont-
eagle's sympathy, or perhaps in her
way of administering it; she was
full of tender response for Pearl's
distress, but she would not admit
that there was the remotest cause
for anxiety as regarded Mrs. Red-
acre. It was an unheard-of thing
for a woman of her age to catch
typhoid fever in that way.
" In fact, my belief is that it is
not contagious at all," she affirmed.
" People don't catch typhoid ; they
brew it in their blood. Your mo-
ther never would brew it ; she is
too sweet-tempered, and she has
the most placid reliance on Provi-
dence of anybody I ever knew."
" She has indeed !" said Pearl.
" Darling mother ! she is an angel.
Only it's naughty of her to tell fibs,
and -say that I would be a nuisance
if I were there."
" It's no fib ; it's the real truth ;
she would worry herself to fiddle-
strings and bring on. typhoid, very
Pearl.
533
likely, if you were. Don't you go
cind bring it on yourself by fretting
over all this, now. Do you hear
me ?"
"Yes."
" And you mean to be good ?"
"I'll try. Indeed, it comforts
me wonderfully what you say about
the fever not being contagious.
Only why was she so frightened, in
that case, for papa and Polly ?"
And Pearl looked at Mrs. Mont-
eagle suspiciously.
"Your mother, my dear, is a
fool ; she is always frightened for
others, and always ready to take
everything painful and troublesome
on her own shoulders to spare your
father and you. I've known her
since before you were born, and
I've always seen her the same."
Perhaps Mrs. Monteagle was
thankful for the diversion this anx-
iety would cause in Pearl's thoughts,
for she had been greatly troubled
about her since that discovery con-
cerning M. Darvallon. If he had
had money enough to marry, it
w"ould have done as well as any-
thing else, better perhaps, for she
admired and liked the man ; but he
hadn't a penny, and neither had
Pearl, so the best thing Pearl could
do would be to put him out of her
head. But would she have the
sense to do this? There was not
time for much talk, but Pearl felt
wonderfully cheered up when she
rose to go. She had been too en-
grossed by her own anxieties to
look at Mrs. Monteagle to see her,
that is to say, for we look at every-
body, but we only see those we
care for ; but as her friend stood up
and faced the light Pearl could not
but notice that she was looking
poorly.
" Dear Mrs. Monteagle, you look
so thin !" she said.
" That is because I am thin."
"But you look tired ?"
" I am tired."
"What is the matter with you ?"
And Pearl laid both hands on her
friend's shoulders and looked anx-
iously into the face that now struck
her as being very worn and pale.
" I am old, my dear, very old."
"Is that all?"
" What more would you have,
child? Old age is the most in-
curable disease going."
" I wish you wouldn't talk non-
sense," said Pearl, kissing her;
" that is what papa is always say-
ing, that he is so old. But is there
really nothing else the matter?"
"You silly thing! As if one
wanted anything else to make one
tired and good-for-nothing. You
will find it out some day. Good-
by. Come soon again and see me.
It is not good to be so much alone
when one is old. One is bad com-
pany for one's self."
" Is it possible you feel that ! I
never should have thought you
knew what it was to be lonely,"
said Pearl, u you are always so
cheerful."
" A cheerful face hides many
things ; it is often no better than a
gay deceiver. But don't fancy that
I pine for company, my dear. I
hate most people. I don't want to
see any one, except the few foolish
ones who have got into a habit
of caring for me ; and I am asham-
ed to say that I feel rather lonely
now and then for a glimpse of
them, of the old familiar faces.
Run away ! You must not be out
a-gadding when your missus comes
home."
Pearl paid no attention to the
abrupt dismissal, but twined her
arms round Mrs. Monteagle's neck
and looked into her eyes.
"Do you know something? I
begin to be sorry for having re-
584
Pearl.
fused that offer. I feel half inclin-
ed to come back on it, and let you
take me as your dame de compagnie.
Perhaps you wouldn't have me
now ?"
" If I had the spirit of a mouse
I would not."
" But you haven't ! Then you
will take me? I may give warn-
ing, and say I want to better my-
self?"
" I don't know about that," said
Mrs. Monteagle, yielding her face
to the soft, sweet caresses that crept
into her heart and warmed her
blood like the sunshine. "Think
well before you give your other old
woman notice ; the change might
turn out for the worse. But if you
must have change, you may as well
come here as anywhere else, I sup-
pose."
" Dear Mrs. Monteagle ! I am
so glad ! I never thought to be so
pleased about getting a situation.
And how I shall bully you ! I be-
lieve that is what is the matter
with you ; you are lonely for want
of some one to bully you ?"
" Yes, since you gave me the bad
habit I miss it, I'm afraid. Be off
now, this minute ! Do you hear
me ?"
"When am I to come to you?
Shall I tell Mme. Mere at once
when I go home?"
" No, I think you had better let
me manage it. I will speak to
Mme. Leopold when the time
comes for their all going to Gar-
danvalle. Say nothing about it till
then."
It was a sudden and perfectly
unselfish impulse in Pearl that had
prompted her to make the proposal,
but, now that it was done, she felt
so happy that it was a wonder to
herself that she had not thought
of it sooner. Not but that Mme.
Mere was as kind as kind could be,
but she was " the missus," as Mrs.
Monteagle said, and then there was
the family making such an atmos-
phere of humiliation and worry in
one way or another; whereas at
Mrs. Monteagle's she would be a
spoilt child, petted and made much
of. Above all, she would be a
comfort to her old friend and make
a salutary change in the loneliness
of her life.
" People fancy she is so inde-
pendent of everybody," thought
Pearl ; " nobody suspects her of
suffering from loneliness, and yet I
can see what a change there is in
her since we left Paris above all,
since I left her."
This was the truth. The cheer-
ful faces are often no better than
gay deceivers, as Mrs. Monteagle
said, and she was herself a proof of
it. With all her surly snarling at
sentiment, and her make-believe
independence of her fellow-crea-
tures, she had a soft human heart
that hungered for human love and
human companionship, and she was
perishing now in her old age for the
want of them. This fresh interest,
added to the painful one furnished
by the daily letters from the Hol-
low, went far to distract Pearl's
thoughts from Raoul to divide
them, rather, for he was seldom out
of her mind for a moment in the
day. She knew now why he had
not kept his promise of calling the
day after that rencontre at the
Odeon; but he might have written.
Why had he not written ? He must
know that she was miserable, that
she wanted to see him, to clear
away the misunderstanding that
had arisen between them. Pearl
forgot that Captain Darvallon was
a Frenchman, and that, with all his
independence of character and opin-
ion, he would never fly in the face
of les convenances so far as to
Pearl.
585
write her a love-letter to write
to her at all until he had posi-
tively asked her to be his wife
and won her father's consent. But
she did not reckon with this illogi-
cal slavery to les convenances. Raoul
had told her he loved her in lan-
guage more unmistakable than mere
words, less easily misunderstood or
turned from its true meaning, and
she had not tried to seem insen-
sible or to conceal the emotion
which the avowal caused her.
And yet after this he could mistrust
her on the strength of that ab-
surd scene with Captain Leopold !
He ought to have known it was
only a joke that brought Leon on
his knees before her; at any rate
he ought not to have condemned
her without a hearing. It would
have taken more than that to have
shaken her trust in him.
Pearl sat clasping her knee and
looking out at the green tree full of
birds in the courtyard, and began
to conjure up all sorts of circum-
stances wherein Raoul should figure
covered with every appearance of
guilt; she marshalled an array of
witnesses, she piled up an amount
of evidence that must have damned
an angel out of heaven, and con-
victed him as a criminal of the
deepest dye ; and then she beheld
herself defying judges and juries
and witnesses alike, and acquitting
Raoul, and clinging to him in spite
of his disgrace, because of it, with
the faith of a true woman. And
yet he could lose faith in her be-
cause of a bit of child's play ! Fool-
ish Pearl ! She began to cry there
at the open window; but the birds
went on singing as if her heart had
been light as theirs, and her love
heaven-high, beyond the reach of
tempest.
Blanche's marriage was fixed for
the last week in June. They were
very near that now, and Mme. Leo-
pold was in a state of mind more
easily imagined than described.
" If it lasts another week I will
break down under it," declared the
exhausted lady.
" Under what ?" said Mrs. Mont-
eagle.
" The anxiety, the fatigue, the
responsibility, the emotion. Chere
madame, you know not what it is
to marry a daughter, a beloved
child whom you have covered with
your eyes for nineteen years ! The
anguish of the parting is so great
that only a mother's love is strong
enough to bear it and live."
u How many deaths you French
people do die before the real one
comes !" said Mrs. Monteagle.
"The wonder is you live through a
tenth of them. ... Go and see the
trousseau ? What in the name of
common sense has an old woman
like me to do with trousseaux ? I
have no doubt it is very fine; but I
don't care to see gowns and pock-
et-handkerchiefs and night-caps
spread out and tied up with miles
of pink ribbon. It is very well
for those young things. I hope
Blanche will be happy ; I wish
you may all be happy ; it seems to
me you are going the wrong way
to work, but perhaps that is my
mistake. It all comes to the same
in the end."
There was a certain sadness
about the way she spoke, a cir-
cumstance so foreign to Mrs.
Monteagle that Mme. Leopold could
not but remark it.
" You are not as well as I should
like to see you," she said, forget-
ting her maternal anguish for a mo-
ment and looking kindly at Mrs.
Monteagle.
" An't I ? I think I am as well
as I have any right to expect. You
586
Pearl.
are all going to Gardanvalle the
week after the wedding, are you
not ?"
" Yes, if the baron can get
away, as he expects. I should not
care to leave him all alone here."
"And what about Pearl? Is she
going?"
" Certainly. That was arranged
from the first."
"Things have happened since
then which might have altered the
arrangement. In my opinion the
best thing Pearl could do would be
to go home."
"Of course it is. Common sense
ought to have told her that long
ago."
" So it would, if she had consult-
ed it ; but common sense and she
are not on speaking terms ; they
never have been, I'm afraid, my
poor Pearl !"
"You surprise me. I thought
you -considered her a model of
good sense?" said Mme. Leopold.
" She is a model of all good
things, except precisely that one.
She is not the least common-sensi-
ble, my poor Pearl. But she lis-
tens to people who are, which is
something ; and I mean to tell her
that she had better leave Mme.
Mere before you go to the coun-
try. She can come to me, and
stay here until it is convenient for
her to return to Broom Hollow."
" You are the wisest of friends,
chere madame," said Mme. Leo-
pold ; "and since the proposition
has come from you, I confess you
have relieved me of a great bur-
den. I have passed sleepless
nights meditating how this could
be done without seeming unkind
to Pearl. Cette chere petite, I love
her dearly, and my heart bleeds
when I think of what she would
have suffered down at Gardanvalle
amongst Leon's people, reminded
of him at every hour of the day,
living with him for part of the
time, perhaps we hope this horri-
ble Algerian threat will be avert-
ed, and then th'e dear boy may get
leave for a month. Only think
what a painful position for the
poor child and for me who feel
like a mother to her!"
Mrs. Monteagle for once in her
life was at a loss what to say. Did
the woman mean to persist in as-
serting that Pearl was in love with
Leon ? And did she think Mrs.
Monteagle such a fool as to swal-
low this palaver about her feel-
ing like a mother towards Pearl ?
There was something too insolently
grotesque in the notion ; but when
ces chers enfants were in question
nothing was too much for Mme.
Leopold's audacity. In this in-
stance, however, she really believ-
ed what she said that Pearl was in
love with Leon and it had kept
her awake many a night wondering
whether Leon was in love with her
or not. A circumstance that told
heavily against him was that he
had never spoken about Pearl to
his mother. Now, a French son
tells his mother everything. She
is the confidant of his wildest fol-
lies, of his debts, the troubles of
his heart, his conscience, and his
betting-book; she knows it all; he
will hide many things from his fa-
ther, but he hides nothing from his
mother. And the mother, on her
side, repays this confidence by
boundless indulgence and sympa-
thy that never fails. She is never
horrified, never shocked ; nothing
throws her off her guard ; she would
bite her tongue through rather than
check the flow of filial confession
by an exclamation of disgust, a
word of dismayed incredulity, by a
glance of cold rebuke. In this the
French mother more than any
Pearl.
587
other resembles the priest. The
mantle of maternity is made of sa-
cramental threads, making every
mother rich in strength and mercy;
but nowhere is this truth so mani-
fest as in France. The French
mother, with a heart pure as the
morning dew, can gaze without
shrinking into a heart as black as
night, and listen, apparently un-
dismayed, to the darkest revela-
tions, never recoiling, never de-
spairing ; seeing through all pre-
sent corruption the beauty of in-
nocence that once was there, of re-
pentance that may yet be there.
No wonder this deep, strong, all-
embracing compassion in the mo-
ther calls forth a full response from
the son. Leon Leopold had never
concealed anything from his mo-
ther. His youth had been stormy,
but she had seen every wreck that
marked its course ; he was on the
way of being " ranged " now, but
he occasionally committed a folly,
he occasionally got into a scrape
in the regiment, on the turf, in
many places, and his mother was
always the first to hear of it ; he
kept back nothing. But he had
never opened his lips to her about
Pearl Redacre. This silence was
alarmingly significant. He knew
that she had pity and indulgence
for every enormity of folly he could
commit, except one : she would
not forgive his marrying foolishly
marrying, that is, any one she did
not approve of; and he knew in his
heart that to marry a girl in Pearl's
position would be an offence be-
yond the reach of pardon.
*' What have I done to be visited
in this way !" thought Mme. Leo-
pold many a time as the horrible
possibility rose before her. ** I
have been a good mother; I have
done my duty by my children ;
why should my son turn against me
like this ?" But Mrs. Monteagle
had lifted a load off her heart.
The danger was in a great measure
past, and she had the game pretty
well in her own hands now. She
had compelled Mme. Mere to for-
bid Leon the house, and the pros-
pect which had made him so sub-
missive under the privation of his
being thrown with Pearl at Gar-
danvalle during the vacation was
at an end. There was nothing to
fear from the seductive power of
personal influence. Pearl's proud
resistance would be exposed to no
risk of surrender from the daily
pressure of Leon's presence; her
heart would not be subjected to a
trial out of which nothing but
superhuman strength could carry
it victorious.
Blanche had at once announced
her intention of having Pearl for
her demoiselle d'honneur at her
wedding, and Mme. Leopold had
not thought it prudent to oppose the
choice. She resolved to circum-
vent it. This, however, was no
easy matter. Her first attempt to
substitute a young lady whose dot
would have made an eligible daugh-
ter-in-law was met by a flat refusal.
Blanche unexpectedly showed that
she had a spirit of her own, and
meant not to be contradicted in
this last act of the closing scene of
her girlhood.
" Pearl is my favorite friend, next
to Polly," she said, "and we
three always promised to be one
another's bridesmaids to the two
first who were married. I don't
care the least about Jeanne Bru-
here, and I don't see why I should
turn off Pearl for her. She is
odiously purse-proud."
But greater troubles were brew-
ing for Mme. Leopold. She came
home from the shops one after-
noon a few days after that interview
588
Pearl.
with Mrs. Monteagle which had
so roused and reassured her, and
found Blanche and Leon together,
deep in confidential talk, when she
broke in upon them. Leon had an
angry wrinkle down his forehead
that she noticed frequently of late,
and Blanche was flushed and met
her mother with a hostile glance.
" Are you long here, mon cheri ?"
said the soft, large mother, kissing
the strong man on the forehead.
" I came to have a talk with
Blanche," he said, rising. " And
now it is time for me to be going.
I have a good deal to do. You
have heard the news?"
"What news? Good heavens!
Not Algiers ?"
" No, worse than that. We are
ordered to Brest, a vile hole where
there are neither tigers nor civilized
people. The desert is better any
day than la province. But you
don't think so, so I must not com-
plain."
Before his mother had recovered
from the shock of the announce-
ment he had taken himself off, and
she and Blanche were alone.
" He would much rather have
gone to Algiers," said Blanche.
" Mon Dieu ! How could I
guess they were going to send him
to Brest ? But he is not gone yet.
I may be able to get the order re-
called. Your father must help me."
" Leon says it will do him harm
if you interfere any more ; and be-
sides, papa has used up all his in-
fluence at the War Office already."
" Yes, I left no stone unturned,
I moved heaven and earth, to pre-
vent his going !"
" You had better have left heaven
and earth alone," said Blanche,
with disrespectful petulance.
" Ma fille ! in what tone dost
thou speak to thy mother ?" said
the amazed parent.
Instead of answering Blanche
flung herself on the sofa and burst
into tears. Mme. Leopold was
aghast ; but before Blanche had re-
covered her composure sufficiently
to explain anything the mother
understood that Leon had de-
nounced her, and that the furies
had passed her well-guarded ma-
ternal gates.
"Why should Leon not marry
her if he loves her?" said Blanche,
lifting her head and showing a
face drenched with tears. "It is
cruel, it is unreasonable to hinder
him. But he won't be hindered ; he
will marry her in spite of every-
body ! And, ma mere, he is quite
right !"
" What is this ? Am I dream-
ing ? My own children, you, my
daughter, rising against me, defying
your father's authority, defying all
the convenances ! You are mad."
" No, ma mere, I am not mad. I
love Leon, and I want him to be
happy ; he loves Pearl, and you
ought to be glad that he married
her. She lost her money ; but
what does that signify, since Leon
has money enough and does not
care ?"
" What rank nonsense you are
talking, child ! Leon is a fool ;
and as to that petite, she is a cun-
ning minx, an intriguante. She
has laid herself out to catch him ;
a most unmaidenly girl, running
away from her family and coming
off here for no other purpose than
to get your brother to marry her.
I will none of her for a daughter!
I never liked her."
" O mamma !" cried Blanche,
" how can you ? You were wild
for Leon to marry her until she
lost her fortune. You know you
were !"
" I was ready to sacrifice my
own inclinations to what I believed
Pearl.
589
would have been for his good,"
said Mine. Leopold. " I have al-
ways sacrificed myself for my chil-
dren, and this is my reward. They
turn round and upbraid me ; they
accuse me of being a bad mother !"
"No, mamma, we don't; we are
dutiful children ; we will always
love and obey you; but you are
unkind and unreasonable to Leon.
You want him to sacrifice his real
happiness to what he doesn't care
a straw for; but he won't do it.
He is his own master after all : he
is thirty; he is not a boy."
" He will find out whether he is
his own master. What ! he dares
to take that tone ? And you, you
follow his example ? But I will
leave your father to deal with you.
We will see whether Leon will
brave him in this way."
" He will brave everybody ; he
loves Pearl, and he will marry
her!" said Blanche defiantly.
" Without his father's consent ?
He cannot."
" He will send him a sommation
respectueuse f"
"Gracious heavens! what do I
hear?"
Mme. Leopold was sitting in an
arm-chair, upright, flushed, panting,
her bonnet strings pulled open ;
but at the sound of that awful
word, sommation respectneuse, she
stood up, her face white, her eyes
dilated, her hand grasping the arm
of the sofa. She knew that there
was such an expedient in existence
as the sommation respecttieuse, and
that some parents, low-born people,
mismanaged their children so as to
become the victims of it ; but that
such a disgrace should fall to her
lot had no more occurred to her
than that she should be murdered
by her children. The idea of Leon
sending his father papier timbre,
and then walking out of his fa-
ther's house, in company with the
commissaire de police, to meet,
chez Monsieur le Maire, the bride
whom his parents refused their con-
sent to his marrying this was a
calamity scarcely less horrible to
contemplate than Leon's death.
Of course things never would come
to that pass. M. Leopold would
consent to his son's marrying the
Arab Jewess rather than drive him to
make use of the weapon which the
law wickedly provides for children
of a larger growth against tyrannical
parents ; but that Leon should de-
liberately propose using this wea-
pon, should threaten her and his
father with it, and that Blanche
should side with him in the crimi-
nal revolt this was beyond belief.
It was as if the two had flung a
stone at her. She was too stunned
to speak ; she stood looking at
Blanche, bewildered, outraged, a
lioness set upon by her young.
Blanche had wiped her eyes and
ceased crying, and braced herself
to fight for her brother.
" It is not his fault," she said.
" He is unhappy, he is miserable ;
but he loves Pearl, and he will not
give her up."
" He prefers to give up his mo-
ther, his father, all his own flesh
and blood !"
" He need not give me up. I
will stand by him and by Pearl ;
they shall be married from my
house." And Blanche raised her
head with an air of dignity, as if
she were already Marquise de Choi-
court in her grand hotel, Rue St.
Dominique.
" Mon Dieu ! has it come to
this ? My children arrange their
destiny without even consulting
me ! I am thrown aside ; I am of
no account. Mon Dieu ! take
me away, since they do not want
me any more. Mon Dieu ! I wish
590
Pearl.
I were dead." She sank down on
her chair, repeating under her
breath, " I wish I were dead !"
Blanche flew to her side, and
threw her arms round her, and
burst into fresh floods of tears.
" Maman, chere petite maman !
don't say that. You will break
our hearts. You know how Leon
loves you. Only speak to him
and hear what he has to say, and
you will forgive him, and it will all
be right. It will kill him to see
you unhappy !"
She covered her mother's face
with kisses, and Mme. Leopold
kissed her, and they wept and kiss-
ed together for some minutes. Then
Mme. Leopold, feeling that, for the
moment, she had become master of
the situation, desired Blanche to
sit down and tell her everything
what Leon had said, and what
Pearl said, and how this horrible
scheme of the sommation respec-
tueuse had been set on foot. But
there was nothing to tell except
what Blanche had already said.
The first she had heard of the
affair was from Leon this morning ;
he seemed exasperated and unable
to keep silence any longer ; he told
her Pearl had repulsed him, and
he did not feel at all sure that she
would consent to marry him under
any circumstances. He didn't be-
lieve she cared for him; she had
told him she did not. Blanche had
laughed at this, and said she was
certain Pearl had loved him for a
long time; but she was proud, and
Leon ought to have asked her soon-
er, before these troubles came on
Colonel Redacre; it would take a
great deal of pursuing and per-
suading now to make her yield ;
but Blanche maintained that if
Leon was resolute Pearl would give
in ; the great difficulty would be to
make her accept the sommation, or
to have the thing done unknown to
her; but Blanche proposed that
they should wait till she was mar-
ried, and then it would be more
easily managed ; it would be so dif-
ferent if the Marquise de Choi-
court protected Pearl, and covered
the proceedings with her name and
countenance ! This suggestion had
cheered up Leon very much, and
decided him to have recourse to
the three legal summonses, in case
persuasion failed with his mother
and that he succeeded in gaining
Pearl's consent.
Mme. Leopold listened to the
whole story without a word of in-
dignation or surprise, putting her
handkerchief to her eyes now and
then when she felt they were like-
ly to betray her by an angry flash.
" So it was you, my Blanche, who
decided him to push things to the
bitter end, to do what you knew
would break your mother's heart !
Don't you love her any more, your
poor mother?"
" Chere petite maman ! I love
you with all my heart," said Blanche,
putting her arms round her ; " but
I love poor Leon too, and he was
so angry and excited that I would
have done anything to help him.
And it would be so nice having
Pearl for a sister ! You see I
know what it is now to be really
happy. I want those I love to
make happy marriages like me.
It is so horrid to think of people
marrying without caring for each
other ! After all it is no mesal-
liance for Leon to marry Pearl. I
dare say those old frumps in the
Faubourg talk of M. de Cholcourt's
marriage with me as a mesalliance;
they are such selfish old bigotes !
But I don't care what they say,
neither does M. de Cholcourt, or
else he would not have defied them
all to marry me. Would he, petite
Pearl.
591
mere ? He must love me or he
would not have done it."
Blanche said all this with her
head nestling on her mother's
shoulder, while the mother rested
the fold of her soft double chin on
her daughter's cheek and smiled
in self-complacency. Here, at least,
her efforts had been blessed, and
one aim of her life splendidly ac-
complished. Blanche had never
entertained a " sentiment " for any
man living, so beautifully had the
mother's drilling kept nature with-
in the leading-strings of les conve-
nances ; but now the child discov-
ered that she had a heart, and she
had given it to the man whom her
parents had not, indeed, chosen,
but whom they would have chosen
had the power rested with them.
Blanche had found out her heart
just at the proper moment. The
mother's responsibility was now at
an end.
" Mon enfant, it makes my heart
overflow with joy to hear you speak
so. But, my Blanche, this other
marriage of inclination is altogether
different. You admit that Pearl re-
fused Leon. I agree with you that
this may have been from "
" Pride and delicacy, mamma."
" Well, be it so. She has refus-
ed him, and he persists in suing
her. I will cease to oppose him.
If she consents I will consent, and
I will use my influence with your
father to make htm accept the mar-
riage. But for this Pearl and Leon
must, on their side, make some
slight concession; he must go to
Brest, and Pearl must return to her
father's house, and at the end of
six months, if they still wish it, he
shall go to England and marry her."
" Chere maman ! Bonne petite
maman !" said Blanche, covering
her mother's fat hand with kisses,
while one arm still clasped her
neck.
" I will write to Mrs. Monteagle
and tell her this," said Mme. Leo-
pold, " and you may tell Leon.
One other condition I make : Leon
does not see Pearl before he leaves
Paris, and they do not correspond
during the six months. This is not
asking much, considering the sacri-
fice I am making for his sake."
" I am sure # Leon will agree to
it all," said Blanche ; " six months
will soon be over, and it will be so
much nicer for Pearl to have him
go and fetch her ! And you, too,
will go, petite mere, will you not ?
And I also. M. de Cholcourt will
take me, or I can go with you and
Leon. It will be delightful !"
She clasped her hands, and laugh-
ed, and kissed her mother, and
wanted to send for Leon that very
moment; he had said he was going
to the e*tat-major, and he would be
there still.
Mme. Leopold made no opposi-
tion to this sisterly haste. She had
gained six months. Pearl would
soon be out of the way, and Provi-
dence, meantime, would be on the
side of the righteous, and help the
virtuous mother fighting to save her
son from marrying a girl without
a dot.
TO BE CONTINUED.
592
A Discontented Journey.
A DISCONTENTED JOURNEY.
NAPLES is dull and dreary. We
are sick of it all. Vesuvius will
not erupt, as he had led us to ex-
pect. It is all " flat, stale, and un-
profitable;" and " Da wo ich nicht
bin ist das Gluck." So let us be
off. Seven o'clock A.M. Friday
morning. " Will it rain ?" "Yes,
it rains." But Madame assures us
it will clear. "But will Richard
think so, and join us, as agreed, at
the station ?" " In his place I
should go for the chance ; so de-
pend upon it he will." We are
under way : Madame, the Colo-
nel, maid, and Rufa. Arrived at
the station, no Richard is there.
Frantic jacchini try to drag our
luggage off and out of the carriage.
But we are resolved to wait for the
laggard till the very last moment.
The Colonel acts sentinel outside,
watching for Richard. " He com-
eth not, he said ; I would I were
in bed." Finally, we climb the
heights, driving to Richard's door,
and the Colonel ascends to his
aerie on the ultimo piano, and
drags him down with his valise to
breakfast at the Villa T and
leave with us by a later train. For-
tified with sea-trout and beefsteaks
(ah ! when shall we see the like
again ?), we start afresh, calling on
our way for Richard's boots, which,
however, do not prove to be of
seven leagues. At length, with a
puff and a snort, we are off.
We reach Caserta in ample time
to drive through the much-vaunted
gardens. Passing through the beau-
tiful portico which pierces the en-
tire depth of the palace, a long
vista lies before us, at the end of
which we see what we are told is a
cascade, produced with wonderful
art and malice by an aqueduct
which joins those of Carignano,
that carry water to Naples. Un-
fortunately, seen from a distance it
recalls to our imagination the or-
namentation of a German clock, in
which spirals of twisted glass are
made to represent falling water ;
and, as ill-luck will have it, the
glass seemed to do it better. The
grand cascade contains groups of
figures representing Diana and her
nymphs, and Actseon just at the
moment when his head has sprout-
ed horns, and his nose has elongat-
ed into a stag's face, while his
body still claims humanity. A dog
has his paws on his shoulder, but
is evidently begging him first to ex-
plain what he really is, man or
beast, before he determines on
what course to pursue, while all
around stand Molossian hounds,
equally uncertain what it may be
their duty to do. The nymphs
are taking it quietly; which, consid-
ering that they are more in bathing
undress than the indignant goddess
herself, does not say much for
them. Lesser cascades of tranquil
captured water tumble down mar-
ble steps and sink into repose in ft
semi-circular basin below.
We alighted from our carriage to
walk through the English garden
planted in 1782 by Queen Caroline
of England. It is very pretty,
though not more remarkable than
many to be seen surrounding the
snug parsonages of some of the
more wealthy English clergy. And
though on the lawn there are
palms and aloes, they are not su-
perior to those grown in pots, ac-
A Discontented Journey,
593
cording to first-class gardening, at
home. A maple-tree had shed all
its pale gold leaves. They lay
thick and soft over some square
feet Danae's couch, and the fair
frail one departed.
The trees in the outer garden
are clipped into walls and arched
cloisters nature put into a strait-
waistcoat. There are ugly laby-
rinths of box-trees, three feet high,
so that the unfortunate wretch who
gets into the maze may be seen
meandering in insane bewilder-
ment. Also there are clumps of
trees deftly trimmed all round and
at the top like a huge green cake.
The rest is grnss, badly kept. It
is all highly artificial except the
English garden. The green ar-
cades are marked by rows of sta-
tues, or rather Termini ; and no-
thing but a Watteau scene on a
large scale could give the place a
cheerful animation. It wants the
ladies in sacks, with high scarlet
heels and elaborate buckles ; with
the long "love-lock" and the wide
fan ; or in hoops and ruffles, with
spotless white pierrots lying at
their feet ; or gentlemen in baggy
pink satin breeches whispering soft
nothings in their ear. Nothing less
than this, with a sedulous study of
" The Rape of the Lock," with
Dresden china and old Saxe, with
pounce-boxes and " clouded canes,"
could bring back life to such a
made-up version of nature.
Madame wears a bear-skin hat
throughout the expedition ; and the
Colonel at intervals inquires : "Com-
bien avez vous paye pour ce cha-
peau, Madame ?" It becomes the re-
frain of all our lighter talk, and is
the inverse sense of the " Prennez
mon ours " of the French play, and
hardly less frequently repeated.
We next visited the palace, the
marble staircase of which is mag-
VOL. XXIX. 38 ***
nificent ; the first flight is crowned
by two beautiful white marble lions
"couchant," copies of Canova's.
Vanvitelli was the architect of this
splendid palace, which is said to
be the largest in Europe. It is
rectangular in form, and surrounds
four courts. The finest marbles
are lavished upon it, but especially
in the chapel, which we entered
just as Benediction had begun.
Here marble, the coldest of mate-
rials, has, by the happy harmony of
tints, been made to produce the
richest and warmest effects. It is
very large, and the scattered con-
gregation of about fifteen people
gave it a sadly deserted aspect.
We went all through the lengthy
suites of splendid rooms, only very
moderately furnished now, and that
little comfortless and in bad taste.
There is the bed in which the late
King Ferdinand died, richly but
coarsely decorated with brass
opima spolia in relief on the wood-
en frame. It seemed a mock-
ery indeed where death was the
only victor ! There was the un-
fortunate Francis II. 's bed, hung
with ugly salmon-colored silk.
There was the room occupied by
Pius IX. during his exile here, and
the altar at which he said Mass.
The pictures are a horror and
an abomination, more especially
those in her majesty's reception-
room, where a Prometheus larger
than life is struggling in naked
agony under the claws of his feath-
ered tormentor. There was the
bust of a pretty woman ; but, lo !
she has a clock in her breast, and
all interest ceases with the thought
of what a well-regulated and wound-
up female she must have been,,
never ceasing, never silent, and
with a " memento mori " in every
ring of her monotonous voice.
Again we found ourselves on the
594
A Discontented Journey.
beautiful staircase, passing between
the passive lions. At the foot of
the stairs is a fine copy of the Far-
nese Hercules, with the tell-tale
small head and brawny shoulders,
the heavy, quiescent limbs, and the
indolent pose all bespeaking the
good-humored giant, with little
brain but infinite strength, and
therefore merciful and kind.
We returned to our hotel, the
Vittoria, and lazily examined the
colored prints on the walls of our
large, dark salon. They are all of
far-away cities which are person-
ally known only to the travelled
Colonel. There is a bird under a
glass case in a corner. We begin
by calling it a bustard, but correct
ourselves and pronounce it a bit-
tern.
Suddenly Richard and the Colo-
nel disappear. It is the hour when
the woodcocks, the Colonel's great
predilection, alive or roasted, fly
from the marshes towards the sea,
.and in doing so cross a main road.
All the sportsmen of Caserta emerge
at that hour to take their chance,
and the Colonel joins them. The
birds are few, and only one is kill-
ed, which is gracefully presented to
the foreign gentleman. He forth-
with announces his intention of
coming to spend a week alone in
the large, empty hotel, and shooting
with the amiable landlord, who
speaks no language but his own
patois, whereas the Colonel can
freely converse in Hindostanee.
Meanwhile no eud of woodcock's
feathers are gathered round his
hat.
A desultory breakfast and a
walk to the station marked the
early hours of the following day.
We took the train to Sparanisi,
passing Caserta, which sternly un-
-seductive place we agreed our mo-
rals, though not our " morale,"
would resist to any amount. At
Sparanisi Rufa produced a consid-
erable sensation in consequence of
one of the party lifting the lid of
her basket, and so betraying the
secret of her sweet, soft, white-silk
presence curled up inside. The
carriage we had ordered was wait-
ing for us at the station, with three
miserable, bony, entirely starved
ponies harnessed three abreast.
Madame and maid and Rufa were
packed inside, the two gentlemen
mounted the coupe, and the little
driver sat on a lower seat in front
of them with his head on a level
with their chins. The wind was
cold, the roads were bad, and the
carriage of the dislocating order.
The tower of Francolisi looked
down upon us from its picturesque
height, and further on the pretty
town of Teano, which gives a title
to one of the Bourbons the an-
cient Teanum, the city of the Sidi-
cinians rose amid the olive-clad
slopes of Rocca Monfini. We
catch a glimpse of Mount Falernus,
and once more debate how far the
honey-sweetened and skin-bottled
wines that Horace sings would suit
our modern taste ; and as they
diluted it in so much water, it is a
marvel how they ever got merry
upon it. We admire the rich
brown earth that lies in narrow
ridge and furrow ; and more still
do we admire the man and the
maid, Daphnis and Chloe, digging
together, he with a spade, she with
a light pickaxe. She wears a neat-
ly-folded, square white cloth on her
pretty head, and has full, snow-white
sleeves, a tight bodice of red or
blue, a short petticoat of blue or
neutral green, and a red or yellow
gown tucked up round the hips.
She has large earrings of gold; and
as she stands in the new-made fur-
row, looking so bright and clean,
A Discontented Journey.
595
we wonder whether the rough com-
panion in front of her is alive to
the picturesque effect and the po-
etic sentiment produced by his
graceful helpmate in the scene, or
if long habit has made him imper-
vious to the fancies which flit
across our mind with memories of
" Pastor Fido," and a whole train
of agricultural and pastoral and
Biblical idyls of all lands and all
ages since Adam delved and Eye
span.
We pass a garden full of fine-
grown laurels, and remark that this
beautiful shrub, the ornament and
the shelter of our home gardens,
where it is so luxuriant and abun-
dant, is rarely seen in its own clas-
sic land of Italy. We notice a
large farm-house, surrounded on
the first floor with deep arcades.
Dense shadows lie athwart the white
inside walls, and strings of bright-
red tomatoes hang in thick bunches
from the ceiling, making festoons of
vivid scarlet in the dappled light
and shade. The house is large,
and a group of well-built hay-
stacks round it speak of prosperity
and plenty. Horses seem to be
few, and the worst of their kind.
But donkeys are everywhere ; and
gray oxen with Juno's eyes are
dragging the primitive ploughs that
recall the Georgics, or the long,
narrow cart with the picturesque
owner sitting at the far end, dan-
gling his legs as though he were
acting as balance to the rude ma-
chine. We meet groups of pea-
sants, each riding home on his don-
key, with panniers made of long,
wiry grass flung across the animal's
shoulders. The grass we notice
growing in dark green tufts by the
roadside. The men have a very
bandit appearance, and not alto-
gether pleasant countenances. One
old gentleman in a very ragged
cloak of many colors had a pecu-
liarly sinister appearance. He
hugged a suspicious-looking bundle
as various in color as his mantle,
and carried a lantern, making as
though he were going up to Monte
Spaccata, an evil-renowned locality
close on the confines of Fra Dia-
volo's own country. The little
town of Cascano stands on the
ridge of Monte Massico ; and
having eaten our scanty luncheon,
we had flattered ourselves we might
find, not Falernian wine, but some-
thing drinkable at least. The dri-
ver urged our stopping at an inn
beyond the town, passing through
which we found the women sitting
at their doors making green grass
panniers for the donkeys, and mats
and brooms. They wear their hair
in two plaits, brought forward and
curled round in a rosette. A nar-
row piece of linen edged with lace
is folded rather low' on the fore-
head, and hangs in a bow and ends
behind. The whole street was lin-
ed with gray pottery waiting to be
baked. There were large ampho-
rae and other smaller vessels of
curious old Etruscan shapes, with
probably less euphonious modern
names. When we reached the
small inn where we were promised
good wine, and where consequent-
ly there was no bush, the two
gentlemen went in, leaving Madame
and her suite in the carriage. They
were a long time absent, and Ma-
dame, weary of waiting, got out,
when presently the gentlemen ap-
peared, declaring the wine undrink-
able, and the company sitting in
the inn of a very Fra Diavolo type,
and very noisy. So with unappeas-
ed thirst we rumbled on again, the
road terribly rough, and, as appeai>
ed afterwards, the Colonel's new
silk umbrella worn into holes from
Madame having appropriated it to
596
A Discontented Journey.
help support the cushion which
she had laid between the back and
front seats so as to make a rude
couch.
We rattle on. The air grows cold-
er; the day is declining. Fine oaks
and great chestnuts mark the land-
scape, and large acacias line the
road. Presently we cross the sus-
pension-bridge over the Garigliano,
the Liris of olden times, famous
in ancient and modern history for
the scenes its banks have witnessed.
The slow and turbid stream is of a
dull ochre hue, though probably
that is the result of the rainy win-
ter season. It formed the boun-
dary between ancient Latium and
Campania. Caius Marius crossed it
in the Marsic or Social War be-
tween the Romans and the Italians
a distinction of names which has
survived all ages and remains in
force even in United Italy. The
advantages of the war had been on
the side of the Italians, although
the Tuscans, Latins, and Umbrians
had remained faithful to Rome.
The chief command of the Roman
forces was given to Julius Caesar
and Rutilius Lupus, one of whose
legates was Caius Marius. The
two latter threw two bridges over
the Liris, the present Garigliano,
within a short distance of each
other. Vettius Scato, commander
of the Italian forces, had encamped
opposite to Marius' bridge, but in
the night he lay in ambush near
that of Rutilius, and when the lat-
ter attempted to cross in the morn-
ing he was driven b'ack with a loss
of eight thousand men, receiving
himself a wound in the head of.
which he subsequently died. Ma-
rius immediately assumed the
command of Rutilius' army. Cae-
sar meanwhile had also been de-
feated at the head of thirty-five
thousand men, and escaped with
difficulty to the modern Teano. The
Marsians attacked Marius, but were
driven back into the vineyards our
eyes now rest upon ; and thither
he did not venture to follow them.
But Sulla, who was encamped on
the other side of the vineyards, rush-
ed out and put them to flight ; and
shortly after the Italian army was
entirely defeated. But in this war
on the borders of the turbid Liris it
was felt that Marius had shown but
little of his ancient vigor, although
he was at the age namely, sixty-
five when our modern statesmen
and generals seem to reach the
acme of their intellectual vigor.
At any rate the neighborhood of
the Liris was to be fatal to him ;
for two years later that is, in 88 B.C.
his jealousy of Sulla led to his form-
ing a conspiracy against him, and
he thereby succeeded in obtaining
the command of the army in the
Mithradatic war. Marius and Sul-
la fought against each other at the
Esquiline ; the former was defeat-
ed and outlawed. Marius then
fled to Ostia, where he took ship,
and landed off this coast ; but be-
ing alarmed at the approach of
some horsemen, he went on board
again and sailed away, in spite of
the angry remonstrances of the
horsemen with the sailors for .dar-
ing to carry off their intended vic-
tim. Not long after, however, the
sailors themselves, reflecting on
their position and fearful of possi-
ble consequences, persuaded the
unhappy Marius to land at the
mouth of the *Liris under the pre-
tence of his thereby getting some
rest. But no sooner was he asleep
on the turf than away they sailed.
Marius then fled into the marshes,
but was hunted down like a wild
animal, and captured while hiding
naked in a ditch. He was convey-
ed to Minturnae, the ruined walls of
A Discontented Journey.
597
whose amphitheatre and the arches
of an aqueduct we saw soon after
we had passed the bridge. Here
Marius was imprisoned. But the
man sent to put an end to him
shrank back before the old man's
dauntless words and piercing
glance. And so finally, not daring
to kill him, they put him on board
a vessel bound for Africa, where
who has not seen him, " sitting on
the ruins of Carthage," for ever
after in painting and sculpture ?
Once again the green banks of
the Liris, by that time called Gari-
gliano, witnessed another important
battle, in 1503, and that not far
from the spot where the present
bridge crosses it.
Some few years before that is,
in 1494 Charles VIII. of France
invaded Italy, and Piero de' Me-
dici set out from Florence to meet
him. But his heart failed him on
witnessing the brilliant successes
of the invader's arms, and he at
once offered a cowardly surrender
of some important cities, which
conduct procured him a very ill
reception on his return. Savona-
rola was then at the height of his
popularity, and he roused the peo-
ple against Piero. In vain the
latter with his two brothers travers-
ed the streets on foot, shouting the
cry of the Medici, " Palle! Palle !" *
The once popular cry meets with
no response, and Piero has to
fly the city and escape to Bologna
in the disguise of a Franciscan
friar. Arrived in the city of
arches, Piero knocked humbly at <
the door of a Dominican monastery
of which he had been a benefactor
in the still recent days of his pros-
perity. But gratitude is not always
the virtue of the cloister, and the
doorkeeper, recognizing'.himatonce,
shut the door in his face. The
* Alluding to the Medici arms, three balls.
A
forlorn man strolled down the Via
Giglio, and presently, raising his
eyes, he saw looking out of a win-
dow Bernardo, the former sec^e-
tary of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Piero, not daring openly to reveal
himself, merely asked, " What are
you doing there, Bernardo ?"
"Waiting for your excellency,"
was the prompt reply from one of
the many who never forgot the gen-
erous and open-handed Lorenzo ;
and for a long time the hunted
man found refuge under Bernardo's
roof.
Meanwhile Charles, after discon-
tenting everybody in Florence, set
out for the conquest of Naples.
But he met with serious opposition
on the frontiers of the country.
Nevertheless he pushed forward,
making good his way in every
town he passed, until Alfonso II.
of Naples abdicated from sheer
terror in favor of his son, Ferdi-
nand II., and, after losing Capua,
retired to the lovely island of
Ischia. Ferdinand was, however,
no more fortunate than his father,
and all the provincial towns, and
finally Naples itself, fell into the
hands of that plausible monarch,
Charles VIII., without a single bat-
tle. This easy conquest ended in
rousing the indignation of the rest
of Italy ; and Charles, who had
been amusing himself in , feasting
for three idle months at Naples
while his followers tyrannized over
the neighboring provinces, thought
it would be safer to try and get
back to France. This he did at
the head of a large army, and with
a succession of brilliant conquests.
Charles had left his relation, Gil-
bert de Montpensier, as viceroy at
Naples ; but he had made himself
detested by the people, and they
hastened to recall their own sov-
ereign, Ferdinand II., while the
598
A Discontented Journey.
French, who had come and gone
like a comet, speedily lost all they
had gained.
Nevertheless the longing for the
fair lands of the south was undy-
ing among the French nation;
and Charles VIII. having died
from an accident, his successor,
Louis XII., began his reign by
dubbing himself Duke of Milan, in
spite of the rightful duke being in
possession. He succeeded in ob-
taining the town of Milan, and
threw the duke into prison. It was
soon after this lawless exploit that
the famous battle of Garigliano
took place, on December 27, 1503.
The Italians were allied with the
Spanish army under the command
of Gonsalvo de Cordova, "the Great
Captain," as he was called. The
French occupied the heights above
the river; the Spaniards were in
the marshy lands below. The
French threw a bridge across the
Garigliano as we have seen the
Romans did before them; and the
Chevalier Bayard, the "sans peur
et sans reproche " of all history,
defended it single-handed against
two hundred Spanish cavalry.
The French were decimated by the
debilitating effects of the treach-
erous southern climate, and the
Great Captain gained an easy victo-
ry over their discouraged army.
In the French camp was Piero de'
Medici, the exile from Florence.
Piero, intending to carry some
cannon to Gaeta and rally a portion
of the forces in that strongly-forti-
fied town, had embarked at the"
mouth of the Garigliano. One is
inclined to wonder whether any
recollection of Caius Marius pass-
ed through his highly-educated
and classic mind at that moment.
But several fugitives from the
French army rushing on board
the boat at the same time, it foun-
dered, and Piero de' Medici per-
ished ignominiously. His body was
recovered and silently buried by
the monks of a neighboring mon-
astery. Is his sleep less deep
though no Michael Angelo lias
sculptured his image o'er his tomb
to fill the world with admiration,
as befell his predecessors ?* Thus
the same Liris and Garigliano wit-
nessed the defeat of two impor-
tant historic characters, differing
from each other as widely as did
the epochs in which they lived.
The evening was fast closing in
as we entered on a flatter and less
wooded tract of country. Rows of
aloes formed the hedges by the
roadside, mingled with lentiscus
and the graceful smilax with its
bunches of bright red berries.
Soon wide plains of cultivated
land spread out on either side,
now hedgeless and unbroken. The
wind grew damp and cold, and
white masses of cloud drove out to
sea, the faint silver line of which
we were fast approaching. The
clouds sped swiftly on, swelling in
gray and snowy folds like the
breast and wings of some vast bird,
flecking the pale blue sky, which
far off above the horizon melted in-
to faint green and warmer yellow.
Presently the tall, grim tower of
Garigliano came in sight, standing
alone in the wide plain where the
river mingles its dim waters with
the tideless sea, even as the world's'
history flows on into the unknown
eternity.
At length, as night closed in, we
reached Gaeta, to learn that the
hotel named, and moderately com-
mended, in all the guide-books had
* There is a sculptured tomb erected by Clement
VII. to the memory of Piero de' Medici in the
choir of the church of Monte Casino. It is by
San Gallo. But whether his body was removed
from the vicinity of the Garigliano and brought to
Rome we are unable to state.
A Discontented Joiirney.
599
also passed away, and that nothing
was left us but a certain Albergo di
Gaeta unknown to fame. The
driver tried to reassure us as we
drove up to the gateless archway
that opened upon what seemed
nothing better than a stable for
donkeys and mules. The gentle-
men went in first, leaving Madame
to await their verdict in the car-
riage, around which gathered a
motley crowd, eagerly eyeing the
luggage and calculating with each
other that there might be a few
" soldi " to be got by carrying it
up-stairs. Presently Madame is
requested to alight by Richard,
who conducts her between the
tired mules, munching their well-
earned evening meal regardless of
tired travellers. Up-stairs Mad-
ame finds herself in a vast, long hall,
which the Colonel calls then and
ever after the Desert of Sahara.
At the further end is a dimly-light-
ed table, at which were seated the
officers of the regiment quartered
at Gaeta, the garrison of the fort,
and who were carrying on a vehe-
ment debate on local affairs, which
was renewed every night, and after
each recurrence, although at mo-
ments they seemed about to come
to blows, they parted in silence
and peace ; one tiny lamp burned
on, and it became the haunt of
the Colonel and his solitary cigar.
Our several rooms (without availa-
ble locks to the doors) were decid-
ed upon, with the luxury of a sit-
ting-room to ourselves, all opening
out upon the Desert of Sahara.
Here our little party managed to
exist for three days, living upon
little, and that little cooked chiefly
under the all-necessary superin-
tendence of Madame's maid, with-
out whose aid we should have been
fairly starved. It is true it was an
inn, with a host and a hostess, and
one poor serving lad who limped
about equally in his limbs and in
the way he performed his duties.
The hostess never appeared. She
remained our favorite aversion to
the last. All evils were traced to
her malign influence, and particu-
larly the exorbitant charges in the
bill. The rnilk was served in a
handless teapot ; the coffee, thick
and undrinkable, appeared in a
wine-glass. Happily, we had pro-
vided ourselves with certain stores,
without which Madame at least
must have starved. The shaking
carnage and the cold air had made
her ill. But Richard and the
Colonel, fortified with good Eng-
lish tea brewed by the invaluable
French maid, started the next day
under a cloudy sky for a late Mass.
They had been assured Mass was
said at twelve ; and so it might be,
but it was the wrong end of it.
They wandered about the town,
inquisitive for sights, and exciting
the curiosity and mirth of the in-
habitants. True to their native
proclivities, they started in quest of
newspapers, and marched down
the street with the quick, alert step
of their race, a Daily Telegraph or
a Times widely unfolded before
them. Naturally the native signori
looked forth from the cafes and
laughed. The postman had called
just before our arrival at the hotel,
to ask whether an English princess
had arrived, as her newspapers
were waiting for her. Inquiries
were made of the gentlemen them-
selves, when the burning curiosity
of the town could bear it no longer,
whether the illustrious party had
not arrived in the ironclad which
then lay anchored in the port. As
we passed through the streets
heads appeared at every window,
and merry maidens looked down
and smiled upon us.
6oo
A Discontented Journey.
In the evening from the Colo-
nel's window we overlooked the
entrance of a little theatre of Ma-
rionettes, and the gentlemen went
to witness the performance. The
spectators, as a rule, were silent and
absorbed in the interest of a sub-
lime tragedy; but our London-
ers were convulsed with laughter
at the magniloquent expression
conveyed by the arms and legs of
the big dolls.
On the following day we went to
see the cathedral, over the high altar
of which hangs the magnificent
standard presented to the chival-
rous and fair-haired young Don
John of Austria when the hero set
out for the victorious battle of Le-
panto, that point in history which
decided the great question between
barbarism and the advance of mo-
dern civilization. The venerable
pontiff, standing at one of the win-
dows of the Vatican, beheld in su-
pernatural clairvoyance the success
of the Christian arms, and intoned
a Te Deum with the cardinal who,
albeit seeing nothing, stood by his
side. Outside the church there is
a curious mediaeval pillar, richly
carved on the four sides with Scrip-
tural subjects in alto-rilievo. We
wandered on past orange and
lemon gardens shining with dark
and pale gold fruit. We passed
the enclosure where the " awkward
squad " were learning to ride, sit-
ting like sacks of wool on their ill-
groomed horses, and the Colonel
grew cynical and severe. We
climbed the ramparts fringed with
cannon ; but only two are mounted
on their carriages. The rest slum-
ber in the peaceful herbage, and
are only " make-believe " in their
present useless state. We wan-
dered through quaint old streets
not six feet wide, arches overhead
connecting house with house a
network of habitations, lying so
thick together, parted by so nar-
row a space, that to be born and
live and die there must make all
the crowded humanity as familiar
as one family. What friendships or
what hatreds it must engender !
Doubtless in the old times these
streets were well inhabited. Scutch-
eons and coats-of-arms surmount
the doors and windows. We wan-
dered up and down with a feeling
that we were transported to the
far East. It had Asiatic character-
istics, and is like what may be seen
in the old Moorish towns of Spain.
In the afternoon the gentlemen
climbed the hill on which stands
the fort, to visit the circular tomb
of Munatius Plancus, the tribune
who with his colleague Rufus was
prosecuted at the expiration of his
term of office for burning the
senate-house when, having convey-
ed the body of Clodius, killed by
Milo, to the Rostra, the mob car-
ried it off, and, making a pyre of
the seats, burnt it and the house
together. Pompeius, having been
made sole consul, passed a law
forbidding any one to come for-
ward and praise an accused per-
son. But when Munatius Plancus
stood on his trial Pompeius was the
first to send in a written eulogy,
whereupon Cato objected that he
must not be allowed to violate his
own laws ; and Munatius was pro-
nounced guilty. The ascent of the
hill was long and steep, and a cold
wind blew as the evening closed in.
Both the Colonel and Richard got
a chill, of which we heard more
later on. And now dawned the
important moment when we all
felt our only refuge lay in the wise,
calm, and just administration of
Richard. The bill had to be
paid ! And as it was exorbitant
and tricky, only a long practice of
A Discontented Journey.
60 1
Italian ways, an intimate know-
ledge of the language, and a habit
of discoursing in patois could have
overcome the wily ways and dex-
terous calculations of our large and
aggressive landlord, who was evi-
dently backed up by his invisible
wife in the remote regions of the
dreary old house. She kept send-
ing for him, no doubt to prime him
with fresh deceits and renewed
machinations. We kept it dark
that we meant to take flight the
next morning, not knowing what
foul play might not be resorted to in
order to deprive us of the power of
locomotion. And having vanquish-
ed our enemy and saved a few
francs, we spent our last night in
inhospitable Gaeta, and made our
escape in a deluge of rain early the
next morning to Formia, or Mola
di Gaeta, a distance of four miles.
It rained the whole way, and the
hotel was considerably worse than
the one we had left behind us. It
consisted of two houses united by
a little wooden bridge, which we
named the Bridge of Sighs, and
which was so slippery from wet and
dirt that we always crossed it at
our peril. To get to our sitting-
room Madame had to pass through
the public room, where all the
youthful elite of Formia were hold-
ing high festival (in company with
several tame pigeons, who came in
and out at their pleasure), termi-
nating with a dance entirely without
female partners and interspersed
with singing.
The afternoon was bright, and we
took a long walk between groves of
olives. The trees were so laden
with fruit that the berries predomi-
nated over the leaves. As we
walked through the one long street
ofthe^town we looked into a jew-
eller's shop, and admired the
golden bands, about an inch in
width, called " spadelli," with
which the women confine their
abundant tresses. The shopman,
with great good nature, showed us
all his wares, and beckoned to a
peasant woman to show us how the
hair was plaited in with rolls of
ribbon, the whole forming a sort of
skull-cap. A handsome gold band
will cost some hundreds of francs.
The less costly ones are of silver.
The earrings made of pearls are
exceedingly large and heavy.
Madame, being tired, wanted to
borrow a donkey of a man who
was leading one in through an
arched gateway ; but he objected
that he had to carry stones for
his master, and that the stones and
the lady could not ride together.
Pretty little villages, with their tall
campanile and their domed church,
were perched amid olive-gardens
in the heights above us, with the
yellow and white and faint pink
fafades of tall houses, pierced with
many windows and rooted in the
rocks. They bore soft Italian
names that sound smooth and
musical upon the lips of the bright-
eyed, graceful peasantry of whom
we inquire, and who, while ques-
tioned by Richard, address their
reply to Madame as a homage to
the sex.
Our dinner proved to be a
sort of make-shift, and before it
was well over the warrior of the
party was suddenly and alarmingly
seized with a sharp attack of his
old enemy, "climatic" fever, and
was compelled to lie down on the
cruel sofa with a hard wooden bar
as a pillow. Madame handed him
the cushion from her chair, which
was sternly refused ; and Richard,
whose instincts are always genial,
exclaimed, " Why cannot you gra-
ciously accept what is graciously
given ?" while one of the party
602
What was the Primitive State of Man ?
silently remembered a great writer
has said, " There is often more kind-
ness in accepting a favor than in
conferring one." The suffering
Colonel got no sleep all night, and
so made it his business to walk
round and call everybody from
their slumbers at half-past four,
although we were not to leave till
seven.
The same route to Sparanisi
was once more pursued by wiser if
not better men and women ; and
we hurry on to Naples, where we
part with our good guide and
counsellor, Richard, who toils up
to his dwelling in the clouds, and
goes to bed with a complication of
rheumatism and neuralgia. The
Colonel, who was also the following
day to succumb to cold and fever,
entered the drawing-room at the
Villa T exclaiming, " Ah ! this
is comfortable."
And thus we bring back " the
heavy lumber and luggage of our-
selves," and learn for the hun-
dredth time, and probably for the
hundredth time in vain, that " le
mieux est 1'ennemi du bien."
WHAT WAS THE PRIMITIVE STATE OF MAN ?
BEFORE we enter upon the argu-
ments showing how the permission
of moral evil enhanced the mani-
festation of God's infinite attri-
butes, and increased, therefore, the
final moral good of the world, we
deem it necessary to lay down the
plan which we intend to follow as
the best calculated to make good
our promise. The plan is this : ist.
We shall speak of the primitive
state in which man was placed by
God. 2d. We shall institute a deep
research into the nature of moral
evil and its consequences. 3d. We
shall study Adam's sin in itself
and in all its consequences relative
to all time and space. 4th. We shall
proceed, to establish the necessity
of man's restoration, and state its
nature and its conditions. 5th. We
shall proceed to the event of such
restoration, and to its application
to time and space and to eternity.
When we have discussed all these
questions, and studied what Christ
the mediator has done for the
fallen universe, then shall we be
able to judge whether the permis-
sion of moral evil did not immense-
ly enhance the final moral good of
the universe. In the present arti-
cle we limit our inquiry to the first
question : What was the primitive
state of man when God Almighty
created him ? To understand which
careful attention has to be paid to
two principles which are fundamen-
tal in the present question. The
first is the final and supreme end
of man. The second is as to the
nature of the means necessary to
attain such an end. We shall dis-
cuss both questions thoroughly, but
with suitable brevity.
And first as to the final end of
man. It is admitted as a matter
of faith that according to the pre-
sent dispensation and agreeably to
the present system of the universe,
which God was pleased to select
among so many which he might
have preferred, the final end of man
consists in the intuitive vision of
God. All Catholic theologians are
agreed upon this. But whether the
What ivas the Primitive State of Man f
603
intuitive vision of the Godhead is
the final end of man simply be-
cause God chose to elevate man to
such a grace or privilege, or be-
cause the intuitive vision of God's
essence is the end and termination
to which an intellectual creature
naturally aspires, and without which
it cannot be said to have reached
its natural perfection or happiness,
are questions which are warmly
disputed. One school of theology,
with which many theologians of an-
other school agree, holds that the
natural end of man is not the intui-
tive vision of God's essence ; that
such a vision is the present final
destination of man as a grace, a
supernatural favor, granted to him
by God, and by no means due to
him for any title whatever; that
the natural end of man consists
merely in such a knowledge of
God as we possess in this life,
only in a much more perfect de-
gree ; and that God could have
created man simply endowed with
his natural essence and faculties
that is, an intellectual being wedded
to a material nature in the unity of
one personality, having merely a
natural end to acquire. Another
school of theologians holds quite
an opposite opinion, and this may
be called the common opinion of the
schoolmen.* It affirms that every
intellectual creature naturally as-
pires to the intuitive vision of
God's essence as its final end, with-
out which there would be no final
perfection for its specific faculties ;
that the said rational creature,
though naturally aspiring towards
*Communior scholasticorum sententia asserit
esse in nobis appetitum naturalem ad beatitudinem
in particular!, atque ea de causa illam dicendam.
esse finem nostrum naturalem, non quoad assecu-
tionem et simpliciter, ea enim ratione omnes faten-
tur dicendam esse finem supernaturalem, sed quoad
appetitum atque potentiam passivam. Dominicus
Soto in 4 dist. xlii. art. i, 2, et lib. i. De Nat. et
Gratia^ cap. iv.
this intuitive vision of God, could
not by its own natural powers reach
this natural end, and that conse-
quently God could not, without
contravening his infinite attributes
of wisdom, goodness, and provi-
dence, have created man without
giving him supernatural means to
enable him to reach his end.
We hold this second opinion not
only for its intrinsic merits, but
also because it is the most common
opinion of the schoolmen, and of
St. Thomas in particular, and be-
cause it is, as it were, the bridge
which unites the natural with the
supernatural in the most reasona-
ble and convincing manner. Let
us state it with more accuracy and
exactness : ist. We maintain that
the natural end of man, that which
will give man his ultimate and final
perfection a perfection which, once
acquired, leaves him nothing more
to desiderate is not any knowledge
of God such as we may acquire in
this life, no matter how great, sub-
lime, or perfect it may be supposed
to be, but an immediate vision or
intuition of God's essence, a con-
templation of the Godhead face to
face, with nothing between the in-
tellect and the object which may
obstruct the vision ; that man natu-
rally and in force of his specific
faculties aspires to such a vision.
2d. We hold with all Catholic
theologians that though (according
to our opinion) man aspires to such
vision, he can never actually attain
it by his natural powers of intellect
and will, but must receive super-
natural aid from God to enable
him to attain such vision. 3d. We
admit that, considering the power
of God isolated from, and indepen-
dent of, all his other attributes, God
could create man without giving
him such supernatural aid to ena-
ble him to reach his end. But we
604
What was the Primitive State of Man f
most strenuously deny that if we
consider the power of God not
merely as physical power, but as a
power directed by his infinite wis-
dom and goodness, he could not
create man without supernatural
aid to enable him to reach his end.
Omnipotence, as it really exists and
acts, not isolated but in most per-
fect harmony with wisdom and
goodness, could not leave man to
himself, sighing after an end which
he could not possibly attain. The
truth of this opinion entirely de-
pends upon our establishing our
first statement, that the natural end
of man is the intuitive vision of
God's essence; the second state-
ment being admitted by all, and the
third being a consequence of the
first.
PROOF.
The end of every being may be
easily discovered and known from
the specific faculties of its nature.
For if God, in creating each being,
had in view an end to be attained
and realized by the being, it follows
that he must have put a certain
proportion, or similitude, or agree-
ableness between the nature and
faculties of such a being and the
end which it is destined to attain:
a proportion and similitude which,
if they do not always enable the
being actually to attain its end by
its own unaided effort a thing
which is oftentimes impossible, as
we shall demonstrate in this article
yet clearly point out the nature of
the end for which the being is des-
tined. Hence St. Thomas teaches
that the specific operation of every
being is also its end, as the end
is the second perfection of the
being.*
Now, the specific faculties of man
* Propria operatic cujuslibet rei est finis ejus ;
est enim secunda perfectio ipsius. C. G., cap. xxv.
are intelligence and will an intel-
ligence which, not being limited
toward any particular truth, aspires
to, and seeks for, only universal
truth. "Objectum intellectus est
universale verum " (St. Thomas, la,
23e, qu. 2, art. 8). Likewise man's will
is not confined to this or that par-
ticular good, but seeks for the uni-
versal good, the very reason why
it is free with regard to particular
good. Now, if the object of man's
intelligence is not this or that par-
ticular truth but universal truth,
if the object of his will is also uni-
versal good, it is evident that the
end which corresponds to these
specific faculties of man can be no
other than God, the absolute truth
and the absolute good, the princi-
ple and fountain of every truth and
goodness, and the clear vision of
such a truth and the immediate
possession of such good can alone
be the end of those faculties.
It has been said : It is true that
the analysis of human nature shows
truly that an intelligence not limit-
ed to this or that particular truth,
and a will not limited to this or
that particular good, demand as
their end an unlimited truth and
good, but only in an indefinite way.
Because there is a great difference
in saying that the intellect must
have for its end a truth without
limit and the will a good without
bounds, and in saying that both
must be the immediate vision and
possession of God. In the first
case we only deny the restriction of
tending to a particular object, and
therefore assign for the object of
the intelligence an indefinite truth
and for the object of the will an
indefinite good; in the second case
we make the Infinite the immediate
term of those faculties a thing as
false as the confusion between the
infinite and the indefinite. It is in
What was the Primitive State of Man ?
605
force of this reason that so many
theologians, though holding that
the specific faculties of man require
as their 'end an unlimited object,
assign to man an abstractive know-
ledge of God as his last natural
end. But a serious reflection on
the real difference of those two
terms, indefinite and infinite', will
solve the difficulty. The first
means the impossibility in which
\ve are to assign a limit to the ob-
ject of our cogitative act ; the second
expresses the objective plenitude
of perfection in the being which
is the object of our thought. The
first is subjective, the second is emi-
nently objective. Now, the simple
notion and distinction of the infinite
from the indefinite is sufficient to
demonstrate how man's -end can-
not be indefinite truth and good, but
the true, real, absolute, objective
truth and goodness that is, God.
Because the last end of a being can-
not be an abstraction, but must be
a concrete object ; it cannot be an
unreality, but a real being. Now,
the indefinite only expresses a sub-
jective negation, and not a reali-
ty ; therefore it is so far from be-
ing the last end of man that it could
not even be the natural end and
the final completion of any being.
God, therefore, as the absolute
truth and goodness, not in the ab-
stract but in his objective reality
and the plenitude of his perfection,
can be the natural final end of
:man.
This truth, which results naturally
from the simple analysis of man's
nature, is confirmed by the condi-
tions which are essential in that ob-
ject the possession of which must
form man's final happiness. The
last end is absolute good relatively
to the being which possesses it ;
therefore to seek that object in
which resides the last end of man
is equivalent to seeking man's su-
preme good that is, that good which
must be sought for its own sake
and not for another; that good
which, once obtained, satisfies fully
man's innate desire after it ; that
good which, once obtained, ex-
cludes all fear of ever being lost,
and the possession of which implies
an interminable life of joy and sat-
isfaction. Hence the following
are the essential conditions of that
sovereign good in which we can
place the last term of all human
aspirations, and from the possession
of which human happiness must
spring forth:
ist. It must fully and perfectly
satisfy the innate desires of man
after it. 2d. It must exclude all
fear and sadness. 3d. It must be
possessed without end. 4th. The
act of acquiring it must be the
highest and the greatest act of his
specific faculties.
All agree in the number and na-
ture of these conditions. We have
said that first it must fully and
perfectly satisfy man's innate crav-
ing after it : " Ultimus finis hominis,"
says St. Thomas (C. G., ch. xlviii.),
" terminat ejus naturalem appetitum
ita quod, eo habito, nihil aliud quaeri-
tur; si enim adhuc moveturad aliud
nondum habet finem in quo quies-
cat."
2d. It must exclude all fear and
sadness : " Felicitatem perfectam,"
says St. Thomas, ib., " quoddam bo-
num omnes confitentur, perfectum
autem bonum est quod omnino caret
admixtione mali."
3d. It must be possessed without
end : " Omne quod movetur in finem
desiderat naturaliterstabiliri et qui-
escere in illo."
4th. It must be attained by the
highest possible act of man's speci-
fic faculties : '* Propria operatic cu-
juslibet rei est finis ejus. Quod
6o6
What iv as the Primitive State of Man ?
igitur est perfectissimum in hacope-
ratione est ultimus finis " (St. Tho-
mas, C. G., ch. xxv.) It may be af-
firmed, says a modern writer,* that
human beatitude consists principally
and essentially in the most perfect
operation of man's superior powers
in regard to the highest and noblest
object. In order for this object to
be highest and noblest it must be
absolutely perfect, absolutely good,
absolutely ultimate, and thus leave
nothing ulterior to be conceived
and desired which is greater, etc.
Now, if these premises be true as
they undoubtedly are, and are ad-
mitted by all philosophers, because
clearly and evidently emanating
and resulting from the nature of
the subject who can fail to see that
man's natural end can only be
found in the immediate vision and
possession of God's essence ? It is
said that man's natural end is only
an abstract knowledge of God, su-
perior, indeed, by far to that of
which we are capable here in this
life, because after death, being strip-
ped of the senses, our capabilities
for abstraction would be wonder-
fully enlarged and increased, but of
the same nature and kind as we
have now; and that therefore, if
God had left man to his nature
alone, as well he might, such would
have been his natural end. But
how reconcile such consequence
with the premises already admitted
and granted ? The object of man's
beatitude must fully and perfectly
satisfy man's natural craving after
it, so that, once acquired, there is
nothing more to be desired. Will
an abstract knowledge of God
fully and perfectly satisfy this crav-
ing, which is as boundless and un-
limited as the faculties from which
it springs ? An abstract knowledge
of God, multiplied and increased as
* Hill's Moral Philosophy, ch. i. art. 2.
much as you please, will ahvays be
finite, as there is no medium be-
tween the finite and the infinite;
and could a finite object satisfy an
unbounded craving ? " Quomodo,"
we may exclaim with St. Augustine
(Conf., lib. x. ch. xx.), " ergo quae-
ram vitam beatam, quse non est mihi,
donee dicam, sat est ?" Will any
one admit that after one has ac-
quired the most perfect abstract
knowledge of God he can say there
is nothing more to be desired ?
And will not this further desire
which would be created in man,
nay, this failing of satisfying fully
and perfectly man's craving after
infinite truth and goodness, imply
pain and sadness and afford any-
thing but happiness to the subject ?
An abstract knowledge is necessa-
rily and by its very nature progres-
sive. It may be increased indefi-
nitely ; until you perceive absolute
truth and possess infinite goodness
in their objective reality and es-
sence, the knowledge of, and ten-
dency towards, it must be contin-
ually changing and progressing; and
is not this change and progress op-
posed to the third essential condi-
tion of beatitude, that of stability,
beatitude which is " interminabilis
vitae perfecta possessio"?
The fourth condition also de-
mands the immediate vision and
possession of absolute truth and
goodness. Happiness must be ac-
quired by the highest possible act
of the specific faculties of a being.
Now, will any one say that the
highest possible act of the intellect
is abstracting from an object that
which it perceives as not agreeable
to it ? The highest possible act of
the intellect is intuition, vision,
legere intus. Therefore, if the last
end of man must be the highest act
of his intelligence, it must be an
act of intuition, an act which sees
What was the Primitive State of Man f
607
the infinite essential reality. And
with regard to the will, what would
be the highest act of this faculty, in
the opinion we are refuting ? Why,
to grasp, to obtain, to embrace and
possess nothing but an idea. What
real, true communication would
there be between the will and God?
As God would not be present in
his objective reality to the will,
this faculty would only embrace an
abstraction, an unreality, a chime-
ra; and shall we call this the high-
est act of man's will ?
We conclude : In the opinion of
our opponents God would have
created man with an intelligence
naturally craving after absolute real
truth, with a will irresistibly and
imperiously tending after real good-
ness ; and this intelligence would
have for its end nothing more than
an abstract knowledge of him, such
as it could gather from its fellow-
creatures or from its own nature ;
and this will would not really em-
brace God in himself, but an idea of
him, a shadow, a footprint; and they
tell you that as such knowledge and
such possession would be the real
end of man, this knowledge would
fully and perfectly satisfy the in-
tellect and leave nothing to be de-
sired ; it would make man perfect-
ly happy with a happiness unmix-
ed and free from all regret, all sad-
ness, all privation, with a happiness
absolutely constant and unchange-
able ; that this will would bask and
be filled and exhilarated in the em-
brace of a shadow, a fiction, an
unreality, a phantom. If our op-
ponents, to build up their theory,
would consent to reconsider the
essential conditions of true beati-
tude, if they were to say that true
beatitude for man is a thing which
cannot fully satisfy his yearnings, a
beatitude which must necessarily
be accompanied with regret and
pain, a beatitude constantly chang-
ing and varying, a beatitude to be
acquired, not by the greatest act
of his specific faculties, but by the
lowest, then we could understand
how an abstractive knowledge of
God by the understanding, and fic-
titious possession of God by the
will, could be the natural end of
man, his ultimate perfection; only
in this supposition they would have
to give satisfactory reasons for
changing with regard to man those
conditions which emanate from the
very essence and metaphysical no-
tion of happiness. But, after ad-
mitting and defending those con-
ditions as essential to beatitude, to
assign for man an object which
fails in every one of them, to ap-
point for him an abstraction which
could not be the natural end of
any being, is the poorest specimen
of logical reasoning we are acquaint-
ed with, and a clear proof of how
love of a system too often blinds
the sharpest and keenest intellects.
We conclude, therefore, in the words
of St. Thomas: "It being impossi-
ble that the natural desire should
be void, which would be the case
if it were not possible to attain to
the intelligence of the divine sub-
stance a thing which all minds na-
turally desire we must admit that
it is possible to see the divine sub-
stance by intellect." *
This opinion of the immediate
vision and possession of God being
the natural end of man will be
strengthened by the answers we
shall give to the objections of our
opponents.
The strongest objection which is
brought forward against our opin-
_ * Quum autem impossibile sit naturale deside-
rium esse inane (quod quidein esset si noli csset
possibile pervenire ad divinam substantiam in-
telligendain^ quod naturaliter omnes mentes de-
siderunt), necesse est dicere quod possibile est sub-
stantiam Dei videre per intellectum. C. G., ch. li.
6o8
What was the Primitive State of Man f
ion is as follows : There must be a
proportion of nature between the
faculties and forces of a being and
the end which it is destined to at-
tain. Now, it is admitted by those
who hold that the immediate vision
and possession of God is the na-
tural end of man, that between
man's faculties and forces and such
an end there exists no such pro^
portion as they concede ; that man
by his natural powers, unaided by
God, cannot possibly attain his
end. Therefore the immediate vi-
sion and possession of God's es-
sence cannot be the natural end of
man.
This objection, which seems so
strong against our theory, vanishes
the moment a little attention is
paid to a distinction on the major
of the syllogism. There must be
a proportion of nature between the
faculties and forces of a being
and the end which it is destined
to attain ; if the being has to attain
its end by the exclusive unfolding
of its own faculties and forces, we
grant the major. There must be a
proportion of nature between the
faculties and forces of a being and
its end ; if the end is to be attain-
ed by communication with external
objects, we deny that there should
be a proportion of nature between
them. There is no proportion of
nature between man's faculties and
forces and their end; we concede
the minor and deny the conse-
quence.
Our adversaries make a great
mistake in exacting a proportion
of nature between the faculties and
forces of a being and its end in all
cases. This is only true when the
being has to attain its end by the
exclusive unfolding of itself and its
faculties, if such a case ever existed,
%f which we have grave doubts.
But suppose the case to exist ; it is
evident, then, by the very nature of
the case, that there must be a pro-
portion of nature between the fac-
ulties and forces of a being and
its ultimate end. Because by the
supposition the end must be de-
veloped, unfolded, drawn, as it were,
from the bosom of the being and
its faculties, and from them only,
without any external aid. In such
a case a proportion, if not an
identity, of nature must exist be-
tween the end of the being and its
faculties and forces. If I unfold a
spool of cotton, for instance, it is
clear that the end of that spool will
be cotton, and nothing more; it
would be absurd to expect that,
the whole spool being cotton, the
end should be silk. This is what
the German pantheists have done
with regard to human science.
They have rejected all external aid,
all objective reality, and have
striven to create science out of
their own minds. What has been
the consequence ? The result
could be no better than the prem-
ises ; by starting from an imaginary
point they have arrived also at an
imaginary end, a phantasmagoria
of their brains. But the case is
absolutely different when a being
must acquire its end, not by the
exclusive and solitary use of its
own faculties, but by communing
with an external object; in such a
case no proportion of nature is
necessary between the being and
its faculties and the object the
possession of which must form the
final perfection of the being. A
certain similitude, however faint, a
vestige of likeness, between them is
quite sufficient. If this proportion
of nature were required between
the forces of a being and its end,
no being could attain its end. For
instance, a plant, to attain its end, to
reach its full growth, must suppose
What was the Primitive State of Man ?
6o 9
the existence of a certain amount
of earth from which to receive its
food, also the existence of a certain
amount of air, etc. Has the plant
sufficient force in itself to procure
these things ? They are indepen-
dent of, and beyond the native
force -of, the plant ; when it is put
in contact with them it has native
force in itself to attract them, but
unless favored by circumstances
the plant will remain sterile and
will fail to attain its end. A sensi-
tive being requires the existence of
bodies and all those conditions
necessary for sensation in order to
attain its end.
But can it by its own unaided
forces control all these causes, the
existence of bodies, the proper
contact with them, etc.? Certainly
not. Can we say, then, that neither
the plant nor a sensitive being can
tend to its own development, be-
cause there is no proportion of
nature between its forces and the
existence of the objects neces-
sary for that development and the
favorable circumstances to bring it
about ? And because the native
force of the plant cannot control
all the favorable circumstances
necessary to the development of
the plant, can we say that the lat-
ter is not destined to rot in the
earth, to send down roots, to grow
into a trunk, to put forth flowers, to
produce fruits? And because the
animal by its forces cannot control
all the favorable circumstances to
procure sensation, shall we say that
it is not destined to be sensitive ?
When a being depends for the at-
tainment of its end upon an exter-
nal object, we cannot, by the ne-
cessity of the case, expect to find a
proportion of nature between the
forces of the being and the end
which it is destined to attain, other-
wise all the different beings of
VOL. xxix. 39
creation would have to possess
forces sufficient to control all
created agencies that is, to pos-
sess creative power.
Now, applying these principles
to man, it is evident that we could
not expect any proportion of nature
between his natural faculties and
forces and the object which must
form his final beatitude, which
is no less than the Infinite, seen
and possessed in the fulness of his
objective reality. But because no
proportion of nature can exist be-
tween man's faculties and God,
does it follow that naturally man's
specific faculties do not tend to-
wards him as infinite truth and
mfinite goodness ? Assuredly not.
Consequently from this want of
proportion between man's native
forces and their final object we
cannot infer that man's end is not
God, seen and possessed in himself.
But we will turn the argument
against our adversaries. They say
the end of man consists in the ab-
stractive knowledge and possession
of God. Will they admit that man
may arrive at this by his own un-
aided forces, or that he could do
so ? They must acknowledge that
man should be placed in favorable
circumstances to arrive at such a
knowledge and possession cir-
cumstances which are beyond
his power; then even this end is
above the reach of man's native
forces, and consequently, if a pro-
portion of nature is required be-
tween the forces of a being and its
end, man could not even attain to
an abstract knowledge and posses-
sion of God.
It is also objected : Man can-
not naturally tend towards an un-
known object. But he cannot nat-
urally know the essence of God,
which is above the reach of the
native force of his intellect. There-
6io
What was the Primitive State of Man ?
fore he could naturally tend to the
immediate vision of God's essence.
Man cannot naturally tend toward
an unknown object; if the object
be so both generically and specifi-
cally, we grant; if it is unknown only
specifically, we deny the major.
The minor also is to be distinguish-
ed: Man does not know the essence
of God specifically, we acknow-
ledge it ; generically, we deny it.
For instance, I know that in a cer-
tain place there is a treasure hid-
den, but am ignorant of what it is
composed silver, gold, precious
stones, or other material of val-
ue. In consequence of this gen-
eric knowledge of the existence
and properties of this treasure, caA
I not tend towards its acquisition,
or must I wait till I ascertain what
is the precise and specific quality
of its nature ? The same thing
must be said in our case. By
means of the generic knowledge
which man possesses of the objec-
tive reality of God's essence, and
of the particular properties which
must necessarily determine it, he
may easily tend towards it not only
as it presents itself to him under
its generic aspect, but also as it
exists in itself.
Finally, it is objected : Admit-
ting once that the natural end of
man is the immediate vision and
possession of God's essence, these
consequences would follow : ist.
That the supernatural state to
which, as we shall see, man Was
raised by God would not be a gift
and a privilege but a natural con-
dition of man, because it was ne-
cessary in order that man might at-
tain his natural end. 2d. That
God could not have created man
as he is born now deprived of the
supernatural state.
But both these propositions have
been condemned by the church
when it condemned Bains' propo-
sitions, which amount to those two
consequences. Therefore the sys-
tem which necessarily leads to those
two propositions must be false.
In answer to this objection we
shall first lay down the different
meanings which the word natural
may have in theology ; 2d, we shall
explain in what senses those two
propositions were condemned ; 3d,
we shall show in what sense the
supernatural state must be said to
be necessary in our system.
Now, in the first place, the word
natural may have the following
senses : ist, we may call natural
what we bring with us from our
birth ; 2d, that which is agreeable
to our nature that is to say, that
which does not destroy our nature,
but adorns and beautifies it ; 3d,
that which, though a free gift of
God, yet aids and perfects our na-
ture even in its own natural opera-
tions; 4th, that which constitutes
our nature, or part of it, or follows
from it as an effect from its cause,
in which sense the soul, the body,
the faculties of intelligence and of
feeling, are said to be natural as
forming our nature, or a necessary
constituent of it.
Now, as to the propositions of
Baius ; he held that the supernatural
state was natural in the fourth
sense that is, it was a necessary
part, an element, a constituent of
human nature, something due to
man by strict right; and under-
stood in this sense, his system was
false and deserving of condemna-
tion. But it was condemned only
in that sense, and no other.
On the contrary, when we hold
that the supernatural state was
necessary we by no means imply
that it was a necessary element of
human nature or a thing to which
man had any right. We simply
The Sainte Baume.
611
contend that God having created
man for an end which could not
be attained without supernatural
means, it behoved his providence
to furnish him with such means.
God owed the supernatural state
not to man, but to his own divine
attributes of wisdom, of goodness,
and of providence. Absolutely
speaking, God could have left man
without supernatural means for
his nature and faculties, and what-
ever imperfect happiness he could
have acquired by his unaided ener-
gies were already too great a boon
for man to complain had he been left
to his nature. But what God did
not owe to man he owed to himself
as a most perfect agent, as a most
wise, supremely good provisor, who
would not leave his intelligent
creatures without enabling them to
satisfy the craving he had implant-
ed in their breast of basking in the
light of his countenance and of
drinking of the torrents of his bliss.
THE SAINTE BAUME.
Haec est ilia femina
Cujus cuncta crimina
Ad Christi vestigia
Ejus lavit gratia.
A ncient Liturgy of A uck.
THE Sainte Baume * is a famous
mountain cave about twenty miles
north of Toulon, in which, accord-
ing to one of the oldest traditions
of Provence, the last days of the
contemplative Magdalene were
consumed in ecstasy and prayer.
Every one is familiar with that
most beautiful of Christian legends
which brings the family of Bethany
to the shores of southern France,
where Lazarus puts on the mitre
and wins the crown of martyrdom,
Martha founds her choir of virgins,
and Magdalene, after aiding them
in the overthrow of idolatry, re-
tires into the cleft of a lofty moun-
tain rent asunder at the awful mo-
ment of the Crucifixion, and there,
as Lacordaire says, resumes her
converse with Christ, broken off at
the Holy Sepulchre. As for the
latter, you can scarcely take a sin-
* From the Provengal word Baoumo, signifying
cave or grotto.
gle step in Provence without com-
ing upon her traces. Her memory
covers that .poetic land like the
cloud of silvery olives that wave
and shimmer over the dreamy
plains, pale and pensive with their
sacred shades as she who conse-
crated them by her hermit life.
There is the village of the Saintes
Maries on the shore of the Ca-
margue where she landed; the church
of the Majour at Marseilles, on the
site of the old temple of Diana,
where she preached to the people;
the hollow rock in the crypt of St.
Victor that was once her oratory ;
the Aigalades a few miles from the
city, and the Baume of Belon in
the environs of Gemenos, where
she essayed the solitary life, but
found them too near the haunts of
mankind ; the chapel of St. Sauveur
at Aix (or the spot where it once
stood) in which she prayed with St.
Maximin ; the road near Toulon
612
The Sainte Baume.
still called by the peasants lou camin
roitmiou de Santo Magdaleno the
pilgrim road of the holy Magda-
lene ; and the grand basilica at St.
Maximin that contains her alabas-
ter tomb.
The great Nostradamus, in his
Chronique de Provence, says that
Magdalene, " after converting the
duke and all the people of Mar-
seilles to the faith, went to seclude
herself at Baulne in the hollow of
a rock that has since become cele-
brated, having been rendered holy
and venerable to devout and peni-
tent souls by the thirty years that
this tant belle et illustre gentilfame
spent there in penitence, concern-
ing which we once wrote a poem,
in days when the Muses were favor-
able to us, that was not perhaps
unpleasing or of too common a
vein."
No place of pilgrimage in France
has ever been more popular than
the wild solitude of the Sainte
Baume, perhaps because filled with
that sublime, ineffable melancholy
so attractive to the religious heart.
Multitudes came here in the mid-
dle ages to weep and pray in a
spot consecrated by tradition to
repentance. Here kings have
knelt, and queens kissed the rock
once wet by tears of love and peni-
tence tears whose source seems
dried up for us who only know the
sterile tears of earthly woe. Those
who have crushed " that flower of
the virginal heart that never blooms
but once " have come here to pray
where she by penance and perse-
vering prayer regained the purity
of childhood who was the first to
penetrate the scheme of divine
mercy the first, says St, Chrysos-
tom, to beg the cure of her soul.
Petrarch, who visited the Sainte
Baume more than once, says in his
De Vita Solitaria, dedicated to
Cardinal de Cabassole : " Escaping
from her country, and transported
into this region as into another
world, she henceforth led a hidden
life, having for her abode this rock
hollow and bare which you have
doubtless seen, as it is by no means
distant. It is a sacred, venerable
spot worthy of a journey from afar.
I remember going there often in
former times, and spending three
days and three nights, experienc-
ing joys very different from those'
tasted in populous cities."
The life of the great penitent
here has always been a favorite
subject among artists. Who that
has seen it can ever forget the soft
grace and pensive beauty of Magda-
lene in her cave as painted by
Battoni in the gallery at Dresden,
her drooping head raised from the
ground to read the book lying
before her ?
" The dark, o'erhanging rocks, the long, fair hair,
The delicate white skin, the azure robe,
The full, luxuriant life, the grim death's head,
The tender womanhood, and the great book,"
are all brought here into sweetest
harmony. In the background,
through the low entrance, you
catch a glimpse, as through a tun-
nel, of the golden air without, that
contrasts with the dark, shaggy
cave, only lit up by the radiance
of Magdalene's beauty and the rip-
pling waves of her golden hair.
And in the Royal Gallery at
Madrid there is a painting by
Claude Lorraine in which she is
kneeling at the foot of a cross set
up among umbrageous cliffs over
which dash foaming cascades, and
through an opening in the great
forest trees you look off into a
sunny valley bounded by moun-
tains, with the towers of a city in
the distance lit up as with the re-
membrance of past pleasures. The
faultless perspective, the harmony
The Saint e Baume.
6i 3
of coloring, the happy gradation of
lights and shadows giving brilliancy
to the heavens and coolness to the
leafy recess, and the moral beauty
of the motif, covering the landscape
as with the golden mist peculiar to
the painter, make it one of his
chefs-d'oeuvre.
But what Christian artist is there
of any age who has not painted
Magdalene not only as the most
beautiful of women, but the most
touching of penitents? Every in-
cident in her life, so full of' pic-
turesque capabilities, glows on can-
vas. Even the countless legends,
so full of poetry, that have grown
out of her history have been con-
secrated by art, if not absolutely
sanctioned by the church. At
Florence there is the secluded Ri-
nuccini chapel in the church of
Santa Croce, where her whole legend
has been painted on the walls by
Giovanni da Milano, the favorite
pupil of Taddeo Gaddi, to whom the
series was long attributed. We find
it also told in several other churches
of Italy, and still more in detail in
some of the stained-glass windows
of France, particularly at Auxerre.
Mediaeval legends represent St.
Mary Magdalene as of royal blood
through her mother, Eucharia, who
was of the line of David. The
name of her father is uncertain,
but she and Martha and Lazarus
seem to have had different fathers,
from whom they inherited great
wealth. Martha had the estate at
Bethany, Lazarus a great number
of houses at Jerusalem, and Mary
the chateau of Magdalen, from
which she derived her surname, on
the shore of the Sea of Galilee.
The recollection of this chateau
has not entirely died out of the
land. An old voyageur of the
seventeenth century tells how, when
travelling along this sea, the Arabs
pointed out some ruins known to
them as the tour de t amour eux.
Lazarus was a soldier, and, to use
the language of mediaeval writers,
trained to the practices of chival-
ry,* and Martha, aided by Mar-
cella, administered not only to the
wants of the poor but the necessi-
ties of the knights, while Mary by
her resplendent beauty was led
away and acquired the sinister
name of the pecker esse. Raphael
represents Martha leading her sis-
ter to the Saviour up a flight of
steps, where he sits in a grand por-
tico talking to the people; but a
Syrian tradition says this first in-
terview took place beside a well at
Bethany where Martha herself first
met him, and for this reason 'is
still called Martha's Well. Near
by is an oblong, black-and-white
stone, called the Stone of the Col-
loquy, where he awaited Mary, of
whom Martha had gone in search.
This stone, from the remains
around it, appears to have been
formerly enclosed in a chapel, and
it is still in veneration among pil-
grims, who carry away portions of
it as relics.
Franceschini has painted Mag-
dalene pale and faint from remorse,
surrounded by holy women, her
jewels, which she has cast for ever
away, scattered over the ground.
In the Rinuccini chapel she is
prostrate before Christ, her robe
red, corresponding with her fervid
nature, her hair falling over- her
shoulders, and the seven devils fly-
ing away under the form of black
monsters. A little further on she
is sitting calmly at his feet, while
Martha is reprovingly pointing to
the kitchen, where St. Marcella is
to be seen cooking with a nimbus
around her head.
* So Dante, in this same spirit, alludes to the
lance used by Judas in tilting.
614
The Sainte Baume.
After Magdalene's conversion
she followed Christ with Susanna,
Joanna Chuza (the wife of Herod's
steward), and other holy women
who ministered to the wants of him
and his disciples. The facility
with which she entered the house
of Simon the leper makes it easy to
accept the old tradition that he
was her uncle, or at least a near
relative. In Niccolo Frumenti's
picture in the Uffizi gallery, Judas,
with a livid, pinched, Calvinistic
face, looks askance with a sneer-
ing, villanous expression at the
wealth of perfume Magdalene is
pouring out on the Saviour's feet.
It was in memory of this holy pro-
digality the popes of the middle
ages used to distribute more abun-
dant alms to the poor of Christ on
the eve of Palm Sunday.
At the foot of the cross Magda-
lene gathered up some of the earth
wet with the most precious Blood,
and put it into a vial, which she
henceforth carried about with her,
and which became celebrated in
Provence under the name of the
Sainte Ampoule.
An Oriental tradition says that
after the ascension of Christ she
spent seven years in attendance
on Our Lady, and seven as a re-
cluse at Bethany in a cell suppos-
ed to be part of Lazarus' tomb,
where Martha conveyed her food
through an opening. At any rate,
she is believed to have come to
Provence about fourteen years after
the Ascension. Never was bark so
freighted as that which the Jews
set afloat without oars or sail or
rudder, for it was freighted with
saints. Some think Lazarus, who
was the first bishop of Cyprus, did
not come till a little later. But in
the vessel were Martha and her
servant Marcella, Magdalene and
the Holy Maries, St. Trophime the
apostle of Aries, St. Parmenas the
deacon, St. Sidonius, and among
others some say was Joseph of
Arimathea. St. Maxirnin, one of
the seventy-two disciples, was at
the head. They brought with
them many precious relics from the
East, among others the remains of
St. Anne, whose shrine became so
famous at Apt.* An angel and
no wonder! guided the bark
across the azure sea, through the
golden isles, to the seven-mouthed
Rhone, to a land which by the soft-
ness of the air, the eternal smile of
the sun, the luxuriance of its val-
leys, the perfume of its thyme-cov-
ered hills, was worthy, O Magda-
lene ! to receive thee into the bosom
of its mountains, worthy to embalm
thy memory for ever.
When this shipload of saints sep-
arated on the shore of the Ca-
margue the family of Bethany first
went to Marseilles. But here they
could find no one who would re-
ceive them into their household.
So they took refuge in the portico
of the temple of Diana, and when
people came to sacrifice to the idols
the compassion of the devout Mag-
dalene was so stirred that she soft-
ly rose, and with a joyous face and
ready-speaking tongue began to
preach Christ and dissuade them
from the worship of idols. And
they were all amazed at her beauty,
wit, and fair speech, though it is
not to be marvelled at that the lips
which had once piously kissed the
feet of the Lord Jesus should utter
his praises better than any other.
Among them came the king of
Marseilles to sacrifice to the god-
dess, he and the queen, that they
might have progeny, and Mary
Magdalene reproved them for so
doing. King Rene of Anjou has
painted this scene : Magdalene on
* Louis XI. used to swear by St. Anne of Apt.
The Saint e Baume*
6i 5
the steps in white drapery, and
among her hearers Rene and Je-
anne de Laval, asKingand Queen of
Marseilles, sitting on their thrones,
with crowns on their heads and
sceptres in their hands.
The following night Magdalene
appeared to the queen in a vision
and said : " Thou who hast such
great riches, why dost thou leave
the Lord's poor to perish of hunger
and cold?" The queen feared to
make this vision known to her lord.
And the second^night Magdalene
appeared again, adding menaces if
she did not admonish the king to
come to the relief of the poor.
Still the queen could not find cour-
age to utter a word. Then the
third time, in the darkness of the
night, Magdalene appeared to the
king and queen both, with a face of
fire and wrath on her brow, and
said : " Sleepest thou, tyrant and
limb of thy father the devil, with
thy wife, the serpent, who has not
been willing to deliver thee my
message ? Reposest thou, enemy
of the cross, who hast the gluttony
of thy belly satisfied with divers
meats, while thou lettest perish the
saints of God with hunger? Liest
thou in thy palace wrapped in cov-
erings of silk, after seeing them
without housing and comforts, and
passing to one side ? Thou shalt
not escape thus, felon. Thou shalt
not go unpunished as to that which
thou hast so longed for." And
having spoken these words, she
vanished.
At this the queen awoke and
gave a deep sigh. And the king,
for a like reason, groaned and trem-
bled. And shl said to him : " Sire,
hast thou also beheld the vision ?"
" I have/' he answered, " and I am
astonished and afraid. What shall
we do?" And the queen said:
" It would be more profitable to
obey than to bring on ourselves the
anger of the God she preaches."
And they received the strangers
under their own roof, and minister-
ed to their wants. In a window at
Auxerre they are on their way to
the palace, Martha carrying the
Gospel in Hebrew which she had
brought with her from Jerusalem.
As the blessed Magdalene was
preaching one day the king said
to her : " Art thou able to give
proofs of the law thou proclaim-
est ?" And she answered : " Yea,
I am ready to prove it, as the
preaching of our master, St. Peter,
who sitteth in the chair at Rome, is
daily confirmed by miracles." To
which the prince said : " I and my
wife are ready to obey thee in all
things if thou canst obtain us a
son by the power of the God thou
declarest." And the blessed Mag-
dalene prayed the Lord that he
would vouchsafe to give them a
son. And her prayers were heard,
and the queen conceived.
Some time after the king re-
solved to set forth for Rome to
visit St. Peter, and find out if all
that he had been told by Magda-
lene was true. The queen deter-
mined to accompany him, in spite
of his warnings as to the perils of
the sea. She threw herself at his
feet, and by her entreaties obtained
his consent. The sisters of Betha-
ny, as is to be seen in the window
at Auxerre, went down to the ship
with them. Magdalene fastened a
cross on their breasts, and the ves-
sel set sail. After a day and a
night had passed away a terrible
storm arose, and the queen in her
terror brought forth her child and
immediately died. The sailors
wished to cast her body into the
sea, hoping by this means to ap-
pease the storm ; but the king wrung
his hands in despair, and by his
6i6
TJie Sainte Baume.
prayers prevailed on them to stop
at a desert isle, where he laid the
body on the shore wrapped in a
mantle. Under it he also left his
infant son, that he might not have
the grief of seeing it die for want
of nourishment. While so doing
he gave utterance to sad sighs and
complaints against the saint : " O
Mary Magdalene! to my grief and
sorrow didst thou come to Mar-
seilles. Why pray thy God to give
me a son that I might lose it and
my wife also in giving it birth ? O
Mary Magdalene ! take pity on my
grief, and at least save the life of
my child." And so saying, he went
away weeping.
At length he arrives at Rome,
and St. Peter, meeting him by
chance in the streets, sees the cross
on his breast and enters into con-
versation with him. He learns his
misfortunes, and assures him God
is powerful enough to restore what
he has lost. Then he conducts
him to Jerusalem and shows him
the places where our Lord wrought
his miracles, the mount on which
he was crucified, the tomb in which
he was buried, and the spot from
which he ascended to heaven in
all about fourscore places. After
spending two years and upwards
with St. Peter to be fully instruct-
ed in the faith, the king embarks
for Marseilles. Coming to the isl-
and where he left his wife and
child, he lands to weep over their
remains. He sees a boy on the
shore playing with the pebbles and
shells. It is his own son, whose
life has been preserved by the
blessed Magdalene. The child
runs and hides himself in the folds
of his mother's cloak. The king
follows, and is amazed to find her
as fresh as if alive, and still more
so when she opens her eyes and
stretches forth her hands to him, as
is to be seen in the Rinuccini cha-
pel. She tells, him how, while lie
was visiting the Holy Places with
St. Peter, Magdalene took her like-
wise to Jerusalem, and she enters
into a description of the places she
has seen, which the king recognizes
the truth of. They offer thanks to
God, and joyfully set sail for Mar-
seilles, where they find that Mag-
dalene's preaching has induced the
people to abandon the worship of
the false gods aiTd overthrow their
altars. She baptizes them, or, ac-
cording to others, St. Maximin
does.
This legend is given in substance
by Bernard de la Guionie in his
Speculum Sanctorale, and by Cardi-
nal de Cabassole, the friend of Pe-
trarch, who was chancellor of King
Robert of Sicily and one of the
regents during the minority of Jo-
anna I. It is one of those wild
flowers of legendary origin that the
church has allowed to bloom un-
checked in its garden, and even to
beautify its temples, as it allows
the wild vines to grace their vene-
rable walls.
Humanly speaking, it is not
strange the family of Bethany
should come to Provence when
they escaped from the persecution
of the Jews. All along the Rhone
were towns of Phocaean origin.
Marseilles was a port with vessels
from every part of the Mediterra-
nean, and was specially linked with
the East. The language, customs,
and religion of the people all sa-
vored of their origin. Diana was
as great here as at Ephesus, where
Magdalene had lived with Our
Lady. And it was to no land of
barbarians they came, like the rude
countries of the north. At the be-
ginning of the Christian era it had
been a Roman province for a hun-
dred years, and possessed the com-
The Sainte Baume.
bined culture of Greece and Rome.
The universal love of the drama is
shown by the ruins of the immense
theatres, like that at Aries. And
all the remains of Roman times to
be seen, not only in that city but
at Nimes, Orange, etc., are proofs
of their cultivated taste remains,
as Lacordaire says, " worthy of
that power which refused no one a
part in her grandeur, because she
had enough for the whole uni-
verse." It is impossible that the
remembrance of those who first
brought the Gospel to so enlighten-
ed a shore should ever die out,
even though the national archives
were repeatedly swept away in the
devastations of the Saracens. It
is the people, above all, who have
preserved their memory. When
Zwinglius, renewing the impieties
of Celsus, demanded the abolition
of the homage rendered Magdalene
and the destruction of her altars ;
when Calvin ridiculed the account
of her emigration to Provence, and
her identity with the sister of Mar-
tha, as an invention of the monks,
the people resisted the attempt to
uproot their most ancient tradi-
tions, linked with the very origin
of all that was to them sacred.
And they applauded the numerous
refutations, among which was the
triumphant apology of the learned
Bishop Fisher, of Rochester, Eng-
land, written at the request of the
faculty of Paris. And when that
faculty condemned the distinction
between her and Mary of Bethany,
they welcomed the decree with en-
thusiasm. Particular churches, like
those of Auch and Cologne, sang :
"This is the woman who of all
her crimes at Christ's feet was
cleansed by grace."
When the Revolution overthrew
the altars of Magdalene, the people,
as soon as the storm was past, went
to pray amid their ruins, and testi-
fied their opinion by flocking to
the Sainte Baume in thousands.
It was M. de Launoy, the deni-
cheur des saints, who gave the great-
est blow to the old traditions of
France, but a great reaction has
taken place, and many able writers
have come to the support of the
old landmarks. M. Faillon, above
all, has triumphantly established
the traditions of Provence, and
published the life of St. Mary Mag-
dalene as written by Raban Maur,
a monk-of Fulda in the ninth cen-
tury, who became archbishop of
Mayence a work that had lain
hidden for ages in the library at
Oxford, founded on one of far old-
er date. The Sainte Baume has
been restored to the Dominicans,
and, difficult as it is of access, has
never been more frequented.
In the summer there is a regular
communication established between
Marseilles and the Sainte Baume
to facilitate pilgrimages, but as
they cease early in the autumn on
account of the cold weather on the
mountain (there is even an abun-
dance of snow in the winter), we
found they were already over when
we went in the middle of October
to the Dominican convent at Mar-
seilles to ascertain the best means
of reaching the Holy Cave. In
accordance with the directions
very kindly given, we left the city
at a quarter to seven in the morn-
ing by the railway to Toulon. At
Aubagne we changed cars for Au-
riol, where we found a diligence
for St. Zacharie, a small town at
the foot of the mountain of the
Sainte Baume. We arrived at this
village about ten o'clock, and, after
ordering a carriage to ascend the
mountain, went through the long
line of plane-trees to the grim old
church to see the Virgin's slipper,
6i8
The Sainte Baume.
from which the town derives its
arms. In half an hour we had left
the olives and vines behind, and
were ascending craggy heights
among low bushes and stunted
pines. Queens and princes of the
olden time used often to make the
ascent on foot, like St. Louis of
Toulouse and his sisters Mary,
Queen of Majorca, and the Prin-
cess Beatrice, Marchioness of Este.
While Magdalen lived on the moun-
tain it is said no human being was
ever able to go up. As soon as
any one attempted it his limbs
were seized with trembling, and
his heart so failed him for fear
that he was unable to proceed.
But as soon as he turned back all
his strength returned.
The way soon becomes very pic-
turesque, winding as it does around
the edge of the mountain ridges,
and it is a pleasure to go slowly
along, looking down the steep pre-
cipices at the left, now into the
dry bed of a winter torrent, and
again into tangled thickets parch-
ed and dreary. It is no longer the
fair Provence of the pleasure-lov-
ing trouvere, but a wild, rugged
mountain suited to stern, austere
natures. Between one and two
o'clock we came out of the narrow
passes on to a high tableland, bare
and desolate at first, but with a
dense forest beyond, out of which
rises a lofty ridge of solid rock,
gray and utterly devoid of vegeta-
tion. In its side, not towards the
sea but to the north, is Magdalene's
cave. Half way up we could see,
like a nest on a perilous crag, the
white hermitage of the Domini-
cans that stands on the terrace
beside the Sainte Baume, and on
the very top of the ridge, against
the clear heavens, the tiny chapel of
the Saint Pilon. Just this side of
the forest we drew up before a hos-
pice for pilgrims. A Dominican
lay brother ushered us in with a
wintry smile, telling us the last pil-
grim had left that very morning.
We were not sorry. Utter solitude
seemed more in harmony with the
place. We wished to wander alone
through the dark forest, to find
ourselves alone in the holy cave,
and climb the bleak heights of the
Saint Pilon with no human voice to
disturb our recollections.
The hospice is divided by a cha-
pel. Men are lodged on one side
and women on the other. The
latter are served by tertiary sisters
of St. Dominic, who only remain
here during the season, and then
go down to their convent in the
valley for the winter. The cham-
bers are like cells and named for
the saints. They are paved with
tiles, and have two chairs, a deal
table and an iron bedstead, a cru-
cifix instead of a mirror, and three
nails on the wall. In former times
no meat was ever served on the
holy mount, but, though the rule is
mitigated to 'suit the degenerate
times, the bill of fare requires no
profound consideration. As soon
as we had dined we set out for the
cave. The way lies through the
wood, which is only a portion of
the ancient forest of the Sainte
Baume, once held so sacred that
the kings of France forbade its
being profaned under the most se-
vere penalties. It consists of great
oaks, yews, hollies, etc., the boles
of which are covered with moss
and ivy, and it is delightful to fol-
low the winding paths full of fresh-
ness and religious gloom, like the
contemplative aisles of a vast tem-
ple. There are very few birds,
owing to the coolness and dense
shade. The only thing to be heard
was the autumn wind, that on the
bare plain swept so wildly along,
The Sainte Baume.
619
but here sighed slowly, plaintive-
ly through the forest. Here and
there are great boulders by the
way, covered with moss and lich-
ens. There is nothing ferocious or
venomous no serpents, or scorpi-
ons, or noxious insects. Like the
isles of Lerins from the time of St.
Honorat, every pernicious reptile
disappeared from the mountain at
the coming of Magdalene. Here
and there we came to one of the
half-ruined oratories built by John
Ferrier, one of the old archbishops
of Aries, a Spaniard by birth, who
had a great love for the solitary life.
There were once seven of these
small vaulted czdiculce with bas-re-
liefs telling the wondrous history
of Magdalene. In the fourth the
donatore had himself represented
in a suppliant attitude beside Mag-
dalene at the foot of the cross. In
the seventh she was landing mi-
raculously in Provence.
In three-quarters of an hour we
came to the foot of the cliff. It is
an enormous ridge of calcareous
rock that rises perpendicularly hun-
dreds of feet up. The wildness of
this solitary spot must once have
been appalling. It still produces
a profound impression. Before
steps were cut in the rock to enable
pilgrims to reach the cave it must
have been so nearly inaccessible that
we may readily believe the legend
that angels had to transport the holy
penitent thither. Now there are
two paths. That to the left winds
up to the Saint Pilon. The right-
hand path leads to a small shelf or
terrace in front of the Holy Cave,
overlooking an awful precipice.
On one side are some waiting-
rooms for pilgrims, and on the
other a small house embedded in
the side of the cliff for the fathers
who serve the cave.
The original entrance to the
Sainte Baume has been filled up by
a wall, through which windows and
a door have been cut. We were
surprised to find the interior so
spacious. It rounds up like a
dome, and produces something of
the impression of the Pantheon at
Rome. It is one of nature's own
temples, and has a stern grandeur
about it that is truly imposing.
There was not a person in it when
we entered, and coming up out of
the gloom of the sacred wood into
this legendary cave, so silent and
peaceful, the heart is at once dis-
posed to prayer and contemplation.
Ferns and mosses grow on the gray
walls, and a coolness, as of running
waters, pervades the air. The sun
only enters once a year on the
24th of June, towards night.
It never strikes the terrace from
the middle of October till the last
of February, andj the remainder of
the year only for an hour in the
afternoon. The perpetual dimness
of the cave is only relieved by the
lamps that burn here and there
with a pale, steady light as in a
sepulchre. The only sound is the
melancholy dropping of water from
the walls, falling slowly, drop by
drop, like the tears of the penitent
Magdalene. The main altar, which
is nearly in the middle of the cave,
is protected from the dampness by
a baldacchino. The tabernacle is
veiled in white silk, as in Italy, and
over it is a statue of Magdalene
with her vase. Behind the altar is
a high rock in the shape of a tomb,
where not a drop of water falls.
Here Magdalene gave herself up
to tears and contemplation before
a cross on which an angel had
graven the mysteries of Christ's
life and passion, sometimes on her
knees, sometimes reclining as she is
represented in a statue on the rock.
This rock is called the Sainte Peni-
620
The Saint e Baume.
tence, and has always been special-
ly honored by pilgrims. Robert,
King of Sicily, had it in 1337 sur-
rounded by an iron grille, and ap-
pointed four priests to serve the
grotto and sing the praises of God,
in memory of the four angels who
sang hymns in their visits to the
blessed Magdalene. Over the
door of the Sainte Penitence were
the words : Adorabimus in loco ubi
steterunt pedes ejus> alluding to our
Saviour's appearing personally to
Magdalene, the legend says, ten
times. Within burned twenty-one
silver lamps, given by princes,
around her pale marble statue of
exquisite workmanship, and near
by stood the statues of Louis XI.
and Charlotte of Savoy, set up by
the order of that king. A great
quantity of jewels were suspended
around, stripped off by those de-
termined to renounce the vanities
of the world. The walls of the
whole cave were lined with inscrip-
tions and ex-votos, and from the
top hung one of those stuffed
crocodiles so often to be seen in
old churches of the south perhaps
the offering of some traveller or
seaman. The riches of the grotto
became an object of temptation to
robbers, and there were outworks
and a crenellated wall in the mid-
dle ages to defend the place.
The years Magdalene spent in
the Sainte Baume are said to have
equalled in number those Christ
spent on earth. Here she lived
the life of a disembodied spirit,
requiring no earthly sustenance.
Seven times a day the angels bore
her to the summit of the mountain
to participate in the divine praises.
When her clothes fell to pieces her
hair grew still more luxuriant and
covered her like a mantle of gold.
She found the cave at her com-
ing inhabited by a great dragon
of horrid aspect and fetid breath,
that was ready to devour her.
She cried to heaven, and the
archangel Michael descended to
deliver her and drove the mon-
ster to the shores of the Rhone,
where it was slain by St. Martha.
Then Magdalene prayed that water
might spring from the arid rock,
and the sides of the cavern opened
and gave forth a pure fountain,
still to be seen behind the Sainte
Penitence. Going one day to the
spring to bathe her tear-stained
face, Christ appeared to her, re-
splendent as on Mount Thabor.
Her eyes could not bear the sight.
Angels were around him bearing
crowns of flowers, palms, and
branches of olives. He said to
her : u Mary, it was for thee I
prepared this place." But let us
give the account of her life here
as related by an Italian merchant
who visited the Sainte Baume in
1370, and at his return described
all he had seen in Tuscan verse
an account everywhere redolent of
the poetry and mysticism of the
middle ages. Among other things
he speaks of a curious revelation
made in his hearing by a Dominican
friar called Frere Elie, who had
spent eighty-six years at the Sainte
Baume. Borne in the arms of his
brethren into the midst of the pil-
grims on the eve of their departure,
this helpless old man, whose tongue
alone retained the power of motion,
saluted them cordially, and then
said to those who bore him : "Place
me on my seat, for to-day I will
reveal the secrets of God I have
hitherto kept to myself." What he
called his seat was the holy rock
of Penitence on which St. Mary
Magdalene was accustomed to pass
the night. When placed on his
seat Frere Elie spoke as follows
to the pilgrims who gathered around
The Sainte Bauwe*
621
him, profoundly moved at his
venerable aspect :
" My children, the time has come.
The hour of death is at hand.
Listen, therefore, to what I have to
relate to the glory of the blessed
Magdalene, and for the amend-
ment of your lives.
" When, eighty-six years ago, I re-
tired into this wilderness among
the rocks to serve Mary Magdalene,
I was at first seized with utter dis-
couragement. I had not been here
a month before I was filled with re-
gret and began to think of mak-
ing my escape. One night, while
plunged in agony of soul, I saw the
cliff open in the form of a cross, and
the four quarters of the globe were
revealed to my eyes. Above were
the open heavens, and at my feet was
an abyss. Terrified, I fell to the
ground, and remained for a time
deprived of my senses. Having by
degrees recovered, I cried with all
my heart for Magdalene to come to
my siiccor. She immediately ap-
peared with a face so radiant as to
blind me to everything else. Her
unbound hair fell loosely around her
and covered her entire form. But
her arms were bare and her feet hid-
den among garlands of flowers.
* Inconstant and unprofitable ser-
vant,' said she, * it was on thy ac-
count this rock opened and I have
appeared. I can, if such be thy
will, bring peace to thy soul. Thou
hast thought of leaving my service.
Listen to my words, and afterwards
thou shalt do thine own pleasure.
" * We came, several of us, you
know, from Jerusalem to Marseilles,
thrown into a vessel and abandoned
to the mercy of God. Marseilles re-
ceived us and embraced the faith of
Christ, as well as most of the coun-
try around. Such was the consid-
eration with which we were soon
egarded that I became troubled,
re
and began to think of flying from
all commerce with mankind. An
inspiration from heaven led me to
this cavern. I was hardly here
before I perceived in the obscurity
an enormous serpent of which noth-
ing can express the hideous aspect.
It was a dragon. At the sight of
me it rose up, and its hissing
aroused an innumerable number of
serpents of all kinds, that darted to
and fro, their eyes fixed on me with
fury. But the dragon surpassed
them all. He caused me such ter-
ror that I, who did not fear death,
did not venture to look at him.
" Jesus, my God ! " I cried, " if thou
come not to my aid I shall be de-
voured or die of terror." At that
moment the dragon, lowering its
head, sprang forward, beating its
wings and opening its enormous
mouth. It seized me. I was be-
tween its jaws. But my trust in
God did not abandon me. I could
not utter a word, but I cried with
confidence in the depths of my
heart: "Jesus, after overwhelming
me with benefits, wilt thou leave
me in this wilderness to be devour-
ed by a serpent ?" Flying from
heaven came an angel, who snatch-
ed me from the jaws of the dragon,
saying : " Happy art thou, O Mary 1
for having believed." Then strik-
ing the dragon with his foot, " Go
forth," said he, " thou and all thy
brood." And the dragon and the
serpents, the former flying and the
latter crawling, precipitated them-
selves from the rock and disappear-
ed in the wilderness. The angel,
with his breath of flame, purified
the cave of its foul odors, and left
me filled with holy awe. Then I
examined the cave, and, finding it
inaccessible to mankind, I fell on
my knees and exclaimed with tears :
"Blessed be thou,O Jesus ! for hav-
ing fulfilled my desire. Vouchsafe^
622
The Sainte Baume.
moreover, to cause water to flow
from this rock for thy handmaid."
And instantly the enormous rock
divided before my eyes, and from
its hard sides flowed the spring you
behold. As I bent my knees anew
to thank the Lord I beheld on the
right side of the cave more than a
thousand spirits ; who sang in He-
brew : " Mary, it is not well for thee
to give thyself up thus to constant
prayer." I knew from such lan-
guage they were demons, and as
soon as I began to cry unto God
I saw the archangel Michael,
who said unto me : " Here am I ;
fear not," and he immediately
put to flight the spirits of darkness.
" Tremble no more in time to come,"
he added ; " the Most High watches
over thee." And as he spoke thus
he planted a cross at the entrance
of the cave. I fell down in prayer
at the foot of this sacred sign, and
for a long time did not rise. Then,
feeling my bowels dried up by the
emotion I had experienced, I tore
up some roots at the mouth of the
cave and ate them. This was my
first repast in the wilderness, and I
have never had another since.
" ' The rest of the day and the
whole night I remained at the foot
of the cross. The morning sun
surprised me there, gleaming like
crystal. I was inundated with di-
vine love. I thought I heard a
choir of celestial spirits singing
around me. But another vision
soon succeeded to this. I was
transported to the infernal regions,
where sinners groan in direful tor-
ments of every kind. Then I was
taken to the place of purification,
where a throng of souls came flock-
ing to meet me, earnestly crying :
" Pray for us, Magdalene." " May
God vouchsafe to hear me !" I re-
plied. The angel who transported
me to the abode of spirits set me
down again at the foot of the cross.
" Thou shalt remain in this place,"
said he, " as long as the Saviour
lived on the earth." I lay at the
foot of the cross all day, but when
night came the. angels took me
and bore me to such a height in
the air that I could hear the choirs
of heaven. From that time I was
seven times a day thus admitted to
the participation of supreme joys.
Inflamed with divine love, I be-
came insensible to heat and cold.
My garments fell to pieces, but my
hair grew to such a length as to
completely cover me. My life was
spent in meditating on the mys-
teries of Christ. Before the eyes
of my soul appeared successively
Anna and Joachim, Mary and the
Child in the manger, Calvary and
the cross, the sepulchre and the
livid Body, the resurrection and
victorious descent into hell. My
mind was filled with these scenes.
I spent my days and nights in
weeping. Several times in the last
days of my life Jesus Christ him-
self vouchsafed to visit my retreat.
Angels were flying around him, and
he was glorious as on the Mount of
Transfiguration.
'"Render thanks, therefore,
Elie ! render thanks unto God on
this rock, for it is a bridge of sal-
vation over the sea of life. I was
alone when I entered this place.
Thy condition is better. Banish,
therefore, the discouragement that
overwhelms thee.' And so saying,
Magdalene vanished."
Frere Elie himself expired as he
finished this account ; and imme-
diately the bells rang out a joyful
peal without any visible hand to
put them in motion.
The gravest writers of the mid-
dle ages speak with respect of Mag-
dalene's life in the cave. Petrarch,
The Saint e Baume.
623
when he came here, offered her his
homage in Latin verse, and left it
on the wall himself as a monument
of his devotion. It begins thus :
" Dulcis arnica Dei, lacrymis inflectere nostris :
Atque meas intende preces, nostraeque saluti
Consule, namque potes,"
and ends with these lines :
" Hie hominum non visa oculis, stipata catervis
Angelicis, septemque die subvecta per horas
Coelestes audire chores, alterna canentes
Carmina eorporeo de carcere digna fuisti."
Petrarch's example has been fol-
lowed by several other writers.
George de Scuderi, brother of the
author of the Grand Cyrus, offered
Magdalene also his tribute of verse,
graven on a copper lamp, which he
hung up in the cave-
Horace Capponi, Bishop of Car-
pentras, a Florentine, was so af-
fected by his visit to the cave in
the year 1600 that he left the fol-
lowing lines on the walls :
" Quas tua tarn rite hie lacrymis errata lavisti,
Fac talis culpas abluat unda meas.
Angelici cantus vivens in digno honore,
Spes mihi sit saltern perfruar ut moriens."
It was Pope Boniface VIII. who
gave the Sainte Baume to the Do-
minicans. It once belonged to the
Cassianites of Marseilles, establish-
ed here by Cassian himself, who
had been to the East to steep his
soul in the knowledge and prac-
tices of the solitary life. He used
to pass the season of Lent in a
lonely hermitage on one end of the
mountain of the Sainte Baume, the
remains of which are still pointed
out by the herdsmen. Near by is
a spring called the Fountain of St.
Cassian. All that part of the
mountain, in fact, is called by his
name. Many other hermits used
to live in the caves and hollows of
the rocks, and at one time there
was a beguinage on the flanks of
the mountain. St. John de Matha,
founder of the order of the Trinity,
a Provengal by birth and education,
had a great love for the solitary
life, and, out of devotion to St.
Mary Magdalene, lived for some
time at the Sainte Baume in great
fervor of spirit.
Eight popes are known to have
visited the Sainte Baume. The
first on record is Pope Stephen IV.,
who came here in 816 on his way
to consecrate Louis le Debonnaire.
All the old counts of Provence,
and after them the kings of France,
not only visited the Holy Cave but
became its protectors. In 1332
five kings came here at once, ac-
companied by a throng of lords and
ladies : Philippe de Valois, King of
France ; Alfonso IV. of Aragon ;
Hugo IV. of Cyprus ; John of Lux-
emburg, King of Bohemia ; and Ro-
bert, King of Sicily. It was the
latter who went to meet his bro-
ther monarchs at the frontier of
Provence and conducted them to
St. Maximin and the Sainte Baume.
St. Louis came here on his return
from the first Crusade "in honor of
the benoite Magdelaine" says the
Sire de Joinville, who accompanied
him.
Marshal Boucicaut, one of the
great captains of the fourteenth
century, founded a chaplainship at
the Sainte Baume, as he says in
the act, to promote his own salva-
tion and that of his wife, Constance
de Saluce. A Dominican was to
be the incumbent, and a daily
Mass was to be celebrated for the
repose of their souls. This great
lord wore mourning every Friday
in memory of the Passion of Christ,
and fasted every Saturday in honor
of Our Lady. He made several
pilgrimages to the Sainte Baume,
and on one occasion gave a large
sum to render the hospice more
comfortable for pilgrims.
King Rene of Anjou made a visit
624
The Sainte Baume.
here in the Lent of 1438, and
founded a daily High Mass to be
sung for ever in the cave for him-
self and his predecessors, " out of
the respect he bore the sainted
Magdalene, and his singular and
fervent piety towards the Sainte
Baume, where, with the aid of God,
he had just spent nine days in de-
votion." His sister Mary, wife of
Charles VII. of France, also came
here and gave fifty florins to found
a chaplainship. Louis XI., her son,
came here when Dauphin. He en-
dowed the Holy Cave, and had a
baldacchino of white marble erect-
ed over the high altar to protect it
from the water that constantly fil-
ters through the rocks, and on it
were emblazoned thearmsof France
and Dauphine. He did this, as he
declares, " out of \\isgrant singulier
parfaite etentiere devotion a la trh
glorieuse Marie Magdeleine."
Louis XII. came here when Duke
of Orleans, and after his accession
confirmed all the privileges ac-
corded the Sainte Baume by the
old counts of Provence, assigning
as his motive " the honor and rev-
erence he bore the glorious Magda-
lene, who, among many other pla-
ces, is specially honored at the
Baume one of the most devout
spots in the Christian world."
Francis I. came here twice, and
renewed all the ancient privileges,
as he says, " out of the singular
devotion we have to the glorious
Mary Magdalene, who in this
place did penance for the space of
thirty years and more." The second
time he came here was after the bat-
tle of Marignano. With him came
his mother, Louise of Savoy, Queen
Claude his wife, his sister Mar-
garet, afterwards Queen of Navarre,
and many lords and ladies. He
ordered at the sound of the trumpet
that no one should cut wood or
hunt in the forest, or even enter it,
without leave of the monks, under
severe penalties. He gave a large
sum to adorn the grotto and repair
the roads. He had chambers made
for the royal family. The queen's
chamber and the Dauphin's were in
the hospice. The king's was at the
hermitage, and contained the por-
traits of all the popes and sover-
eigns who had visited the Sainte
Baume. He also built a porch of
rich workmanship before the cave.
Over it was carved the Assumption
of Magdalene, and at the sides
were statues of the king and his
mother kneeling before their patron
saints St. Francis of Assisi and
St. Louis of France. In imitation
of Petrarch he also wrote some La-
tin verses in praise of Magdalene.
Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. like-
wise visited the Sainte Baume.
The latter ascended on horseback
to the Saint Pilon, and then came
down to the grotto, where he ex-
amined everything in detail. Nei-
ther he nor his mother would eat
meat in so holy a place, though it
was Jeudi Gras. After his mother's
death he founded six annual Masses
of Requiem in the cave for the re-
pose of her soul, and had the act
inscribed on copper and hung on
the walls.
A steep, rough path around the
ridge leads up to the Saint Pilon.
It is no small task to make the
ascent at any time, but the day we
went up the violence of the mis-
tral rendered it a formidable un-
dertaking. There were places
where we had actually to crawl, for
fear of being swept over the preci-
pice. We were benumbed, too,
with the cold. Some days it is im-
possible to ascend, for the top of
the ridge is bare, and there is
nothing to break the violence of
The Sainte Baume.
625
the wind. It is bleak and wild,
and covered with boulders and
fragments of rock. Sunburnt,
wind-swept, nothing grows here but
a few odorous plants in the crevi-
ces. But the view is superb on
every side, it being three thousand
feet above the level of the sea. To
the south you can see the far-off
Mediterranean lost in the blue of
the heavens, to the north are two
parallel ranges of mountains, one of
them ending almost opposite with
Mt. A urelian, and beyond are the pre-
cipitous heights of Mt. St. Victoire,
or Venture, at the foot of which
Marius defeated the Cimbri and
Teutons (B.C. 125) near the pres-
ent village of Pourrieres, that derives
its name from the Campi Putridi,
where a hundred thousand barba-
rians were slain. At the foot of these
ranges is the town of St. Maximin,
where Magdalene found a tomb.
The Saint Pilon is so called from
a pillar that once marked the spot
to which Magdalene was carried
seven times a day by the angels.
Here she left the imprint of her
feet on the rocks. This pillar was
afterwards enclosed in a chapel.
In 1647 the Princesse de la Tour
d'Auvergne visited the Sainte
Baume, and was so impressed by
the place that she resolved to re-
store the chapel of the Saint Pilon
and line it with rich marbles. This
work was completed by her son,
Cardinal de Bouillon. Over the
altar was a relief in white marble
of Magdalene borne up by the
angels, on a black ground. This
subject, so often chosen by the
painter and sculptor, is known as
the Assumption of Magdalene.*
In the prose of St. Martha, in the
* This is the subject of the colossal group over
the main altar of the Madeleine at Paris the most
imposing monument ever raised to the memory of
the great penitent, and that, too, in the chief city
of earthly pleasures. What an antithesis !
VOL. XXIX. 40
ancient liturgy of Auch, she is
thus felicitated as to these myste-
rious elevations of her sister :
" Animam tuae sororis
Audisti supernis choris
Ferri cum laetitia " ;
and Magdalene is thus addressed
in the Gaudez sung at the Sainte
Baume :
" Gaude, quae septenis horis,
Es ab antro vecta foris
Ad coeli fastigia."
The chapel is now half ruined.
It stands on the edge of the awful
precipice, hundreds of feet above
the Holy Cave. Before it is a tall
cross bent by the wind. You look
through the grated door and see a
rude altar where angels once stood
around the ecstatic Magdalene.
At the Revolution all the rich
offerings of kings and nobles were
carried off. Marechal Brune, call-
ed by Napoleon the intrepide deprt-
dateur, being ordered to keep in
check the royalists of the south,
his soldiers, during the Cent Jours,
went up to the Sainte Baume in a
kind of fury. There was nothing
left to excite their cupidity, but
they dashed the remaining statues
over the precipice and burned the
buildings, leaving nothing but the
bare rock and part of the ancient
forest so long held sacred. Divine
justice seemed to avenge these
sacrileges by the miserable end of
the marechal, August 2, 1815. He
became the victim of popular fury
at Avignon, and his body was
thrown from the bridge into the
Rhone. It floated about for eight
days, and finally stopped a little
above Aries, on the estate of the
Baron de Chartrouse, not far from
the Aliscamps where the dead used
to descend miraculously that they
might be buried in the divinely-
consecrated cemetery of St. Tro-
phime. He was recognized by his
626
The Burial of Pere Marquette.
lofty stature, and the body was
sent to his widow.
In 1816 the Count de Villeneuve,
prefect of Marseilles, visited the
Sainte Baume, and at the sight of
the ruins was inspired with a desire
to restore the ancient altars. With
this object in view he published
an account of its condition which
contains some curious details. He
says a crowd of people were still
in the habit of coming here on
Whitmonday, particularly those
who had been married during the
year, according to the prevalent
custom in Provence, where it is
often stipulated in the marriage
contract, the omission of a pilgrim-
age here being regarded as entail-
ing sterility. They set up a little
pile of stones in token of having
fulfilled their vow. These are call-
ed castelets, or little forts, and are
to be seen in great numbers in the
forest and on the mountain ridge.
The result of this and other ef-
forts was so successful that even
Louis XVIII. and Pope Pius VII.
encouraged the restoration of the
cave and the rebuilding of the con-
vent. The former was reopened
for public worship in May, 1822,
on which occasion eight bishops
and a crowd of religious of all
orders, as well as secular priests,
ascended the mountain, followed
by processions of penitents in their
sacks, and village after village
singing hymns of joy. The whole
number amounted to over forty
thousand people. The archbishop
of Aix, after the service in the
cave, took the Host and came forth
on the terrace overlooking the
forest and the plain beyond, and
gave the solemn Benediction, which
was succeeded by a universal ac-
clamation from the throng, explo-
'sions of fireworks, and other testi-
monies of rejoicing.
Christ had risen anew in France,
and once more seemed to reveal
himself by saying, as of old to her
who sought him at the sepulchre:
"MARIA!"
THE BURIAL OF PERE MARQUETTE,
JUNE, 1675.
SWEET sang the birds in the forest,
Softly the waves replied,
Breaking where Jesuit Mission
Nestled the lake beside.
Music of June in the forest,
Waves' low song on the shore,
Greeting a swarthy procession
Gliding the waters o'er.
Gently the light ripples parted,
Cloven by birch canoe,
Murmuring song to the shadow
Breaking their sunshine through.
The Burial of PZre Marquette. 627
Solemnly Indian hunter
Bent to his paddle's stroke,
While through the silence of sorrow
June's rippling music broke.
Strong were the arms that labored,
Weary the hearts that wept,
Mourning the true love that, living,
Never grew weary or slept.
" Not by the Michigan River,"
Proudly the chiefs had said,
" Shall his rest be who so loved us :
Home we will bear our dead.
" Lonely the forests stretch round him,
Fiercely the north winds cry ;
Bear we the bones of our father
Under his cross to lie.
" Under the smile of his Mother,
Whom e'er his heart held dear,
Well shall he sleep near her image
Blessing the house of prayer."
Sweet sang the birds in the forest,
Softly the waves replied,
Greeting the swarthy procession
Seeking the green lakeside ;
Bearing afar to the Mission,
Over the waters broad,
Marquette, the patient apostle,
Marquette, lover of God.
Not alone faithful Algonquin
Sorrowed for pure soul fled ;
Iroquois, old feuds forgetting,
Honored the holy dead.
Down by the Michigan River
Lonely were wood and wave,
Missing the sweet consecration
Spirit so saintly gave.
Over the makers of kingdoms
Lieth rich funeral pall
Unto the dead that it covers
Love may bring tribute small.
628 The Burial of Fere Marquette.
Banners of conquest- won countries
Over the kings' graves bend
Unto Lake Michigan's waters
Earth could no glory lend.
Silence of sorrowing Indians,
" .-;.; 4 Grief that of love had birth,
Honored the dead that had conquered
Kingdoms for God, not earth.
{
Reverent-hearted they bore him,
Ottawa, Iroquois.
Had he not won for their brothers
Heaven's unending joys ?
Sadly the priests of the Mission,
Chanting a psalm of death,
Bore him they loved to the chapel,
Blessing the Indians' faith ;
Under the cross gently placed him,
Under St. Mary's smile
Hers who had shown him her Jesus
After earth's long exile.
Sweet sang the birds in the forest,
Softly the waves replied,
Slowly the bells of the Mission
Rang from the low lakeside.
Well sleep the olden crusaders,
Fervent in thought and deed,
Holding their life but as tribute
Waiting their Saviour's need.
Never a soldier more fearless
Fought in a nobler strife
Than he, who, loving his Master,
Gave for his flock his life.
Softly Lake Michigan's ripples
Sing to the sunny shore,
Cross of the Catholic Mission
Rising to bless once more,
Shedding the light of old glory
Over the waves hallowed,
While still the sweet consecration
Rests of the saintly dead
" Bore en."
629
Shield of the Ottawa Missions,
Indians' angel guide,
Whose living love, on earth kindled,
Burneth God's throne beside.
"BOREEN.'
CHAPTER III.
"WHAT is the use of my calling
on these swells ?" the barrister ask-
ed of himself as he sat over a fried
sole at breakfast next morning. " It
demoralizes one, and yet in my
profession everything turns in. I
may as well take a peep at the in-
ner life of the Marquis of Pom-
fret." He did not recognize Hes-
ter Bransco*nbe in the transaction
at all. Thus do we hoodwink our
uppermost thoughts, but how thin
is the hood !
Walter went down to the House
of Commons, and, having sent his
card to Mr. Le Fanu, was admitted
by the burly but resolute policeman
within the sacred precincts of the
lobby. Mr. Le Fanu, after a chat
over the proposed bill, passed the
young barrister into the House
underneath the ambassadors' gal-
lery, and just as he entered Mr.
Gladstone had risen to a point of
order, and was engaged in blasting
with the lightning of his eloquence
an insolent juvenile member. Nu-
gent's heart leaped hotly when
came the thought that one day, per-
haps, he might sit in that House,
and win a seat not through the influ-
ence of broad acres they had been
swept from him but by dint of hard
work at his profession. As he
passed along Westminster Hall he
thought of Eldon, who when asked
by an angry father what property
he, a penniless barrister, was pos-
sessed of that he should aspire to
the hand of his daughter, made re-
ply : " The ground I stand on in
Westminster Hall."
Hailing a hansom, he drove to
the Horse Guards, and soon found
himself in a palatial apartment look-
ing out on the park.
" That must be the very elm-tree
she sat under yesterday, and to-
day it seems so strange, like a
dream."
Miss Branscombe received him
graciously. She was attired in
lustrous white all dotted with am-
ber and black bows.
" Ethel will be here in a mo-
ment," she said. " She takes a
siesta every afternoon. I told her
that she might expect a visit from
you, and it greatly disturbed her
slumbers."
" She is a charming child."
" Thoroughly natural, at all
events.'
" It's rather a treat to meet a
child with a doll nowadays. The
age of children would seem to have
passed away."
"Children are becoming horribly
material, Mr. Nugent. They have
ceased to believe in giants and
giant-killers. They won't accept
fairies, they discredit Little Red
630
Bore en?
Riding Hood, and discard the
Arabian Nights. What are we to
do with them ? They insist upon
going behind the scenes, the little
monkeys ! Have you any little
brothers and sisters ?"
" I have one sister. She is sev-
enteen."
"Is she in London with you ?"
" No."
" You should have brought her
over."
"We are very poor," said Walter,
"and couldn't stand the expense" ;
and seeing that the girl was pained
at the contretemps, he added : "I
am here on Parliamentary business.
I am a barrister, and to-morrow I
plead from my first brief."
"Your first brief ? The first of
an illustrious line of descend-
ants?"
"I don't think I have much tal-
ent, much reasoning power, Miss
Branscombe. I am a dreamer, a
visionary, and I am indolent by
nature, though at times I feel as if
I could undertake the task of Sisy-
phus."
The heiress was silent for a mo-
ment.
" Will you excuse my asking you
if you have good prospects I mean
if you are likely to make the bar
pay?"
"I fear not." He had become
quite confidential with this young
girl, and with his elbows on his
knees, his hands clasped in front of
him, leant over towards her. " You
see a fellow, to get on at the bar,
must know a lot of attorneys, and,
if possible, ask them to dinner. I
only know one, and he was my
poor father's solicitor the family
solicitor. We were awfully well off,
Miss Branscombe, but the estate
has gone from us acre by acre, till
we have only the house left. My
mother has let it to an English
family ; perhaps you might know
them the Drake Howards."
"Of Yorkshire? Mr. Drake
Howard is very fond of hunting ;
Mrs. Howard is an invalid ; they
have one daughter, Julietta, who
paints like Millais," hurriedly ex-
claimed Miss Branscombe.
;< The very people ! Do you
know them ?"
" Intimately. Here," approach-
ing an ebony bureau with lich
bolts, and producing a letter
" here is an epistle from Julietta
received this very morning, and
dated Kil Kil "
" KUternan," sighed Walter.
" She wants me to come and
stay with her in the autumn. She
describes the place as being exqui-
sitely situated."
" And so it is," he enthusiastical-
ly exclaimed. "It is the most
beautiful place in the wx>rld." And
his bright, earnest face became
clouded a sad gray cloud born of
sorrowful thoughts that turned to-
ward the past.
Little Ethel came rushing in.
"O Walter! I'm so delighted
to see you," she cried, putting up
her rosebud of a mouth to be kiss-
ed. " Estelle will be delighted to
see you ; you must come up to my
room. I have a tiny little play-
room all to myself. Come !" tugging
at Nugent's wrists almost as violent-
ly as Boreen had tugged at her un-
fortunate doll.
There was nothing for it but to
obey, and the barrister was con-
ducted by the little maid to an
apartment, a very poem of pink
ribbons and white lace, wherein
upon a crimson satin dais was
seated the bride, gazing sternly into
space.
" O you darling !" cried the child,
caressing Estelle. " Here's Walter
come to see you. Speak to him."
" Screen."
631
And pressing the springs, the doll
squeaked " papa," " mamma " quite
melodiously.
" She says she is enchanted to see
you, Walter."
" I am equally pleased to see
her," laughed the barrister. " Have
you found a husband for her yet,
Ethel ?"
'* I have. It's Sir Jasper Jyve-
cote, auntie's beau. You needn't
make a face at me, Aunt Hester;
I "
** What a little prate-box she
is !" interposed Miss Branscombe,
blushing vividly.
Walter began to wonder what
Sir Jasper was like, and if he had
seen his portrait in the photograph
album.
Ethel produced all her toys and
their name was legion for the
barrister's inspection, commencing
with Estelle's bridesmaids, a gift
from her aunt, and ending with a
kitchen range.
" Auntie, has mamma invited
Walter to come with us to Pull-
eyne on Thursday ? " Ethel sud-
denly asked.
Nugent, recognizingthe a-wkward-
ness of the question, at once ex-
claimed :
" On Thursday I shall be in
Dublin, Ethel."
" Where is Dublin ?" asked the
child.
"In Ireland, you little stupid!"
laughed her aunt.
" Oh ! Ireland is where the sava-
ges grow."
" Isn't this too bad, Miss Brans-
combe ?" said Nugent gravely.
"You must not take measure of
a nursemaid's prejudices and a
nursemaid's ignorance, Mr. Nugent.
I used to be frightened to sleep by
my nurse crying, ' Here's an Irish-
man,' " was Miss Branscombe's re-
ply.
" You must not go to Ireland till
after my birthday. I'll be seven on
Thursday, and we're to go in the
steam-launch from Maidenhead to
Marlow and Medmenham, and I'm
to cut the cake myself; and we won't
dine at Pulleyne, but out in the
woods ; and I'm to hang up the ket-
tle to boil, and to gather the sticks
to make the fire, and to light it ; and
papa is to let me cut the cord of
a champagne cork ; and I'm to steer
the launch, and to give Dawkins
and Simpson and the other sailors
beer ; and O Walter! we're going
to have an awfully splendid day,
and you must come, and so will Es-
telle." And Ethel clapped her
little hands and frisked round the
room on one foot in the ecstasy of
anticipation.
" You can scarcely say her nay,
Mr. Nugent," said the heiress.
" I would not, indeed, but I would
be utterly de trop"
" I know what you mean," cried
Ethel ; " de trop means in the way.
That's what auntie said to me when
Sir Jas "
" Ethel, I shall buy a blue rib-
bon and tie up your stupid little
tongue," burst in Miss Branscombe.
" No, you won't, auntie, and when
you said "
" If you go on prattling I'll ask
Mr. Nugent to stop away. I. won't
let him come on Thursday."
This threat effectually silenced
the child.
" Pulleyne is my brother-in-law's
place, Mr. Nugent. It's very charm-
ingly situated on the Thames, and
is rather worth visiting. It adjoins
Medmenham Abbey, the scene of
the unhallowed revelry of the god-
less worthies who called themselves
the Monks of the Screw. The day
will repay you."
" I'm very much obliged, but, if
not amongst the savages, I shall
6 3 2
"Borecn"
have work to do that will chain me
to the oar."
" Where are you stopping ?"
" At the Tavistock, Covent Gar-
den."
" That is a sort of monastery, is
it not?"
" Yes, it resembles the Isle of St.
Senanus. No woman is allowed to
set foot therein."
"What a shame!"
" Oh ! it's a very quiet, respec-
table establishment," laughed the
barrister.
" You'll come here early, to
breakfast, on Thursday, Walter,
won't you ?" cried Ethel, as he rose
to take his leave.
" M'amie, I cannot."
" He says he wo-o-o-o-n't co-co-
co-come,"boohooed the little maid;
and it was only through diplomatic
phraseology that Walter Nugent
was permitted to depart.
" I'll move into a cheap hotel to-
night," he said to himself as he
walked up Whitehall ; " that five-
pound note was too much to spend,
and I must send this exquisite
child a bouquet that will cost me
half a sovereign. What I would give
to be of that party to Pulleyne! What
a day for a poor fellow like me !
Heigh-ho! I couldn't accept little
Ethel's invitation, and Miss Brans-
combe could do nothing less than
back it up ; and yet I do think she
intended it. She seems a sort of
girl who wouldn't allow herself to
be cornered by any contretemps.
I wonder if this Sir Jasper Jyvecote
is to be of the party ? Of course he
will be it's a family affair. Ima-
gine passing them on the river in a
Steam-launch of my own ! I wish I
was back among the Dublin Moun-
tains. There is no place a man
feels the want of a lot of money so
much as here" glancing at the mag-
nificently-appointed equipages that
flashed past him to and from the
park, their occupants reclining with
aristocratic ease and indifference
on the silken cushions. " Yes,
here a fellow is something less than
nobody ; his latitude is simply no-
where. Fancy if I could keep up
with the Pomfrets, ride in Rotten
Row, meet this girl in society from
a garden party at Marlborough
House to a dinner at the Orleans.
Pah ! what a gulf yawns between a
briefless barrister and the Right
Honorable the Most Noble the
Marquis of Pomfret, Her Majesty's
Secretary of State for War ; and yet,
aye, such gulfs have been bridg-
ed over, not by a single effort it is
true, but by a succession of efforts.
Have I the stuff in me to win name
and fame ? That is the question.
I do not think I have. A man re-
quires to be moulded after an ex-
ceptional pattern to win in the
great race of to-day."
He passed into Hyde Park by
Apsley House, and, crossing the
roadway, seated himself upon the
railing, his feet twisted round a
post. Now at a snail's pace, now
at a spanking trot, flowed the car-
riage tide in the Kow, bearing the
high and the mighty of Merrie
England. Family chariots such as
ourgreat-grandmothers used to elope
to Gretna Green in, with coronet-
ed panels, landaus swinging sen-
suously upon C-springs, broughams
resembling opera-boxes on wheels,
phaetons low, open, inviting, wag-
onettes of quaint form, basket car-
riages about the size of wine-ham-
pers what an endless procession,
what a type of the wealth of mo-
dern Babylon !
A clarence, attached to a pair of
chestnuts that would have fetchec
a thousand guineas at Tattersall's
and driven by a coachman in
powdered wig and plum-colon
Boreen!
633
livery slashed with gold, two foot-
men in similar livery seated be-
hind, drew slowly towards where
Walter Nugent sat perched upon
a rail.
" What a swell turn-out!" he mut-
tered. " How those horses would
have delighted poor Andy Gavin !"
He was gazing with such intense
admiration on the cattle as totally
to disregard the occupants of the
vehicle, and it was only when he
heard his name called in a childish
voice that he looked upwards to
find little Ethel kissing a dainty-
gloved, fat hand to him, while at
the same moment a mounted police-
man dashed onwards, waving his
hand in the air, a notification to
all coachmen to pull up, as the
Princess of Wales was coming along
the Row.
Miss Branscombe lay back in the
carriage beside a haughty, aristo-
cratic-looking lady who wore //#<:
nez. Nugent at once recognized
the Marchioness of Pomfret, the
likeness between the two sisters
being remarkable.
Ethel, delighted to meet her
friend, joyously clapped her hands
as she cried :
" Mamma, mamma, look there
on the top of the rail. That's Wal-
ter Estelle's papa."
As the marchioness turned in
the direction indicated the barris-
ter suddenly recollected the un-
gracefulness of his pose, that he
wore low, heavy shoes, and that his
gray stockings, knitted by his sis-
ter, were darned at the heels.
Sliding from his coigne of vantage,
Nugent glided into the crowd of
gaping foot-passengers, his face
very red, and with a feeling of in-
tense irritation.
" She wouldn't look at me pah !"
And giving a vigorous shake to his
blackthorn, he strode towards Pic-
cadilly at the rate of six miles an
hour.
CHAPTER IV.
THE following day brought a letter
from Kate Nugent to her brother.
It contained a lot of that small gos-
sip which is worth grains of gold
when we are away from home.
" Mr. O'Meara was here," she went on
to say, " and he says that your being
specially retained before a committee of
the House of Commons is certain to get
you briefs. He ought to know. He
told mamma that a Mr. Walsh, a solicitor,
told him that he intended to retain you
in a Westmeath fishing case. God be
praised for all this ! What a splendid
career you have before you ! Mr.
O'Meara sent us a salmon that Mr.
Heron caught at Connemara. Of course
we invited him to come and dine to-
morrow. At first he hemmed and hawed
and said he preferred coming in the even-
ing ; but mamma insisted, so he will be
with us. What a charming person Mr.
O'Meara's sister is "
11 Why," exclaimed Walter, " this
letter is all O'Meara. Oho ! Miss
Kate, sets the heart-breeze in that
quarter? You might do worse, my
sister. O'Meara ' takes silk ' next
term, and is making a cool thou-
sand a year."
The letter gushed a good deal
over a Mrs. Byseg, the sister alluded
to, and wound up by a devout pray-
er for the young " barrister's " suc-
cess on his forthcoming maiden ef-
fort. The postscript was as fol-
lows :
"I open this to give you a piece of
startling but not unpleasant news.
Who do you think has turned up ? You
will never guess Andy Gavin ! Dear
old Andy is just as poor as when he
left. He says he will never go back to
America again ; that he will die as near
634
Bore en."
Kilternan as ever he can. The poor fel-
low cried and laughed and seemed
strangely affected on seeing us again.
His manner was curious. Mamma was
afraid that he had been drinking; but no,
he was as sober as a judge. I fear that
disappointment has unsettled him. I
asked him if he had made money at
horses or farming, and he said, ' Not a
cent ' ; then he laughed boisterously. His
clothes, which are very good, were given
him by a friend. We wanted him to take
the little room at the back of the kitch-
en, but he refused point-blank. Poor fel-
low ! it was as much as we could do to get
him to eat some cold mutton. He amused
Mr. O'Meara very much by his adven-
tures out West. Mr. O'Meara and
Andy started together to catch the tram-
car from Roundtown. I hope O'Meara
can do something for Andy. I spoke to
him about it. and he said he would.
When I told Andy of what I had done
he began to laugh. I'm terribly afraid
that the climate of America has affected
his understanding. K. N."
"Poor Andy!" exclaimed Nu-
gent, an intense sadness in his tone.
"" Something must be done for the
dear, faithful old fellow. I've got
to work for my mother, my sister,
and Andy Gavin ; and now for it."
And snatching up the papers that
lay on the breakfast-table beside
him, he hurried on foot in the di-
rection of the House of Commons.
The committee rooms at St.
Stephen's are situated on the river
side of the house. The apart-
ments are large, lofty, and fitted up
after the mediaeval. The members
of the committee sit horse-shoe
fashion, facing the bar and the pub-
lic, the former being provided with
seats inside a railing. Walter Nu-
gent, who looked very handsome in
his horse-hair wig and stuff gown,
proudly bustled to his place, and his
senior, Mr. Calvert Sommerset, Q.C.,
being engaged on another case be-
fore " m' luds," the duty not only
of staling but of making the case
devolved upon the young barrister.
" I have my mother, and Kate,
and Andy Gavin to work for," was
the thought that flashed through
Walter Nugent's mind, as, flinging
his gown a little back and jerking
his wig a little forward, he rose to
lay the foundation-stone of the edi-
fice of his future career. There
were two Irish members on the com-
mittee, one of them Isaac Butt, who,
Triton that he was, smiled encour-
agement and nodded approval to-
ward the minnow who was commen-
cing to swim in the troubled and
eddying currents of the law ; the
other Mr. Mitchell Henry, the
" man for Galway."
Nugent stuttered and stammered
a little at first, the room seemed in-
clined to move round him, while the
faces of the committee appeared as
one white line ; but by degrees the
apartment came to an anchor, and
individual countenances, especially
those of Mr. Butt and Mr. Henry, as-
sumed the outlines of graven images.
The young barrister, never warm-
ing, always cold, clear, concise, ar-
gumentative, held himself well in
hand, and when, after a prolonged
intellectual effort of nearly two
hours, during which he had shiver-
ed lances with three of the most ex-
perienced counsel at the Parliamen-
tary bar without receiving a dint
in his armor, he sat down, there
was a very distinct murmur of ap-
probation not only from the pub-
lic but from the committee ; and
when the room was cleared in order
to permit the committee to delib-
erate in private upon a point raised
by the youthful advocate, Walter
Nugent received congratulations
from those who but a moment ago
he had caused to reel at the point
of his skilfully-directed lance.
" I hear you've made our case,
Mr. Nugent," observed Mr. Calvert
Sommerset.
Boreenl
635
" I did my best, sir," was the
other's modest rejoinder.
When the committee reassembled
the chairman announced that the
preamble had been proved, adding :
"I speak the sentiments of the
committee when I say that our de-
cision has been arrived at mainly
through the able, exhaustive, and
complete argument of the junior
counsel for the prosecution, Mr. W.
Nugent."
Walter, wild with delight, tele-
graphed to his mother : " Had to
do all the work. Have won. Com-
plimented all round. This is grand
luck."
" I hope the dear woman will
have half a crown, as Gavin would
say, 'handy' to pay for this tele-
gram," he laughed as he crossed the
lobby, divesting himself of wig and
gown.
When he reached the Tavistock
late that night for he wandered out
amongst the green lawns beyond
Finchley he found a note awaiting
him in the mahogany rack under
the letter N. The envelope was
square, the superscription in a
strange hand. On the back was a
raised coronet in gold ; beneath
the coronet a monogram which he
failed to decipher.
"It must be for me," he mutter-
ed, as he carefully cut along the
upper edge. " * Walter Nugent, Es-
quire.' Could it be ? By George !
it must be from the Pomfret peo-
pie."
The gilt-edged paper was so
thick that it refused to unfold.
Again the coronet and monogram
met his eye while he read as fol-
lows :
" The Marchioness of Pomfret
requests the pleasure of Mr. Walter
Nugent's company at a fete cham-
petre on Thursday next, to be given
to celebrate the birthday of her
daughter Ethel. Rendezvous, the
Guards Club, Taplow Bridge, n
A.M. "; and enclosed a tiny note
written in round hand : "You must
come, Walter. Please bring Bo-
reen. ETHEL."
" Am I justified in refusing this
invitation ?" argued Nugent, gaz-
ing at the coronet and monogram.
" If I am to go for Parliamentary
business, the more I extend my
connection in London the better.
It is not every fellow who gets an
invitation from the wife of a cabi-
net minister, and a marchioness to
boot. They must wish me to go,
or why this note? And yet, perhaps,
it has been sent to gratify little
Ethel, not out of a true spirit of
courtesy to myself. Noblesse oblige.
Her little ladyship started the ques-
tion, and it was well backed up by
Miss Branscombe. Why should I
not go? Is it not doubting myself
to permit hesitation to creep in on
a collateral issue? The Nugents of
Kilternan are as red in blood as
the Pomfret-Branscombes. I say,
why should I not -go?" shaking the
note wickedly, as though to elicit
a reply from the missive through
the medium of this action. u Am I
not entitled to one day, one day of all
sunshine? I have earned it. For-
tune is fickle, and she is mine now.
Why should I not suit myself to
her mood ? I'll go, aye, and bring
Boreen. I'll quaff one goblet of
the champagne of life ere I settle
down to my usual small-beer." And
uttering this sentiment half-aloud,
Mr. Nugent lighted his candle at
the gas-jet in the corridor, slipped
off his shoes, and retired to his bed-
room.
6 3 6
" Boreenr
CHAPTER V.
I SHALL leave Mr. Walter Nugent
in London, and, crossing the Chan-
nel, ask my readers to step into the
coffee-room of Spadacini's Hotel,
in College Green, Dublin. It was
the morning subsequent to the
young barrister's Parliamentary
triumph, and no less a personage
sat at breakfast in this well-known
hostelry than Andy Gavin. The
ex-whipper-in, newspaper in hand
and breakfast not yet dispos-
ed of, looked the very picture of
solid respectability and comfort.
His shirt was snowy white, the col-
lar ascending to his red ears; his
black frock-coat was sleek and
satiny, as were his waistcoat and
trousers. His boots, very new,
were polished like the handle of
the big front door so feelingly al-
luded to by Admiral Porter, K.C.B.,
in "H. M. S. Pinafore," and if his
leather gave indications of conven-
tional care, so did also his chin,
which shone again, the direct and
happy result of a perfect shave.
Mr. Gavin had ordered himself
an alderman's breakfast. On a
dish right in front of him reposed
three cork-nosed Dublin Bay her-
rings, taken that morning under
the Hill of Howth ; beside the her-
rings ham and eggs appeared in
red, white, and gold ; a couple of
mutton-chops were "convaynient,"
and a pile of toast, built up in the
form of a battery, completed a very
delectable array of creature com-
forts.
Andy was engaged in perusing a
paragraph in the Freeman's Jour-
nal that seemed to afford him the
most exquisite delight, as he mut-
tered while he read:
"More power," "Whisht!"
" That's me darlin'," " I knew it
was in the boy," " An' forninst all
the Parliament," " Be the mortial,
it's Harry Grattan we've a hoult
of."
The paragraph appeared in the
Parliamentary intelligence, and had
been wired from the House of
Commons :
" A young Irish barrister, Mr. Walter
Nugent, has proved that the glories of
the bar of Ireland have in no wise de-
parted. At the hearing of Linadel and
Drumkeeran Drainage Bill before a select
committee of the House of Commons
to-day, this gentleman, in the absence of
Mr. Calvert Sommerset, Q.C., his leader,
took the whole weight of the case upon
his shoulders, and proved a veritable
Atlas. His arguments were brief, con-
cise, and cogent, his satire immensely
telling, and his eloquence of the very
highest order. No ddbut at the Parlia-
mentary bar has come off in a manner at
once so startlingly successful and so
thoroughly armor-riveted. Mr. Nugent
completely took the committee by storm,
and won what without his powerful aid
would have proved a very shaky case.
This young gentleman has a career be-
hind his wig and gown."
" See that now," exclaimed Andy
Gavin aloud as he plunged at the
herrings. " Masther Walther will
bate every man av thim yit, ay,
Gladstone an' Drizzlyeye an' all.
He'll sit in Parlimint for the
county like his grandfather afore
him, God bless him ! Musha, musha!
but this is a great day for the ould
family, that was almost bet up in-
tirely be the loose-heartedness av
the poor masther, the Lord be
marciful to him, amin !"
Andy, carefully folding the paper
and placing it in his breast-pock-
et, finished his breakfast, a joyous
chuckle coming to the surface al-
most after every mouthful, and,
clapping a soft felt, unmistakably
American hat upon one side of his
head, strutted into St. Andrew
Bore en."
637
Street, and paused opposite an
archway to read upon a large
brass plate the words :
D. & T. FITZGERALD,
Solicitors.
" Thim's my men," he muttered
as he entered an office wherein
half a dozen clerks were engaged
in writing upon very wide-margined
paper. " Is the boss in ?" demanded
Andy of a spruce-looking young
gentleman with closely- cropped
red hair.
" The what ?"
" The boss, the head man."
" Mr. Fitzgerald ?"
"Yis."
" I think so."
" Tell him, av ye plaze, that I want
for to see him most particular."
" Your card, please."
" Is it the likes o' me wid a card ?
Go on o' that ! Me name's Andy
Gavin ; that's hapes."
The young gentleman with the
gory locks skipped off a high stool,
skipped up stairs, skipped down
again, and, jerking his head in the
direction of the stairway, motioned
to Andy to ascend.
" You're Misther Fitzgerald ?"
said Andy as he entered a Turkey-
rugged private office.
" At your service, sir," was the
reply of the solicitor. " Take a
seat. What can I do Tor you ?"
** I want ye for to read that, sir,"
exclaimed Andy, flattening out the
Freeman's Journal and bringing his
hand down upon the Parliamen-
tary intelligence with an immense
whack.
Mr. Fitzgerald adjusted a pair of
gold-rimmed spectacles, and, cast-
ing a glance at the paragraph,
quietly observed :
" I have read it."
" Isn't that illigant ? Isn't that
shupayrior ? Isn't that the best
piece av work ye ever got done, as
ould as ye are?" cried Andy, gesti-
culating vigorously.
" It was very well done," said
the solicitor with a smile, " but "
" Hould on for wan minnit. I
know what yer goin' for to say :
' What's this man wastin' me time
for?' /'m not goin' to waste yer
time, or no gentleman's time,"
fumbling in his breast-pocket and
producing a plethoric-looking book.
" I heerd last night from the mis-
thriss of the boy that done that"
again whacking the paper, "that
you was his employer. Now, I'm
thinkin' that mebbe ye hadn't the
manes, or that ye'd be thratin' the
boy like a nagur because he is a
boy; an' here's what I want ye to
tell me: What's the highest fee
yez ever paid to a barrister in all
yer professional career ?"
" At this moment I could hardly
say."
" What wud ye pay Counsellor
Butt ?"
" To plead before a committee
of the House of Commons ?"
" Yis, sir, yis," exclaimed Andy
eagerly "just as Masther Walther
done, an' won in a canther, good
luck to him !"
" Well," said Mr. Fitzgerald, some-
what interested in Andy's earnest-
ness, " we would pay Mr. Butt
one hundred guineas on his brief as
a retaining fee, and fifty guineas a
day refresher."
" Is that all ?" cried Gavin in a
deeply-disappointed tone.
" That is what I have paid him."
u An' did ye give him nothin'
extra whin he won?"
Mr. Fitzgerald shook his head.
" Nor for boord and lodgin' ?"
"No."
" Well, but there's nothin' in the
law for to prevint yer givin' him as
much as ye'd like?"
" Nothing whatever."
638
" Boreenr
" Well, that's fair enough, any-
how," exclaimed Andy, as with a
sigh of relief he proceeded to ex-
tract a sheaf of Bank of Ireland
notes from his pocket-book.
" Misther Fitzgerald, I want ye
for to pay Masther Walther .five
hundhred pound. Here's the
money ; let it come from yerself
as a reward for winnin' that case."
And Andy banged the sheaf of
notes on the table.
The solicitor looked from the
notes to the man, and from the man
to the notes.
" I do not understand you," he
somewhat coldly observed.
" Musha ! but that's quare," re-
torted Andy. " Didn't Masther
Walther win yer case for ye ?"
" Mr. Nugent did his work en-
tirely to our satisfaction."
" Isn't he a counsellor ?"
*' I should say so, and likely to
prove an able one, with time."
" An' there's no law for to pre-
vint you're paying him as much as
the ouldest counsellor in the Four
Coorts ?"
" Nothing."
'' Then here's his fee an' re-
ward," taking up the sheaf of
notes and again banging it on
the table.
"This is strangely generous,
and"
" Arrah ! don't be talkin' that
way, sir. Generous! Shure wasn't
I born an' reared at Kilternan ?
Didn't I larn Masther Walther for
to take a double fence, an' got
him his first broken collar-bone ?
Wasn't I 'stopper,' and didn't I
hunt the hounds for the ould mas-
ther till he hadn't a horse nor a
dog left, nor an acre for to run
thim on if he had ? Wasn't I his
handy man, an' didn't he share his
last lavins wud me ? Generous !
Didn't I go away wud me heart
burstin' fur to seek me fortune, for
to thry an' help thim ? An' it was
a lucky day I wint acrass the say.
Didn't I go to New York, and didn't
I dhrive a Third Avenue car for
tin months, an' didn't I save eight
dollars a week an' sind.thim home
to Father Tom Breen for the mis-
thress, unbeknown to her ? she
thought it was from some wan that
owed the poor masther the money
till I met a man that was startin'
for the Black Hills, poor Tim Mur-
phy, the Lord be good to him !
Didn't I go along wud Tim, an'
didn't Tim, who was always as 'cute
as a pet fox, buy, out an' out, a
claim that belonged to a Pole no
less? a hard-dhrinkin' crayture,
that died in a gulch wud the
whiskey-bottle in the heel av his fist.
Didn't Tim an' me work the mine till
we got some goold, and thin more
goold, and thin sich a sight av
goold as niver was seen afore in
Deadwood ? Poor Tim cotch his
death be raison av workin' day an'
night, an' whin he seen he was
dyin' sez he, 'Andy,' sez he, 'I
haven't a sowl belongin' to me.
There's not wan,' sez he, ' av me
breed, seed, orgineration alive,' sez
he, 'so I make over this mine,' sez
he, ' to you,' sez he ; an' me poor
darlint had it wrote out, sir, on
paper, an' med over to me reglar;
an' it's meself that hated that same
goold whin I seen Tim Murphy
cold foreninst me. Didn't a com-
pany that was riz in San Francisco
sind a man out fur to buy the mine,
and didn't I sell it to him for
faix, it takes me own breath away
whin I think av it for a half a
million av dollars ? that's aiquil to
wan hundred thousand pounds.
Didn't I run home the minit I got
the money, and didn't I purtend
for to be jest as poor as whin I
wint away? for I don't want the
Bore en"
639
family for to think they're goin' for
to git back th' ould estates through
the likes o' me. I'm as alone in
the world as poor Tim Murphy
ever was, an' Father Tom Breen,
that knows it all, sez I'm right in
what I'm doin'; so now, Misther
Fitzgerald, wud ye plaze hand this
money to Masther Walther ?" once
more banging the sheaf of notes
upon the table with one hand, while
he removed the beads of perspira-
tion from his forehead with the
her.
" Shake hands, Mr. Gavin," said
the attorney, starting to his feet
and clasping Andy's bony palm ;
" one reads of these things in ro-
mances, but facts are stranger than
fiction."
" A more curiouser thing ye never
heerd tell of, sir, nor this," said
Andy humbly. " Only for to think,"
he added, while his fine blue eyes
lighted up with honest pride,
" that Masther Walther will be
huntin' over th' ould property, an'
every acre av it his own. Father
Tom is seein' about buyin* it in
promiscous, sir, an' it was he that
tould me ye was wan av the rale
ould respectable sort av attorneys,
that wasn't up to the dirty thricks
that tuk the sod from undher the
poor masther's feet, bad luck to
thim that done the like !"
Andy's bitter disappointment
when Mr. Fitzgerald informed him
it was utterly impossible to convey
the ^"500, or any part thereof, to
Walter Nugent is simply indescrib-
able. This was a pet, a cherished
scheme, it seemed so easy of exe-
cution.
"He wudn't touch a pinny av it
if it kem from me" moaned the
faithful retainer; "an' how am I
to git it to him at all, at all? Could
we do it this way, Misther Fitzger-
ald? Suppose I sint it be way av
restitution. That's it, sir," added
Andy, slapping his leg delightedly;
" it's many a pound I could have
saved the ould masther av I had
the same sinse that's in me now."
" Don't trouble your head about
that, Mr. Gavin, just now. Let us
see how we are to buy the estate
without having to pay for it through
the nose."
"That's the talk!" exclaimed
Andy. " Father Tom's at work,
and betune ye yez'll make a good
job av it, I'll go bail."
It was after two good hours"
tete-a-tete with the solicitor that
Andy Gavin emerged into St.
Andrew Street.
"That's the knowledgeablest
man in all Ireland," muttered the
ex-whipper-in, as he strolled in the
direction of the tram-car that was to
take him to Rathfarnham. "The
way he got at the map, an' put this
an' that together, was shupayrior.
Faix, he'll have th' ould property in-
Masther Waither's possession afore
we know where we are. Murdher I
murdher ! av th' ould masther was
alive to see this day."
CHAPTER VI.
I AM bound to say that Walter
Nugent made a careful, nay, a very
careful, toilet upon the June morn-
ing that was to take him to Tap-
low Bridge. The parting of his
hair gave him " no end " of trouble,
one curl absolutely refusing to be
discounted, while the choice be-
tween a blue and a rose-colored
sailor's knot led to what theatrical
people term "a stage wait." At
ten o'clock, however, he reached
640
Bore en."
the Paddington depot, blackthorn in
hand, the joyful Boreen at his heels,
and in a few subsequent minutes
was speeding away from the mist
of London. Glimpses of a keener,
fuller blue began to appear, the
gardens were green with the early
foliage of summer, the songs of
birds rose high above the rattle of
the train, and the barrister felt like
a very child in his enjoyment of
this glorious rush into fragrant
country. The rapid motion, the
silvery light, the sweet air, the
glimpses of mill-streams, and or-
chards, and farmsteads, and lordly
domains all were a delight to him,
while the anticipation of the hours
to be spent in the refined society
of the people he was about to meet
added additional zest to the charm
of that moment.
Arrived at Taplow Bridge, he
leaned over the parapets, gazing at
the silvery Thames, crowded with
skiffs radiant in many-colored
cushions, and its banks lined with
emerald velvet lawns striped with
ribbon borders like strips of Per-
sian carpets, at villas of every sort,
shape, size, and description, from
the prim, red-bricked mansion of
the days of good Queen Anne to
the imitation Swiss chalet erected
by some rich citizen after an au-
tumn rush through the valley of the
Engadine.
Nugent strolled round to the
Guards Club, and asked of a haugh-
ty and supercilious being attired in
a gorgeous livery if the Marchion-
ess of Pomfret's party had yet arriv-
ed. At this query the human fla-
mingo deigned to be respectful,
and was good enough to intimate
that he would make inquiries.
While this superior being absented
himself, and while Nugent was en-
gaged in gazing at a picture repre-
senting the Russian attack at In-
kermann repelled by the Guards, a
voice exclaiming " That's Boreen "
attracted his attention, and he
turned round to behold little Ethel
putting up her rosebud mouth to
be kissed. She was all white frills,
and ruches, and laces, and inser-
tions, and looked a very charming
little fairy, as, indeed, she was.
Hester Bransr.ombe, also attired in
diaphanous white, stepped forward,
saying as she shook hands with
him :
" How good of you to come !
Let me present you to Ethel's
mamma. Julia, Mr. Nugent."
The marchioness expressed her-
self very pleased to meet the bar-
rister.
"You have quite stolen the affec-
tions of the sole daughter of my
house and heart."
"A proud victory' for me," he
laughed, " and strangely achieved.
This is the first great cause, your
ladyship," touching Boreen lightly
with his boot as he spoke.
" He is beautiful in his ugliness,
Mr. Nugent."
" His heart is in the right place,
at all events," exclaimed Hester.
" His gaze of affection at his mas-
ter is as strong as anything Land-
seer ever painted-"
" Come, Walter," cried Ethel,
" I want to show you the launch ;
but you haven't spoken to Estelle
yet. Go away, Boreen. You sha'n't
touch darling Estelle. Please to
carry her, Walter. Oh ! my, how
awkward you are ; you shouldn't
crush her petticoats. See how she
opens her eyes at you, and the dar-
ling smile on her beautiful lips.
Don't put your thumb into her
back hair. That's better. Now
give me your other hand, and we'll
go on board the Ethel. I want to
introduce you to the engineer, and
the stoker, and the steward, and
" Boreen"
641
the boy. I won't introduce you to
Sam Dicker. I don't like him; he
made a face at me. He did, mam-
ma, and put out his nasty tongue,
and"
" Your little tongue will have to
be tied, Ethel, if you rattle on at
such a rate ; besides, when / was a
little girl I invariably carried my
own doll."
" But Walter is Estelle's papa,
mamma, and hasn't seen the dar-
ling for oh ! ever so long."
Down the velvet and sun-kissed
slope to the shimmering river Ethel
led the way, holding Nugent tight-
ly by the hand, and skipping as
though every pied daisy beneath
her dainty feet had been red hot.
Boreen, barking joyously, bounced
before her, and in very wantonness
indulged in playful and idiotic snap-
pings at her rustling laces, while
ever and anon he would spring high
in air in an abortive attempt to
become possessed of one of Estelle
Lafarge's blue satin, pink-rosetted
shoes, that dangled temptingly over
Walter Nugent's left arm.
The steam-launch lay moored to
the rustic jetty, her coroneted pen-
nant flying in the caressing sum-
mer breeze ; and as the party ap-
proached, the engineer, clad in
snowy white, blew a long and en-
ergetic blast upon the shrill steam-
whistle, to which Ethel responded
by waving her tiny parasol covered
with point lace, a birthday gift from
the Duchess of Leinster, her god-
mother. The joyous child dragged
the barrister on board, and com-
pelled him, bon gr mal gre\ to assist
at the demi-toilette of Estelle, whom
she put to bed in one of the luxurious
berths, with all possible state and for-
mality, holding her daintily up that
Walter should kiss her ere she clos-
ed her china blue eyes for the
siesta. Then Ethel pulled Nugent
VOL. XXIX. 41
from one end of the launch to the
other, presenting him to all hands,
and revealing the entire resources
of the boat, from the latest novel
of William Black to the ice-house,
wherein reposed a shape of ice re-
presenting the " Minuet de la Cour,"
after John Everett Millais. Pre-
sently she bounded to the deck
with a cry of " There's papa !" and
sped across the grass to meet a
spectacled gentleman clad in blue
flannel, a glazed, horn-pipish-look-
ing hat, and buff cricket shoes.
From the pockets of the rakish lit-
tle jacket bulged forth official pa-
pers bound with the stereotyped
red tape, and in his right hand the
most noble the Marquis of Pomfret,
K.G., bore a scarlet morocco de-
spatch-box bearing the all-potential
initials V. R., being those of his
sovereign lady the Queen.
Ambling beside Miss Branscombe
was a gentleman attired in white
flannel, very open at the neck, the
broad, rolling flannel collar being
confined by a sailor's knotof delicate
pink, while between the ends of the
"All in the Downs" trousers and the
varnished patent-leather shoes peep-
ed forth stockings of the same hue
as the tie this being the "cor-
rect form" on the .river Thames.
The man was handsome, languid,
and of the crutch-stick and tooth-
pick class. He was one of the
charmingly-dressed lay figures one
sees in the bay-windows of the pa-
latial clubs in St. James Street or
Pall Mall.
A sting of what ? Was it jea-
lousy ? Bah ! A throb of pain beat
in Walter Nugent's heart as he re-
cognized in Miss Branscombe's
companion Sir Jasper Jyvecote.
" This is Walter, papa," cried
Ethel, as she led her father on
board by the handle of the de-
spatch-box.
642
Boreen"
" Ah !" casting a Treasury-Bench
glance at the barrister. " How do,
Mr. Blantyre?" extending three
whole fingers.
" Nugent," exclaimed my hero,
flushing scarlet.
" Ah ! look like Blantyre. Have
a habit of calling a certain set of
young men Blantyre. Like a type.
Fine day." And the marquis,
who in his language combined the
Socratic method with the Jingle el-
lipsis, passed into the saloon, where
he soon became immersed in pa-
pers which he extracted from the
scailet despatch-box.
" Beauclerc," exclaimed his wife,
" can't you let those horrid things
go for one day ?"
" Cawnt, my dear. House sit-
ting. Fifty questions to awnser.
Secretary to meet me at Cookham
Lock, another at Marlow, a third
at Pulleyne."
" Who would be a cabinet minis-
ter, Mr. Nugent ?" laughed the mar-
chioness. u I have a nominal hus-
band, Ethel a nominal father. I
believe that he is alive, that he re-
sides beneath the same roof with
me. I know that he sleeps. I
cannot say that he eats or drinks.
As for reading, like the brook he
goes on for ever. How I wish that
Mr. Disraeli would throw over the
reins of government to Mr. Glad-
stone !"
"By Jove! if he did you'd have
your husband in Opposition," drawl-
ed Sir Jasper Jyvecote.
" Any change would be for the
better, Sir Jasper."
" Haw ! haw ! Really, that's aw-
fully good. I must tell that at the
club- By the way, you heard what
the Duchess of Sutherland said the
other night at Lady Dudley's
dawnce." And the baronet pro-
ceeded to relate, with many chuck-
les and any number of " aw you
knows," a very pointless, long-wind-
ed story, beginning with nothing
and ending in less.
" I am not the guest of these
people. I do not swim in their
sun-lighted waters," mused Nu-
gent bitterly. " I have been invit-
ed to amuse their child ; to put on
cap and bells, spread out my rag-
ged carpet, and tumble for her."
And making a sign to the watchful
Boreen, he hastily rose and strode'
forward, where he seated himself
upon a brass cannon that shone in
the June sunlight like burnished
gold.
It was a beauteous scene, the
silvery river smooth and full of se-
rene lustre as a mirror, the lilies
and reeds, and wild flowers and
trees, reflected " full fathom five "
the sky of a full keen blue painted
with tree-tops, the outer edges of
the leaves white in the glorious
dayshine. Trout and perch and
barbel leaped high in air, leaving
soft, billowy rings on the glassy
surface, through which the sharp
bows of the saucy launch cut mer-
cilessly. Now they passed a green
field, the grass languidly nodding
to the scythe-man, now by a deep,
shadowed wood emitting the odor
of pine and cedar, now in front of
a lawn of emerald velvet glowing
with blood-red geraniums and lo-
belias, and golden calceolarias and
scarlet snapdragons, backed by a
lordly villa, the children saluting
the steamer with hats and croquet-
mallets and joyous shouts. Now
they darted beneath a bridge of
antique shape, its gray stones ap-
parently held together by the cling-
ing clutches of lichens and mosses
and ferns, yokels in blouses and
straw hats gazing downwards on
them as they scooted in, and ready
with open eyes and open mouths
when they emerged at the other
Boreen"
643
side. Ever and anon they would
come upon white-flannel-clad youths
towing their skiffs, their compan-
ions lying at full length on gaily-
colored cushions in the boat, or
poling long, unwieldy punts after
the fashion of the Venetian gondo-
liers. They skimmed close to el-
derly gentlemen seated upon wood-
en chairs in flat-bottomed boats,
fishing for barbel, each man with a
red cotton handkerchief across the
back of his neck and an open um-
brella in the disengaged hand.
The laughter of picnic parties from
the woods rang upon the drowsy
hum of summer, mingled with the
lowing of cattle and the barking of
jealous dogs, who, espying Boreen,
gave him to understand that, were
he bold enough to set foot on shore,
he'd be driven to take the water
again and make that his natural
element. Oh ! it was a glorious
day in June, and what so fair in
the whole jewel-case of Dame Na-
ture ?
Walter Nugent, seated astride
the brass cannon, gave way to bit-
ter thoughts.
" I knew I would be in the way,
and yet I was weak enough to re-
main in London for the purpose of
what ? To spend a day on board
the steam-launch of a marquis. I
suppose if I was a friend of the
engineer, or the steward, or the
pantry boy I could have done "the
same. Ay, how they laugh ! The
idiotic jokes of this gilded baronet
go off like feu de joie. I do not
admire your taste, Miss Brans-
combe. I suppose it's all right ; eh,
Boreen, old man ?" To this Bo-
reen responded by a violent bark-
ing, directed at a sleepy-looking cow
that was standing knee-deep in the
cool water beneath the shade of
a horse-chestnut in full bloom.
" You have deserted us, Mr. Nu-
gent," said Hester's sweet, low
vofce.
" Please not to mind me" ex-
claimed Walter. " I .am enjoying
this thing immensely."
" ' Least lonely when most alone.'
Who is it that has said that ?"
u Miss Branscombe," he retorted,
" I am not alone. Am I, Boreen ?"
Whereat Boreen dashed madly from
side to side of the launch, challeng-
ing every living thing on either
bank of the river to mortal combat.
" Have you been up the river
before, Mr. Nugent?" seating her-
self on a camp-stool.
" Never. My Thames has been
done on the penny boats between
London Bridge and Westminster."
" It is charming along here, is it
not ?"
"Absolutely." And gazing out-
wards, he was silent.
" We are approaching Marlow.
You can see the church-spire above
the trees. That red brick house
with the wooden cross-beams is the
celebrated Angler's, an inn that old
Izaak Walton used to visit for pos-
sets. Sir Jasper Jyvecote propo-
ses that we shall land for a few mo-
ments to taste the Moselle cup for
which the hostelry is so famous."
" I'll see him hanged before I
taste his cup," resolved the bar-
rister.
Miss Branscombe, who knew
every reed on the river, chatted
gaily and charmingly, relating an-
ecdotes historical and gossipy ;
and, seeing with woman's instinct
that the barrister was "not i' the
vein," kept the shuttlecock to her
own battledore, never so much as
affording him the chance of exert-
ing himself by sending it back to
her.
" Here's Marlow lock, and now for
our cup," she cried, as the launch
glided into the fern-clad chamber.
644
Bore en."
"No cup for me, thanks," said
Nugent.
" But it will be lese-majeste to re-
fuse it."
" I owe no allegiance to Sir Jas-
per Jyvecote, Miss Branscombe/'
At this moment the baronet
sauntered forward.
"By Jove! I thought you had
gone overboard, Miss Branscombe,"
he observed, adding, " Whose is the
cur?" casting a disgusted glance at
Boreen, who was gazing sidewise at
the varnished shoes.
" That is my dog, sir," said Nu-
gent sternly.
"Aw! He's Irish."
" He is."
" I thought so."
" I should imagine you thought
very little about anything." And
Walter turned contemptuously upon
his heel.
I do not seek to excuse my hero.
I have already said that he was but
four-and-twenty and full of hot
Irish blood blood that leaped into
flame as the match struck, I am
telling a plain, unvarnished tale,
and my reader will take my hero
with his imperfections, such as they
are.
"I beg pardon, Miss Brans-
combe," he said, turning on his
heel and bowing ; then, calling Bo-
reen, he lightly sprang ashore.
" I'll stop that ninny-hammer's
sneering," he lightly laughed to
himself, as he wandered, his hands
deep in his coat pockets, into the
trim, glowing garden attached to
ye ancient hostlerie, nor did he
rejoin the party until the whistle
from the launch announced her
instant departure.
"Nearly left behind, Blantyre,"
chuckled the marquis as Walter
leaped on to the deck. " Take a
cigar? Irish Bar, eh? Rum lot;
wild ; clever. Young fellows Home-
Rulers, old fellows Whigs rascally
Whigs, by Jupiter ! Hate Whigs,
Blantyre. Lord O'Hagan orator
flowery. Dowse doosid funny
clown."
Ethel, who had spent her morn-
ing in the engine-room, now ap-
peared with Estelle, whom she had
attired in a suit of waterproof.
" We are going to have a white
squall, Walter, and see how splen-
didly Estelle is prepared for it."
" Take your friend astern, Baby.
Have to meet another secretary at
Pulleyne, Blantyre." And his lord-
ship returned to his all-absorbing
scarlet despatch-box.
Nugent mentally resolved to
avoid both Miss Branscombe and
her gilded admirer for the remain-
der of the day.
" I'll just see this thing out as I
would a comedy of high life ; and
so here goes for treating the mar-
chioness much as Dick Swiveller
treated his titled dame over a game
of cribbage." And the barrister
joined his hostess, with whom was
Ethel.
The Marchioness of Pomfret was
a superb horsewoman. She had
ridden with the Pytchley and Queen,
and contemplated in the near fu-
ture a run with the Galway Blazers.
Upon the subject of horses Nu-
gent, thanks to Andy Gavin, was
an expert, and the moment the
topic was started her ladyship and
her guest were completely cTatcordj
nor did they cease a very animated
and mutually interesting conversa-
tion till the launch glided into a
tiny harbor which bore all the ap-
pearance of a gigantic bath.
" You should see Miss Eileen
O'Meara ride with the Blazers,"
cried Nugent, his eyes on fire, his
cheeks all aglow. " I'll tell you
what happened last season but one.
We were a field of fifty, going at a
Boreen'
645
slapping pace till we came to Sir
Val Blake's demesne wall. The fox
took a break in the wall, and the
dogs followed him. Every man in
the hunt rode up to it and balked,
preferring to trust to the gate.
Miss O'Meara was coming along,
her white teeth set, her hands well
down. ' Give me room, gentle-
men, please? she cried, and she
cleared it like a bird. We saw no-
thing but the, bright steel shoes of
her plucky mare. When we re-
joined her she was standing by the
side of the mare, whose girths had
been loosed ; and no one but her-
self and the dogs had seen that fox
killed. Captain Candy, of the Ninth
Lancers they called him Sugar
Candy and I measured the height
of that jump, and it was five feet
eleven and a half. Miss O'Meara
is a brick."
"I don't admire masculine girls,"
observed Miss Branscombe coldly,
as, taking Sir Jasper Jyvecote's
arm, she went ashore.
" Mamma, you must go with pa-
pa. I want Walter. I have oh ! so
many things to show him," cried
Ethel. " Estelle is asleep, and
'Toinette will mind her. Come,
Boreen, Boreen ! Hi ! cats ! cats !"
Pulleyne, the princely seat of the
Marquis of Pomfret, is situated on
the right bank of the Thames as
you ascend from Taplow. The
house is Elizabethan, of red brick.
It encloses a square court with an
arched cloister, pale blue forget-
me-nots clinging tenderly to the
walls, and a fountain plashes into
a circular basin in the central grass-
plot. It stands on a sort of pla-
teau some ten feet above the level
of the surrounding park, the descent
from the higher to the lower level
being accomplished by flights of
broad stone steps. This plateau
is laid out in elaborate gardens,
the hues of the flowers being gra-
duated and patterned out accord-
ing to the latest refinements of
chromatic art. Along the front of
the house extends a broad, gravel-
led walk bordered by a regiment
of huge red earthenware jars such
as would se'rve admirably in the
Morgiana scene in " AH Baba,"
solely devoted to creeping plants
of a dead gray. Under the south-
ern wing of the house a smaller
walled-in garden is kept in the
Queen Anne style Nature in ruff
and farthingale and high-heeled
shoes. The great park outside,
with its five thousand rolling acres
of turf and brake, is studded with
clumps of burly oaks and ancient,
rugged thorns, and a stately ave-
nue of over two miles in length,
bordered with towering horse-
chestnuts and lime-trees three
deep on either hand, leads up to
the house.
Oh ! it was fair to behold stately
deer, with tender limbs and poised
antlers, passing along the golden
bars that glinted through the deep
boughs. Oh ! it was delightful to
walk beneath the shadowy haunts
on a carpet of moss softer than
Aubusson, or Tashmeghar, or Per-
sian.
Ethel, having selected a site for
the fete champttre, the grass was
soon in an azalean bloom of lob-
ster salad and pate" de foie gras,
while solemn servants silently bus-
ied themselves with elaborate and
seductive prandial preparations.
Boreen had to be tied to a tree,
but not until he had polished off a
chicken-pie and had become the
happy possessor of an entire lob-
ster, which he worried as he would
a combative and recalcitrant cat.
Sir Jasper did Ganymede to Miss
Branscombe ; the marquis, having
bundled off a third secretary with
646
" Boreen"
the despatch-box, applied his spec-
tacles to the contemplation of the
tempting viands; and Walter, whose
appetite always stood him in good
stead, laid on like Macduff. Eth-
el's health was drunk in cham-
pagne, and the party then proceed-
ed in a wagonette to the house ;
Ethel having carefully collected
sticks with the aid of Walter, where-
with to build a fire to make the
tea on the return to the launch.
In the cloister Nugent was
thrown beside Miss Branscombe,
Sir Jasper having entered the house
with the marchioness.
" I hope that stupid remark of
Sir Jasper Jyvecote has been erased
from your memory," she said.
He turned and met her eyes, and
then he felt how beautiful she was.
" I'm very sorry that is, for your
sake. I'm awfully sorry I let my-
self go that time, Miss Branscombe
and and, you will please let me
say good-by."
" Good-by !" And the girl looked
at him with wondering eyes as she
echoed the word.
"Yes."
"Now! Why?"
He grew very pale.
" I want to get back to Ireland.
I am not fit for this sort of thing.
I'm sorry I came. Don't be of-
fended with me !" And suddenly
taking her hand and lifting the tips
of her fingers to his lips, he flung
one long, hungering look .into her
eyes, and the next instant he was
gone.
CHAPTER VII.
IF the statue of Admiral Nelson
that adorns the pillar in Sackville
Street, Dublin, had descended,
walked out to Rathfarnham, and,
stepping into the modest little par-
lor in Mrs. Nugent's modest little
cottage, had invited Walter then
and there to go through the jubi-
lant evolutions of an Irish jig, the
young man's astonishment could
not have been exceeded when Mr.
Fitzgerald's letter arrived announc-
ing in cold, legal phraseology that
the town-park of Clonfinnan, to-
gether with the townlands of Bal-
lybottery and Turbury, was re-
stored to the possession of the Nu-
gents of Kilternan. At first he re-
garded the letter as a practical joke
played off upon him by some wit-
less scapegrace of the " Hall," and
was about to tear it into a thousand
pieces when the genuine appear-
ance of the document stopped him.
Could there be anv mistake ? There
in the corner stood his own name,
correct in every particular. There
in the body of the missive were the
townlands succinctly set forth.
Clonfinnan had gone first to pay
the losses upon Fly-by-Night's de-
feat at Punchestown ; then followed
Ballybottery, where the hounds
were once again entrusted to his
father's mastership; and lastly
Turbury, that filtered away in
the reckless extravagance conse-
quent upon entertaining the vice-
roy, the Earl of Carlisle, when half
the county was invited to meet
him.
Could it be possible that this let-
ter was intended for somebody
else, and that in the hurry of busi-
ness his, Walter Nugent's, name had
been erroneously inserted ? Yes, it
must be so; and as Mr. Fitzgerald
had been so attentive and courte-
ous, it behoved him to call upon
that gentleman without delay, and
" Bore en"
647
set to right this palpable and pain-
ful error.
" No mistake, my dear sir," was
the solicitor's remark as Walter
handed him the letter.
"No mis take!" he echoed in
a dry, choking way.
" None whatever. Do not be
excited, Nugent. There is such a
thing as good luck." And Fitzgerald
busied himself with papers, in order
to let the first high heart-beats
throb off.
" I I don't understand this.
Am I dreaming? Is this real ? What
does it mean ?" gasped Nugent,
grasping the table till his knuckles
shone up glassy and white, and
staring with dilated eyes and
mouth wide open at the solicitor,
who, cool as the parchment he was
engaged in handling, appeared not
to notice him.
" I congratulate you, and "
" But what does it mean ?" burst
in the young man, beads of perspi-
ration now trickling down a face
that flamed and paled alternately.
" It means that the estate former-
ly in the possession of your lament-
ed father has been purchased in
fee and restored to the family."
" Who purchased it?"
" A client of mine."
A flush of joy illumined the bar-
rister's heart, only to leave utter
darkness. " Your client's name,
please " this haughtily.
" Stet nominis umbra," laughed
the other. " Let me call him Ju-
nius."
" You shall call him by his pro-
per appellation, Mr. Fitzgerald.
Although a beggar, I wish to thank
this unknown Dives while I refuse
his alms."
" You'll do nothing of the kind,
Mr. Nugent. Sit down now sit
down, I say and listen to me for
just two minutes. I must be in
court at 11.20," glancing at a
Louis Quatorze clock that peeped
from behind a bundle of mouldy-
looking law papers. " The case
stands this wise : An old man enor-
mously rich, a bachelor without
kith or kin Father Breen knows
all about him, and this has been
done with the reverend gentleman's
entire concurrence has been un-
der mountain loads of obligations
to your family at the time when
the Nugents held their heads as
high as their own race-horses. He,
I might say, lived at Kilternan, and
his earliest associations have been
connected with the place and the
race. He loves Kilternan, he
loves the family, and a dream of
his life is to see the Nugents en-
joying their own again. Accident
has enabled him to gratify this all-
absorbing desire. The lands were
in the market ; he has purchased
them in fee. Here are the deeds,
my dear sir, and allow me to offer
you ten thousand congratulations
and three thousand a year. I shall
be late, and the Master of the Rolls
will strike me off the rolls." And
snatching up his hat and a bundle
of papers, Mr. Fitzgerald hastily
withdrew.
Walter gazed at the deeds that
lay within his reach, gazed out at
St. Andrew's Church, gazed at the
tin boxes, and maps, and acts of
Parliament, and the dread para-
phernalia of the law by which he
was surrounded; then he bent over
the table, lower still, until the backs
of his hands rested upon the parch-
ment that gave him rank, and
wealth, and station, till his fore-
head rested upon his hands. And
thus he remained until one of the
clerks came into the apartment to
ask him if he felt unwell.
" I cannot go home," he said to
himself. " I must try and pull my
648
" Boreenr
thoughts together." And hailing an
outside car, he drove to the Phoenix
Park, and there, under the fragrant
horse-chestnuts, meditated upon
this marvellous turn of the wheel
of his fortune, and upon the su-
perb generosity of his unknown
benefactor.
" I can meet Hester Branscombe
on equal terms now" was the
triumphant thought that fluttered
high in his jubilant heart.
CHAPTER VIII.
" KlLTERNAN, July 28.
" DEAR MR. NUGENT : As we have but
a few days ere we retreat from this
fortress with, let us hope, all the honors
of war, I would be very pleased if you
would favor us with a visit, in order
that I may render an account of my
stewardship. With best regards to your
mother and sister, I remain very truly
yours, JULIA HOPE HOWARD.
" P. S. I shall send to Clonfinnan to
meet you."
A burning desire to visit the old
home seized possession of Walter
Nugent as he perused this epistle,
and without a moment's hesitation
he telegraphed he had removed
with his mother and sister from
Rathfarnham to the Shelburne
Hotel, Stephen's Green his accep-
tance, adding that he would leave
for Kilternan upon the following
day at two o'clock.
The Howards had received a
polite notice to quit Kilternan in
other words, were informed that
at the expiration of the year ter-
minating the 3ist of July the pro-
prietor would take possession ;
hence this note.
It was a lovely summer evening
as Walter Nugent, with Boreen at
his heels, entered the old-fashioned
gateway leading to the home of his
race. In his telegram he request-
ed of Mrs. Howard not to send
any vehicle to the station, and he
now trudged, on a brave pair of
low-heeled shoes, up the elm-lined
avenue to the house. Mrs. Clancy,
the lodge-keeper, fairly wept for
joy as he stepped into the lodge
and took a cup of tea with her, and
Patsy Farrel, the gardener, with
trembling hands fastened a magni-
ficent Marechal Niel rosebud in
" the young masther's " button-
hole, who now, " glory be to God !
come back for to live amongst
his own agin."
As Walter neared the house
the tide of past recollection and
that of present happiness met in
one great wave that washed over
his heart, and a tear stood in his
eye as for a moment he ever and
anon paused to gaze at some well-
remembered spot, some landmark
recalling a past no longer soured
with a deadly bitterness. It was
during one of these pauses that he
heard the rustle of a woman's dress,
and, imagining it might be some of
the domestics or people employed
about the place, he stepped aside.
Boreen, who was considerably in
advance, having travelled miles
after impossible rabbits, suddenly
set up a joyous barking, followed
by whines indicative of pleasure
laid on at high pressure.
"Somebody that Boreen is ac-
quainted with," thought Nugent.
" I wonder who can it be ? He
never was here before. I'll an-
swer for the dog. How jolly he is,
to be sure !" And he stepped from
behind the trees into the avenue.
A young, girlish figure stooped
over the terrier, caressing Boreen
with dainty hand. The barrister's
Bore en."
649
heart leaped as in the figure he re-
cognized Hester Branscombe.
"Why did you leave Pulleyne
that day ?" she asked, without look-
ing up and still fondling Boreen.
Walter was silent.
"Why did you leave Pulleyne?"
she repeated, still stooping over
the dog. Her tones were low, and
her voice, despite an ill-concealed
effort at firmness, quivered from
agitation.
" May I, dare I tell you ?" he
blurted, and in surprising the se-
cret of his own heart he learned
that which lay enshrined with his
own image in hers.
Oh ! that stroll beneath the elms
at Kilternan, Boreen, the inimita-
ble Boreen, chasing rabbits with
hoarse and roystering bark, till the
dew descended like a tulle illusion
veil upon the grass, and the moon
hung like a gem on the brow of the
sky. Are there not moments in all
our lives when life seems not to
belong to earth, the very remem-
brance of which awakes echoes of
sweet melody in the heart ?
" I liked you from the very mo-
ment you stood opposite to me
with dear old Boreen, his pink
tongue covered with sawdust," she
murmured.
" And yet you treated me "
" Like a what a big goose you
were !"
Miss Branscombe had come over
to visit her friend, Miss Howard,
even before the sun of the London
season had set. She was anxious
to see Walter Nugent's birthplace
and his home.
" How strange it all seems!" he
said, as they emerged into the open
space before the house ; " you have
got my old room."
The Nugents live at Kilternan,
and by the Nugents I mean Mr.
Walter Nugent, his wife, his heir,
his mother, and his sister. By the
way, Mr. O'Meara, Q.C., intends re-
moving the latter young lady to Mer-
rion Square in the course of the com-
ing autumn. Andy Gavin, whose se-
cret is still faithfully preserved, occu-
pies his old quarters at the stables,
where he is as happy as his own
honest conscience can make him,
and that is completely happy. Lit-
tle Lady Ethel is on a visit with
her aunt just now, and takes the
heir she is out of dolls for an air-
ing in a very pretty little wicker
carriage. Is it drawn by a pony ?
No. A goat ? It is harnessed to
our exalting and jubilant
BOREEN.
650
Has History become a Novel?
HAS HISTORY BECOME A NOVEL ?*
EVER since Carlyle called histo-
rians Dryasdusts we have ceased
reading statistical reports, tabulat-
ed lists of manufactures, appendi-
ces to maps, and other dull matter
once deemed of necessity to com-
plete the annals of a nation. Poor
Dryasdust cannot write history,
even if he can give facts. Your
modern historiographer is noth-
ing if not romantic. Demos-
thenes read and reread Thucydides
in order to form his style and fa-
miliarize himself with Grecian his-
tory ; but has not Grote proved
that Thucydides did not know how
to write history at all ? It is true
that the Greek historian was a per-
sonal actor in the wars which he
describes, and a modern reader
might be excused for supposing
that he knew what he was writing
about; but the modern reader must
understand that the Athenian his-
torian had no philosophy of history,
and, in fact he was a Dryasdust.
He simply told what he knew. He
had no subtle insight into the mo-
tives of generals who were so ab-
surd as to fight without any motive
at all. Now, in the Zulu war Lord
Chelmsford always fights with a
motive ; whereas your ridiculous
old Plutarchian heroes warred
without any apparent reflection.
It is painfully evident that they
thought only of winning a battle,
instead of watching its sociologi-
cal effects upon an autocratic as
distinguished from an oligarchic
government.
The mention of Plutarch recalls
a whole world of pleasant historical
* A History of Our Own Times. By Justin
McCarthy. 1879.
reading, even if such reading failed
of the modern conditions of histo-
rical writing. How often we have
laughed at the superstitious solem-
nity of old Herodotus, who takes
us aside to tell us some " awful
whopper " about what he saw in
Egypt ; or at such a story as that
in Diogenes Laertes about a cro-
codile that completely floored the
philosopher Antisthenes upon a
question of metaphysics. One
might suspect that the crocodile
was a prototype of Mr. Barnum's
wild men from the impenetrable
forests of Tasmania, whose scaly
fins defy comparative anatomy to
explain, and whose knowledge of
the English language puzzles phi-
lology. The ancient historians
chronicled everything they saw,
heard, or read ; and the great value
of their writings is owing to the
circumstance that they never
dreamt of philosophizing upon
what they wrote. Perhaps the
greatest charm of Homer is that
he is profoundly convinced of the
truth of what he sings. Nor does
such a conviction altogether destroy
the historical value of the writings
of the ancient annalists. Criticism
can very readily sift the chaff from
the wheat. In even the unpoetic
and practical records of ancient
Rome it is questionable whether
trustworthy history antedates Sue-
tonius. Who shall decide whether
the Agricola or the Germania of
Tacitus is history or romance ?
We fear very much that modern
English historians have been given
to romancing. The necessity be-
gan with concealing the shameful
spoliation of the monasteries in
Has History become a Novel?
England, as also the hiding of the
real causes of the Protestant Re-
formation. We do not say with
De Maistre that for the last three
hundred years history has been a
grand conspiracy against the truth,
for we are profoundly convinced
that truth is stronger than any con-
spiracy ; but it is certainly true
that history, in the hands of Eng-
lishmen, has been little better than
a novel, and it is with regret we
note the deepening of this vicious-
ness in contemporary English his-
torical essays. What are we to
think of even the possibility of such
a book as J. A. Froude's Life of
Thomas a Becket, the very shame-
lessness of which nearly deterred Mr.
Freeman from exposing its count-
less misrepresentations, and even
documentary falsifications ? If,
as Mr. Froude says, since his with-
drawal from the ministry of the
Church of England he has no oth-
er resource for making a living than
that furnished by literature, can he
not turn his imaginative powers to
romance, and not outrage history ?
Half of the elaborate description
spent upon his theory of the crimi-
nality of the Queen of Scots, put
into a certain style of fashionable
novel, would have made him a
quicker, and atleast as adequate, pe-
cuniary return. If he had describ-
ed some imaginary proud, haughty,
impure, and vulgar prelate in a sort
of mediaeval romance, instead of
calling such an imaginary person
Thomas a Becket in a pretended
history, he would have made as
much money, besides saving any
historical reputation he may af-
fect. It is honorable in litera-
ture to call a novel a novel, as
Lockhart says, speaking of Sir
Walter Scott's romantic Life of
Napoleon, which might have been
made admirable as a story, but
which, as a biography, is of no
worth.
Swift said of Bishop Burnet's
History that it was a lame and
spavined old horse tottering under
the weight of all the ecclesiastical
filth that had accumulated in the
Church of England from the days
of Cranmer. The expression is vul-
gar, but the dean was not mealy-
mouthed. This same old steed
has been alternately coaxed and
driven to carry also a most weighty
pack of political lies ; and if the gall-
ed jade winces, that is no matter
for surprise. If we except the
simple and touching biography of
Cardinal Wolsey, written by his
man-servant, there are few trust-
worthy histories of England or of
Englishmen, from Henry VII I. 's
day, until we reach Lingard.
Hume began the graphic and ro-
mantic style of English historical
writing, of which we have the imita-
tion in Macaulay, Carlyle, Froude,
Green, and, in a quieter way, Justin
McCarthy. Hume did not care
whether he was right or wrong a
very proper mood indeed for writ-
ing history. It is not probable
that he believed in his own philoso-
phical theories, but the man who
wrote that right and wrong are only
conventional terms, invented by
a degraded priesthood to make
money, is hardly a sale guide.
His characters in his history are
well drawn, and his analysis of mo-
tive displays that critical faculty
which, his admirers boasted, was
triumphantly exercised in his refu-
tation of the possibility of miracles;
but after all one feels that they are
only the etchings of a skilful draw-
er who positively believed that all
his royal characters were a great
deal worse than he painted them.
It is curious to notice that whereas
Froude's pencil is dipped in celes-
6 5 2
Has History become a Novel?
tial hues, Hume works in dark pig-
ments. But neither of them is a
historian ; and as Henry VIII. on
the canvas of Froude appears rayed
with a halo a veritable if rather
burly saint and about as like him
in personal appearance as the Bluff
Hal on the English tavern, so
Hume's graceful and melancholy
picture of Charles I. resembles
him as much as the famous por-
trait by Vandyke.
The apotheosis of historical ro-
mance was reached in Thomas
Carlyle, who set to work to over-
turn every preconceived notion we
ever had on the subject of history.
He had one idea, which he has
hammered out into the thinnest
plates in all sorts of writing. That
idea is the supremacy of physical
force over all other kinds of power.
Endowed with a marvellous com-
mand of the epithets expressive of
force, he proceeded to hurl them
with what his devotees call Titanic
fury, but which others would desig-
nate by a far rougher term. Taking
as a text, " To be weak is to be
miserable," he began ringing the
changes. The world has grown
tired of his savage growl at its
weakness. It refuses to believe in
the omnipotence of muscle. No
doubt it is a very desirable thing to
be able to walk a thousand miles
in a thousand quarters of hours, or
to snap an iron bar like a pipe-
stem ; but how is it if we all cannot
be Milos ?
Carlyle calls the pope a " bundle
of old rags," and of the whole line
of Roman pontiffs admires only Ju-
lius II., who went to war with
Venice, bullied Michael Angelo,
renovated St. Peter's, and, we are
afraid, dealt rather summarily with
certain religious malcontents. Not
every pope can be a Julius, and the
church does not often choose a
pontiff who loves the sword of St.
Paul more than the keys of St.
Peter. Nor does society as a rule
prefer war to peace, brute force to
moral power, the hangman's rope to
the priest's exhortation, or, in civ-
il rule, Saul to Solomon. The
French Revolution was a misfor-
tune, Mirabeau a demagogue, and
Frederick the Great a despot. All
the dreadful energies of the Carly-
lean heroes did not effect a parti-
cle more than the quiet and potent
working of good ideas which, in-
stead of being " clad in hell-fire,"
might have been spoken in a whis-
per by the church, sung by the poet,
or penned by the scholar.
The brilliant historical roman-
ces of Lord Macaulay put the fin-
ishing touch upon the Dryasdusts.
Goldsmith's Natural History is not
so interesting as a Persian tale, but
Macaulay 's England is. The bal-
anced sentence, the deft touch of
character, the cunning close of
chapters, after which we expect to
read, " To be continued in our
next," the minute attention to sce-
nery, the mingling of grave and
gay, and the panoramic effects, all
mark the great romance of English
history. Gibbon is learned, dif-
fuse, and generally exact. Macau-
lay is sparkling, rapid, and ima-
ginative. Let us put away the lat-
est novel, and fancy we are im-
proving our mind by reading se-
rious history.
It is too much to expect that
Justin McCarthy should have es-
caped the influence of the roman-
tic school of English history. Where
more pretentious and ambitious,
though not always abler, men have
led the way, it was unavoidable
for him not to have followed. Be-
sides, he is a novelist, and a good
one. This History of Our Own
Has History become a Novel?
653
Times reads like so many episodes
out of the great romancers Field-
ing, Smollett, or Thackeray. The
judgments upon the men and the
women of the Victorian era are
simply admirable from a novelis-
tic stand-point but false historical-
ly, as time and the matured judg-
ments of posterity will indicate.
Mr. McCarthy cannot afford, po-
litically, to put down in full the
estimates of characters at which he
hints. It is quite easy for him to
weave out a series of motives for
his political characters which is
sufficient for the day. Beacons-
field is drawn as a successful ad-
venturer. He is this, but more.
O'Connell is described as a dema-
gogue, not scrupling to abuse cer-
tain feelings and tendencies of the
Irish people. But he was a great
orator, and deserved and wore
with honor the name of tribune
of his people. Cardinal Newman
had a mystic as well as a logical
mind, and this sufficed to make
him leave the Establishment. But
he also had the grace of God.
Prince Albert was a most affec-
tionate father, and therefore did
much to preserve the tranquillity
of the English court, etc.
Out of a few such actual or as-
sumed traits in his heroes Mr.
McCarthy evolves a very read-
able analysis of their characters.
His " villains," too, are melodra-
matically ruffianly, and his hero-
ines are all that can be desired.
His survey of literature suggests
a very narrow range of reading on
the writer's part.
The chief excellence which Mr.
McCarthy brought to the writing of
his history is the minuteness of de-
tail afforded him by his experience
as a journalist. The man who has
not only read telegraphic despatch-
es and newspaper correspondence
for years, but has also written upon
them, may err in judgment, but not
in intimate acquaintance with those
little facts, incidents, phrases, and
popular opinions which go far to
make up history. Macaulay's later
volumes of his History of Eng-
land are condensed newspaper;
and if Carlyle had not the Moniteur
at hand the most vivid chapters
of the French Revolution could not
have been written. McCarthy's
History impresses us much as a
scrap-book in which leading edi-
torial articles have been pasted,
among which at proper intervals is
sandwiched a " letter from our
own correspondent at the seat of
war." We have in the opening
chapter a very interesting account
of the death of William IV., with
the very latest intelligence from the
sick-room and touching incidents
of the trying scene. Next we have
political "leaders" on the Peel,
the Melbourne, and other ministries,
in the style of a confidential secre-
tary of the government, who is cau-
tious about letting the people into
important state secrets. As Sir
Patrick O'Plempo, in the Irish
Ambassador, would say, " Situated
as I am," Mr. McCarthy declines
telling us all he knows ; and we
are left in great uncertainty as to
the real designs of France in the
Crimean War.
The excellence of the portraits
of eminent Englishmen in this
History may be inferred from the
fact that years ago Mr. McCarthy
had the reputation of being the
best "interviewer" upon the Lon-
don press. The word has an un-
pleasant hint of vulgarity to Ameri-
can ears; but in England the in-
terviewer would not, and, in point
of fact, does not, set at defiance the
canons of etiquette and courtesy.
In most cases a public man gives
654
A Peep into Two Buried Cities.
his views at a large banquet; but
where such a medium of commu-
nication is absent he has no ob-
jfection to meeting an authorized
member of the press. The series
of articles on distinguished men
which Mr. McCarthy wrote some
years back for the Galaxy gave a
good idea of an English "inter-
view." There was a certain amount
of " puffery," but no violation of
domestic or of social privacy, and
a fair statement of the " views."
Our own idea of what history
should be is magnificently illus-
trated by Bossuet in his discourse
on universal history. Still, if any
one likes to read novels under the
disguise of history, he will find
such a book as Mr. McCarthy's
very agreeable. Most of us will
give such a reader the same credit
for his historical knowledge as we
should to the philosophical gentle-
man on whose chess-table we find
two huge tomes, bound in morocco,
and entitled The Works of Bishop
Berkeley on Idealism. The title
may be a little deceptive, but the
contents furnish much amusement.
A PEEP INTO TWO BURIED CITIES.
IN this month of August the
people of Naples are celebrating
the destruction of Pompeii and
Herculaneum by an eruption of
Mount Vesuvius which took place
in the year A.D. 79, eighteen hun-
dred years ago. It is a rather pe-
culiar in memoriam, but it has a
singular interest, and the Italians
enjoy the memory and benefits of
the old catastrophe. Indeed, they
are justified in this ; for it has done
more, in the way of preserving a
true knowledge of men and things
as they existed at the beginning of
our era, than all the classic writers.
Volcanoes certainly have their own
uses in the providential order of
human progress.
The first mention of Pompeii
occurs under date of B.C. 300, at
which time the Romans took the
coast country of Campania from the
Oscans, Samnites, and others who
had possessed it. The little city
occupied a small eminence at the
base of Vesuvius, about a mile
from the strand of the Bay of
Naples ; the site having been raised
by some former overflow of lava,
which had become covered with
soil in the course of ages. The
first settlers must have fancied that
the volcano had ceased to be dan-
gerous, and they covered the place
with vineyards and cornfields. The
soil was wonderfully fertile, and
the circle of Campania round the
bay was a circle of natural enchant-
ment, earth, sea, and a beautiful
climate combining to make it the
paradise of Italy. When Rome
had become mistress of all the
peninsula, her rich citizens recog-
nized the attractions of the locality
and built villas at Pompeii, Baiae,
Naples, Herculaneum, and other
places, all in sight of the volcano.
Cicero had a villa at Pompeii, as
he tells us in his Epistles, and he
must have often speculated on the
next eruption of the great hill,
which never allowed the inhabi-
tants to forget its character for any
length of time. Smoke was almost
always visible at its summit, owing
A Peep into Two Buried Cities.
655
to the interior lava-combustion,
which was always kept up by the
sea-percolations from the Adriatic.
It is now a recognized fact first
suggested by an Irish Protestant
bishop, Dr. George Berkeley, of
Cloyne that the great volcanoes of
the world are on the edges of the
ocean, or very near them, as the
reader may observe by looking on
the maps. The thousand volcanoes
of the globe are nearly all in sight
of salt water.
In the process of time the hydro-
gen of the Adriatic troubled the
lonely repose of Vesuvius ; and a
great earthquake, in A.D. 63, shook
Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other
towns, as we are told by Seneca.
The people of Campania propped
and repaired their walls and went
on gathering their harvests for six-
teen years longer, till the great ca-
tastrophe came in A.D. 79. Pliny
the Younger has left us (in his
letter to Tacitus, Epist. vi. 16) a
description of it, apropos of the
death of his uncle, the natural phi-
losopher. The eruption began with
showers of dust, pumice-stones, and
hot cinders, which were succeeded,
for a week, by torrents of liquid
matter and lava. At the end of
that time the beautiful country was
covered over by a gray coating of
ashes and scoria, and the inhabi-
tants had vanished, leaving silence
behind them. It was considered
that the residents of Pompeii had
amounted to twenty-five thousand
persons; and these had time to es-
cape for the most part. The skele-
tons subsequently found seemed
to indicate that much less than a
thousand lives were lost, and that
those who perished had calculated
on the quick subsidence of the
storm and remained in their houses.
The same catastrophe reached Her-
culaneum, about three miles off on
the coast ; but lava found its way
to the latter along with the hot
cinders, filling the houses and sub-
sequently rising to a height of
seventy and a hundred feet of hard-
ened lava above them.
No lava reached the high site of
Pompeii, and the preservation of
its ruins is owing to the lighter and
dryer covering of sand and cinders,,
which was only about twelve feet
deep on the average. Under this
covering it had a long sleep.
Scarcely any mention of it was
made by subsequent historians,
and in all probability it received
some further accumulations of dust
from a n,umber of later eruptions.
The Emperor Alexander Severus
made some excavations at the place,
and succeeded in obtaining a num-
ber of columns and other architec-
tural fragments for the adornment
of Rome ; but no one thought of
Pompeii any more, as a place of
residence, for nearly seventeen
hundred years.
The resurrection of Pompeii be-
gan in 1750 under the auspices of
the Bourbon kings of Naples, whose
curiosity had been excited by some
chance discoveries on the deserted
site. Malefactors, felons, and Turk-
ish captives were first employed in
the excavations, which soon began
to reward the explorers. The re-
lics were carried to Naples, and
there arranged in the Museo Bor-
bonico, which has become the great
"curiosity-shop," so to speak, of
the kingdom of Italy. It was found
that Pompeii was a very valuable
appendage of Naples ; and Bour-
bons, Bonapartes, Murats, Garibal-
dis, and Sardinians have in turn-
cherished it accordingly. It has
quite thrown into the shade its sis-
ter-sleeper of Herculaneum, which
received a number of lava-streams,
and was more deeply and durably
656
A Peep into Two Buried Cities.
buried by more than one overflow.
The digging of a well on the site
of the latter town in 1709 led to
the discovery of its exact position ;
and then a mining process began
different from the lighter work of
Pompeii. The hard lava-rock of-
fered great resistance, and only a
space of i, 800 feet by 1,000 has
thus far been explored by shafts
for nothing has as yet been opened
to the light of day. In this slow
way a large theatre has been dis-
covered capable of seating 8,000
spectators ; a basilica with curious
paintings, mosaics, and a number
of other things duly recorded in
the Antichita di Ercolano, published
at Naples in 1792. The houses,
built of brick, were of one story,
and the streets very narrow. Among
the discoveries were 2,000 rolls of
ancient MSS. ; but they were so
blackened and decayed by the ac-
tion of heat and damp that only
two or three of them could be de-
ciphered by the most careful mo-
dern experts. One of them, a trea-
tise on music by one Philodemus,
was published in Naples, but had
no merit. The " Herculaneum
Chamber" in the Museo Borbonico
has a great variety of old relics
and curiosities bronze statues,
fresco paintings, busts, candelabra,
lamps, vases, surgical instruments,
mirrors, cooking utensils, and loaves
of bread left too long in the oven.
Pompeii, on its lava-ridge, is about
three-quarters of a mile long and
about half a mile across, covering
nearly one hundred and sixty-one
acres of ground and surrounded
for the most part by walls with
parapets and towers of the Oscan
period. Only about one-third of
its area has been uncovered. It
has eight gates : one leading north-
ward to Rome, another to the
south; another is the gate of ]Her-
culaneum. Its streets are very
narrow, as they cross one another
at right angles and divide the city
into " islands " or blocks. They are
usually about twelve feet wide, in-
cluding the little sidewalks, and are
paved with large, rough blocks of
lava-stone, set in their places by the
paviors of nineteen] hundred years
ago. That narrowness of streets
in ancient cities was owing to a
love of shade rather than sunshine
in warm climates as in the East
at present. It was the Roman
fashion; and Tacitus complains
that Nero spoiled the city with his
wide streets after the great fire.
On the whole, those classic thor-
oughfares must have presented a
very poor and shabby appearance;
and in Pompeii they look worse
than ever. But the little city has
its compensations in some large
spaces and buildings, such as the
Forum, 300 feet long by 100 feet
broad ; an amphitheatre (430 by
330 feet) ; two theatres and half a
dozen temples, a court of justice,
granary and other structures, visi-
ble in their lower walls and pillars,
etc. From those temples have
been extracted hundreds of marble
statues, bronzes, paintings, and mo-
saics.
While the public buildings ex-
hibited the Greek and Roman
styles, the domestic architecture
was more after the manner of the
Oscans, Etruscans, and other Ital-
ian peoples. The outsides along
the narrow streets were blank, like
those of Asia Minor, and furnished
on the ground-floor with a succes-
sion of little shops or booths, in
which hucksters and artificers car-
ried on their business. The finest
houses had such appendages, and
Cicero in one of his letters speaks
of those clinging to his own villa,
and yielding him a handsome year-
A Peep into Two Buried Cities.
ly revenue. In an advertisement
discovered on one of the city walls
a lady named Julia Felix announces
that she has about ninety of such
little booths to rent on her property
for a term of five years. Pompeii
had within its walls a number of
very aristocratic houses, such as that
of Sallust, of Pansa, Meleager, the
Tragic Poet, the Faun, Castor and
Pollux, Lucretius, etc. designa-
tions adopted from some prominent
name or feature belonging to those
buildings. In them were found
beautiful mosaics, pictures, vases,
bronze figures, coins, and a great
variety of other brilliant relics.
Beyond the gate of Herculaneum
the visitor finds himself in a nar-
row way, with some villas on either
side notably those of Cicero and
Diomedes and especially lined by
a succession of tombs and monu-
ments of the dead, thus brought
very close to the daily footsteps
and memories of the living, ac-
cording to the rather sociable and
pathetic fashion of the old Greeks,
Italians, and other races. In this
place were the Mount Auburn and
Greenwood of Pompeii ; and those
mortuary records could preach a
short sermon to the most careless
of the passers-by.
In glancing at the remains of
Pompeii, or reading a description
of them, one is apt to think it could
not be a place of " population "
that is, of those poor and working
classes that belonged to Rome and
other large cities. We find noth-
ing but what has some connection
with artistic elegance and the
means and appliances of the
wealthy classes, and no traces of
the dens and hovels that shelter
the industrial workers of our own
times. But this may be partly ex-
plained. Pompeii was a colony of the
higher orders a sort of Brighton
VOL. xxix. 42
or Newport for those weary of the
Fumum et opes strepitumque Romae,
and longing for the sea-breezes of
the Adriatic. The mass of the
people in such places belonged to
them as slaves and servants people
never liable to suffer the physical
misery of workmen who were free.
The lower classes of Pompeii lived
chiefly with and on their masters
and were not paupers ; and one
reason why they have left so few
traces of their mode of life may
be that they had their lodging in
the top stories of the villas tim-
ber accommodations which would
quickly perish under the action of
hot cinders and the lapse of time.
And yet there may be found
among the relics of Pompeii many
things to show that the city had
its workers and busy people who
lived by their daily industry ; and
the habits, manners, and social
shifts and contrivances of such
folk discoverable in many words,
traces, and relics of that age are
better calculated to come home to
the feelings of people in general
than any of those artistic refine-
ments and decorations imitated from
the Greek and Roman fashions of
high life. A little room with its
cooking-stove, a pot and a kettle
with a sort of poker, and the skele-
ton of a cat would be more likely
to interest the reader at this dis-
tance than a temple of Neptune
with its bronzes, pillars, cornices,
mosaics, and painted stuccos. Some
of the inscriptions and graffiti found
on those exhumed walls give curi-
ous insights of the ways and
thoughts of those who composed
them. One of them refers to that
cherished passion of antiquity, the
love of sport and amusement. We
have the placard of one Sittius, a
comfortable maitre-cThotd and city
658
A Peep into Two Buried Cities.
showman who does business at the
sign of the " Elephant," and who
announces that he will have in his
place, on such a day, a good fight
of gladiators and an " awning."
This last intimation was an agree-
able piece of news for the pleasure-
seekers of Pompeii, who attended
such spectacles in open places, and
probably thought an awning the
best part of the entertainment.
Another "caterer " announces that
" the public baths will be dedicat-
ed on a certain day at the expense
of Cneus A. Nigidius Mains ; and
that on the occasion there will be
a grand baiting of wild beasts,
wrestling of athletes, a handsome
sprinkling of perfumed water, and
an awning." The notice ends
with " Success to Maius, chief of
our colony !" Maius certainly de-
served success ; for those elegantly-
arranged and commodious therma
must have been a blessing to the
little city, furnishing accommoda-
tions for men in one department,
for women in another, and for
slaves in a third, the admittance
being probably free, or fixed at a
very low figure, according to the
excellent fashion of the Greek and
Roman cities. Martial speaks of a
man who, when he has paid his
" farthing " and had his bath, will
walk off like a king rex ibit. In
this respect the ancients had much
happier notions and practices than
the people of our modern cities,
enjoying much larger water facili-
ties.
It has been observed a great
many little shops were found lining
the street-fronts of the dwelling-
houses. Among them was a res-
taurant or cook's booth with mar-
ble slabs, several kitchen utensils,
earthen pipkins, ladles, bronze
trays, an iron tripod, and a cooking-
stove. Little advertisements were
read on the walls, such as Cor. opt.
i.e., " Best Corcyra Wine "and
" Old Luna," reminding us of the
Londoners' " Old Tom " and the
" Old Rye " of places nearer home.
In one of the ovens was found a
batch of bread, forgot by the baker
when the shower began and greatly
over-baked, in 1843. Among the
graffiti, or scribblings, on the walls
or posts are many words showing
that a municipal election was to
take place about the end of that
month of August. One of them
says : " Vote for [such a one], for
he is the worthiest." There was
certainly some public spirit in the
city ; for it had its decuriones of the
senate, and its comitia, or " com-
mon council," its augustales, or
priests, its aediles, etc. These were,
no' doubt, the wealthier citizens,
distinguished from the artisans who
were their " clients " and the great
body of the workers living in the
condition of serfs. The latter had
little or no voice in public affairs,
except at the amphitheatre and the
theatres, in which they found their
chief enjoyment.
Though the great body of the
citizens escaped from Pompeii,
there are many evidences of loss of
life and suffering. In the House
of the Faun as it is called two
skeletons were found in an oven r
those of an old man and a little
girl, who had tried, no doubt, to es
cape from the hot air of the apart-
ments. In the house of Diomedes
were discovered the skeletons
twenty adults, with those of a bo)
and an infant, gathered together
the foot of a staircase. The ma
ter himself was found at the front-
door, accompanied by a slave wit!
a silver vase and about two hun-
dred gold and silver coins. Th<
entire family had remained in theii
beautiful villa after the flight
A Peep into Two Buried Cities.
659
their neighbors, hoping, no doubt,
that the storm would subside.
Diomedes tried to go out in search
of help, but the hot air suffocated
him and soon reached all the rest.
From the ruins were gathered,
along with the skeletons, a number
of ornaments, such as necklaces,
armlets, rings, and coins bearing
the effigies of Vespasian and Galba.
The family might have escaped if
they had fled on the first alarm,
without waiting to secure their
valuables. In other places several
skeletons of women were discover-
ed, indicating that they had clung
to their homes and the hope of
ultimate rescue or escape, and so
perished in the vaults and crypts
to which they had retired. In
some cases their actual forms as
they first lay dead on the ground
may be gazed upon. The streams
of heated mud that accompanied
the discharges of ashes flowed in
upon them, enveloped them, and
then hardened by degrees, at the
same time taking the shapes of their
bodies. When this tufa-casing was
broken by the excavators it was
found that the figures had shrunk
to a few bones within the mould ;
and under the care of the Cava-
liere Fiorelli (who became superin-
tendent in 1861) the relics were
cleared out and the hollows pre-
served or restored in such a way as
to retain their dimensions. Liquid
plaster was then poured into those
hollows and allowed to get hard ;
after which the rude moulds were
broken and the shapes of the dead,
first made in A.D. 79, presented to
the gazers of the nineteenth cen-
tury.
Among the thousand traces and
tokens of ancient life in Pompeii
there are others of a more cheerful
character, especially found in con-
nection with the little business
booths built in the fronts of houses.
Over a drinking-saloon two men
are shown running along, tandem,
with a liquor-cask slung on the pole
they carry on their shoulders. In
another place, over a small school-
house, may be seen the figure of
one boy horsed on the back of an-
other, while a third urchin is ad-
ministering an admonition. This,
no doubt, was the wicked work of
some outsider; for no schoolmas-
ter would put such a " sign " over
the door of his academy. Other
striking facts, as they may be term-
ed, are the bottles and drinking-
vessels found in wine-shops. They
are of glass, which some have re-
garded as among the modern in-
ventions. But the ancients cer-
tainly knew the uses of glass
and could manufacture it. Panes
of glass have been found in some
of the broken windows of Pompeii.
Readers may remember the old
story of Archimedes and the burn-
ing-glass with which he used to set
fire to the sails of the Roman ships
at the siege of Syracuse. Aristo-
phanes, in one of his farces, repre-
sents Strepsiades as boasting that
with his secret burning-glass he de-
stroyed the writ of a bailiff who
came to arrest him. No doubt the
moderns have been slowly re-dis-
covering a great many things fami-
liar to the old Phoenicians and
Pelasgians. But the most amusing
of all those Pompeian facts is a
pill-box. No traveller contem-
plates it with a grave countenance.
It was found with veritable pills in
it, and beside it was the little rope
of blackened matter from which
those pills were chopped off.
The excavations of Pompeii
and of Herculaneum as well have
been of late years carried on more
actively than heretofore, though
many are of opinion that the work
66o
A Peep into Two Buried Cities.
should be done more quickly es-
pecially the Americans. But the
Italians are more deliberate in their
ways. When an Englishman once
asked Cardinal Consalvi why the
Roman scavi were not carried on
more rapidly, his eminence laughed
and said they should leave some-
thing for the next generation to
dig up. At the present rate of
operation the excavations of Pom-
peii, which is about one-third ex-
tricated, will last for the next hun-
dred years, preserving to the city
of Naples one of its most curious
attractions. And yet in this case
it might be a perilous thing to pro-
phesy. The volcano may interfere
to put a stop to the work and fling
another pall of silence over the
corse of the old Campanian city.
Of late years Vesuvius has become
more violent than ever. From 1794
to the present time it has had more
" paroxysms " than it exhibited in
the preceding seventeen hundred
years. In the above year (1794)
a terrible flood of lava, contain-
ing, says Prof. Breislak, about
46,000,000 of cubic feet, destroy-
ed the town of Torre del Gre-
co, and entered the sea in a tor-
rent 1,200 feet wide and 15 feet
deep. In 1822 another eruption
broke the head of the cone into a
chasm three miles in circumference
and 2,000 feet deep. In 1866
about eleven smoking cones broke
out within a mile of Torre del
Greco, and an earthquake shook
the circuit of the bay. In 1867
and 1868 other formidable erup-
tions took place; and in 1872 a
flood of lava, running for months,
destroyed the villages of Sebas-
tiana and Massa, while the streets
of Naples were covered with hot
dust to the depth of three inches.
The causes which have made Ve-
suvius the chronic terror of Cam-
pania are still at work, deriving
force from the sea-water, accord-
ing to the philosophic idea of Bi-
shop Berkeley, and exhibiting them-
selves just now in the powerful
throes of Mount Etna. The latter
is far larger than Vesuvius and
twice as lofty ; and for that reason
Signor Spallanzani terms the latter
a " boudoir-volcano." But the ter-
rible record of the Italian moun-
tain tells another story; and that
story may have some chapters as
terrible to follow.
The Italians, as has been ob-
served, are rather proud of their
formidable, volcanoes, so grandly
spectacular in their nature and per-
formances, and so profitable to the
people among whom they stand.
Latterly the citizens of Naples have
made a railroad from the city to
the very edge of the crater of Ve-
suvius, and have added other con-
veniences of travel along its sides.
Among the attractions of the moun-
tain is a handsome observatory,
constructed about half way on the
road to the summit, and presided
over by Prof. Palmieri. None of
these improvements have as yet
reached Etna, which still retains
the formidable roughness of its Ti-
tanic days. But it will be softened
and civilized in time, though its
terrors may continue to be as live-
ly as ever. Those of Vesuvius are
very menacing; and another show-
er and torrent like those of 79
would soon obliterate the railway
and the observatory, and perhaps
put a stop to the interesting exca-
vations of the Cavaliere Fiorelli
among the rubbish of Pompeii.
Novel-Mongers.
66 1
NOVEL-MONGERS.
How do books get written ? How
do spiders weave their webs ?
Does the one imply more labor
than the other ? Every one knows
how birds put their nests together,
and some books are not unlike
nests. A mosaic of past experi-
ence, a piecing together of pleasant,
graphic remembrances, a shred of
romance, a tuft of some deeper
feeling lining the inner side, and
within all some favorite axiom or
personal hobby, and sometimes an
original theory, the reception and
due hatching of which form the
reason which caused the whole nest
to be. A book that is like a spi-
der's web is something different
from this. The whole thing is the
product of the writer's own individ-
uality; every separate circle and
every connecting hair tends to one
personal centre, his own busy brain ;
only the extremities touch any out-
side objects, even as the web hangs
from three or four ropes hooked to
a distant bough, or to the slender
stalks of tall grass, or again to the
beams of an old roof. But of these
books a man hardly ever writes
more than one in a lifetime, be-
cause his whole spirit is embodied
in it ; it becomes the essence of
himself, and if circumstances so
order it that writing is either a
profession or a necessity to him,
the rest of his productions will be
nothing more than " pot-boilers "
are to the artist who has poured out
his soul in portraying the despair
of Hero for Leander, or in lovingly
reproducing any heroic, spiritual
phase of man's nature. It is not
always the book which makes an
author's reputation which is really
his best, the essence of his higher
nature. The popular taste often
seizes on a book and gives it a lit-
erary apotheosis which makes the
writer's fortune, it is true, but can
never bestow the subtle stamp of
spiritual beauty and perfection on
his work. Some obscure sketch,
hidden away in an old number of
a magazine published long before
popularity had lifted the writer out
of poverty, may be richer in soul-
beauty and truth than anything he
has written since the tide turned in
his favor. A Spanish king once
said : " I can make a knight or a
count at any time, but only God
can make a gentleman." It is no
less true in the world of books ;
popularity confers a sort of rank as
easily as the Queen of England
turns a silk- weaver into a knight,
but the true distinction is not con-
ferable by any mortal tribunal.
We say mortal advisedly, and not
human, because the unseen tribu-
nal where real worth is recognized,
the shrine in which it is reverenc-
ed, is human, but formed by the
deathless part of humanity, by the
aggregate of spiritually cultivated
minds which pronounce a secret
verdict on the productions of a wri-
ter. For instance, the name of
Harriet Beecher Stowe is known
all over the reading world, but not
for the delicately-shaded Minister's
Wooing, a tender domestic picture
of a holy home, and a vehicle for
the writer's best and highest spirit-
ual aspirations. The sensational
and often untrue Uncle Tom's Cabin
is the pedestal on which she stands
in the world's eye. Lamartine's
Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses
662
Novel-Mongers.
is a far finer and more perfect work
than his Meditations, which became
"the rage" and made his reputa-
tion. It is more Christian, more
chastened, fuller of soul insight
because fuller of personal experi-
ence.
Works of pure imagination never
stir the heart in the manner of
those that reflect the writer's indi-
viduality. A certain egotism is the
secret of good book-making. It is
a mistake to suppose that the more
of yourself you put into your work
the less successful it will be. A
human being is the microcosm of
humanity, and there are thousands
to whom the written word will
bring home thoughts like unto
yours, yet to themselves original.
Books should be as spokesmen to
the multitude of dumb poets that
live in the world. It will be ob-
jected that many who have rare
faculties of expression have noth-
ing but diseased aspirations to ex-
press. True; but that only in-
creases the necessity of healthy
minds who have the same, or even
lesser, faculties pouring themselves
forth simply, naturally, spontane-
ously for the benefit of their neigh-
bors. Those whose minds and
works are morbid are not living
true lives ; they are unfaithful to
the nobler part of their nature, and
intent upon crushing the more
healthful promptings of their soul.
A good test of this is that ther.e
are very few perhaps none of
these who would willingly allow
young and innocent persons, their
own sisters and daughters, or even
young strangers, to read the out-
growth of their perverted genius.
Something undying rebels within
them, and they shelter themselves
behind specious excuses to the in-
tent that such things are written
only to suit certain people, to paint
certain stages of life, to relieve
certain impulses within themselves.
It is not only evil men and women
who lead untrue lives and write un-
true books. With some it is frivol-
ity, the force of circumstances and
the weakness of character, the loss
of time and waste of brain-power.
They go down with the current and
comfort themselves with the thought
that they do no great harm. It is
a question, however, whether that
kind of neutral morality is enough ;
was that the purpose for which free-
will was given to all and genius to
some ? But from no matter what
cause this unreality of life, and con-
sequently of writing, comes, one
thing is certain, and that is the
consciousness of the fact of artifi-
ciality on the part of the livers and
writers. Just as there is no abso-
lute atheist on earth, so there is no
man who has not the consciousness
of what is and what is not the true
life. We might repeat this in a
thousand forms or illustrate it by
a thousand examples ; it is enough
for our'purpose, however, to suggest
it to every one's mind, and let each
one say whether it squares with his
most intimate' experience. As far
as it bears on the subject of book-
making, we mean to make it an in-
troduction to a kind of dissection
of the books which the public buys
and reads. Any one who has read
many novels will follow us with an
amused reminiscence of pages and
pages skipped, and of the same
wearisome old mould repeated over
and over again. Of course we do
not ask for originality in the usual
run of works of fiction, but surely we
may ask for common sense. Now,
the flourishes and sentimental po-
sitions and stereotyped scenes of
most novels lack just this one ele-
ment, without which real life would
be a nuisance, and indeed in many
Novel- Mongers.
663
cases an impossibility. No doubt
we read novels with an exasperat-
ingly matter-of-fact mind, for we
so often come to scenes that have
overstepped the delicate boundary
between the sublime and the ridi-
culous. First of all the language
is perpetually on stilts ; every word
that recalls the common duties of
every-day life is carefully avoided,
and a set of phrases used for this
intellectual " feast of reason and
flow of soul " which bear to ordi-
nary speaking the same relation
that the "best china" for "com-
pany tea " bears to the common
ware of the family meals in house-
holds of the rural pattern. We do
not hear of houses, rooms, meals,
etc., but of residences, mansions,
chambers, apartments, banquets,
all the synonyms with long-drawn,
high-sounding syllables, words that
roll from the lips with a sugges-
tion of importance. In the same
way conversations go in masque-
rade and trip along with unac-
customed stiffness, laden with " I
presume" and "alas!" and such
like unnatural expressions. People
in novels generally talk as if they had
the public before their eyes, as some
bad actors do on the stage. Death-
bed scenes are often a stumbling-
block in book-making, and the real
sacredness is lost in the affectation
of suitable talk. Scenes of love-
making are wonderfully artificial ;
the lovers beat round the bush in
a sort of aimless, high-strung man-
ner, more like the speech of a man
just in the first stage of intoxica-
tion than like that of one who is
choosing a partner for life. Reli-
gion is mostly brought in as a sauce-
piquante, a topic on which some
harmless jokes may be legitimate-
ly spent, and are even expected.
Every subject is treated more or
less lightly, as if it was ill-bred to
be very much in earnest about any-
thing, and as if the writer were
ashamed to be betrayed into any
outburst of enthusiasm for fear of
being ostracized from the pale of
calm, correct " society."
One of the most fruitful sources
of nonsense is the conventional
use made of music. This has
struck us as conspicuous in almost
every novel, English and American.
The heroine sits down to the piano-
forte, and her " white fingers wan-
der over the keys " exactly as if
they were guided by mediums or
were themselves " materialized "
portions of spirits. Some marvel-
lous chords follow, and her soul
seems to pour itself out in strains
of the most touching melody ; in
fact, this is the perfection of im-
provisation. Probably the heroine
is a musical genius, a woman given
up to her art, or at least one who
practises five or six hours a day
and cares for little else. In that
case she might possibly achieve the
performance attributed to her. But
it is no such thing. She is merely
a sentimental girl, generally very
young, and, as you can find out by
the context, one whose life is spent
in social pleasures or perhaps do-
mestic duties, with neither time nor
inclination for hard practising, and
whose real knowledge of music is
derived from a year or two of
musical drudgery at a fashionable
school. Is it likely that she can
do what the writer makes her do
in order to put a touch of poetry
into his tale ? The touch is even
too stereotyped by this time to pro-
voke anything but a smile ; it is
a stage-trick which every average
reader knows by heart. Yet, like
many an acknowledged stage-trick,
it is retained by mutual consent,
and every successive author does
not scruple to make use of the
66 4
Novel-Mongers.
clumsy machinery. What an ac-
complished artist would find it
hard to do is unhesitatingly attri-
buted to an untaught girl ! Be-
sides, as a fact, do those who have
the power thus to translate their
thoughts ever do so under such
theatrical circumstances ? An artist
is far from being a sentimentalist ;
his strains are the outcome of
healthy life, a calm mind, and regu-
lar hours, not the wild, chance
ravings of a soul hurried out of its
normal state of peace by grief or
passion.
Another very common and heed-
less bit of stage-effect is produced
by making the hero wander into a
deserted church, and, finding his
way to the organ, sit there for
hours playing divine improvisa-
tions or the most elaborate works
of dead and gone musicians. Now,
a common-sense question will soon
bring down this poetical edifice
about the writer's ears viz., Where
was the blower? This trick we
have repeatedly seen used by nov-
elists.
Personal appearance is of course
a mighty engine in the hands of
the writer of fiction. If the sub-
ject had not already been han-
dled at length in a clever article
in an English magazine two or
three years ago, we might say a
good deal with reference to the
prominent part played by hair in
modern novels. Black hair, with
bluish shading, used to be the
correct thing for a heroine ; now,
upon the whole, auburn has taken
its place. Yellow hair and mous-
taches are rather in vogue for a
hero, and an abundance of fine
hair has come to be very nearly a
synonym for freedom of behavior,
not to say worse. Watch the nov-
els of the day, and you will find
virtue mostly coupled with scanty
hair of a dusty, lustreless kind,
and a figure to match. Fair-haired
personages used to be the lay-
figures of romance : the girl who
screamed at sight of a mouse, or
fainted on hearing a peal of thun-
der, invariably had light hair ; the
blondes were the clinging ivy, the
china-shepherdesses, the wax-dolls
of the novel, while black or brown
hair went with courage and resolu-
tion, and strength of character.
Now, on the contrary, we often
find flaxen-haired heroines " with
a wrist of steel " and a heart of
adamant ; witness Miss Braddon's
fascinating " Lady Audley," the
petite, lovely, infantine beauty who
has murdered her first husband,
and attempted to take the life of
the only person who has the secret
of her crime. Novelists never seem
to take into consideration that col-
oring and complexion are chiefly
physical results of known causes,
and are determined rather by race
than by temperament. Until quite
lately it was the fashion to play
Hamlet in a black wig, because his
character is melancholy and satur-
nine, the fact of his Scandina-
vian origin being wholly overlook-
ed. The dark beauty of a Syrian
and the yellow, floss-silk hair of a
Northern damsel may both conceal
a weak character or evince a hardy
one ; the outer covering will have
little to do with it. It is said, in-
deed, that the stronger the vitality
of the subject the more marked is
the coloring of the hair ; but we
believe this applies to the various
shades of each color rather than to
the relation of one color to an-
other.
The color and expression of the
eye is also a favorite " deus ex ma-
chind" How weary one gets of
" lustrous violet eyes," which the
writer describes as possessing as
Novel-Mongers.
665
many shades of color as the soul
does shades of feeling. It is quite
a relief to come across a book
whose personages are the plain
ware of every-day life, and not all
the choicest specimens of egg-shell,
china people whom there is no
need to describe beyond the de-
scription which their words and
proceedings give of themselves;
people whose temper gets ruffled,
and their clothes tumbled, and their
hair out of curl, and their gloves
shabby.
Real stories of home-life, such
as Mrs. Whitney's, Miss Muloch's,
George Eliot's, and, in German,
Wilhelmine vonHillern's, and many
more not unknown, either, but
widely read and appreciated such
are the models on which sensible
novels should be written. George
Macdonald and Oliver Wendell
Holmes among men are not bad
specimens of writers of home-sto-
ries stories that find an echo in
your own experience, that show
you people who are the very por-
traits of many whom you know,
and that deal with life in its sim-
plest forms, such as no human
heart can be ignorant of. Dickens,
of course, is pre-eminently a novel-
ist of real life, but his word-paint-
ing is often pre-Raphaelite, and its
minuteness is sometimes as painful
as the realism of Millais and Hoi-
man Hunt. But, popular as many
of these writers are, it is impossible
to say that home-stories and likely
stories are the best liked and the
most read. The thing that best
meets the public taste is a showy
unreality, the picture of the fever-
ish, exceptional phases of life, the
morbid and unhealthy frames of
mind. Books are written for the
majority, based on exaggerated in-
cidents of the life of the minority.
Life in all essential points is the
same in all'classes, but many wri-
ters make the mistake of dwelling
chiefly on the accidents that make
the difference between classes. It
is equally unhealthy reading for
rich and poor : for the former be-
cause it narrows their sympathies
and turns their thoughts selfishly
inwards; for the latter because it
creates envy and discontent, and,
moreover, gives a most mistaken
view of what is vulgarly called
" high life." Disraeli's novels deal
almost exclusively with the highest
circles of English society; each
individual character is truthfully
drawn, talks naturally, and acts
just as his bringing-up would lead
one to suppose ; but if you look
into it you will find in him a sim-
plicity which will astonish the pen-
ny-a-liner who laboriously draws
great people for the weekly papers.
Still, with all this truthfulness, which
is the exceptional luck of a writer
who is moreover a social and po-
litical magnate, Disraeli's novels
become tedious, being too plenti-
fully buttered with titles and high
mightinesses. If any one would
read a probable and natural de-
scription of some phases of Eng-
lish social life among cultivated
people, let him try Trollope's Bar-
chester Towers, and especially The
Last Chronicles of Barsetshire, and
Charles Lever's Lord Kilgobbin.
Reading these, he will be spared
the questionable glories of rooms
fitted up and lighted as the palaces
of the Arabian Nights, for many
novels are in that respect much
like advertisements of superfine
upholstery. We do not say that
there are not, here and there, a
few people who do indulge in such
enervating and on the whole de-
grading luxuries, but luckily they
are few and far between and no-
one scruples to laugh at them.
666
Novel-Mongers.
Their life is unreal, useless, and
barren ; they will leave no trace
when they die, and no one will be
sorry when they are gone. Rather
a high price to pay for a bad imi-
tation of " Aladdin and his Won-
derful Lamp."
No doubt it has struck the least
observant novel-reader that wo-
men are made to cry for hours and
yet look all the better for it ; indeed,
it enhances their beauty in the eyes
of their lovers. Any one who has
lived in a household of women
could disprove that touch of would-
be pathos. Perhaps an old bache-
lor would believe the pretty fib,
but his faith would not survive the
first experiment of its truth. Wo-
men know how unbecoming tears
are, and how the concession that
often follows this last resource is
rather the result of impatience than
of pity. Men. .hate an unpleasant
sight ; they resent being tacitly
shown up as tyrants, and above all
things they dislike " scenes " ; and
to all this women owe the forbear-
ance which is often nothing but an
error of judgment on the part of
the husband or lover. Even sham
tears, those that can be controlled
at will and made to serve a pur-
pose, scarcely add to the beauty
of the weeper, and they certainly
show an ugly spot in her moral na-
ture. No sensible man would long
consider them an improvement on
the charms of his lady-love. In one
respect novels are true to life, and
most unfortunately so i.e., in the
staginess of certain relations be-
tween men and women. The in-
cipient acquaintance and vaguely
defensive attitude which lead to
love-making generally make a
breach in the reality of people's
demeanor. Notice the people
about you, and you will find a cer-
tain flutter of manner and inane-
ness of speech, during the phase
of acquaintance which is tending
towards courtship, that is alto-
gether foreign to every-day life. In
this the novel is faithful enough to
real life. It is a sad literalness,
for it shows how conventionalism
has eaten into even the most sol-
emn things. There is more of
fashion than of sacredness in the
first stages of love-making, and
yet what can be more immortally
fresh, in theory, than the linking
together of two souls, to walk
through life, helping one another?
In some places and some lives
customs and education are so earn-
est, so natural, that this ever-new
poem is seldom vulgarized. We
remember to have read a scene
which to our mind was the perfect
type of what is called a proposal.
The lovers had been to church to-
gether, and the text of the sermon
had been, " This is my command-
ment, that you love one another."
On the way home the man said
to his companion, after a long si-
lence, " Sarah, will you help me
keep this commandment?" And
she silently put her hand into his.
Any true woman would prefer such
wooing as that to the gallantries of
a ball-room, and a proposal made
in full-dress in a conservatory arti-
ficially lighted. True, the simpli-
city of heart, " the spirit and the
truth," might be in the latter as
well as in the former; the lover
might turn out a tender, domestic
husband, and the girl a careful and
loving helpmate ; still, the first
bloom of the fruit would be missing,
and the hallowing remembrance of
the first asking would fade in the
glare of the uncongenial surround-
ings.
The novel is full of these got-up
scenes, interludes in the real busi-
ness of life, where the hero and
Novel- Mongers .
667
heroine meet in their best clothes,
with their " company manners "
on, and play at make-believe gen-
tility. Many a woman whose daily
life lies in hard work, and even
drudgery, indulges herself in this
dangerous game for the brief pe-
riod between girlhood and mar-
riage. The majority of mankind is
still under the curse pronounced
on Adam, and is forced to work in
the sweat of its brow. Recreation,
healthy and natural, ought to exist
for these workers by necessity, but
it should always be suited to their
condition and within their means.
Unfortunately that chosen by most
of our girls and young women is
not of this kind, and this danger-
ous tendency is fostered by the
novel, which, unreal in most other
respects, is but too faithful a copy
in this. Is there not a sense of
unfitness, of bad taste, in this
straining after effect, this assump-
tion of leisure, among people whose
real condition is that of toil, and
whose means are scarcely enough to
cover their real wants ? Whose mind
would not revolt from the over-
dressed figure of a young girl, sit-
ting among her admirers, dealing
out unmeaning giggles, and labored
phrases, and all the paraphernalia
of flirtation, when he knows that
her real life lies behind this un-
usual show, in homely details of do-
mestic toil, in the kitchen, the laun-
dry, the shop ? Is it dignified ?
Is it womanly ? And do the men,
whose addresses are often as un-
real as her encouragements, think
the better of her for it, even while
they laugh and joke with her ? If
women could know what men real-
ly think of them there would be
less untruth in their behavior in
their presence. When a man wants
a wife he seldom takes the showy
girl with whom he has flirted in
the parlor, but the girl whom he
has seen to be a careful, modest,
unassuming person, a good house-
keeper, a likely helpmate, a nurse
in sickness, a mental companion,
and a religious guide. If he has
seen her at work, so much the bet-
ter ; he will have more confidence
in her, though no girl of this sort
would ostentatiously lay herself
out for this kind of inspection. If
he has seen her during her short
hours of rest, she will have been
quietly and neatly dressed, not
decked out in cheap and showy
finery, aping a dress she could
not afford. Her " accomplish-
ments" will be of a solid, useful
character, and instead of chat-
tering unintelligible French or
moulding wax flowers, she will
know how to bake cakes and bis-
cuits and bread of exquisite light-
ness, and to make preserves, to
sew and cut out and fit, and above
all to see at a glance how things
may be saved and altered, so as
to make them do twice as much
as any other woman could. This
tact and deftness come of ex-
perience, and though much of it
is an innate gift in some, yet a good
deal of it can be acquired. Nor
need it be supposed that, because
these are our model girl's accom-
plishments, she is never to have
any leisure time, never to see her
friends and enjoy innocent amuse-
ments. But the manner in which
she does these things marks the
difference between her and the
showy, unreal woman of whom we
have been speaking. She will
never feel the worse for her
amusement the next day. It will
not make her languid, idle, or dis-
satisfied ; she will not hate her
work and pass her time in looking
forward to another such interrup-
tion of her ordinary duties. She
668
Novel- Mongers.
will not think of men as beings
made to flatter and admire her, to
bring her presents and pay for her
amusements, and then in the dim
future of one singled out from the
rest, who will doubtless revenge on
her the blandishments she unskil-
fully exercised on his sex in gene-
ral by making her, instead of a
helpmate, a drudge and a victim.
On the contrary, her thoughts on
men and marriage will be earnest
and full of dignity. Before mar-
riage they will be to her as persons
with whom to associate in sober
and useful intercourse, perhaps to
influence for good by her behavior
and even her words ; after marriage
the chosen one who will be her
own will be, in her eyes, a soul for
which she has pledged herself to
God, a man for whose every action
she will be responsible, a man to
influence, to cherish, to obey and
yet to guide. On every subject
her thoughts will be simple and
earnest ; life for her will be a holy
task, a noble burden, not " sicklied
o'er " by a false sense of romance
and an expectation of wonderful
advancement or change. Now,
very few novels help forward the
real, the soul-life ; it reproduces all
this restlessness, this feverishness
of untrue life, and glorifies it, while
sober reality is made to appear
dull, stupid, old-maidish.
Novel-mongers have stereotyp-
ed phrases as well as stereotyped
scenes. One move follows the other
as inevitably as in a game of chess,
and certain situations are pretty sure
to bring out a certain correspond-
ing form of language. Just as there
is newspaper clap-trap, so there
is novel clap-trap. There are the
hackneyed comparisons of a " rose-
bud of a girl " and " a complexion
blending the rose with the lily,"
and other such well-known expres-
sions, which save the writer the
trouble of giving a description of a
beautiful woman which shall sug-
gest to the mind of the reader
something more than the perfection
of a wax doll. How often do wri-
ters describe what they have seen ?
Every one has at some time of his
life known some woman whose very
imperfection of features was an
attraction, and whose behavior
was more winning than the man-
nerisms which pass current among
novelists for refinement and know-
ledge of the world. But a flesh-
and-blood heroine would never do.
We must have a succession of
handsome, gallant men and world-
ly, fascinating, improbably lovely
women, such as no one ever meets
in real life. Then the writer la-
boriously hunts up as many witti-
cisms as his memory or reference
to a good collection of bons-mots
will supply, and manufactures an
improbably brilliant " assault at
arms " such as, at least in Anglo-
Saxon society, would be as ridicu-
lous as it is practically unlikely.
The subject of marriage generally
provokes a lot of commonplace
reflections and jokes which mark
the ordinary novelist as more used
to the secondary than the best
circles of social life. There is so
much " padding " that you wonder
how the author had the patience to
build it up. We have somewhere
seen a sketch called " Skeleton
Novels." It contained the full
substance of an English three-vol-
ume story in a dozen chapters
consisting of short headings. And
the events were rather crowded,
too, somewhat more so than in
many a long-drawn novel, with
descriptions and moral reflections
which use up a good third of the
paper and type.
One great fault of novels in
Novel-Mongers.
669
general is that no person of ordi-
nary faculties can help foreseeing
the end and guessing at many of the
intermediate details. A foreign tour
and a brain-fever are common inci-
dents; few books end without one
or the other. If towards the middle
of the story the love-making takes
a particularly favorable turn, you
know that of course some trifling
accident will interfere and part the
lovers till the orthodox time ap-
pointed for the end of the novel
and the consequent marriage cere-
mony. In fact, there are no sur-
prises now, just as there are no
more undiscovered continents to
tempt a new Columbus. By the
bye, that is rather a commonplace
phrase, but it just expresses the
weariness of novel-reading nowa-
days. Even the sensational has
ceased to be startling, and we
read placidly of ghosts, murders,
Bluebeard closets, fires and
wrecks, and even of hospital and
morgue scenes, because they
have become as common a season-
ing to our literary breakfast as
Chili and Cayenne are to that of
the bon-vivant. The newspaper has
accustomed us to "sup on horrors,"
and the newspaper has become the
groundwork of the novel. Our au-
thors divide their forces between
the prison calendar and the fash-
ionable vapidness of the drawing-
room. In both extremes there is
a morbid, exceptional element ; if
there is reality there is no normal-
ness. Both are phases of life, but
only passing ones, occupying a
shorter portion, for the most part,
even of the time of bad or frivolous
people, and certainly belonging
only to the life of a minority of
human beings. True, these un-
pleasant phases are the most pro-
minent, but we have been so sur-
feited lately with minute exposi-
tions of them that it is no wonder
if they no longer contain even the
element of novelty and excitement.
We may expect a reaction soon.
But it must be confessed that if
this reaction sets in it will be a
strain on the powers of our wri-
ters. It is far easier to concoct a
story of crime and deviltry than one
of domestic life. We shall need
more skill, more delicacy, more
tact in our novelists. Few writers
ever attempt a story of quiet house-
hold .life without falling into the
"milk and water" style. Even
Miss Muloch, after giving us John
Halifax, has also given us trash.
Perhaps Mrs. Oliphant is the most
even and pleasant writer of house-
hold stories ; her Scotch ones are
certainly unrivalled, and her Chro-
nicles of Car ling ford are as life-like
as George Eliot's Middle march. Of
the latter book we have heard some
of the uninitiated say that it is dull.
Then, again, we have read tales of
domestic life which are acknow-
ledged to be delightful, and which
we found simply silly ; whose they
are we will not say, for fear of be-
ing taxed with bad taste. We
came across a book quite lately,
entitled True to Life, which is a
most pleasant example of a story
of home-life in England, with not
one extravagant or out-of-the-way
occurrence, and the only novel-
like device being the loss and sub-
sequent finding of a will. But even
this reads as if it were copied from
some personal reminiscence, for the
treatment is very unlike that of
the common run of such subjects.
The writer (anonymous) has lived
among the best people in England,
and describes their life simply and
unaffectedly. True, she has put
only the best specimens into her
book, and, though saying that she
doubts if she can write what will
Novel-Mongers.
suit the popular taste, she ends the
preface with these words : " There
are so many unpleasant pictures of
home-life published in these days
too true, I fear that I am not sor-
ry to add to the minority of stories
which try to bring out the better
side of every-day life."
Perhaps in embodying the views
of the thinking and reading public
on some of the books presented to
them under the auspices of popu-
lar booksellers, and with the help
of " puffs " from the newspapers
and magazines, we have overlook-
ed one important item. The life
hidden behind the work that comes
to us in the shape of a dull book
or a sensational drama may some-
times be a very sad one. Some
writers write what they know to be
below them because it will sell and
they have their bread to earn ; ma-
ny write for the same reason that
orphan girls of good family but no
means become teachers and gov-
ernesses. Necessity drives many a
respectable man or woman to con-
trivances which they shrink from
with disgust. In this case the wri-
ters are more to be pitied than the
readers and buyers of their trashy
books. This is not the lowest
depth, this is not a wilful degrad-
ing of the mind; but what can be
more deplorable than the sight of
an author who is in love with his
bad material, and thinks his sham
pictures of " life " the acme of lite-
rary ability ? When the sense of
doing something derogatory is gone,
when self-respect has sunk before
self-interest, then has a writer of
fiction reached the lowest point of
intellectual degradation. His posi-
tion then is no better than that of a
ballet-dancer or tight-rope perform-
er, or any of those given to make
the lowest and most contemptible
tricks and forms of what people
still complacently call " art," at-
tractive to the multitude who know
no better. Such work is lowering
and perverting, and for such will
the writer be held accountable. If
the novel with us has not yet reach-
ed the pitch of moral perversity
which it has in France, it is fast
tending that way, and we want an
army of better writers to stand in
the breach. Where shall we find
them?
A New Glance at an Old Acquaintance.
671
A NEW GLANCE AT AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.
OF all poets, except Homer,
Shakspere was the least of an ego-
tist. He nowhere appears to paint
his own character or to apologize
for his own defects. Even his son-
nets afford no clue to his personal
history. Of Shakspere only that
abides which was essentially im-
mortal, that which time cannot
change or fashion cast into the
shade.
As long as there are human
hearts and human understandings
Shakspere must remain the one
transcendent seer and interpreter
of human nature in all its phases.
Homer was the Shakspere of his
age, the poet of action, of passion
as it is the proximate cause of
action, of human nature as it is
i embodied in sensible effects ; but
i the world of thought, the mysteri-
| ous springs of our affections, sym-
pathies, and presentiments, were
' to him a world unknown. But
Shakspere's intellect was more pro-
found. It was not only that of the
deep-thinking philosopher versed
in the logical demonstrations of
reason ; of the poet passionately
loving the grand, the beautiful, and
the good ; of the dramatist mi-
nutely observant of the differences
of character, of the partial eclipses
which are produced on the under-
standing by passion, folly, or igno-
rance, and able to set forth in
glorious words and vivid imperso-
nations all its conceptions, whether
philosophic, poetic, or dramatic ;
but it was also metaphysical, and
in some sort theological. He did
not, indeed, turn the theatre into a
conventicle; he wrote neither ser-
mons nor sacred dramas ; nor did
he abound in allusions to the reli-
gious disputes of the time.
Shakspere, as a lay poet, wisely
and reverently abstained from fre-
quent allusions to religion either in
comic or serious vein. How, then,
was his genius theological ? Be-
cause in fathoming the abysses of
human nature he transcended
nature and explored the hidden
regions of the soul, discovered in-
stincts, prophetic yearnings, and
unutterable depths of thought
which nothing in the world of
sense or intellect can satisfy or ful-
fil.
" Those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings ;
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal nature
Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised."
Because Shakspere penetrated the
sanctuary of belief, the holy place
where faith alone should dwell,
but which, alas ! too often since
the first temptation has been in-
vaded by vain, mistrusting curio-
sity, the tool of sensual selfishness,
striving to make the things above
sense subject to sense, and enslave
spiritual powers to earthly purpo-
ses.
In reproof of this desecration of
man's possible sanctity the genius
of Shakspere created the tragedies
of Macbeth and Hamlet. Whether
foreseen and designed or not, these
dramas show the evil and confu-
sion which would result in the
moral world from sensible com-
munication between natural and
supernatural agents.
Shakspere wrote in an age when
men deemed that no impassable
672
A New Glance at an Old Acquaintance.
gulf divided the things seen from
the unseen powers ; they had no
molecular theories to guard them
against the shapings of a passion-
ate imagination, from forbidden
hopes, blind fears, and thoughts
that go astray in the wilderness of
possibility. That in his youth he
listened, with a faith sincere, to all
fireside traditions may be regard-
ed as certain. That he ever total-
ly and confidently disbelieved them
is doubtful. But his fine sense
and knowledge of the soul, which
his imagination extended to all con-
ceivable cases, informed him of the
moral unfitness of such intercom-
munion, and, if it did not prove what
has never yet been demonstrated,
the physical impossibility or logi-
cal absurdity of the popular belief
in spirits, intimated its inconsisten-
cy with the moral welfare of man,
and consequently with the revealed
will of Heaven. The proper state
of man can be maintained only in
sympathy and communion with his
fellow-men. All motives, rules, and
purposes of action must be uni-
versally intelligible. All salutary
knowledge must be communicable
to every understanding. But it is
manifest that one who acted on in-
formation derived through, or re-
ceived orders from, a disembodied
spirit would be separated from hu-
man sympathy and communion.
His knowledge would no longer be
" discourse of reason," and out of
that knowledge duties, or apparent
duties, would arise, widely diverg-
ing from, and frequently crossing,
the prescribed track of human con-
duct, abrogating the common law
of conscience. Hence an inward
contradiction, a schism in the
soul; jarring impulses, and the har-
mony of thoughts and feelings,
11 Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh."
Hence in impetuous natures crime
impelling crime, and in meditative
spirits a paralyzed will, a helpless,
melancholy madness rendered the
more insupportable by an unim-
paired understanding.
May not the character of Ham-
let be partly elucidated upon this
principle ? Few historical and no
fictitious characters have given
rise to more controversy. Some
commentators hold him up as the
pattern of all that is noble and
wise; others condemn him as a
mass of inconsistency. Goethe, in
his Wilhelm Meister, says that
Shakspere's intention was to ex-
hibit the effects of a great action
imposed as a duty upon a mind
too feeble for its accomplishment.
Here is an oak-tree planted in a
china vase, proper only to receive
the most delicate flowers. The
roots strike out, and the vessel
flies to pieces. A pure, noble,
highly moral disposition, but with-
out that energy of soul which con-
stitutes the hero, sinks under the
load which it can neither support
nor resolve to abandon. Observe
how he turns, shifts, advances, and
recedes ; how he is perpetually re-
minding himself of his great com-
mission, which he nevertheless, in
the end, seems almost entirely to
lose sight of, and that without re-
covering his former tranquillity.
Now, surely, feebleness of mind,
the fragility of a china vase, lack
of power and energy, are not the
characteristics of Hamlet. On the
contrary, he is represented as fear-
less almost beyond the strength of
humanity; he does not "set his life
at a pin's fee." He converses un-
shaken with what the stoutest war-
riors have trembled to think upon,
jests with a visitant from darkness,
and gathers unwonted vigor from
the pangs of death. Nor in all
A New Glance at an Old Acquaintance.
673
his musings, all the many colored
mazes of his thoughts, is there any-
thing of feminine softness. His
anguish is stern and masculine,
stubbornly self-possessed, above
the kind relief of sighs and tears
and soothing pity. The very style
of his serious discourse is more
austere and philosophic than that
of any other character in Shak-
spere. It is not the weight and
magnitude, the danger and difficulty,
of the deed imposed as a duty, that
weighs upon his soul and enervates
the sinews of his moral being, but
the preternatural contradiction in-
volved in the duty itself, the irreg-
ular means through which that
duty is promulgated and known.
Presumptuous as it may appear
to offer a new theory on a subject
which has exercised so many minds
before, or to pretend to know what
Shakspere intended where his inten-
tions have been so variously con-
jectured, we will yet venture to take
a cursory view of this most Shak-
sperean of all Shakspere's dramas,
and attempt to explain not justify
the most questionable points in
the character of the hero.
Let us for a moment put Shak-
spere out of the question, and con-
sider Hamlet as a real person, a re-
cently-deceased acquaintance. In
real life it is no unusual thing
to meet with characters every whit
as obscure as that of the Prince of
Denmark men seemingly fitted
for the greatest actions, clear in
thought, still meditating mighty
works, and urged by all motives
and occasions to the performance,
whose existence is, nevertheless,
an unperforming dream ; men of
noblest, warmest affections, who
are perpetually wringing the hearts
of those whom they love best ;
whose sense of rectitude is strong
and wise enough to inform and
VOL. xxix. 43
govern a world, while their acts
are the hapless results of chance or
passion, and to themselves hard-
ly appear their own. We cannot
conclude that all such men have
seen ghosts (though the existence
of professed spirit-seers is certain) ;
but they have generally, either by a
course of study too remote from
the practice of life, or by designs
too pure and perfect to be execut-
ed in earthly materials, or from
imperfect glimpses of an intuition
beyond the limits of common know-
ledge, severed themselves from the
common society of human feelings
and opinions.
Such a man is Hamlet an habi-
tual dweller with his own thoughts,
preferring the possible to the real ;
refining on the ideal forms of
things till the things themselves
become dim in his sight, and all
the common doings, duties, and
engagements of the world a weary
task, stale and unprofitable. His
father's death, his mother's mar-
riage, and his own exclusion from
the succession ; grief for one pa-
rent, shame for another, and resent-
ment for himself, tend still further
to confirm and darken a disposi-
tion which the buoyancy of happy
youth had hitherto counteracted.
Sorrow contracts around his soul
and shuts it out from cheerful light
and wholesome air. It may be ob-
served in general that the men of
thought succumb more helplessly
beneath affliction than the men of
action. How many of his dearest
friends may a soldier lose in the
course of a single campaign, and
yet find his heart whole in his win-
ter-quarters, the natural decease of
one of whom in peace and sereni-
ty would have robbed his days to
come of half their, joy!
In this state, then, is Hamlet
first introduced to us, not distinct-
6/4
A New Glance at an Old Acquaintance.
ly conscious of more than his fa-
ther's death and mother's dishonor,
yet haunted with gloomy suspi-
cions and undefined presentiments,
weary of all things, most weary of
himself. His best affections borne
away upon the ebbing tide of me-
mory into the glimmering past,
he longs to be dissolved, to pass
away like the dew of morning.
This longing after dissolution, this
fond familiarity with worms and
graves and epitaphs, is, as it were,
the background, the bass accom-
paniment, of Hamlet's character.
It sounds at recurring intervals like
the slow knell of some pompous
funeral. No sooner is he left
alone, in the first scene after his
entrance, than he wishes that the
1 ' Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter."
In the last in articulo mortis he
requests of his only friend
u If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile.
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story."
So little does the dying man love
life that he holds it the utmost sa-
crifice of friendship to endure it.
Yet this desire is prompted not by
any anticipation of future bliss.
He dreams neither of a Mohamme-
dan Paradise nor of a Christian
Heaven. His yearning is to die,
to sleep, not to be. He delights in
contemplating human nature in
the dust, and seems to identify
man with his decaying relics. Not
that he does not believe in a no-
bler, a surviving human being ; but
the spring of hope is so utterly
dried up within him that it flows
not at the prospect of immortality.
It might be imagined that the
appearance of a. departed spirit
admitting it to be authenticated
would, so far from a curse, ^be a
most invaluable blessing to man-
kind, inasmuch as it would remove
every doubt of a hereafter, and de-
monstrate the existence of a spiri-
tual principle. He who knew what
was in the heart of man, and all its
possible issues, has declared other-
wise : " If they hear not Moses
and the prophets, neither will they
be persuaded though one rose from
the dead."
In fact, the knowledge which
finds no companion in the mind,
which remains an isolated wonder,
may cast a doubt on all that was be-
lieved before, but can never of it-
self produce a fruitful or a living
faith. Seeing is not necessarily
believing; at least, it is not rational
conviction, which can only take
place on one of two conditions :
first, if the new truth be itself
conformable with former convic-
tions; or, secondly, if it be able
to conform and reconcile all other
truths to itself and become the law
and centre of the total being. The
latter is the blessed power of Chris-
tian truth when, being received by
faith to faith, it renews and quick-
ens the regenerate soul. The for-
mer is the condition of all growth in
mere human knowledge.
All the movements of Hamlet's
mind, and consequently all his
words and actions, would be expli-
cable on the supposition that the
ghost were, like the air-drawn dag-
ger in Macbeth, a mere illusion.
But the belief of Shakspere's age,
the necessities of dramatic repre-
sentation, and the very nature of
poesy and art, which deal not with
the invisible processes of mind, but
with their sensible symbols select-
ed, integrated, and realized by the
imagination, require that the ghost
should be considered as an objective
existence. Accordingly the appear-
ance is authenticated with the most
A New Glance at an Old Acquaintance.
6 75
matter-of-fact, judicial exactness.
It is produced before several wit-
nesses, and in the first instance to
impartial ones to Horatio and the
rivals of his watch before Hamlet
is even apprised of the visitation.
There is a circumstantiality, a mi-
nuteness in the details of the exhi-
bition worthy of particular remark.
First we have the chill night, the
dreary platform, the homely rou-
tine of changing guard, the plain
courtesy of honest soldiers, the im-
perfect narrative, interrupted by the
entrance of the royal shade, the
passing and repassing of the per-
turbed spirit, the wide guesses and
auld-warld talk of the sentinels,
calling up all records of their me-
mory to bring their individual
case under the general law and
dignify it by illustrious example :
" In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted
dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets."
The images of superstition are
not always terrible. The halo, no
doubt, is an unsubstantial, it may
be an ill-omened, vision ; still, it is
the halo of the pure and lovely
moon.
" Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long ;
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad ;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets
strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time."
With what consummate skill this
introductory scene prepares the
way for the subsequent disclosure !
The wonder, the terror of the ghost,
is shaded and humanized ; the spec-
tator is familiarized to his aspect
before he becomes a speaker and
an agent in the drama, and is thus
enabled to sympathize with Ham-
let, who almost forgets the speaker
in the father :
" I'll call thee Hamlet, king, father, royal Dane."
It is not easy to reduce this
ghost to any established creed or
mythology, though some commen-
tators have taken pains to prove
by chronological arguments that
he must have been a pagan. A
pagan, however, would scarcely
complain that he was
" Cut off even in the blossoms of his sin,
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd."
And yet would not a true Catho-
lic spirit have requested prayers
and Masses rather than vengeance?
The poet here happily seizes a
transitional condition of Christian
belief still mingled with pagan re-
liques.
To Hamlet, a son, what motive
of revenge so mighty as the purga-
torial pangs, the indefinitely pro-
tracted sufferings of a parent whose
virtues might have entitled him to
immediate bliss, had they not been
taken in company with casual in-
firmity ? Is not the desire of re-
venge, even on an adulterous mur-
derer, one of the imperfections
that must be burned or purged
away ? One who believes a pur-
gatory proportioned to the de-
gree of sinfulness adhering to a
soul endued with the principles
of salvation may indeed be tempt-
ed to take vengeance for the dead.
While the spirit is present Ham-
let displays the affectionate rever-
ence of a son for his departed sire,
of an earthly to a spiritual being.
But no sooner does the presence of
human mortals break in upon him
than he treats the fearful vision
with ludicrous irreverence ; calls
him in his own hearing, be it re-
membered " Truepenny," " fel-
low in the cellarage," u old mole."
While the spirit is present Ham-
let's mind is absorbed and con-
centrated. His composing powers
are suspended. He feels the reality
6;6
A New Glance at an Old Acquaintance.
of his moral relation to the incor-
poreal visitant, and is upheld by
the consequent sense of moral obli-
gation. Even after the "Adieu!
remember me," his soul is still
collected and retained in unity
with the one great object. He is
still out of the body ; earth glim-
mers away into non-existence.
But the bare recollection that there
are other creatures creatures with
whom he is newly placed in the re-
lations of utter estrangement and
irreconcilable enmity occasions a
partial revulsion. His human na-
ture is resuscitated in an agony of
wrathful scorn.
The sound of living voices, the
sight of living bodies, further re-
mind him that he is still in the
flesh, but charged with a secret
that must not be communicated,
which alienates him from the very
man who, not an hour since, might
have read his heart in the light of
day, which turns his former confi-
dants into intrusive spies. Hence
the wild and whirling words, the
half-ludicrous evasions, the struggle
of his soul to resume its accus-
tomed course and effect a dominion
over the awful shapes and sounds
that have usurped its sovereignty.
From this period the whole state of
Hamlet may aptly be likened to a
vast, black, deep river, the surface
whereof is curled and rippled by
the passing breezes and seemingly
diverted into a hundred eddies,
while the strong under-current,
dark and changeless, maintains an
unvaried course towards the ocean.
The points in his character which
have been most controverted are
his seemingly causeless aversion to
Polonius; his cruel treatment of
Ophelia ; his sceptical views of a
hereafter, spite of ocular demon-
stration that to die is not to sleep ;
his treachery to his early friends
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and
his tardy, irresolute, and at last
casual performance of the dread
vow which he has invoked heaven,
earth, and hell to witness. Of Polo-
nius in his prime it might have
been said that wisdom and cunning
had their share in him. His honor
and honesty were of the courtier's
measure, with more of the serpent
than the dove. Even his advice to
Laertes is altogether worldly and
expedient, such as a worldly-wise
man might derive from the stores
of experience. He has the true
court genius for intrigue, and the
circuitous and furtive acquisition
of information. He is a master of
ceremonies and compliments, and
abounds in prosy criticisms.
Between such a personage and
the moody, metaphysical, impatient,
open-hearted Hamlet there must
needs have existed an utter anti-
pathy ; and though antipathy is not
synonymous with hatred, it is on
the high-road to it. When natures
are entirely discordant small pro-
vocation suffices to produce per-
sonal hostility. Now, Polonius is
the confidential adviser of the king,
and may be supposed to have had
a hand in directing the succession.
He is Ophelia's father, and as such
has enjoined her to deny her com-
pany to Hamlet prudently enough,
no doubt, but paternal prudence
rarely escapes the resentment of the
disappointed lover. The plainest
dictates of parental duty are as-
cribed to sordid and unworthy
motives. That Hamlet imputes
such motives to Polonius is evident
from the ambiguous epithet, "fish-
monger" and from his ironical
admonition, " Let her not walk
in the sun," etc. But more than
all Polonius betrays his intention
of pumping Hamlet ; and the irrita-
tion naturally consequent on the
A New Glance at an Old Acquaintance.
6 77
discovery of that purpose is height-
ened by contempt for the manoeu-
vring imbecility with which it is
pursued. It is, therefore, not un-
natural, though quite unjustifiable,
that Hamlet, in his behavior to the
inquisitive old chamberlain, should
lose sight of the reverence which is
ever due from youth to age, and,
even when he has stabbed him be-
hind the arras, should continue to
the dead body the same strain of
scornful irony wherewith he used
to throw dust into the prying eyes
of the living counsellor. But for
wringing the kind, fond heart of
Ophelia with words such as man
should never speak to woman what
can be said ? There have been
men who would tear open the soft-
est breast for the satisfaction of
finding their own names indelibly
written on the heart. But surely
the brave, noble-minded Hamlet
would never be guilty of such cruel
meanness, nor would Shakspere,
who reverenced womanhood, have
needlessly exposed Ophelia to in-
sult, if some heart-truth were not
developed in the exhibition. One
truth at least it proves the fatal
danger of acting madness. Stam-
mering and squinting are often
caught by mimicry ; and he who
wilfully distorts his mind, for what-
ever purpose, may stamp its linea-
ments with irrecoverable deformity.
But the best apology for Hamlet is
to be found in the words of a poet
who, perhaps, beyond all other
critics had the clearest insight into
the spirit and designs of Shakspere :
*' For to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain."
Hamlet loved Ophelia in his
happy youth, when all his thoughts
were fair and sweet as she. But
his father's death, his mother's''
frailty, had wrought sad alteration
in his soul, and made the very
form of woman fearful and sus-
pected. His best affections are
blighted, and Ophelia's love, that
young and tender flower, escapes
not the general infection. Did not
his mother seem kind, faithful, in-
nocent? And was she not mar-
ried to his uncle ? But after the
dread interview, the fearful injunc-
tion, he is a man among whose
thoughts and purposes love can-
not abide. He is a being severed
from human hopes and joys, vowed
to other work than courtship and
marriage. The spirit that called
him to be an avenger forbade him
to be a lover. Yet, with an incon-
sistency as natural as it is unrea-
sonable, he clings to what he has
renounced, and sorely feels the
reluctant repulse which Ophelia's
obedience presents to his lingering
addresses.
Hamlet's, moreover, though a
tardy, is an impatient nature, that
would feel uneasy under the com-
mon process of maidenly delay.
Thus perplexed and stung, he
rushes into Ophelia's presence, and,
in amazed silence, makes her the
confidant of his grief, the cause of
which she might not know. No
wonder she concludes that he is
really mad for her love, and enters
readily into what to her appears to
be an innocent scheme to induce
him to lighten his overcharged bo-
som, and ask of her the peace
which, unasked, she may not offer.
She steals upon his solitude while,
weary of his unexecuted task, he
argues with himself the expediency
of suicide. Surprised as with a
sudden light, his first words are
courteous and tender, till he be-
gins to suspect that she, too, is set
on to pluck out the heart of his
mystery; and then, actually mad-
dened by his self-imposed neces-
6/8
A New Glance at an Old Acquaintance.
sity of acting madness, he dischar-
ges upon her the bitterness of blast-
ed love, the agony of a lover's
anger, as if determined to extin-
guish in himself the last feeling
that harmonized not with his fell
purpose of revengeful justice.
This is, perhaps, the most ter-
rifically affecting scene in Shak-
spere. Neither Lear nor Othello
is plunged so deep in the gulf of
misery.
The famous soliloquy which is
thus painfully interrupted has been
injured by its own celebrity. It
has been so often quoted, torn
from its vital connection with its
parent stock, that we are hardly
conscious that it derives its whole
sense and propriety from the per-
son by whom, and the circumstan-
ces in which, it is spoken.
Shakspere has been accused of
inadvertence in putting such doubts
into the mouth of one who had ac-
tually seen and conversed with a
denizen of that
" Undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns."
But though an apparition might
confirm the faith of a hereafter
where it pre-existed, where that
faith was not, or was neutralized
by an inward misery implicated
with the very sense of being, its
effect could be but momentary or
occasional ; a source of perplexity,
not of conviction, throwing doubt
at once on the conclusions of the
understanding and the testimony
of the senses, and, fading itself into
the twilight of uncertainty, making
existence the mere shadow of a
shade.
Hamlet in his first soliloquy talks
like a Christian an unhappy and
mistrusting Christian, indeed, but
still a Christian who reveres the
almighty canon. But now, when
his doubts have received that con-
firmation which should seem cer-
tain, he talks like a speculative
heathen, whose thoughts, floating,
without chart or compass, on the
ocean of eternity, present the fear-
ful possibility of something after
death, but under no distinct con-
ception either of hope or fear. The
spirit has unsettled his original
grounds of belief and established
no new ones. That the active
powers of Hamlet are paralyzed
he is himself abundantly con-
scious. Every appearance of ener-
gy in others the histrionic passion
of the player, the empty ambition
of Fortinbras, the bravery of grief
in Laertes excites his emulation
and his self-reproaches. Yet day
after day, hour after hour, the exe-
cution of his vow is in his hand.
No fear, no scruple seems to de-
tain him ; and yet, after the play
has caught the conscience of the
king and every doubt of the ghost's
veracity is removed, that very
ghost upbraids his almost blunted
purpose. The power of action re-
visits him only at intervals, and
then his deeds are like starlings out
of slumber, thrustings on of his des-
tiny. In one of these fits he stabs
Polonius ; in another he breaks open
the commission of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, and, without consid-
ering how far they might or might
not be privy to his uncle's treach-
ery, sends them by a forged instru-
ment to the block.
At last, when the envenomed ra-
pier has wound up his own tragedy,
he finds new strength in his dying
moment, and in an instant per-
forms the work, and dies !
The Crisis in Italy.
679
THE CRISIS IN ITALY.
THREE noticeable communica-
tions under the title of " The Fail-
ure of the Catholic Party in Italy "
were published in the London Tab-
let in its issues of March 15 and
May 3 and 10, and introduced by
the editor with the following re-
mark :
" We have received a very thought-
ful communication respecting the
past and future of the Catholics in
Italy, to which, as it is well deserv-
ing of serious attention, we have
thought it well to give publicity."
The first of these communica-
tions raises the questions : " Where
were the Catholics of the Pontifi-
cal States ? Where were the Ro-
mans when Garibaldi and the
Piedmontese moved against the
Eternal City?" Then follow the
answers given by Catholic politi-
cians, which the writer analyzes and
finds unsatisfactory. The third is
principally occupied with the de-
velopment of the writer's own an-
swer contained in the second arti-
cle, and with answers to supposed
objections. It is to the second com-
munication, which we publish en-
tire, that we would call the atten-
tion of our readers :
" As we have seen, the indifferentism
of the Catholics in Italy cannot be ex-
plained sufficiently by the terrorism of
the revolutionary government and the
limited electoral law ; not by the politi-
cal inexperience of the people ; not by
the want of a fixed programme ; not by
the attitude of the Holy See, and not
even by the love of the united kingdom
which is attributed to the mass. But
what can be the true explanation ? We
have studied the conditions of Italy for
a long time, and we come to the conclu-
sion : It can be found only in the low
social state of the country-people, who
form 60 per cent, of the whole popula-
tion of Italy. Misery and desperation is
their daily life ; they begin the day with
hunger and finish it with hunger. They
could not have any interest in defend-
ing an order of things which leaves them
in misery ; they could not feel enthusi-
asm for a government, and patriotism
for a state, which does not make social
and economical reforms calculated to
elevate the people to a condition worthy
of mankind. For the same reason they
cannot now have any interest or enthu-
siasm for the new government, which
has made the situation worse. For the
same reason they cannot have any inte-
rest in the rising Catholic party, which
promises, indeed, fine things, but which
has nothing for their hunger. Therefore
they do not care at all for politics and
for political parties. Only a social re-
formation would help them ; and there-
fore the Internationalists have some in-
fluence and excite some hope, and Gari-
baldi, who utters from time to time a cry
of pain about the misery of the people,
excites such great sympathy. But the
mass of the people has yet too much re-
ligion and is not inclined to make a revo-
lution. This is the condition of the Ital-
ian country-people. This is our expla-
nation of a political indifferentism the
like of which was never seen in the world
before.
"The landed property in Italy is gen-
erally in the hands of landlords of the
old nobility or rich citizens, who live for
the most part of their time in the cities,
and do not know the people who live on
their estates. Very many of them take
no trouble about their properties, and
leave them completely in the hands of
industrial capitalists, who live also chief-
ly in the cities, and cultivate the lands
either through farmers or directly by
a multitude of laborers with overseers.
Every one of these gentlemen, landlords,
capitalists, and farmers, look to get as
much money as they can. That is, of
course, natural. On the other hand, there
is some necessity for it, because they have
to pay very heavy taxes, and agricultural
products are cheap in Italy, so that they
find it often more profitable not to culti-
68o
The Crisis in Italy.
vate the land at all. Therefore they try
to get it cultivated as cheaply as possi-
ble.
" Now, there are a multitude of unoc-
cupied people who offer their services
for the cultivation of the land. Other
work they cannot do, because there is no
trade and no commerce. They must get
employment from the landlord, or who-
ever manages the cultivation, so as not
to die of hunger. And thus the landlord
is absolute master of the wages, and acts
accordingly. When he gives one lira,
which is scarcely tenpence, a day, the
laborer is very, very happy ; if he could
only earn tenpence every day he would
be content all his life, and live with his
wife and his children on that small sum.
But the landlord often gives only six-
pence, and even less. Very often there
is no employment ; for example, a long
time in the winter. Improvements of
the land or the roads, regulations of the
rivers, etc., are made only in case of the
greatest necessity, because that would
cost money ; then the capitalist or the
farmer, who is only a temporary mana-
ger, has no interest in improving the
land for those who may succeed him ;
moreover, once : asking a farmer why he
left the land in such a miserable state,
we got the answer, ' My condition is all
the better for it, because otherwise the
landlord would raise my rent at once, and
all my work would go for nothing.' In
these days of idleness the laborer and
his family must live, as every one will
see, hungry and discontented ; from his
small savings, if any, he can spare no-
thing. And. moreover, the laborers
cannot all get work when there is
work to be done, because there are too
many. What can they now do? Live
idle and hungry or become brigands.
Imagine, for a better view of this condi-
tion, a town of from one to ten thousand
inhabitants in the country of Italy, nice-
ly situated either on a hill and that is
the rule or in the valley. There are a
few poor priests, who cannot afford to
buy a newspaper, some policemen, and
some trades-people ; the other fashion-
able people consist of from one to five
' signori,' landlords, or capitalists, or
farmers. All the other inhabitants are
people who possess nothing, who have
no work of any kind besides the work
on the property of the landlord on the
land, in the vineyard, the olive-garden,
the wood, the stalls, where they are
sometimes occupied. That is Italian
country-life.
"We repeat here that we speak about
the general condition of Italy ; that there
are exceptions we know very well, but
they are exceptions. In some parts the
peasants have their own property, in
others you find manufactories, especial-
ly in the north of Italy. Some of the
people also -find a way to improve their
condition ; they go into cities and be-
come servants, and send some money to
their families in the country. Some go
for many years abroad to Austria, Ger-
many, and France are employed there
in the heaviest labor in tunnels and on
roads, and return with what they have
gained, more or less demoralized. Many
emigrate for ever, and the latest official
statistics, which are of about the year 1876,
show that in that year not less than sixty
thousand countrymen emigrated. Some
go with hand- organs through the world,
and so live better than their families at
home. In Southern Italy many sell their
children to rascals who take them to other
countries either for immoral purposes or
to gain money for the ' padroni ' by beg-
ging and playing. I think Englishmen
know a little about these poor children.
This is for many the way to improve
their condition ; these are results of the
miserable state of the country.
"Could you expect now that these
people would assemble to oppose Gari-
baldi's attacks and to defend their
princes? Could you expect that these
people would rush to Florence, to Rome,
to Naples, to offer their blood in defence
of the old order? Can you expect that
these populations will defend the new
government against a new revolution?
Can you hope that they will hear with
any interest about the programme of a
new Catholic party which will bring
back the old order of things ? Although,
I think, you can understand that these
people are enthusiasts, at least for some
days, when Garibaldi comes and says ' I
will help you,' and when he orders out
bread and wine from the houses of the
landlords and the convents. This policy
is understood by every one and interests
every one. You can understand now,
also, why so many of these people swear
vengeance on a society which is so cruel
to them, the laws of which do not give
them the power to live as human beings.
You can understand too, I think, why
all the people like brigands, as a living
The Crisis in Italy.
68 1
protest against society, and why all help
them, and why they show not the slight-
est interest in helping the policeman
and the government to put down brigan-
dage.
" But is there nobody who takes the
part of the people in this state ? Yes,
some helps they have : the first is the cli-
mate of Italy, which makes hunger and bad
clothes and miserable dwellings more
easily borne than in northern countries.
Secondly, there are some landlords who
have feeling hearts, and provide at least
the most necessary help against misery,
although they do not think about any
radical and durable change. And for-
merly there were the convents, which
gave the greatest relief to the poor, peo-
ple may say about them whatever they
like. Every one who suffered hunger
could go to the convent and he got some
help and refreshment, and, therefore,
hunger was not so general in Italy, and
nobody died from starvation. But now
the convents are destroyed, their pro-
perty is in the hands of city-people, Jews
and other ' patriots '; and these legaliz-
ed brigands, who have made the unity of
Italy for themselves and not for the peo-
ple, have no interest in the despised
peasants. When you, therefore, make a
journey in Italy and many come to you
in the country and beg an alms, do not
be angry with them, do not say, Why do
you not work ? Look them in the face,
and you will see that it is great suffering
which compels those to be beggars who
are naturally as proud as any other
nation.
" We have spoken freely and clearly
about the social misery which we have
seen in Italy, and which we believe is
the first cause of the political misery.
Now we conclude : Only a party which
promises the people a better social con-
dition and makes arrangements for their
improvement can gain the support of
the population and guide the future of
Italy. The Catholic party must, there-
fore, here begin and accept a social pro-
gramme. Otherwise it will never suc-
ceed ; otherwise it will find the same in-
differentism in the future which the
legitimate governments found in the
past."
It is plain to any one who has
paid attention to what is passing in
Italy that its social and political
affairs cannot remain as they are.
The question which is now coming
rapidly forward is : Who shall take
the lead and direct the Italian peo-
ple to those needed reforms which
alone promise an enduring peace
and future prosperity ? Shall it be
the revolutionary party now led by
Garibaldi, who seems actuated by a
diabolical hatred to religion, and
whose followers are made up of the
worst elements of Italy ? Or shall
it be an enlightened Catholic
party which, while securing the
rights and independence of the
Holy See, shall at the same time
maintain as an integral part of its
programme those necessary social
and political reforms which will se-
cure tranquillity and a better and
brighter future for their country ?
There is always a tendency
among the influential and ruling
classes to forget that society and
the state are organized not for the
special benefit of the few, whoever
these may be, or whatever may be
their titles or their possessions,
but for the common good that is,
for the equal good of all. The
ruler, the statesman, or the legislator
who does not keep this great end
steadily in view ignores his func-
tions, and if he deviates from it he
is derelict in his essential duties.
Whence do Internationalism and
Communism, two of the most dan-
gerous tendencies of our times,
find the main reason for their ex-
istence unless in the evils arising
from the petty political divisions
of peoples closely related, if not of
the same race and land ; and in
the evils which come from the im-
perfect laws which hitherto have
controlled and directed the owner-
ship of .the soil? Now, it is for
Catholic statesmen to see and ap-
preciate these evils if they would
be equal to the duties which their
682
The Crisis in Italy.
position demands, gain the affec-
tion of the people who suffer most
from these evils, and become their
leaders. " Catholicity fears no pro-
gress that is not downward. It
loves the people ; it sojourned
with them in the Catacombs ; it de-
livered them from pagan imperial-
ism, protected them from the Mo-
hammedan yoke, and struck from
them the chains of feudal serfdom.
It rejoices in the expansion of their
justly-regulated rights and powers,
in which, as in a dilated breast,
its free spirit respires with ease."*
He is a superficial thinker who
fails to detect the fact that the
truths which these false movements
contain, and which give their pro-
moters a certain hold on the peo-
ple, are fragments separated from
the great truths of Christianity,
which alone reveal the intimate re-
lations of brotherhood between man
and man, and those rights and duties
existing between man and all the
natural gifts that go to make up
this habitable globe. The aspira-
tions which give force to these
misdirected efforts have a legiti-
mate basis. Satan always clothes
himself in the garb of light when
he woujd deceive men, and makes
false promises of a real good when
he would lead them astray. What
makes these movements dangerous
is not the truths which they con-
tain, but their exaggeration. Re-
form by evolution should be ,the
watchword, and not by revolution.
No one would recommend a man
as a skilful surgeon who to set a
broken finger would break one's
back.
What else is the unity of peoples
and of nations than the transfer to
the .political order of that divine
bond of unity which has ever existed
* Aubrey de Vere. Preface to Irish Odes and
Other Potms, The Catholic Publication Society.
in the church a natural aspiration
of the human heart which Chris-
tianity has quickened into greater
life, and realized more or less per-
fectly in the ages of faith. What
else is that political equality of
which so many speak than an ap-
proximation of the laws of the
state to that equality which has al-
ways prevailed among the house-
hold of the faith in the bosom of
the Catholic Church ? Not many
centuries ago, Europe was covered
with primeval forests, peopled by
barbarians whose instincts and
habits were not far removed from
our primitive Indians. What su-
perior force tamed those wild in-
habitants of the woods of the north
and transformed them into civilized
men ? Who taught them the arts
of civilization, and changed that
vast wilderness into teeming gar-
dens, populous cities, and organiz-
ed those turbulent tribes into great
nations ? Question the authentic
pages of history, and its unmistak-
able voice proclaims, that force was
the Catholic Church, those men were
her apostolic missionaries. Catho-
licity is the well-spring of life of
modern civilization, and its inevita-
ble and constantly recurring pro-
blem from generation to generation
is, how to bring the national, social,
and political relations of men more
completely in harmony with the-uni-
versal principles, the ideas of jus-
tice, and the common brotherhood
of men which the Catholic Church
ever maintains and always teaches?
These problems cannot be set aside
until the ideal of Christianity is
realized, and it is for Catholic the-
ologians, philosophers, and states-
men to come forward with the
courage which their faith inspires
and take a leading part in the so-
lution of these difficult problems,
and, instinct with a supernatural
The Crisis in Italy.
683
energy, contribute by their studies,
earnestness, and activity to the ad-
vancement of this providential
movement of true progress.
There are times in the affairs of
nations when they are called upon
to choose and to determine their
line of/ action for future generations,
and on this choice depends either
a course of error, crime, ending in
ruin, or, by a noble act of fidelity
to truth, a career of increased jus-
tice, a profounder peace and great-
er prosperity. This period comes
to every nation in its turn, and
Italy now appears to be passing
through its crisis. To prevent the
people from being led astray and
becoming the instruments of dema-
gogues and revolutionists, Catho-
lics have no other escape than by
a fresh presentation of the great
truths of Christianity in popular
language and attractive forms be-
fore the eyes of the people, and by
making it plain to their comprehen-
sion that the more practical appli-
cation of its principles would reme-
dy all existing removable evils and
satisfy every legitimate aspiration.
God has not abandoned noble
Catholic Italy, and as in times past,
so now its providential men will
not be wanting.
Catholics fall far short of their
high mission when they are content
to range themselves among the advo-
cates of any one form of political
government, or as the promoters of
particular dynasties, or as partisans
of the political divisions of a coun-
try. This is not to say that Ca-
tholics are not animated by the
noble sentiments of love for their
country, whether by birth or adop-
tion, or that they do not prefer its
institutions to all others, or that
they are not free to co-operate with
any honest political party and its
just measures ; to say this would
be to join in with the calumny
against Catholics invented by the
Prussian liberals so-called. Ca-
tholicity has no sympathy either
with a one-sided exaggerated na-
turalism or supernaturalism, and
no such party would deserve or re-
ceive from them their support. Ca-
tholicity means universality, and
takes up in its scope* all the true in-
terests of man.
The true aim of a Catholic is to
promote the reign of God in souls,
and a glorified humanity in the
ampler world to come ; but he
never forgets that the fruit of God's
reign in the individual is the estab-
lishment of his kingdom upon earth,
and the gate to the kingdom of
heaven above is opened only by
the key of his earnest and sincere
and heroic labor in establishing
this kingdom of heaven here below.
For the aim of Christ was not par-
tial or sectional in its scope, but
universal. The end of his mission
was the restoration of all things.
He embraced in his design both
heaven and earth. His was "the
dispensation of the fulness of times,
to re-establish all things, that are
in heaven and on earth." They
have studied Christianity but slight-
ly who entertain the idea that it
has exhausted its power for good
in the social order and political
condition of things which now
reign everywhere in the civilized
world. O Utopian schemer ! there
is a vista before the vision of
Christ's church of future things,
and to which she is ever reaching
forward and approaching, infinitely
more perfect than that you so vain-
ly dream.
When Christ, nailed upon the
cross, uttered with his expiring
breath the cry, " It is consummat-
ed !" he proclaimed that the en-
franchisement and glorification of
684
The Crisis in Italy.
the universe was essentially achiev-
ed. Since that supreme moment
God's providence has conducted
the order of grace, the whole course
of nature, all creatures, the move-
ments of history including its
crimes and revolutions, to converge
to this : either the world must
throw itself into the arms of its
Redeemer and- Mediator, or re-
turn to barbarism and perish mis-
erably.
Universal enfranchisement, in
view of universal glorification, be-
ginning here and now in the soul
and embracing the whole universe
in its consummation, this is Ca-
tholicity, because it is Christianity.
Christianity holds individual men
and society to this higher than
a mere natural destiny with a
more than deathless grasp. This
aim alone is worthy of man's high-
est devotion, as it is alone ade-
quate to his uttermost action.
Unity among nations and peo-
ples, more perfect justice between
man and man, and the reign of
universal brotherhood upon earth;
the realization of these noble as-
pirations is to be found nowhere
except in the divine force which
gave them birth. Not in a further
departure from, but in a closer ap-
proach to Christianity is the direc-
tion in which lies the road to safe-
ty, progress, and the glory of the
world. Christ reigns !
The timely pointing out and
condemnation before the civilized
world of the leading, active, mo-
dern errors by the Syllabus, the
value and importance of which is
being better appreciated as these
errors display their real character,
was a noble act of Christian hero-
ism on the part of the chief pas-
tor of Christ's flock. A Christian
church whose authority dares not
expose and condemn the threaten-
ing errors and vices of an age, no
matter how popular these may be
or who their teachers, is a sham
and worthy of no respect. And he
who knows how to interpret rightly
the Syllabus will read in it the
same answer essentially which
Christ gave to the arch-enemy on
the mount when, after his. lying
promises, he commanded him, in
the might of his divine authority,
"Get thee behind me, Satan!"
The church is Christ's body, and it
is Christ who speaks by the mouth
of St. Peter's successor authorita-
tively to every age.
But the church in condemning
the errors of an age aims neither at
stopping the progress of society nor
at resuscitating a dead past, as
some ignorantly or maliciously
would have men believe. Her
work is not one of mere negation,
important as that at times may be,
but one of building up and estab-
lishing God's kingdom of justice
and peace upon earth. Hence the
separation of the truths contained
in these errors, and which give
them currency and make them so
formidable in the mouths of dema-
gogues; and the pointing out the
way of turning their destructive
threats into precious blessings, this
is a still greater and nobler and more
heroic labor. This is the task now
incumbent upon Catholics, and un-
der the never-failing inspirations
of God they will not fail in its ac-
complishment. O providential ne-
cessity ! that compels the demon-
stration of the great truth before a
sceptical world that Christianity is
no less the preserver of the family,
society, and the state from impend-
ing ruin, than the saviour from its
sins of the individual soul. The
church will never fail by the virtue
of the indwelling presence of Christ
to save the world until its consuin-
The Victims of Quiberon.
685
mation. Christ is the Saviour of
the world Salvator mundi !
The times are out of joint, and
it depends on Catholics to lead the
way and set them right. Let en-
lightened Catholics but speak out
from their deep convictions, spring-
ing from the common and divine
source of their natural instincts
and the teachings of their holy
faith ! For it inspires the soul
with heroic courage, the loftiest
hope, and an enthusiasm for im-
provement which is illimitable.
The noble attitude of Leo XIII.,
now happily reigning, is well
calculated to inspire the Catholics
of Italy and throughout the world
with that lofty faith and courage
which the present crisis demands ;
and the light which his course
sheds on the problems of our day
is the unerring finger of God's
Providence pointing out the way to
a fresh triumph of Christianity,
the renewal of society, and for man-
kind a better future !
THE VICTIMS OF QUIBERON.
IT is becoming the fashion with
certain writers on both sides of
the Channel to undertake the re-
habilitation of the men and of the
deeds of '93. Those who are dis-
posed to waste their admiration on
objects so unworthy would do
well to ascertain beforehand to
what they pledge themselves.
" On the pth Thermidor," said
Count Joseph le Maistre, "some
scoundrels sent other scoundrels to
execution " that was all ; but the
present sketch is intended to por-
tray one of the sanguinary acts in
that long tragedy, the French
Revolution, which prove that the
prescriptive genius of the Conven-
tion survived its domestic quarrels,
and that the so-called Sacre de
l'/mmam'tewa.s one continuous mas-
sacre, which nowhere offered more
lamentable scenes than at Auray,
Vannes, and Carnac, where nearly
two thousand prisoners of Quibe-
ron, most of them mere youths,
were murdered in cold blood, and
this by order of the Convention.
About two miles from Auray,
where the roads meet from Pluvi-
gner, Auray, and Sainte-Anne, is a
grassy opening of a circular form
almost surrounded by woods. In
its centre rises a Doric column of
blue granite, supporting a globe
surmounted by a cross. From one
side of this open space, which bears
the name of the Champ des Martyr s y
a sombre avenue of firs leads to an
oblong quadrangle, surrounded by
a green terrace planted with rows
of trees. At the farther end of this
space stands a " Chapel of Expia-
tion," on the frieze of which are
the inscriptions, "Hie Ceciderunt"
and "/ Memoria sEterna erunt
Justi"
When this chapel was built the
renaissance of Christian art in
France, inaugurated later by Rio,
Montalembert, and Gueranger, had
not yet dawned. Instead, there-
fore, of the early Gothic forms so
common in Brittany and so suita-
ble to all its associations, rose this
gloomy Doric temple, full of a
melancholy befitting the massacre
it commemorates, but lacking the
686
The Victims of Quiberon.
heavenward aspirations of faith and
hope stamped by our forefactors
on the Christian architecture of
northern Europe. Each column
supporting the fafade is a mono-
lith of granite from St. Malo, and,
like the rest of the edifice, dark
with damp. The one window, at
the farther end, serves but to
show the forlorn and unfinished
state of the interior, where for fifty
years the walls have been awaiting
their frescos and the altar its or-
naments. Owing to the constant
succession of governmental changes
in France the monument has never
been completed.
From the Chapelle Expiatoire,
erected on the very spot of one of
the massacres of which we propose
to give an account, the visitor re-
turns, by the fir-tree avenue, to
the Chapelle Sfyulcrale, also of
Grecian architecture, and built
against the church of the Carthu-
sian convent. The fact of its hav-
ing been raised by public subscrip-
tion is indicated by the words in-
scribed beneath the portico : " Gal-
lia M&rens Posuit"
Occupying the centre of the in-
terior rises a mausoleum of white
marble. In the end which faces
the entrance is the bronze door of
the sepulchral crypt, while the far-
ther end faces the altar. The
tympanum of the upper sarcopha-
gus, surmounted by a cross, repre-
sents France, covered with a wid-
ow's veil and leaning against a
tomb, with the inscription : " Qui-
BERON, XXI. JULII, MDCCXCV." Be-
low this, in hemispherical niches,
are the busts of De Soulanges and
De Sombreuil, and beneath them
the words, "Pro Deo, Pro Rege,
nefarie Trucidati" On the far-
ther end are the busts of Mgr. de
Herce, Bishop of Dol, D'Hervilly,
and De Talhouet. On the sides of
the monument are engraved the
names (all that could be ascertain-
ed) of 952 of the more than 1,500
victims whose remains are piled in
the crypt beneath.
After the return of the Bourbons
the cure of Auray carefully col-
lected the remains of the victims of
Quiberon and transported them
hither. A rare engraving of the
time represents the visit of the
Duke d'Angouleme to this vault
in 1814. In it the prince and his
aides-de-camp are kneeling before
a pile of skulls and bones, four
metres in height, covering a space
of not less than twelve metres
square, while a priest, standing by,
recites the prayers for the dead.
On the 2oth of September, 1823,
the Duchess d'Angouleme, daugh-
ter of Louis XVI., laid the first
stone of the two chapels, which
were inaugurated October 15, 1829,
by the bishops of Vannes, St.
Brieuc, and Quimper, in presence
of a concourse of 20,000 men, come
in procession, with their clergy,
from two hundred parishes of
Brittany.
Thus, thirty-four years after their
unrighteous deaths, the brave sol-
diers of Quiberon received funeral
honors, and the Restoration hasten-
ed to put in possession of their last
abode these victims of the First
Revolution, as if under a presenti-
ment that its time was short, and
that ere long it also would be over-
whelmed by the freshly-gathering
clouds already darkening the hori-
zon.
We will briefly retrace the man-
ner in which these unfortunate
men fell into the power of the Con-
vention.
On the evening of the 2ist of
July, 1795, Fort Penthievre, the key
of the peninsula of Quiberon, and
one of the last strongholds of the
The Victims of Quiberon.
687
royalists, was taken, rather by ruse
than by superior numbers.* The
secret approach of the republican
troops in the increasing darkness was
further favored by a terrific storm.
Peals of thunder, heavy rain, the
roaring of wind and waves around
the rocky promontory, effectually
concealed the sound of columns
advancing simultaneously from
three different directions, while
within the fort three republican
subalterns and a number of pri-
vates, who had enrolled themselves
among its royalist defenders, had
conspired with the besiegers with-
out to deliver it into their hands.
Still further to secure the success
of his stratagem, General Hoche
had placed in the van more than
a hundred republican soldiers in
royalist uniforms. These men, hav-
ing obtained the password, gained
easy admittance from their accom-
plices within. The soldiers of
Rohan and Perigord, who defend-
ed the gates, were instantly over-
powered and "slain. Hoche had
commanded that no quarter was
to be given. " General Humbert,"
he had written in his order of the
day, " will take the fort, and kill
all whom he finds in it, unless the
fusiliers join his troop. The offi-
cers, infantry, sergeants, and artil-
lery-men are to receive no quarter."
The coup-de-main succeeded but
too well. It was not until late in
the evening that the multitude as-
sembled in the lower part of the
peninsula learnt that the only bar-
rier that protected the royalists
had fallen. The terror was intense
among this unarmed population of
old men, women, and children, who
had come from all the surrounding
neighborhood to seek refuge near
* A full account of this disastrous night is given
by M. Alf. Nettement in Quiberon (pp. 179 et
seq.) Paris: Lecoffre.
the royalist camp. The republi-
can columns drove all before them,
and the cries of the panic-stricken
people, as they rushed towards the
port of Orange, greatly dishearten-
ed the royalist troops, which, ow-
ing to the tempestuous sea, had
only then been able to disembark
from the Loyal Emigrant, protect-
ed by the guns of the English
squadron. " These unfortunate
beings," wrote an eye-witrress of
the scene, " leaping into already
overcrowded boats, perished among
the equally crowded rocks. From
sea and land shrieks of despair
rose above the intermingling roar
of the waves, the storm, and the
republican guns pointed upon the
fugitives." Amid this dire confu-
sion M. de Puisaye, commander-
in-chief of the army of disembarka-
tion, after giving orders to the
young General de Sombreuil, and
promising to support his move-
ments, turned his horse's head to-
wards the coast, and from thence
furtively escaped in a boat to the
English vessels.
De Sombreuil, around whom,
after the cowardly disappearance
of Puisaye, all that remained of
the royal troops had rallied, found
them wholly unable to withstand
the attack of the enemy, who was
far superior in numbers. For more
than five hours, therefore, he with
remarkable firmness and skill con-
ducted the retreat until he had
reached Fort Neuf, an insignificant
place near the village of Fort Hali-
guen, and the extreme point of the
peninsula. Here again, from the
republican ranks, was repeated the
shout which from time to time had
been heard ever since the com-
mencement of the struggle : * " Lay
down your arms, brave emigres !
* See the account of M. dc la Touche, p. 112.
688
The Victims of Quiberon.
No harm shall be done to you.
We are all Frenchmen !"
This invitation was now accom-
panied by more emphatic protesta-
tions than before.
De Sombreuil thought not only
of his men, but also of the helpless
multitude besieging the few boats
which the English fleet was able
to send to their rescue through the
tempestuous sea, and which, were
he to strike one last and hopeless
blow, must inevitably fall into the
hands of an irritated conqueror.
He therefore consented to a parley.
On a little elevation between
Fort Neuf and the fountain that
supplies Fort Haliguen the con-
ference took place between De
Sombreuil and Hoche.
"After it had continued a long
time," wrote Count Harscouet de
St. Georges, " our brave young
chief rode towards us, and said in
a loud voice : * Gentlemen, I have
obtained a promise that the lives
of all shall be safe, my own life
only excepted. Let those who do
not trust to the capitulation join
the English squadron by swim-
ming or otherwise, if they are able.
As for rne, I remain.' '
We quote the testimony of an-
other eye-witness, M. de Chaume-
reix, wjio wrote immediately after
the event.
"Arrived at Fort Neuf," he says,
" M. de Sombreuil collected the
debris of the different corps. The
English corvette, the Lark, anchor-
ed near the coast, was firing on the
central (republican) column, while
the two other vessels manoeuvred
so as to protect us. M. de Som-
breuil advanced alone towards the
enemy, and made a sign with his
hand. The column halted. Gene-
ral Hoche, who commanded it,
advanced a few steps, accompanied
by two officers of his staff. M. de
Sombreuil said in a loud voice :
; ' The men whom I command are
resolved to die under the ruins of
the fort. If, however, you allow
them to embark, you will spare the
shedding of French blood.' To
this Hoche replied: 'I cannot al-
low them to re-embark, but all who
lay down their arms shall be treat-
ed as prisoners of war.'
"'Will the emigres also be in-
cluded in this capitulation ?' asked
General de Sombreuil.
" ' They will,' was the answer.
* Every one is included in it who
lays down arms.'
" M. de Sombreuil, returning to
the fort, said : ' Gentlemen, I have
obtained the most favorable con-
ditions of which circumstances ad-
mit, and I have engaged to lay
down arms. Lay them down,
therefore, and tell the English cor-
vette to cease firing.' Some per-;
sons who understood English then
went down to the beach, and call-
ed out for the sloops to retire far-
ther from the shore? as a capitula-
tion had taken place."*
Some, who had not any confi-
dence in the promise given, pre-
ferred to trust themselves to the
stormy sea, but of these only a
small number reached the English
fleet in safety. And now there
were no more combatants, no more
enemies ; there were only the
French republican soldiers and
their French prisoners of war.
The general feeling manifested
by the bulk of the republican army
when the struggle was over, far
from being hostile, was favorable
to the royalist prisoners. Even
Tallien, who, immediately on re-
* We are the more careful to give from authentic
witnesses the details of the capitulation of Qui-
beron, on account of the attempts made by certain
modern French writers either to throw a doubt on
its having ever taken place or else to deny it alto-
gether.
The Victims of Quiberon.
689
turning into the revolutionary at-
mosphere of Paris, showed himself
so violent against them, appeared
for the moment touched by their
situation. It is also worthy of no-
tice that by far the greater part
of the army which had fought at
Quiberon, not being influenced by
that fear of the Convention which
actuated Hoche and Tallien, per-
sisted to the last in regarding the
royalists as prisoners of war, and
in treating them as honorable cap-
tives, not as guilty criminals.
On that same evening of the 2ist
of July Hoche ordered that the
prisoners should be marched to
Auray, six and a half leagues dis-
tant.
They departed in three columns.
The first was composed of some
thousands of the weak, aged, and
helpless of every description, who,
driven from their homes, had
sought for safety with the royalist
army. This column, after slowly
advancing a league, was command-
ed to disperse. The two other
columns, formed of the debris of
the royal army and of Chouans,
and amounting to about five thou-
sand men, were taken by different
roads to Auray. General Humbert,
who commanded the escort, fore-
seeing that many of the prisoners
might profit by the darkness to es-
cape, demanded, after again assur-
ing them that they should receive
no harm, their word of honor that
they would not attempt escape.
They pledged their word, and the
signal for departure was given.
The length and difficulties of the
way, the blackness of the rainy
night, the proximity of the woods,
the fatigue of the escort, and the
sympathy of the country people, all
favored the escape of the prison-
ers. But when all had had time
to arrive at Auray not one was
VOL. xxix. 44
missing. Some who had lost them-
selves among woods or marshes
followed the rest on the return of
daylight, and of their own accord
rejoined their fellow-captives.
The first column reached Auray
about eleven at night. The streets
of the quaint old town were silent
and deserted, but there were lights
in the houses. " All the women,"
wrote M. de Chaumereix,* " were
at the windows with lights. Tears
were streaming from their eyes,
and I saw on their faces an expres-
sion of the tenderest compassion."
The prisoners of the first column
were crowded into the church of
St. Gildas, and those of the second,
who arrived some time after mid-
night, into that of the Cordeliers.
In each of these improvised pri-
sons, which were too small for the
numbers thrust into them, a single
lamp threw its dim light over the
captives, many of whom were
wounded, and who lay, without
even a little straw, on the bare
stone floor.
" I passed this first night," wrote
the Chevalier de Grandry, f " on
the steps of the high altar, nearly
suffocated by the weight of my
weary comrades, who lay stretched
upon me. Many arrived in small
bands, without escort, and, not
knowing where to go, lay down in
the street. None had tasted food
since an early hour on the pre-
vious day."
On the morning of the 22d the
officers were separated from the
soldiers and removed to the great
prison called the Prison des An-
glais. The misgivings to which
this proceeding gave rise were in-
creased when, later in the day, the
* Relation de M. de Chaumereix* p. 12.
t The Chevalier de Grandry, one of the few survi-
vors of the army of Quiberon, knelt, eight years af-
terwards, on the steps of this same altar, by his
bride, a near relation of De Sombreuil.
690
The Victims of Quiberon.
prisoners, strongly guarded, were
marched to a place about a mile
from Auray, where were assembled
three thousand troops. This time,
however, the republic contented
itself with counting its victims.
When they re-entered Auray the
inhabitants openly expressed their
joyful surprise, and requested per-
mission to assist them. The re-
publican authorities, willing to be
saved expense, granted the request,
and from that time it was to Ca-
tholic Auray that the prisoners
were indebted for food, medicine,
and clothing, as well as consola-
tion and services of every kind,
the people treating as honored
guests those whom the government
regarded as its prey.
On returning M. de Sombreuil
was separated from the rest, and
kept under guard in the principal
inn of the town. Some days pass-
ed, and in the course of that time
Hoche, who had given his word
for the lives of the prisoners, took
his departure. Tallien, who had
witnessed the capitulation, had al-
ready quitted Auray, while his
more violent colleague, Blad, re-
mained at Vannes. Nearly all the
troops that had fought at Quibe-
ron, and were therefore aware of
what had passed there, received
orders to march to distant quar-
ters. This careful removal of the
authors and witnesses of the capi-
tulation increased the existing ap-
prehension as to what might be
about to take place in Brittany.
On the evening of the 26th De
Sombreuil was brought back to the
prison in an unconscious state from
a pistol-shot in the forehead. The
soldiers who carried him alleged
that he had shot himself a story
which appeared highly improbable
to the prisoners, knowing, as they
did, the knightly and Christian cha-
racter of their young chief. They
believed it to be an invention of
his guards to conceal the fact of
their having assassinated him in
order to despoil him of the rich
booty of guineas they expected to
find in the possession of a com-
mander-in-chief lately returned
from England. It was, in any
case, evident that he had been
rifled of every object of value. It
is, however, possible that, when the
frightful prospect of the non-obser-
vance of the terms of capitulation
broke upon him, together with the
thought that, in bidding his brave
men lay down their arms, he had
delivered them over to the execu-
tioner, the blow for the moment
unhinged his reason, and in a par-
oxysm of agony he may have at-
tempted suicide.
When, on the folio wing day,
General de Sombreuil and some
of his companions were taken be-
fore a council of war, he answered
his judges with a dignity and firm-
ness which won all their sympathy.
He desired nothing for himself,
but demanded the fulfilment of the
promise that the lives of his men
should be safe. Then, turning to
the soldiers who filled the hall, he
said :
" Ready to appear before God, I
swear that there was a capitulation,
in which I received a promise that
the emigres should be treated as
prisoners of war. I call you to
witness, grenadiers !"
As one man they answered :
" It is true !"
And the commissioners separat-
ed, declaring by the voice of their
president, Laprade, that they had
no right to judge prisoners who had
capitulated.
General Lemoine, the republican
chief of the department, furious at
their resistance, immediately nom-
The Victims of Quiberon.
691
inated a new set of commission-
ers,* to whom he declared that he
would not suffer any refusal to act
nor any allusion to the capitula-
tion. Before this commission De
Sombreuil, the Bishop of Dol, Count
Joseph de Broglie, the Count de
Landelle, and fifteen of their com-
panions were brought on the after-
noon of the pth Thermidor (28th
of July), 1795-
After the Count de Broglie had
energetically reproached the coun-
cil of war with its breach of faith,
and De Sombreuil had reiterated
his protest, they and their com-
rades were condemned to death
for having borne arms against the
republic. They were chained to-
gether in a wagon and taken to
Vannes, sixteen kilometres from
Auray, arriving there at midnight,
before the sounds of the celebra-
tion of this republican festival had
died away. The dancing was still
going on when the wagon passed
heavily along the street, laden with
the victims for the morrow's butch-
ery.
They were shut up in the two
towers surmounting the city-gate
by the Garenne ; this, the favor-
ite promenade of the inhabitants,
being selected as the place where
they were to suffer. The chasseurs
forming part of the nineteenth demi-
brigade, and who had fought at
Quiberon, had been told off for the
execution, but officers and soldiers
alike refusecl to do the work of as-
sassins. It was undertaken by a
battalion of the Paris volunteers.
While General Lemoine was in
search of executioners, his victims,
* It was only after the most imperative and
threatening orders from General Lemoine that a
new commission was formed. In Le Recit Sommaire
de M. Chaumereix, pp. 17 and 30, we find the
following : " Tous les officiers ay ant refuse, le ge-
neral Lemoine ordonna que 1'armee prit les armes,
et il menaa de faire fusilier sur le champ celui qui
n'accepterait pas sa place dans une commission. 1 '
aided by the holy prelate who form-
ed one of their number, calmly pre-
pared themselves for death.
On the morning of the 29th of
July the prisoners, whose number
was augmented by the addition of
fourteen priests, were taken to the
Garenne, the clergy reciting the
prayers for the dying and their
companions making the responses.
When they reached the appointed
spot an executioner approached to
bandage the eyes of De Sombreuil.
He signed the man back with his
hand, saying, " I am accustomed to
look my enemies in the face."
Then, with his last breath protest-
ing against the slaughter of his
comrades, he knelt down on one
knee, bade the soldiers aim a little
to the right, so as to be sure to
strike him, and gave the order to
fire.
Thus, at the age of twenty-five,
died Count Charles de Sombreuil,*
one of the noblest victims of the
Revolution. Besides heroic cour-
age he possessed high qualities as
a commander. Full of truth and
loyalty, he knew not how to believe
in meanness and falsehood in oth-
ers, and even his enemies were
struck by his remarkable personal
beauty.
Next to him fell the Bishop of
Dol, still praying for his murder-
ers. His was the death of a saint
side by side with that of a Chris-
tian knight. ., ^
The signal having thus been giv-
en by the death of General de
Sombreuil and his companions, the
* General de Sombreuil was brother to the heroic
lady who drank a cup of blood to save the life of
her aged father. Before leaving home, having a
presentiment that he should never return, he laid
a piece of black crape on the bed of Mile, de la
Blache, to whom he was engaged. On the morning
of his execution he cut off a lock of his hair, and,
together with her miniature, which he always wore,
placed it in the hands of a republican officer, who
promised to convey it to this lady. She afterward
became the Comtesse d'Haussonville.
692
The Victims of Quiberon.
massacres were for more than a
month to be continued on three
points of the Morbihan namely,
Auray, Vannes, and Quiberon. Of
the four military commissions now
set up at these places, two were at
Vannes, whither, on the 3ist of
July, a part of the prisoners were
sent from Auray.
"This time," wrote M. de St.
Georges, " we walked in broad day-
light, escorted by a double file of
soldiers, and found strong detach-
ments posted at intervals along the
four leagues of road which sepa-
rate the two towns, in case the roy-
alists of the country should attempt
our rescue. On the way our con-
ductors despoiled us of the best of
our clothing, which they replaced
by their own tattered uniforms, so
that by the time we entered Vannes
we looked like a band of brigands.
"We were taken first into the
court of an ancient convent, and
left for two hours a spectacle to
the revolutionary soldiers of the
garrison, a troop selected for the
sanguinary task it was shortly to
fulfil. At this exhibition prepara-
tory to our execution (to which it
made an additional pain) none of
the true people of Vannes appear-
ed. We saw only those hang-dog
visages which seemed everywhere
to spring from the ground to assist
at the hideous festivals of those
miserable times. From thence we
were taken to the church of the
Grand Se'minaire, called Du Mene,
and chosen as our prison on ac-
count of its isolated position. The
church was then surrounded with
troops, and fifty soldiers of the line
placed on duty in the interior.
The day had been intensely hot.
We had left Auray before ten in
the morning ; it was now past six.
No food had been given us, and
we were fainting from exhaustion
and fatigue. As at Auray, so also
at Vannes, the authorities offered
us nothing. It was their business
to kill us, not to keep us alive.
However, they announced that * if
any persons chose to assist the pri-
soners in the Church du Mene, the
republic, in its munificence, would
not hinder them from taking food
to its captives.' "
This was enough, for the people
of Vannes, like those of Auray,
were eager to follow the promptings
of their generosity and courage;
for, in those times of tyranny, the
interest taken in the victims point-
ed out their consolers to proscrip-
tion. Rich and poor rivalled each
other in testifying their sympathy.
In a few minutes the pavement of
the vast church was strewn with
fresh straw, upon which were laid
long rows of mattresses, while pro-
visions flowed in abundantly and
assistance of every kind was eager-
ly rendered. The women espe-
cially, as at all times when an im-
mense woe calls forth a measure-
less pity, seemed to the prisoners
like the compassionate angels sent
to sustain and comfort man in his
distress. And during the three
weeks that followed the same acts
of generosity were daily renewed
before the eyes of those who daily
went thither to take new victims.
" On the ist of August," wrote
M. de St. Georges, " a captain of
infantry, with a hideous counte-
nance and a red cap, appeared at
the prison, accompanied by a de-
tachment of sans-culottes, and an-
nounced that he must have ten of
us instantly. As no one showed any
inclination to answer this rough
summons, he became furious, and,
seizing a prisoner near him, swore
that unless he were immediately
obeyed he would run every one of
us through. His threat would
The Victims of Quiberon.
69$
doubtless have been carried out
had not twelve of those who hap-
pened to be nearest followed at
random, and disappeared, never to
return. Some hours passed. Sud-
denly we heard a loud detonation ;
then all was silent. . . . One of
the officers on guard, observing the
anxious expression on our faces,
said with a malignant smile : * Do
not be afraid, gentlemen ; it is only
the springing of a mine by our
major de place. I may as well warn
you that he will spring several
more of the same kind in the course
of the day.'
" One of the prisoners answered
indignantly : * We are soldiers and
know how to die. Do you happen
to be a coward yourself, since you
impute cowardice to us ? What
heart can you have, who rejoice at
our misfortune and mock us when
we are face to face with death ?'
' . . . We who remained then
profited by the respite (at the sug-
gestion of one of the elder noble-
men) to divide our number into
sections of ten or twelve persons,
ready to march to execution at
the first summons. Scarcely were
these sections formed before an-
other band of victims was summon-
ed. The machinery of death was
doing its work quickly." On this
first day about one-third of the
prisoners were shot.
At Auray it was on the 4th of
August that the executions began.
The few who effected their escape
have left touching narratives of the
scenes which passed within the
prisons. In that in which were
confined the remains of the heroic
company of the old Chevaliers
de St. Louis, the aged knights, after
exhorting their younger compan-
ions to die like Christian soldiers,
worthy of their lineage and of their
cause, knelt and recited with them
the prayers for the dead, while their
guards, wondering to find them-
selves moved, joined them in re-
peating the psalms of the church.
" In a side chapel," * wrote the
Count de Montbrun, " the emigres,
nearly all naval officers, were pros-
trate in prayer. . . . When straw was
offered for them to lie upon they
preferred to remain on the damp
ground, and to be allowed a light
by which to read the prayers. Some
one having suggested taking a little
food, ' Let us rather,' said M. de
Kergariou, * busy ourselves with our
souls '; and he began the office for
the dead, the rest answering and
smiting their breasts, while the
sound of their voices re-echoed sol-
emnly in the gloomy church.
" Several ladies, having obtained
permission to visit once more those
to whom they had been as sisters
and mothers, found the prisoners
kneeling along the balustrade of
the choir, while the aged Count de
Soulanges, wounded and ill, was
fulfilling for the last time the func-
tions which were on the morrow
to devolve upon M. de Kergariou.
Leaning for support against the
altar, he was saying the prayers for
the agonizing. The soldiers at
this sight remained silent and re-
spectful. The women wept.
" ' Your charity, my ladies,' said
M. de Soulanges, ' follows us, then,
even until death !'"
The young Chevalier de Volude
having been urged to state his age
as a few months less than it was,
asked M. de Kergariou-Locmaria,
his uncle, whether life was worth
the sacrifice of truth. (" La vie, est
elle (Tun prix egal au prix de la ve-
rite"!"} "It is better to die than
purchase life by a falsehood," was
the answer; and shortly afterwards
uncle and nephew were walking
* Sirtce called the Chapelle de TAgonie.
694
The Victims of Quiberon.
side by side to execution, the for-
mer barefoot in imitation of our
Lord and his sacred Passion.
One of the commissioners, touch-
ed by the youthful appearance of
the younger De Lassenie, suggested
to him the same means of escape
by saying : '* You are very young ;
you could not have been sixteen
when you joined the emigres?"
"Yes, monsieur," he replied, u I
was sixteen. I cannot save my life
by telling a lie."
He was sixteen years and four
months.
At Quiberon the condemned
were crowded into a garret until
the hour of execution. This took
place by the sea-side, and the
corpses were carried away by the
waves. Twenty were shot at a
time, and as there was only one
soldier for each, very few died at
the first shot. The local traditions
affirm that each chose his own ex-
ecutioner, whom he paid for shoot-
ing him to the heart. For those
who still had the money to pay,
the tariff for each of these murders
was a guinea * and the habiliments
of the victim.
An officer, M. de Kerauten, dur-
ing an execution which happened
to take place at nightfall, broke
from his guards, and, plunging into
the sea, gained an English vessel
anchored near the coast. Another,
M. d'Houaron, also burst his bonds
and fled, throwing behind him from
time to time a gold-piece, and thus
delaying his pursuers until he had
reached a farm, where a young girl
concealed him in a haystack until
in three weeks' time he escaped in
safety to his family. But these es-
capes were very rare ; few attempt-
ed them, and still fewer succeeded.
At Auray and at Vannes a ditch
* Muret, Histoire des Guerres de P Quest, torn,
iv. p. 204.
was dug every morning in propor-
tion to the day's slaughter. The
prisoners, bound two and two, were
ranged along its edge, with their
faces towards the trench and their
backs towards their executioners,
so as to fall when shot, whether
alive or dead, into the pit. Then
the sans- culottes threw themselves
upon the bodies, stripping them
completely and carrying off their
clothes. If in these they found
money or valuables, they were com-
pelled to share them with their
superiors. The trench, dug each
day, was not covered over until the
morrow ; then, if any of the victims
it contained still breathed, they
were either despatched or buried
alive.*
At the spot we have already
mentioned, where the roads cross
from Auray, Pluvigner, and Sainte-
Anne, is a solitary meadow on the
border of a salt marsh through
which, over its shallow and rocky
bed, flows the Loc. At the time
of which we write a winding path
led to thjs meadow, which, sur-
rounded by lopped and decapitat-
ed oaks, had a singularly dreary
aspect. Here it was that, in the
fourteenth century, Charles de
Blois lost his crown and life at the
battle of Auray, after crossing, con-
trary to the advice of Du Guesclin,
the narrow valley of the Loc to
attack the English battalions, mo-
tionless upon the farther bank, un-
der the command of the gallant Sir
John Chandos. This field, already
the scene of bloodshed in fair fight,
was now to be the theatre of san-
guinary tyranny and crime.
Hither it was that, during three
weeks, the prisoners were brought
from Auray and shot, twenty at a
time. The women of Auray, pro-
vided with disguises, concealed
* Account of M. Harscouet de St. Georges.
The Victims of Quibcron.
695
icmselves in the woods of Kerzo,
in readiness to facilitate the escape
of any of the victims ; but so close
was the surveillance around the
field of carnage that four or five
only were able to avail themselves
of this assistance. One of these,
De Boisairault d'Oiron, threw him-
self on the ground at the moment
of the discharge ; then sprang up
and darted into the woods. The
young Marquis de Rieux, the last
of an illustrious race, had nearly
succeeded in saving himself by the
same expedient, but while making
his way through the marshes he
was pointed out to the soldiers by
a cobbler of Auray. They fired,
and he fell, mortally wounded.
The wretch who had thrown him
back into the hands of his murder-
ers, on returning home that even-
ing, took up a hatchet to chop
wood. With the first blow he
struck off his left hand the hand
he had stretched out to betray the
fugitive.
The commissioners were no less
implacable at Quiberon than at
Auray and Vannes. The sick and
wounded prisoners, unable to ap-
pear at the bar, were condemned
unheard, and shot in their beds
or upon the straw that had been
thrown to them.* Not to one was
mercy, or rather justice, shown.
For all there was but one sentence
death.
Thus perished in cold blood,
within the narrow triangle of which
Vannes and Carnac form the base
and Auray the apex, nearly two
thousand men, among whom were
the flower of the chivalrous ancien-
ne noblesse of France, besides a
*This account, taken from the MS. narrative of
M. le Comte Harscouet de St. Georges, helps to ex-
plain the fact that the official list of the executions
published by General Lemoine contains no more
than seven hundred and ten names. The sick and
wounded who were shot in their beds figure con-
veniently among those who " died in prison."
large number of the brave and
loyal peasantry of Brittany. From
the 29th of July until the 26th of
August the malignant vengeance
of the Convention here pursued its
murderous path, prolonging crime
as others prolong pleasure, and in-
tensifying its cruelty by pretended
respites. Hope was held out (i) to
those who were not more than six-
teen years old at the time of emigra^
tion ; (2) to the sick, and (3) to those
of plebeian origin ; nor was it until
the 24th of August that all these
hopes were crushed, and the pri-
soners given to understand that
those only who came under the
category of extreme youth had any
chance of respite.
This announcement was merely
a snare laid by craft and cupidity ;
the messenger sent to take these
youths before the commission in-
formed them that the interrogatory
they were about to undergo was a
mere form, and bade them carry
with them all they possessed instead
of leaving it in the prison, " whither
they were certain not to return"
Youth is credulous, and these
young men joyfully believed in the
treacherous hopes held out to them.
" The young prisoners," says the
Count de St. Georges, "took away
with them not only the money and
various articles given them for their
own use by the people of Vannes,
but everything also which we, who
had before us nothing but the im-
mediate prospect of death, insisted
on giving them. We also charged
them with letters for our families."
No sooner did these youths, who
at Vannes were thirty in number,
appear before the council than
they were asked their names, bound
together in couples, and marched
off to execution. One of these in-
nocent victims was Louis de Tal-
houet, whose father had been killed
The Victims of Quiberon.
at the head of his regiment on
the i6th of July. Being seriously
ill, his widowed mother and his
sister, by persevering entreaties,
and after surmounting immense
difficulties, had obtained leave to
remove him from prison to be
nursed at the house of a relative at
Auray. There also he was under the
close surveillance of a soldier, who
nevertheless showed himself con-
siderate and humane, and the fam-
ily ventured to hope. One morn-
ing, however, when the poor youth,
scarcely convalescent, was walking,
supported by his mother and sister,
two gendarmes appeared with an
order to take him back to prison.
This was the 25th of August, the
day of his fete. The next morn-
ing he was shot at Vannes.
To atrocity of act was frequent-
ly added atrocity of detail in the
execution. - M. d'Antrechaux, an
officer who escaped, relates a dis-
play of cold-blooded cruelty on the
part of General Lemoine which
shows to what manner of man
Hoche had left the command of
the Morbihan.
" There was amongst us," he
writes, "one of the handsomest
men I ever saw in my life. His
name has escaped my memory.
He could not have been more than
twenty years old at most. He drew
admirably. General Lemoine, hav-
ing seen some of his drawings, took
him to make his plans and take his
portrait. He made him share his
table, showing him every attention,
and soon lie was the favorite of all
the officers of the staff. We re-
garded him as saved. When the
revocation of the respite arrived
no one for a moment supposed
that it would apply to him. The
general had him, as usual, to din-
ner, and treated him with even
greater friendliness than ordinary.
At the end of the repast he called
a corporal and four soldiers, and
had him shot under his windows !
The officers were indignant, and,
at the risk of being disgraced, did
all in their power to save the un-
fortunate youth."
We will conclude this (still in-
complete) narrative of these atro-
cities with an extract from the ac-
count given by M. de St. Georges
of his own escape.
" We were," he says, " transferred
(August 25) to the Tour au Fou,
a dependence of the old fortifica-
tions of Vannes, and found there a
large number of our companions.
After the final interrogatory we
were led back to prison. On the
morrow we were to die. On the
26th, therefore, fresh victims were
sent for every two hours. The
prison was emptied story by story,
beginning from below, without
choice or order ; all whom it con-
tained being destined to perish. I
had contrived during the whole
day to elude the attention of the
purveyors of death, and, with five
of my companions, was so fortu-
nate as to escape notice. We con-
cealed ourselves among the rafters
of the roof, and, when night came,
succeeded in purchasing our lives
of the sergeant and corporal of the
guard for three hundred and fifteen
louis d'or with which I had been
furnished by some kind relations."
Such were the events which fol
lowed the disaster of Quiberon, am
which, in spite of the vain and ini
quitous apologies attempted at tl
present time for the crimes of tl
Convention, furnish of themselves
abundant proof that, after as well
as before the fall of Robespierre,
this exterminating assembly retain-
ed to the full its murderous in-
stincts and its implacable passions.
The Church of the Cup of Cold Water.
697
The memories of that time, re-
lated from generation to generation
during the long veillees or fileries du
soir, have remained engraved in the
hearts of all true Bretons. Often
may the peasants dwelling near the
scenes of massacre be seen, on
their way to and from their daily
work in the fields, kneeling at the
foot of one of the wayside crosses
so common in the ferny lanes of
Brittany, to say a De Profundis for
the souls of the noble victims of
Quiberon.
THE CHURCH OF THE CUP OF COLD WATER.
ONE evening in the year of grace
1815, after a day of excessive heat
the heat of a Spanish summer
the aged cura of San Pedro, a vil-
lage a few leagues distant from
Seville, returned from a round of
parochial visits, weary and ex-
hausted, to his poor presbytery,
where awaited him his worthy sexa-
genarian housekeeper, Senora Mar-
garita.
No one, however accustomed to
the sight of poverty could have
failed to observe the extreme bare-
ness of the old priest's dwelling
a bareness all the more noticeable
from a certain air of pretension in
the arrangement of the few poor
articles of furniture, which made
the nakedness of the walls and the
more than doubtful condition of
the floor and ceiling still more
evident.
Margarita had just completed
the preparation of a small dish of
olla podrida for her master's supper,
which, except the sauce and the
pompous name, consisted of the
remains of his dinner, seasoned and
disguised with the utmost talent.
" God be praised ! Margarita,"
exclaimed the cura, as he inhaled
the appetizing odors which wel-
comed his return. " The fragrance
of your olla podrida would give a
dying man an appetite ! By St.
Peter, comrade, you ought to recite
the whole rosary as an act of
thanksgiving at finding so good a
supper."
Margarita, looking round at these
words, saw that her master was
followed by a stranger. Her face,
suddenly disconcerted, expressed
a curious mixture of disappoint-
ment and annoyance. Darting a
glance first at the unknown per-
sonage and then at her master, the
latter said, with the apologetic tone
of a child before a wrathful parent,
" Bah ! enough for two is enough
for three, and you would not have
had me leave a poor Christian, who
for two days has not tasted food,
to die of hunger?"
" Holy Virgin ! a queer sort of
Christian, I should say, when he
looks more like a brigand.". And
she left the room muttering to
herself.
The guest during this doubtful
reception remained standing mo-
tionless near the threshold. He
was a man of lofty stature, clad in
garments that were torn in all di-
rections. His flowing black hair,
flashing eyes, and long carabine
made, in fact, an ensemble little
calculated to inspire interest or
confidence.
u Well ?" he asked, " am I to go
awav ?"
698
The Church of the Cup of Cold Water.
With an emphatic gesture the
cura answered : *' Never shall he
who seeks shelter beneath my roof
be driven from it ! Never shall he
seek in vain a welcome ! Put down
your carabine ; let us say JBenedi-
cite and sit down to table."
" I and my carabine never part
company. The Castilian proverb
says, 'Two friends are one.' This
is my best friend. I can sup with
it between my knees ; for, though
you may suffer me in your house
instead of turning me out of it
before I have a mind to go, there
are others who would not show
me the same consideration. Now,
then, to your good health, and let
us begin."
The temperate cura of San Pe-
dro was struck with amazement at
the voracious appetite of his visi-
tor, who, not content with devour-
ing nearly the whole of the olla
podridct) emptied the wine-flask
and left nothing of an enormous
loaf. While occupied in thus
clearing the table he looked from
time to time uneasily around him,
started at the slightest sound, and,
when one of the doors suddenly
slammed in the wind, sprang to his
feet, grasping his weapon like a
man who was determined to sell his
life dearly. Then, recovering from
the alarm, he sat down and contin-
ued his meal.
When this was finished he said
to his host : " You must now put
the finishing stroke to your kind
reception. I am wounded in the
thigh. Give me some linen rags,
and then you shall be rid of me."
" I do not want to be rid of you,
my poor fellow," said the cura
kindly. " I am something of a
surgeon, and can at any rate dress
your wound better than a clumsy
village barber. You will see."
So saying, he took from a cup-
board a bundle in which were
rolled up old linen and other need-
ful appliances, and, turning up his
sleeves, prepared to exercise the
functions of a surgeon. The wound
was deep. A ball had traversed
the thigh, and it must have requir-
ed no small amount of courage and
endurance for the man to have
continued walking.
" You cannot go farther to-day,"
said the cura as he probed the
wound with the satisfaction of an
amateur. " You must be content
to pass the night here. A few
hours' rest will give you fresh
strength, lessen the inflammation,
bring down the swelling, and . . ."
" I must go to-day, and at once,"
interrupted the stranger. " There
are those who expect me," he add-
ed, sighing, and then, with a fierce
smile, " and others who seek me.
Now, then, have you finished the
dressing ? Good ! I feel quite
fresh again. Give me a loaf. Take
this gold piece for your hospitality,
and adios ! "
The priest pushed back the
money indignantly. " I am no
innkeeper, and I do not sell my
hospitality."
" As you please ; and pardon
me! Farewell."
Then, taking the loaf which Mar-
garita, at her master's bidding, had
unwillingly brought, the strange
visitor plunged into the woods
which surrounded the cura's lowly
dwelling.
An hour later, in the same woods,
the sound of repeated firing was
heard, and the stranger again hur-
ried feebly into the presbytery,
bleeding from a wound in the
breast and pale as death.
Hastily putting down some gold
pieces, he said to the priest : " My
children in the ravine near the
little river."
The Church of the Cup of Cold Water.
699
He fell exhausted on the ground,
'he Spanish gendarmes rushed
in, gun in hand, and found no re-
sistance on the part of their pri-
soner, whom they bound tightly,
and then permitted the cura to
dress his wound ; but, heedless of
the priest's observations on the
danger of removing him in his pre-
sent state, they placed him on a
cart and prepared to take their
departure, saying, "Whether he dies
now or with a halter round his
neck, his business is settled all the
same. He is the famous brigand,
Jose."
Jose" looked his thanks at the
cura and whispered, "Water!"
As the priest leant over him, hold-
ing the cup to his lips, he said
faintly, "You understand ?"
The cura nodded assent.
No sooner had the men departed
with their prisoner than, regard-
less of the voluble representations
of Margarita of the danger of go-
ing through the woods at night, he ,
hastened, as quickly as the deepen-
ing twilight would permit, in the
direction of the ravine. There, by
the corpse of a woman, killed pro-
bably by a chance shot, he found
an infant and a little boy about
four years old. The latter was
pulling his mother's arm and call-
ing on her to awake.
The feelings of Margarita may
be imagined when she beheld her
master re-enter the house with two
children.
" Saints of Paradise !" she ex-
claimed, " and what are you going
to do with them, senor ? We have
barely enough as it is to live upon,
and here are you bringing in two
children ! Well, I suppose, then, that
I am to go begging for you and them
from door to door. And after all,
what are they ? The sons of a
vagabond, a gypsy, a brigand, and
perhaps worse ! For certain they
are not even baptized !"
At this moment the babe in
swaddling-clothes began to cry.
"And how is this child to be
fed?" she resumed. "You can't
pay a nurse ; and as for the sleep-
less nights / am to have with it,
what will they matter to you, sleep-
ing at your ease all the same ?
Holy Virgin ! it cannot be six
months old. Luckily there is some
milk in the house, which only wants
warming."
Then, forgetting her displeasure
after having thus relieved her feel-
ings, she took the infant in her
arms, kissed it repeatedly, and,
raking the fire together, set an
earthen pot of milk upon the em-
bers. When the little one had
been fed and laid carefully to sleep,
the elder boy had his turn. Whilst
Margarita undressed him and im-
provised a bed with an old cloak
of her master's, the good man relat-
ed where and how he had found
the children, and how they had
been bequeathed to him by their
father.
" This is all very good and very
fine," said Margarita; "but the
chief thing is to know how we
are to feed them and ourselves
too."
Laying his hand on the Gospels r
the cura answered : " ' Verily I say
unto you that whosoever shall give
a cup of cold water to one of these '
little ones as being my disciple, he
shall not lose his reward.' "
"Amen !" answered Margarita.
Next day the priest buried the
woman found near the ravine, and
recited over her the prayers for
the dead.
Twelve years afterwards the
cura of San Pedro, who was at that
time seventy years old, was warm-
7oo
The Church of the Cup of Cold Water.
ing himself in the sun at the pres-
bytery door. It was winter, and
for two days not a ray of sunshine
had until then pierced the clouds.
By his side a lad of eleven or twelve
years of age was reading aloud the
breviary, and from time to time
glancing somewhat enviously at a
youth of sixteen or so actively
working in the little garden. Mar-
garita, nearly blind, was listen-
ing.
The sound of approaching wheels
was heard, and presently a splen-
did carriage on the road from Se-
ville, instead of passing, drew up
at the door. A servant in rich
livery got down, and, going up to
the old priest, asked him for a glass
of water for his master.
"Carlos," said the cura to the
younger boy, " fetch a glass of water
for his lordship, and some wine also,
if he will accept it quick !"
The nobleman then alighted from
the carriage. He was a man of
about fifty years of age.
" Are these boys your nephews,
padre ?" he asked.
" Far better than that they are
my children; that is, of course, my
children by adoption."
"How so?"
" I will tell you, senor mio ; for,
besides that I could not refuse to
answer the inquiries of a great no-
bleman like yourself, I, who am
poor and old, with no experience
of the world, have need of good
counsel to direct me how I am to
provide for the future of these
young boys."
He then related their history,
asking, as he concluded his re-
cital, " And now what would your
lordship advise me to do with
them ?"
" Make them ensigns in the
Royal Guards, and, in order that
they may keep a suitable establish-
ment, allow them a pension of four
thousand ducats."
" Sir, I did not ask you to jest,
but to advise."
" And then your church must be
rebuilt, and close by we will have
a new and commodious presbytery
with a garden. The whole shall
be enclosed in a fence. See, I have
the plan in my pocket. Does it
suit you? When it is finished we
will call it The Church of the Cup of
Cold Water"
"What is the meaning of all
this?" asked the bewildered cura.
" What are you saying ? Stay ! I
seem to have some vague recollec-
tion of these features, of this
voice ?"
" It means that I am Don Jose
della Ribiera," was the answer,
" and that twelve years ago I was
Jose the brigand. I made my es-
cape from prison ; times are chang-
ed, and they have made the robber-
chief the chief of a political party.
You have been a hospitable host to
me, and a father to my sons* Em-
brace me, my children !"
And he folded the boys in his
arms.
Then, holding out his hand to
the cura, he said, " Well, father,
will you not accept the Church
of the Cup of Cold Water ?"
The cura, greatly moved, turned
to old Margarita, who stood behind
him weeping for joy, and said :
" Did I not remind you that * who-
soever shall give even a cup of
cold water to one of these little
ones should in no wise lose his re-
ward ' ? "
A year afterwards Don Jose delia
Ribiera and his two sons were pre-
sent at the consecration of the
Church of San Pedro of the Cup of
Cold Water one of the prettiest
churches in the neighborhood of
Seville.
Fighting Fitzgerald.
701
FIGHTING FITZGERALD.
THE name of " Fighting Fitzge-
rald " still exists, and comes to the
surface when any mention is made
of duelling as naturally as that of
William Kidd as the typical exem-
plar of piracy. The figure of Kidd
has been taken out of the cloud of
vague tradition and set distinctly
and prosaically in the last volume
of Macaulay's History of England j
but Fitzgerald, who flourished much
later, and in a time which has fur-
nished some of the most graphic
sketches in English anecdotical
literature, has thus far failed to
be shown to the public in any hu-
man or possible form. He is vague-
ly known as the chief of duellists
in the place and time Ireland at
the end of the last century when
duelling was carried to its highest
extravagance ; but Sir Jonah Bar-
rington, who gives such a full ac-
count of the society of fire-eaters
and the notable duels of his time,
makes only incidental mention of
" Fighting Fitzgerald." He had
ended his career before Sheil's
time, and was not a member of the
bar, so that he missed furnishing a
parallel portrait to that of Lord
Norbury, who was one of his al-
most innumerable antagonists in
the " fifteen acres." Yet "Fight-
ing Fitzgerald " was one of the
most notable as well as notorious
persons of his day, a type of the
Protestant gentry of Ireland at the
time of our Revolution, and re-
markable in his character and ca-
reer to a degree that seems a pro-
digy to us, like a Nero, or the
strangest compound of ferocity and
foppery that ever lived.
George Robert Fitzgerald was
born in the latter half of the last
century in his father's mansion in
the beautiful vale of Turlough,
north of the town of Castlebar, in
the county of Mayo. He was of
the noble Geraldine family on his
father's side, coming, as he boast-
ed, of the elder or Desmond branch,
which was banished from its pos-
sessions in Waterford to the wilds
of Connaught by Cromwell. His
mother was Lady Mary Hervey,
daughter of the Earl of Bristol,
and sister of the acquiescent hus-
band of the bigamous Duchess of
Kingston, Foote's enemy, and of
the Earl Bishop of Derry, who for
a time assumed to lead the Volun-
teer movement in Ireland with the
pomp and ambition of a king, and,
after the disappointment of his pre-
tensions, lived in Italy in a haugh-
ty and epicurean idleness, and a
contemptuous disregard for the du-
ties of a bishop of the Established
Church and of public opinion about
his course of life, perhaps more as-
tonishing than anything in eccle-
siastical history.
There was a saying that " God
made men, women, and Herveys,"
and the vagaries of the race were
never more singularly marked than
in this Irish collateral descendant.
Nothing but what is favorable is
known of his mother, from whom
he probably derived the sweetness
of manner and affability which usu-
ally distinguished him when not
enraged. She had been a maid of
honor to the Princess Amelia, and
her transfer to the mansion of a
Connaught squire such as it was
at that time, with its riot, coarse-
ness, and barbarism, must have
702
Fighting Fitzgerald.
been a somewhat similar shock to
that which Mrs. Fanny Kemble
Butler has recorded of her expe-
rience at the South Carolina plan-
tation of her husband. The father
of George Robert Fitzgerald was
one of the worst specimens of his
class. The Protestant country gen-
tlemen of those days lived in a
state of riot, ignorance, and bru-
tality quite unparalleled in any
modern civilization. Hunting by
day and orgies at night were their
habitual occupation, diversified by
duels. George Robert's mother
was soon compelled to leave her
husband and return to England,
while he paraded his debauchery
by seating his mistress beside him
on the bench of the assize court
on its periodical visits to Castlebar.
We can form an idea of the state
of society in which such a thing
was tolerated without any special
opprobrium. It must be remem-
bered that he was not an obscure
man, but a representative of one of
the noblest families in Ireland and
the owner of an estate of five thou-
sand pounds a year, equal to at
least fifty thousand dollars in our
experience.
George Robert was educated at
Eton by the instigation of his mo-
ther's family. At sixteen years of
age he received a commission in
the army, and was stationed at
Galway, the very focus of the wild-
est riot of that day. He soon earn-
ed the sobriquet which distin-
guishes him in history. He fought
with a Mr. French, who had the
presumption to bring him a chal-
lenge from a tradesman whom he
had cudgelled. They locked them-
selves into the parlor of an inn
and commenced to shoot. Fitz-
gerald missed his man and French's
pistol flashed in the pan. Young
Fitzgerald stepped forward with
courteous generosity and proffered
his powder-horn to supply the
priming. Alarmed by the shot, the
people of the house broke down
the door, and there was an end to
that duel. A second duel in Gal-
way was caused by his petulance
toward an elder officer, whose man-
ners he did not like, and in this he
received a crack in the skull from
the pistol-bullet which he carried
to his death, and which may cha-
ritably be supposed to have added
to the wildness of his temper. It
was found necessary to trepan his
skull, and on the operating-table
he begged the surgeon to spare his
toupee. He was soon the most fa-
mous of all the ready fighters of
Connaught in his eagerness for per-
sonal encounters and daring and
insatiable recklessness. From Mayo
he went up to Dublin, preceded by
his fame, which was soon estab-
lished on a metropolitan basis by
half a hundred encounters. In
Dublin George Robert fell in love
with the prettiest and richest young
lady of her time, Miss Connelly, a
sister of the great commoner, Mr.
Connelly of Castletown, and a cou-
sin of the Duke of Leinster. Fitz-
gerald was extraordinarily hand-
some and of very fascinating man-
ners with ladies, nor is it likely
that his reputation for recklessness
and bravery injured him in the es-
timation of a spirited Irish girl.
Mr. Connelly did not approve of
such a brother-in-law, and conse-
quently there was an elopement,
with a reconciliation afterward and
a grand wedding journey to Paris
on the wife's fortune.
Here Fitzgerald was the wonder
of the hour from his magnificence,
his profuseness, and his reckless
daring. Louis XVI., who was lazy
and peaceable, said sneeringly,
"Here comes Jack, the giant-killer,"
Fighting Fitzgerald.
703
and Fitzgerald has been credited
with the sublime impudence of the
remark concerning the identity of
the thief, on seeing his majesty's
portrait hung beside that of the
Saviour. It has been attributed to
many others on as many different
occasions, and it is really doubtful
if it was ever uttered by anybody ;
but it suits Fitzgerald's " style "
better than most of its supposititious
authors. He was a companion of
the Count d'Artois in the wildest
dissipation, and had the prover-
bial ill-fortune which accompanied
games of hazard with that accom-
plished prince. He astonished all
the royal hunt by leaping on horse-
back a wall with a descent of four-
teen feet into the Seine, and swim-
ming across to bring the deer to
bay, and had the distinguished
honor of handing the knife to the
king to cut the poor animal's throat.
But the fate overtook him which
usually befalls the brilliant spend-
thrift. And here crops out that
part of his character seemingly so
inconsistent with his courage, his
haughtiness, and his recklessness,
but which the record shows to be
characteristic of many of his class.
Thackeray depicts it very power-
fully in the Luck of Barry Lyndon,
but his hero was not of the blood
of the Fitzgeralds nor a gentleman
by breeding. Impatient at being
without money, Fitzgerald bet at the
gambling-table when he could not
pay his losses, engaged in ques-
tionable jockeying transactions, and,
strangest of all, had fits of abject
cowardice, as though his spirit was
contaminated by embarrassment
and meanness. As if to complete
a parallel to Pope's portrait of his
famous ancestor in
" Pride that licks the dust,"
he was ignominiously kicked from
the door of a gambling-room by
the Count d'Artois, without resent-
ing it, for dishonoring a bet.
He soon returned to Dublin and
resumed his spirit and his honor
with a supply of money. The tra-
dition of his appearance long sur-
vived in society. He is described
as rather low in stature but elegant-
ly made, and he dressed in the
most elegant French fashion, the
button and loop of his hat, his
sword-knot and buckles all brilliant
with diamonds, his garments of
brocade and velvet, a muff on his
arm, two enamelled chains with a
multitude of seals dangling from
each fob, and an appearance so
light, foppish, and yet distinguish-
ed that it was impossible to be-
lieve him the author of the des-
perate and ferocious deeds credit-
ed to his name. His career was
wilder and more reckless than ever.
Among other exploits he fired a
pistol in the streets at Denis
Browne, high-sheriff of Mayo, and
struck "Black Jack" Fitzgibbon,
afterward Earl of Clare, a blow in
the face ; and out of his violences
these two deeds at least were fully
avenged in the future. About this
time he retired to his estate in
Mayo, and there, according to ac-
count, actually took an interest in
the welfare of his tenants. He en-
deavored to encourage the growth
of wheat and to establish a linen
manufacture. Wild as he was, he
showed that there was something
more to his character than the
mere bully and spendthrift- A de-
bauchee, it may be said, he never
was. His tastes were moderate in
all indulgence of the appetites.
His wife died, leaving an infant
daughter, and Fitzgerald, who had
always been a most tender and de-
voted husband, was nearly frantic
with grief. He started with the
704
Fighting Fitzgerald.
body for the burial-place of her
family in the county of Kildare,
where she had requested that she
might be buried, and traversed the
whole distance in the dead of win-
ter with a long procession compos-
ed of his servants and followers.
At the inns he had the coffin
brought into his room to lament
over it. At one place the innkeeper
objected to having the foreign
corpse brought into the house, as
it might bring ill luck, and was
nearly made a corpse himself by
the furious mourner, who drove
him out of doors with his sword.
On his return Fitzgerald took up
the wild habit of hunting by night,
and rode over the hills of Mayo in
the chase, accompanied by servants
with naming torches to show the
way, like a veritable demon hunts-
man. The memory of the mid-
night hunts, the wild chorus of
dogs and the shouts of "mad Fitz-
gerald " as he tore headlong by, is
yet a tradition in the region about
Turlough. Among his exploits was
his leaping his horse over a preci-
pice for a bravado to the gentle-
men of the hunt. The poor ani-
mal was killed, but he escaped
without injury. Equally charac-
teristic was his driving a person
from table because he was too fat
and the sight of him eating would
shock his delicate sensibilities.
This compound of the exquisite
and the dare-devil must have been
a strange being to the squires of
Mayo.
During the latter part of his life
on his estate Fitzgerald acted as
though he were "fey" to use the
Scotch expression for one doomed
to a violent death by his own con-
duct. He quarrelled with the
Brownes, the all-powerful family in
the west, the head of which was
Lord Altamont, and a member,
Denis Browne, the sheriff, whom he
had shot at in Dublin. For some
fancied pique he rode up to the
hall-door of Lord Altamont and
shot the watch-dog on the porch,
leaving word that while he would
not allow the men to keep dogs, he
would graciously permit the ladies
of the family to keep a lapdog
each. Next he rode up to the
door of Denis Browne, called him
a coward, and dared him to come
out and fight. Browne could not
refuse so open an affront, and offer-
ed a meeting, stipulating that the
weapons should be broadswords, in-
asmuch as he was heavy and clumsy
and no match with small-sword or
pistol for so accomplished a duel-
list. To this Fitzgerald agreed,
but when he came to the place of
meeting he was seized with a sud-
den spasm of ferocity and fired a
pistol at Browne, who fled into a
house. He quarrelled with Dick
Martin, who
" Ruled the houseless wilds of Connemara,"
and was afterwards known as the
Henry Bergh of his day in the Brit-
ish Parliament. They met in the
streets of Castlebar and fought,
Martin being wounded in the breast.
On this occasion, as on some others,
Fitzgerald was accused of wearing
a bullet-proof undergarment, but he
was generally acquitted of this sus-
picion in popular estimation. At
a duel in Belgium in which that
gallant Irish gentleman, Hamilton
Rowan, was his second, the test
was proposed, and it was conclu-
sively proved that he was not
guilty of such treacherous coward-
ice. Not satisfied with having
quarrels on his hands with the
Brownes and the Martins, he one
after another insulted the Blakes,
the Bodkins, the Frenches, and all
the proprietors of his neighbor-
Fighting Fitzgerald.
705
hood, so that he was without a sin-
gle powerful friend within it. Not
only did he alienate all his equals
and associates, but he could not
restrain himself from acquiring the
enmity of the peasantry by shoot-
ing their dogs and in other ways
wantonly injuring them. He had
no support or faction in the coun-
ty except a set of desperate fol-
lowers. Their places were no sine-
cures, and he was fond of trying
their courage by some desperate
freak. On one occasion he fan-
cied that he wanted an attorney,
and engaged one in Dublin to go
down to Mayo for permanent ser-
vice. On getting into the carriage
at night for the journey the attor-
ney found a speechless person in a
fur coat on the seat beside him, and
woke up in the morning to find he
had been riding beside a huge
black bear, one of Fitzgerald's pets.
Fitzgerald ordered the bear to kiss
the attorney, and in the struggle of
the bear to put his muzzle in his
face he broke out of the carriage
and ran away amid the wild laugh-
ter of his employer.
Fitzgerald became involved in a
lawsuit with his disreputable fa-
ther for the arrears of a rent-
charge on his estate settled at the
time of his son's marriage and never
paid. In accordance with Fitzger-
ald's views of justice he took his
father a prisoner and carried him
off to his own house. An attempt
was made to rescue the old man,
and his son removed him to a for-
tification which he had construct-
ed on a hill in his demesne and
armed with the cannon of a Danish
ship which had been wrecked on
the coast. An appeal was made
to the central authority in Dublin
Castle, and a detachment was sent
to reduce the fort. They found
the guns dismounted and spiked,
VOL. xxix. 45
and that Fitzgerald had taken his
father with him in a boat to one of
the islands in Sligo Bay. Finally
the old man agreed to sign the
necessary papers for a settlement
and was taken by his son to Dub-
lin. As soon as he got there he
had his son arrested for abduction.
Fitzgerald was tried, fined a thou-
sand pounds, and imprisoned in
Newgate, from whence he publish-
ed An Appeal to the Public in
the shape of a pamphlet written in
the elaborate language of those
days, but with very considerable
eloquence and force, and but few
signs of that extravagance which
might have been expected from its
author. He was pardoned by the
government ; so strong and jeal-
ous was family influence that no
crime could alienate it in any con-
tact between one of its members
and authority.
Fitzgerald returned home after
his release wilder and more fero-
cious than ever. One Patrick
Randal McDonald, a coarse and
bold attorney, had been engaged in
actions against him, and his punc-
tilious pride prevented his meeting
him in the usual way because of
his low birth. McDonald was fired
at and hit in the leg from behind a
hedge as he was riding home at
night. He accused Fitzgerald of
being the instigator of the attempt
at assassination, and caused a ten-
ant of his named Murphy to be
arrested. Murphy was discharged
for want of evidence. Fitzgerald
had a warrant sworn out against
McDonald for the arrest and false
imprisonment of Murphy, and pro-
ceeded to execute it in his own
summary fashion. McDonald and
two of his followers were captured
by Fitzgerald and taken to his
mansion, and there confined for the
night. In the morning they were
Fighting Fitzgerald.
started on their way to Castlebar
under an escort. Not far from the
house shots were fired from behind
a hedge, and the escort, turning
upon the prisoners as though they
feared a rescue, shot and killed
them. The news soon spread over
the country. McDonald was cap-
tain of a militia company in Castle-
bar, and, besides, a man of strong
faction. The volunteers and the
faction gathered and poured along
the road toward the mansion at Tur-
lough, armed with guns and scythes
and sticks. Fitzgerald was warn-
ed, but, by that fate which some-
times confounds the bravest, and
is particularly liable to fall with
sudden panic on such impulsive
spirits, he was seized with a fit of
dastardly trembling and could not
even mount the horse which was
brought to the door for him to fly
with. He hid himself, and was
found by the fierce crowd under
a pile of clothes in his bedroom.
" What do you want, you ruf-
fian ?" he cried out when found.
" To dhrag ye like a dog's head
to a bonfire," said a huge peasant
named Morran, who seized him by
the breast of his coat and drew him
out.
A pistol was snapped at his head,
but it did not go off, and he was
finally dragged and hustled along
the road until he was delivered to
the jailer at Castlebar. That night
the sentry was overpowered and
an attack made on him in his cell.
Several shots were fired at him,
one of which hit his thigh and an-
other broke a ring on his little
finger; a bayonet was broken off
between his teeth, and he was
thrust through the arm. He fought
with the ferocity of a wildcat until
he was left for dead under the
table and the lights were extin-
guished.
The trial speedily followed, in
which the jury was summoned by
Denis Browne, and John Fitz-
gibbon was prosecuting attorney.
The conviction was speedy, and
the sun was not allowed to set on
the execution. The sheriff and the
prosecuting attorney appeared to
fear lest a pardon or a reprieve
should be obtained by the family
of Fitzgerald if there was a day's
delay. At six o'clock in the even-
ing he walked from the jail to the
gallows, the executioner, with a
mask on his face, preceding him.
He was dressed in sordid garments,
a faded scarlet coat and a hemp-
en cord substituting the usual dia-
mond loop of his hat. On reaching
the gallows he sprang up the ladder
with a light step, and, as soon as
the rope was around his neck, flung
himself off. The rope broke.
That touch of death chilled all his
bravado. He was the coward
again, and besought and wept and
prayed for mercy, for life, for min-
utes of time to pray, until the
crowd lost their savage exultation
in contempt and pity. A new rope
was brought and the miserable
wretch hanged in writhing violence
under the eye of the exulting sheriff.
According to custom, the mob
stoned the executioner to the im-
minent danger of his life.
The body was taken to the house
at Turlough, and so complete was
the plunder of all its magnificent
furnishing that it was waked by
candles set in the necks of bottles,
not a single candlestick being left.
A few of his trembling followers at-
tended the last rites and saw the
body buried in the family tomb on
the estate.
He was thirty-eight years of age.
Such a fiery spirit, unbalanced
in brain and afflicted with blood-
drunkenness, yet not without kind-
A Summer Idyl.
707
ly qualities, generosity, and court-
esy, alternating between desperate
bravery and fits of wretched cow-
ardice, capable of chivalrous sacri-
fice and of taking mean advantage
according to the moment, might
seem impossible without insanity ;
but our Wild Bills and despera-
does of the Western frontier are
very often after a similar pattern,
making allowance for difference in
culture and surroundings. It grew
to an evil end in an Irish gentle-
man amid the worst society in the
world. In more favorable circum-
stances it brought honor and glory
to Charles XII. and Lord Peter-
borough.
A SUMMER IDYL.
MINE is no lay of long-past days,
There breaketh through its singing
No echo of a Godfrey's lance
With knightly prowess ringing ;
It holdeth no cathedral state
Save that the forests bring it :
The birds that pair 'mid budding leaves
I think might fitly sing it.
One summer, when the lengthened heats
The city streets were burning,
And languid footsteps sought the hills
To coax the spring's returning,
There gathered, 'neath a farm-house roof
That sheltered kindly faces,
A motley handful from the town,
Haunting earth's quiet places.
No waterfall that eyes had seen
Half-hid among the mountains,
But eager feet must scale the cliffs
To track the silver fountains ;
No solemn mountain lifted brow
To catch the sunlight tender
But ardent voices called to it
Heart's secrets to surrender.
No wonder that a small foot's tread,
A brown eye's liquid gleaming,
Should mingle with the fountain's voice
That sang through some hearts' dreaming ;
/08 A Summer Idyl.
No wonder that the forest seemed
To lie in sunshine ever
When twinkling foot and shining eyes
Made leaf and heart-strings quiver.
So one, amid the careless group,
With earnest soul life living,
Soon learned to treasure for one's sake
All that he had worth giving.
His sunshine grew the soft brown eyes,
His clouds the drooped lids veiling,
His guide on every mountain side
The firm foot far heights scaling.
Soon grew one maiden's heart to be
Calm sea for his ship's sailing,
Her breath, the wind that filled its sails,
Her absence, its light's failing;
Soon grew the valley 'twixt the hills
A little glimpse of heaven,
And earthly joy wore heavenly state,
Grown sweeter with love's leaven.
A puzzled joy it was to watch
Her swift and busy finger
As hearkened she his earnest speech
O'er glancing needle linger;
A half-real dream to hear her voice,
As clear as thrush's singing,
Out speak her thoughts whate'er their path,
An upward way still winging.
Would she outsoar him, nor look back
To learn his earnest loving ?
So lifted unto light that soul
Earth-love seemed, unbehoving.
All through the summer grew his hope,
His love each day increasing,
The faithful service of true heart
At her feet laid unceasing,
Half fearing her heart's mystery
To loose with thoughtless speaking,
Lest closed for ever be the gate
To honor's dearest seeking.
We noticed in an idle way,
Who watched the glamour growing,
The tender little courtesies
From constant thought o'erflowing;
A Summer Idyl.
The careful breaking, as she passed,
Of forest boughs unruly,
The fear to help, on broken cliff,
A foot so firm, unduly;
The harebells gathered near the sky
To win her gracious keeping,
The blueberries' great, luscious globes
Her tin cup's measure heaping.
So ran the idyl's golden thread
Our dulness interweaving,
The homely pattern of our life
From its thin lines relieving;
So rang the poem's silver words,
With life prosaic blending ;
So sweet the strophe of each day
We almost feared the ending.
But, as May's bloom is perfected
In happy June's completeness,
Her woman's heart at last gave out
Its mystery of sweetness :
One day the silent hills betrayed
Her quick pulses' fluttering,
And love's entreaty words awoke
Too dear for common uttering.
Unto the summer's subtle siege
The citadel surrendered ;
Captive and conqueror only knew
What faith the treaty tendered.
King Alexander, in his quest,
Heard but the song of heaven :
To this love's quest on northern hills
Was Eden's vision given :
Not glimpse alone of cool green palms
Above the closed gates waving,
But living draught from sparkling stream
The meadow grasses laving;
With vision of celestial hills
Not any nightfall darkened,
That fairer grew in lovers' eyes
As each the other hearkened.
At last came from the city's walls
Relentless call of duty,
And faded from our daily paths
Our idyl of life's beauty ;
7IO Current Events.
True, was the maiden's happy face
A little space left shining
Along the forests' shady ways
Our hearts her thoughts divining ;
True was it, heavy letters came
To kindle her lips' smiling,
But not for us the sacred hoard
Heaped but for her beguiling.
And with the early snow that capped
Our hills, with autumn burning,
Faded our mountain ways of life,
Each footstep homeward turning.
Still, ever, as at winter hearth
We tell that summer over,
We see in shade and sunshine rise
The forms of maid and lover,
While, with the grayness of life's days,
Still is the gold thread braided,
Tying that dream of perfect love
In those two hearts unfaded.
CURRENT EVENTS.
THE PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLY'S ment of Christ, or an entirely new
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE CATH- invention of the Catholic hierarchy,
OLIC CHURCH. substituted for the genuine sacra-
ment.
At the General Assembly of the This second question is a very
Presbyterian Church, held this year trivial one. On the so-called evan-
in Saratoga, a discussion respecting gelical theory, sacraments are mere
the view which sound Presbyterian signs without any efficacy. The
orthodox believers ought to take of question of validity or invalidity
the Catholic Church arose, which cannot be raised, for it has no
still continues in the newspapers meaning except in view of a sup-
of that denomination, and at the posed effect which is produced or
time attracted some general at- not, according as the sacramental
tention. The great question with cause is or is not really placed,
the clerical and lay elders was : The first question is the real one
Whether the Catholic Church is for Presbyterians and Protestants
a Christian church or an abso- generally. The history of the dis-
lutely anti-Christian religion. A cussions and decisions in the Pres-
second question, subsidiary to the byterian Assembles is briefly this :
first, was : Whether Catholic bap- When the Old and New School
tism is valid baptism, a true sacra- Presbyterians were divided into
Current Events.
separate bodies, the Old-School
Assembly passed resolutions, or
emitted what they call " deliver-
ances," in which it was declared
that the Catholic Church is not the
Christian Church or any part of it.
The late learned Dr. Hodge, a man
highly respected by all men who
knew his character, and one of the
chief ornaments of Princeton Col-
lege, together with some others,
strongly opposed these acts. The
New-School Assembly abstained
from passing any of a similar na-
ture. These two bodies having
now been fused into one, one con-
sequence of the fusion is that there
is not the same general agreement
in respect to the substance of or-
thodox Presbyterian doctrine in the
united Presbyterian denomination
as there was in the separated Old-
School fraction. Accordingly, when
the Catholic question came up this
year there was a difference of opi-
nion dividing the elders into two
parties. The one party wished to
reaffirm the former " deliveran-
ces." The other party wished to
fall back upon the position of pro-
test against certain doctrines and
practices of the Catholic Church,
without going to the length of de-
claring that these have altogether
destroyed the very essence and
substance of genuine Christianity
in the Roman communion.
The two contrived to make a
compromise, of which the upshot is
that the Catholic Church in general
is a branch of the Christian Church,
whereas the hierarchy is a kind
of anti-Christian corporate body
which has usurped dominion over
the laity who compose the commu-
nion recognized as a portion of the
Christian Church.
The dispute has become warmer
and more perplexed than ever since
the Assembly adjourned, some on
both sides claiming a victory for
their own view, and others again
denouncing the decision in no mea-
sured terms. Their petty disputes
and mutual recriminations have no
interest for any except those who
are concerned in them. We dis-
miss them altogether, to pay atten-
tion to the only aspect of the dis-
cussion worthy of notice.
The extreme and violent faction
among the Presbyterians can hold
their own orthodox doctrines in
conjunction with their anti-Catho-
lic prejudices sincerely and hon-
estly, only as ignorant and deceiv-
ed by misrepresentations. The
progress of knowledge and the aug-
mentation of study and observa-
tion, in the period of the last half
century, have led to a very great
diminution of the force and exten-
sion of these prejudices among or-
thodox Protestants. A large num-
ber of them, including their best
scholars and thinkers, have discov-
ered that they cannot undermine
our foundations without shaking
dangerously their own fabric. They
have also learned to understand
and appreciate more correctly the
Catholic Christianity of modern,
mediaeval, and ancient times, and
the great writers of the Catholic
Church, its ancient doctors and
early fathers. They are unwilling
and unable to isolate themselves
from the universal and historical
Christendom. They have been,
therefore, carried to a position
from which the view which they
take of the Christian Church and
Christianity presents a different as-
pect from that which is taken by
those who are still in the valley of
ignorance, surrounded by dense
mists of prejudice. They regard
the Christian Church as in some
general sense one, with substantial-
ly the same faith and religion, and
712
Current Events.
their criterion of essential ortho-
doxy adapts itself to the exigency
which requires that a common mea-
sure shall be found applicable alike
to Catholics, Greeks, and orthodox
Protestants ; to modern, ancient,
and primitive Christianity, as they
apprehend the actual state and
character of the things designated
by these terms.
The extremely Protestant and
violently anti-Catholic party in the
several Protestant denominations
is naturally irritated by this dis-
turbance of old-fashioned, heredi-
tary prejudices. It is impossible,
however, to resist successfully
knowledge, enlightened thought,
sound reasoning, by obstinate ad-
herence to prejudice and to an au-
thority which cannot establish any
valid claim to the submission of
the mind or the will. Protestants
cannot help in the long run, and
in a general sense, using the right
they have always claimed to inves-
tigate and decide for themselves,
on their individual responsibility,
all questions pertaining to doctrine
and religion. The Catholic Church
is before them, and their own con-
troversies only present her doc-
trinal and ethical and historical
character in a clearer light and a
more commanding position. They
must examine, and inquire, and re-
flect concerning this great phenome-
non which cannot be ignored. They
must account in a rational and satis-
factory manner, and in a way con-
sistent with their own professed
Christian principles, for the origin,
growth, and universality of the Ca-
tholic Church. They must also,
each separate form for itself, ren-
der an account to Christendom
and the world of their own reason
of being, of their origin, and the
validity of their pretensions. The
more the Catholic Church is dis-
cussed in their assemblies the bet-
ter pleased are we ; and as for the
harsh epithets, the damnatory re-
solutions, the loud assertions which
are exploded on these occasions,
we smile at them, and so does the
world. Whatever real scholars and
honest thinkers among them may
say on their side shall receive our
respectful attention.
IMPENDING CHANGES IN GERMANY.
There seems to be no room for
further doubt as to the actual re-
signation of Dr. Falk, the framer
of the May Laws. This, coupled
with other signs, leads one to be-
lieve that the May Laws themselves
will soon be a thing of the past, or
will be so altered as to admit of
the modus vivendi between the Ca-
tholics of Germany and the state
which Prince Bismarck has for
several years past professed ear-
nestly to desire. It has been ad-
mitted long since, even by those
who, through prejudice against Ca-
tholicity or actual short-sighted-
ness, at first welcomed them, that
the May Laws proved a disastrous
failure. They were framed to
strangle Catholic life in Germany.
They undoubtedly wrought great
material havoc in the church, the
record of which has appeared time
and again in the pages of this ma-
gazine. Yet, as a matter of fact,
they succeeded in giving not a
new but a stronger and more he-
roic life to the German church.
With sees despoiled and bishops
banished ; with altars unserved and
schools and seminaries closed ; with
the religious of both sexes wander-
ing over the world, we have seen
these resolute Germans welded to-
gether by the very blows of the
persecution that fell so fiercely
upon them in the shape of the May
Current Events.
713
Laws. They did not rebel, neith-
er did they whine and stretch out
useless hands to heaven. They
seized fast hold of what they had.
They had votes and they knew
how to use them. They had the
press, and they learned how to use
that. They had that happiest of
combinations, an intelligent and
faithful priesthood and an intelli-
gent and faithful laity. They knew
exactly what they wanted, and they
made for it courageously. Noth-
ing could daunt them. When their
bishops, priests, or editors were
fined, they paid the fines. When
they could not pay them they went
to prison. If they were banished
they carried the story of their
wrongs abroad. Meanwhile they
kept their eye on their votes, and
returned able men to represent
them in Parliament. They were
denounced by the government, by
Prince Bismarck himself, as traitors.
They responded by returning mem-
bers who could make even Prince
Bismarck wince, and whose intelli-
gence and power and nobility of
life and character were an honor
to all Germany.
Time went on, and time is always
on the side of the right. In the
first flush of his victory over France
the sympathy of the world had
been altogether on the side of
Prince Bismarck. As the smoke
of battle cleared away truths that
were hidden began to appear.
Prince Bismarck's own character
began to show not quite so god-
like as had been thought. He
quarrelled with his friends; he
quarrelled with every one in turn.
He was bent on having his own
way, us most of us are ; but in this
game it is one against a world, and
in the long run, in these days es-
pecially, the world wins, and has
sometimes a rude way of winning.
Outer sympathy began to fail the
prince ; and when the enthusiastic
German people came to foot the
bills entailed by the chancellor's
heroic policy, the great victories,
the fortresses, the Krupp cannon,
the mighty armies, the horses, the
bayonets and rifles and uniforms,
began to wear quite a new aspect.
They all had to be paid for, and
somebody had to pay for them.
Where were the French milliards ?
Gone ! And with them was gone
German industry and German
thrift. War had wrought its de-
bauch, and the people were left
poorer than ever.
Hence arose the conflict of par-
ties, and fuel was added to the fire
of socialism. Meanwhile the Ca-
tholics were working bravely as
ever, though the persecution was
trying them fiercely as ever. They
returned more members to Parlia-
ment at each new election, until at
the elections forced on by the
chancellor, in view of the attempts
on the life of the Emperor last
year, the Catholics found them-
selves with the balance of power
in the Reichstag. Prince Bismarck
was in despair for allies. He prides
himself on his gastronomic ability.
After much hesitation, and much
looking this way and that to see
if there was no escape, and many
a wry face, he sat down to perform
the most difficult feat of his life :
he swallowed himself! or, in other
words, everything he had ever said,
or done, or written, or instigated
against the Catholics. Let us hope
that his dish will agree with him.
He has gone over to the " traitors "
to save his government.
THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE.
To say that there is a complete
reconciliation between the German
Current Events.
Government and the Catholic
Church would, of course, be pre-
mature. But matters are plainly
tending that way. Dr. Falk gave
as the excuse for his resignation
that he now saw a possibility of
such reconciliation, and he was too
patriotic to stand in the way of it.
It is needless to discuss Dr. Falk's
patriotism or to waste hard words
on him now. There is room, too,
for higher motives in the renewal
of good offices between the courts
of Berlin and the Vatican than
Prince Bismarck's need of a Parlia-
mentary majority. The attempts
on his life seem to have opened the
eyes of the German Emperor to
dangers which he scarcely suspect-
ed to exist in the empire. When
great dangers threaten men natu-
rally look around for help, and the
conviction came to him at last
that the Catholics were after all
among the most loyal of his sub-
jects. They had been tried as no
other class of his subjects had been
tried in every way short of abso-
lute torture of the person yet
never had they gone beyond the
fragments of law left to them in
seeking redress. Were the Catho-
lic Church, as had been freely al-
leged, an agent of disorder, it had
every incentive to exercise its great
power, which had never been de-
nied. But the honest convictions
of any thinking and observant man
must force the truth upon him
that the Catholic Church now,
as always, is the prime agent of
order in this world for order's
sake, irrespective of this or that
form of government. The social-
ists themselves in Germany, as
all the world over, regard the
church as a deadlier foe to their
nefarious schemes and attempts
than all the monarchs and rulers
put together, while it goes far be-
yond them in its appeal for, and
defence of, what is really owing to
humanity. The Emperor was pre-
pared, therefore, to listen to the
calm, clear voice of the Holy
Father, Leo XIII., appealing for
peace, not in the name of this or
that man, but in the name of God
and of humanity. The German
Emperor is certainly not without a
strong religious belief. He has
given frequent expression to this
belief, and his expressions deepen
and widen with advancing years.
Perhaps the most significant of
these was uttered as recently as
June 17, at the commemoration
festival of a religious society in
Berlin. The substance of the
speech, as reported in the London
Times, was this :
" If there is anything capable of acting
as a stay to us in the life and turmoil of
the present time, it is the support alone
to be found in Jesus Christ. Let not
yourselves, therefore, be misled, gentle-
men, by the tendencies prevailing in the
world, especially in our days, and do not
join the great multitude who either en-
tirely leave the Bible out of account as
the only source of truth, or falsely inter-
pret it in their own sense. You all
know, gentlemen, that I, of full and free
conviction, belong to the positive (not
positivist) union founded by my deceas-
ed father. The ground and rock to
which I and all of us must cling is the
unadulterated faith as taught us by the
Bible. There are many who do not pur-
sue the same path ; every one does as
best he can, according to his knowledge
and his conscience, shaping in conform-
ity therewith all his acts and all his ways.
I esteem, honor, and tolerate them ; but
whoever also wishes to enter the society
will always be received with open arms.
. . . Each one can act as his conscience
dictates, but all must, nevertheless,
build on the ground alone of the Bible
and the Gospel."
If that be not a proclamation of
freedom of conscience to all his
subjects, then plain words have no
The Civil Marriage Bill in Italy.
715
meaning. Certainly Catholics ask
no more liberty than the measure
there laid down to shape their
acts and ways in conformity with
their knowledge and their con-
science.
THE CIVIL MARRIAGE BILL IN ITALY.
ROME, June 17, 1879.
IN my last contribution I alluded to a
law, then under discussion in the Italian
Parliament, establishing the precedence
of the civil celebration of marriage be-
fore the ecclesiastical ceremony. On the
igth of May it was sanctioned, to wit :
ART. i. The omission of the celebra-
tion of the civil marriage before any re-
ligious ceremony whatsoever constitutes
an offence which is punished according
to the following articles. The civil mar-
riage may be celebrated at any time, and
such a celebration annuls the penal ac-
tion, provided it takes place before sen-
tence is pronounced. The penal action
is suppressed also by the death of one of
the parties united by the religious rite.
ART. 2. The minister of any form of
worship who gives his voluntary assist-
ance to the religious rites contemplated
in the preceding article, without having
evidence that the marriage was first cele-
brated in the form established by the
Civil Code, shall be punished with im-
prisonment for not less than one month
and not more than six.
ART. 3. The spouses who commit the
offence enunciated in Article I shall be
punished with imprisonment, which may
be extended to three months. The wit-
nesses who assist voluntarily at the cele-
bration of the religious rite before the
celebration of the civil marriage shall be
subject to the same penalty.
For a thorough understanding of the
spirit and the object of this law enough
has been quoted. The most competent
critic in the world has already examined
and made it the subject of another of
those documents which have contributed
largely to rendering his name famous
and respected even in the ranks of his
bitterest opponents. I speak of Pope
Leo XIII. On Pentecost day, the ist of
this month, he addressed a letter on this
bill to the archbishops and bishops of
the provinces of Turin, Vercelli, and
Genoa. The style of the letter is, as
usual, dignified, the tone temperate, and
the reasoning irrefragable. After com-
mending the zeal with which these pre-
lates opposed the projected law from
the outset, the Pope reasons, first, on
the nature and institution of marriage.
Not a creation of the state, but an insti-
tution of God for the propagation of the
human race, and raised, in the law of
grace, to the dignity of a sacrament,
marriage is essentially a sacred and reli-
gious act, the regulating which naturally
belongs to the religious power, not by
the delegation of the state, but by the
commission of Jesus Christ.
In the second place, he disposes sum-
marily of the sophistical disassociation
of the contract from the sacrament, as
upheld by the state. Such a disassocia-
tion is dogmatically impossible, and
contrary to the conception of Christian
marriage ; because the bond of marriage,
sanctified by religion, is identified with
the sacrament, and constitutes therewith
one sole object and one reality. As to
the examples adduced of Catholic states
(France and Belgium) in which a simi-
lar law is in force, they prove nothing.
For, in the first place, those nations, be-
ing the prey of social disorders, were
obliged to submit to such a reform,
while the reform itself was either im-
posed by heterodox influences or by the
tyranny of the rulers. In the second
place, the results of the reform are any-
thing but satisfactory, while the strictly
Catholic conscience of the people has
always been opposed to it.
The Holy Father then repudiates the
false accusation that the church wishes
to invade the province of the state in the
affair of matrimony. No one ever de-
nied to the state the right of regulating
matrimony in its civil effects according
to justice. But the state can exercise
no influence whatever over the august
bond in its intrinsic nature, even as it
716
The Civil Marriage Bill in Italy.
cannot bind, nor loose, nor change. For
the profound morality inherent in the
sacrament of matrimony the state wish-
es not only to create, but to impose un-
der penal sanction, a connubial morality
of its own, entirely human, and under
merely forensic forms. Such a morality
cannot render the marital union either
lawful, honorable, or lasting. The law
is injurious to religion, to the priest-
hood, and to the liberty of conscience of
the people. It is injurious to religion,
because it presumes to dispose of a mat-
ter not in its sphere ; it is injurious to
the priesthood, because it subjects to
penalties the minister, who merely per-
forms a sacred duty in blessing the mari-
tal union ; it violates the liberty of con-
science of the people, because, besides
imposing the civil form before the reli-
gious, it declares this last not only null
in effect, but an illegal concubinage !
Yet with glaring inconsistency the law
takes no notice of the enormous num-
ber of real concubinages already exist-
ing.
Judging from all this, and from the
fact that the minister who assists at the
religious ceremony is subject to a great-
er penalty than the principal offenders
who, after all, can escape punishment by
the subsequent civil celebration the
Holy Father is not without the suspicion
that the law is dictated more by the de-
sire of afflicting the church and her min-
isters than by a sense of order and so-
cial rectitude.
In fine, he recommends the archbi-
shops and bishops to teach the people
that the origin and sanctification of mar-
riage are of God. As for the civil pre-
scriptions regulating marriage before
the law, he recalls the wise instructions
of different pontiffs instructions which
give the people full liberty to follow the
law after the essence of the dogma and
the dignity of the sacrament have been
provided for.
What is the declared object of this
law? To diminish the number of "ille-
gal concubinages." Would you know
what these concubinages are ? Nothing
more nor less sacred than the marriages
celebrated before the church alone. The
sacramental union of itself, without the
celebration of the civil ceremony, is de-
clared a concubinage, and the law re-
fuses to recognize the issue of such a
union. This is actually the law. The
new law proposes to punish such a union
as criminal, and yet it leaves unpunish-
ed real concubinages !
Statistics prove that the number of
purely ecclesiastical marriages is far
superior to that of the civil marriages.
Therefore, according to law, there are so
many illegitimate families in the land.
This is the evil the government would
remedy by the new law. It is certainly
a great evil, and is to the uninquiring
and superficial mind a powerful argu-
ment in favor of the new law. But waiv-
ing the palpable malice of the new law,
the odious distinction between the cele-
brating minister and the principal sub-
jects under consideration, and the fact
that it makes no provision whatever for
really criminal unions considerations
which would brand it with infamy in any
land professing the shadow of Christian-
ity let us go back a step or two in Italian
legislation and discover the real cause
of the evil which they would now reme-
dy. We find it in a law of the year 1865,
which declares null and of no civil effect
whatever the marriages celebrated before
the church alone without the civil cele-
bration, either previous or subsequent,
it was then immaterial. The baneful
consequences of such a law began to
appear immediately. Unprincipled men,
whose only desire was to satisfy the bas-
est passion of man, married unsuspect-
ing maidens coram Ecclesia, and then
heartlessly deserted their victims, know-
ing that the law was against them. Thus
it was the state that created the illegiti-
macy in the first place by refusing to
recognize the sacramental bond which
had from time immemorial been the sole
legitimate form of marriage. It was the
state that gave full license to the profli-
gates, constituted the so-called illegiti-
mate unions ; and the remedy which it
now proposes, be it even in good faith,
is worse than the original evil. Novissi-
mus trror pejor priori !
The law has not passed the Senate,*
and well-founded hopes are entertained
by the Catholics that it will not receive
the sanction of that body, or that it will,
at least, be remanded with substan-
tial modifications. Meanwhile, protests
against the law are pouring in from all
sides. There is not a Catholic society
in the land which has not already formu-
lated a remonstrance against the project.
The most recent is that of the Society of
St. Francis Regis. The object of this
* It has since passed. ED. C. W.
The Civil Marriage Bill in Italy.
717
society, which is blessed and fostered by
the church, gives the lie to the govern-
ment when it accuses the church of be-
ing opposed to the state's regulating
marriage in its civil effects. Its princi-
pal purpose is to induce parties who co-
habit unlawfully to legitimize their union
by the blessing of the church, and then
by conforming themselves to the pre-
scriptions of the law. In the past year
of 1878 it procured the legitimization of
four hundred and ninety-four unions. Of
these only one hundred and eight had
not observed the law a consummation
brought about by the society.
We have only to go back to the dis-
cussion of the law in Parliament to dis-
cover its true purpose. One of its pro-
moters defined it to a nicety when he
called it an act of reprisal against the
church. Such, indeed, it is. It is one
of that long series of outrages and in-
juries to the Catholic Church and to
nearly twenty-seven millions of baptized
Catholics. It exasperates still more that
moral dualism now existing in the land,
and which is the real enemy, and will in
the end be the total destruction, of its
political unity. I speak not of moral
unity. That is gone, or going fast, and
will disappear entirely unless Provi-
dence interposes.
The false proclamation by Cavour of
the maxim, " Free church in a free
state," will be the ruin of this last, be-
cause it tends to destroy the moral unity
of the country. There never was a wise
legislator yet who did not aim at pro-
moting the moral unity of his people as
the foundation-stone of political unity,
independence, and prosperity. Why is
it that Italy to-day, despite its unity and
independence, gives but equivocal signs
of life ? Why is it that the blood does
not circulate freely and healthily in the
now reunited body ? Because its. soul is
languishing under the frequent and dis-
loyal attacks of the government. Be-
cause its moral unity, the effect of the
one, only, apostolic faith which bound
the people together, is tottering.
In a country like the United States of
America the admission of the maxim
" Free church in a free state " is not
only wise and feasible but necessary.
Hence the separation of the various
churches in general and state was a
necessity towards the preservation of
political, and the ultimate obtaining of
moral, unity. And as every religion is
free to act and develop and diffuse its
influence, so that religion which has the
most vitality, the greatest cohesive power
and influence, or rather that religion
which has the life sustained by eternal
truth will in the end prevail, absorb the
rest, and establish the moral unity of the
people.
In Italy it is different. Here the peo-
ple were morally united before political
unity was accomplished. And the first
efficient impulse towards obtaining Ita-
lian unity and independence was not
only supported and aided, but even
sanctified, by that idea of moral unity.
Why was it that Italy was almost deli-
rious with joy when Gioberti published
that wonderful book called // Primato
cT Italia ? Because as the foundation of
the new and independent edifice which
he would construct he placed the glori-
ous Catholic faith with its pontiff, its
clergy, its religious ; and because as
the natural and moral head of Italy he
placed the Roman pontiff. Although
Gioberti's idea was not realized, owing
to the treachery and malice of the sects,
still that idea of making the Catholic
religion the inseparable companion of
political unity and independence was
retained, at least in semblance. Every
annexation, from that of the little duchies
to that of the Eternal City and its terri-
tory, was preceded or accompanied by
solemn promises to preserve and re-
spect the religion of the people. It was
declared as the religion of the state !
The latest interpretation, however, of
that article shows whither the govern-
ment tends, and brings us back to the
question, the decay of moral unity. In
a recent decision the Roman Court of
Appeals declared that, according to the
interpretation imposed by circumstances
and by modern progress, the first article
of the Italian Constitution means merely
that the state entertains a quasi predi-
lection for the Catholic religion !
Now, to the detriment of this religion
which is universal in the land, the gov-
ernment has opened the door to every
form of error and religious extravagance
under the sun. It has itself become a
preacher of immorality in its Parliament,
where its members, representatives
only of the immoral minority, expose
doctrines in which it is difficult to de-
cide whether gross immorality and un-
belief prevail, or absurdities. It has
banished the religious, sequestrated their
7 i8
New Publications.
goods, subjected priests to military ser-
vice, placed a detective surveillance on
the preaching of the Gospel, and now
it would constitute Christian marriage
in the category of illegal concubinages.
They call all this only a war against the
priests, who are the sworn enemies of
the country. But no ; it is the war of the
state against its twenty- seven millions
of subjects, for these in the mass, and
not the priests alone, constitute the
church. The dualism then in reality is
between Catholic subjects and state.
The state may be a political unity, but
it not only has not the cordial, unre-
served sympathy of the people which is
necessary to the maintenance of a tho-
rough unity, but it is for ever warring
against their dearest instincts. Hence
anarchy, hence disorder, hence discon-
tent among the people, hence a paralyz-
ing of the nation's energies.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
MOONDYNE : A Story from the Under-
World. By John Boyle O'Reilly.
Boston: The Pilot Publishing Com-
pany. 1879.
This is, we believe, the author's first
venture as a story-writer in prose, and
he is to be congratulated on having
achieved something far higher than a
succes (festime. The " under-world " de-
picted is Australia, and Moondyne, the
hero, is a convict, who afterwards turns
into a sort of Jean Valjean or Monte-
Christo. His purpose, however, is high-
er than that of either Alexandre Dumas
pere's hero or Victor Hugo's. Moon-
dyne has no crime to wash out, and his
noble nature enables him to rise above
the spirit of revenge. How he is sud-
denly changed from a rough and, for all
the reader knows, untutored convict
into a cultivated gentleman at whose
wisdom and insight British cabinet min-
isters and high officials and journalists
stand appalled, is not explained. All
we know is that he has the secret of the
gold-mine of the Vasse, that he is ac-
cepted as a brother and ruler by the na-
tives, and is thus provided with that
commodity which most modern heroes
lamentably lack a quite unlimited sup-
ply of cash. As a rule, it is only the
bad men who are rich in stories. Virtue
and poverty are generally inseparable
companions, thus bearing out the con-
soling dictum that "virtue is its own
reward" or "virtue alone is happiness
below."
The purpose of our ex-convict hero is
to ameliorate the condition of convicts
and prisoners by appealing to the better
feelings which, he holds, only lie dor-
mant, never wholly dead, even in the
worst natures. On this subject several
discussions are held between himself, a
cabinet minister, and other important
persons, wherein he very easily gets the
better of everybody, and where we must
often forgive his vague and sometimes
absurd talk for the sake of his high and
honest purpose. Apart from all this,
however, the story has a genuine and
sustained interest of its own. Some of
the chapters, indeed the whole of the
first book, are written with remarkable
power, in a clean, nervous style, and
here and there with a vivid play of ima-
gination. The author constantly dis-
plays a true dramatic instinct, the real
pathos of a tender heart, and, indeed, a
variety of gifts from which everything
good is to be hoped. Moondyne is a
much better story than two-thirds of
those that come to our table from far
more pretentious authors. There are a
few features we do not care about in it
and would like to see absent. For in-
stance, there is something of the cant of
transcendentalism in hunting after capi-
tals for very plain words, such as man-
hood, truth, word, idea, thought, princi-
ple, crime, sin, death, and so on. Words
of this kind our transcendental friends
would deify by beginning them with a
capital and throwing a sort of mist
around them, as though they were too
awful and too sacred to approach.
Mr. O'Reilly has fallen into this affec-
tation, and occasionally slips into their
windy phraseology. But in the main the
New Publications.
719
story will be found to be one of ex-
ceptional interest and power, the Aus-
tralian scenes being especially rich in
color and novel in scenery and incident
to the average reader. To our own lik-
ing a minor character Officer Lodge
is one of the best drawn in the book. His
first introduction furnishes a capital bit
of character-painting, given in the quiet-
est but truest colors and a subdued
humor that is very charming. We hope
to hear from Mr. O'Reilly again in this
very useful and, we trust, not unprofitable
field.
LOUISA KIRKBRIDE : A Tale of New
York. By Rev. A. J. Thebaud, SJ.
New York : Peter F. Collier. 1879.
To see the learned author of The
Church and the Gentile World and The Irish
Race in the gay guise of a story -writer
is, to reverse a well-known simile, like
seeing Saul armed with David's sling.
In Louisa Kirkbride will be found many
thrilling scenes of New York life woven
around a story whose great object, as the
author tells us, is to describe American
life in New York, and to warn the peo-
ple of this country against some social
dangers which all must admit are only
too real and might be the cause of un-
told calamities.
THE Two BRIDES : A Tale. By Rev.
Bernard O'Reilly, L.D. New York :
Carleton & Co. 1879.
In this charming and pure love-story
the learned author of the Life of Pius
IX. , the Mirror of True Womanhood,
and, in fact, of a small library of de-
lightful and useful books, has concen-
trated his gifts. Dr. O'Reilly is a writer
of extensive knowledge and observa-
tion, lightened by a bright imagination.
In the works with which his name has
been hitherto connected his imaginative
powers have necessarily been subordi-
nate to facts. In the present instance
they have had the fullest and happiest
play. The time he has chosen for his
story is previous to and during the civil
war in this country. The troubles that
led up to that disastrous struggle he
touches with the hand of a Catholic
priest and of a man of the world. The
characters and scenes are in the main
American ; but scenes in other lands are
introduced, as the author would say,
with " a deft hand " and with admirable
effect. Dr. O'Reilly has been successful
in the effort of making his learning and
knowledge popular. Those who read
between the lines in the present story
will find something more than a very
pleasing tale to amuse them. They will
find rare information regarding men and
places and things which can only be ac-
cumulated in many years and by a per-
son of much native insight and cultured
observation. For the lazy summer days,
or indeed for any days, we can recom-
mend no more pleasing and profitable
companion than The Two Brides.
SADLIER'S EXCELSIOR COMPLETE SPEL-
LER, ORAL AND WRITTEN. By a Catho-
lic Teacher. New York : William H.
Sadlier. 1879.
This seems an intelligently-prepared
and useful speller, giving all the grada-
tions of words from their simplest to the
most compound form, with accompany-
ing lessons in dictation and rules for
pronunciation. We question very
much the perplexing use of so great a
variety of points and marks intended as
guides to pronunciation ; still, as they
are in vogue, we suppose each new spel-
ler must exceed its predecessors in the
ingenuity and intricacy of its points and
devices for giving every shade of pro-
nunciation, and in this Mrs. Sadlier's
speller excels. The result is not pleas-
ing to the eye, and we doubt if it is an
efficient guide to the ear, but this criti-
cism may be applied to Spellers in
general. Mrs. Sadlier's has many ex-
cellences of its own.
THE INNER LIFE OF THE VERY REVER-
END PERE LACORDAIRE, O.P. Trans-
lated from the French of Rev. Pere
Chocarne, O.P., by the author of
Knights of St. John, St. Dominic and
the Dominicans, etc. (with the author's
permission). New York : P. O'Shea,
Agent. 1879.
Father Chocarne's Life of the great lu-
minary of his order in these latter times is
one of the books of the day, and is too
well known to need any recommenda-
tion at our hands. There is nothing
more interesting than the study of this
life, so grand and heroic in these days
that are thought to be so common. Its
720
New Publications.
reading is happily not at all restricted to
those of the Catholic faith. Father La-
cordaire has been the admiration of all
men who ever looked at him or at his
works. In these days of restless search-
ing and keen inquiry nothing better
could be recommended to those who are
really seeking after truth than a vision
of the workings of the spirit of one who,
by yielding to God's grace and inspira-
tion, passed from great darkness and
despair into great light and faith. Our
young people especially should study
this volume, which they will find far more
interesting than most of the books that
attract them. Such biographies as this,
and the Life of Ozanam by Miss O'Meara,
furnish the very brightest and best read-
ing for people of all classes.
LA NOUVELLE ATALA, ou LA FILLE DE
L'ESPRIT : Legende Indienne. Par
Chahta-Ima (de la Louisiane). Nou-
velle-Orleans, 1879. Imprimerie du
Propagateur Catholique, Rue de
Chartres, 204.
This is a prose poem in French, em-
bodying the ripe fruits of a gifted poeti-
cal soul. The author is an unfeigned
lover of solitude, views all things in
their divine aspect, and rarely descends
from the heights -of contemplation. Al-
most every page of this volume, small in
size but weighty if judged by the value
of the contents, is enriched with original
thoughts, profound views, and rare sug-
gestions on religion, the arts, man, na-
ture, society, and the state, clothed in
charming language by a skilful master
of style.
This volume is a gem in its way, and
belongs to a class of books like Joseph
of Arimathea, by St. John Damascene,
Johnson's Rasselas, and Chateaubriand's
Atala. The author's appreciation of the
mystical side of man's nature in relation
to the visible creation reminds us of
Novalis and passages in the writings of
that sublime master of and writer on
spiritual life, St. John of the Cross,
and of certain chapters in that inimi-
table work, The Following of Christ.
The book is unique, and could only
have been written by a descendant of the
Celts, a bom poet, and a Catholic
priest who has the courage of the deep-
est convictions and faith in the holiest
aspirations of his soul. It is a literary
thef-cTauvre, and rich treasures are to be
found in its pages.]
CANTICA SIGN ; or, English Anthems set
to Latin words, for the service of the
Catholic Church by a priest of the
Society of Jesus. London : Novello
Ewer & Co.
The first number of this proposed work
gives a full anthem by Dr. Boyce, to
which has been adapted the Latin of the
psalm " Super flumina Babylonis," minus
the last verse. The high merit of the
music is incontestable, but we fail to see
the fitness of this production "for the
service of the Catholic Church." It is
true the psalm is one of the five appoint-
ed for the ferial office of Thursday's Ves-
pers, which are nowhere sung except in
a few monasteries, but it is quite evident
that the monks would never think of
abandoning their sweet, simple, holy
chant for such complicated harmonies as
these, to say nothing of leaving out the
last verse, or of their being obliged to
call in some boys or women to do the
soprano and alto parts. These anthems
have, in fact, no legitimate place whatso-
ever in the "service of the Catholic
Church." At a time like the present, when
such earnest efforts are being made in all
parts of Christendom to purify the cele-
bration of the divine offices of the church
from the musical exhibitions which have
so notoriously hindered the intelligent
devotion of the people, and so shamefully
mutilated and garbled the liturgy in its
every part, we cannot but regard this at-
tempt to thrust Protestant anthems into
what is styled our 4f service " by putting
them into a Latin dress as something
quite unworthy of the source from which
it emanates. It is high time that we got
rid of the church concert and turned our
attention to giving the faithful a chance
to hear the Catholic liturgy celebrated in
its completeness as the church com-
mands it to be done.
LESSONS IN PRACTICAL SCIENCE ; OR,
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE REGARDING
THINGS IN DAILY USE. Prepared ex-
pressly for schools and academies.
By the author of The Neptune Out-
ward Bound, etc. New York : P.
O'Shea, Agent. 1879.
A very useful and entertaining volume,
containing a variety of practical informa-
tion, set in catechetical form, regarding
common things around us.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIX,, No. 174. SEPTEMBER, 1879.
IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?*
DOUBTLESS every one who will
read this article knows already
something of the writings of Mr.
Mallock, which have lately startled
the educated world of England
and the United States, and excited
no little attention. His New Re-
public contains an acute and closely-
reasoned analysis of the chief vari-
eties of positivism lately gaining
adherents in England, often so
tersely expressed, and with such
condensation of matter, that it be-
comes abstruse and is almost
equally hard reading with Dr.
Brownson's Convert. Like the
Convert, it has a narrative and
dramatic frame-work surrounding
the purely philosophical argument.
The great doctor, however, takes
his story from real history and
biography. Mr. Mallock's is in
form fictitious, although some of
the principal characters are drawn
from real life, most of them are
commonly reported to be studies
from life, and, for all we know, the
incidents which make the plot of
the story may be founded in fact.
The New Paul and Virginia is a
* It Life Worth Living? By William Hurrell
Mallock. New York : Putnams. 1879.
Copyright : Rev. I.
caustic satire, a laughable come-
dy, in which keen-edged argument
takes the shape of merciless, not al-
ways very delicate and refined ridi-
cule, after the manner of Aristo-
phanes, albeit in the form of plain,
narrative prose. It is not nearly so
fine a composition of its class as
. the Comedy of Convocation. It is
too broad and farcical to please a
fastidious taste, and the intended
effect would have been better pro-
duced by the grave and serious
satire which is really the author's
forte. Besides some other minor
pieces which we cannot speak of, as
we have not yet had the pleasure
of reading them, the next most re-
markable production of Mr. Mai-
lock's pen was an essay contained
in two articles which appeared in
the Nineteenth Century, published
in the numbers for September, 1877,
and January, 1878, bearing the
same title with the present volume
and furnishing its basis. This essay
we have considered since reading
it a few months ago, to speak now
merely of its literary merit, as a
specimen of the most perfect ex-
cellence attainable in the line of
serious and argumentative writing
T. HECKER. 1879.
722
Is Life Worth Living f
of the species adapted for a peri-
odical review. Although so very
different in every respect except in
fitness for the pages of a review,
it is comparable for its successful
felicity of execution to Macau-
lay's brilliant and famous articles in
the Edinburgh Review. We were,
therefore, agreeably affected, as by
an incident making life, for the
time at least, a little better worth
living than it sometimes appears on
the arrival of a parcel from the edi-
torial office, when the neat and at-
tractive volume from the publish-
ing house of the Putnams greeted
our eyes, mutely asking, like a
young cadet just graduated who
presents himself with his diploma
under his arm before his mother
and sisters and other admiring
friends, " Am I worth looking at,
am I worth having?"
Mr. Mallock evidently thought
life worth living while he was a
student, and lived it in an intel-
lectually and morally worthy man-
ner. He has thought " the game
worth the candle " which he has
burnt with serious and earnest pur-
pose, while producing the elabo-
rate works of his fine mind which
have made him, although yet a very
young man, a warrior of marked
prowess in the intellectual arena.
The style in which he writes is re-
markable for one unusual quality
betokening both a rare metaphysi-
cal faculty in the author's mind,
and a very assiduous labor in the
cultivation of rhetoric. It is a
truly English and idiomatic style,
and at the same time it is adequate
to the exact presentation of logical
and metaphysical ideas and argu-
ments derived from Greek and
Latin authors and modern writers
whose works are technical and
scientific. Together with this ex-
actness and terseness of expression,
there is combined a felicity of dic-
tion, a grace and charm of manner,
a happy way of illustration, a sparkle
of wit, an eloquence, a vivid play
of imagination, which make the
close argumentation with which
the thesis is unremittingly pursued
readable and intelligible for a much
greater number of persons than are
ordinarily secured as willing listen-
ers by men who reason well, but
cannot or will not allure an audi-
ence by rhetorical art. Mr. Mal-
lock is a very young man, produc-
ing his first works, and a certain
juvenility might be expected and
may be pardoned. That there is
sometimes an excess of imagination,
a coloring which comes from feel-
ing not quite controlled by reason,
an exaggeration on one side, a di-
minution or partial ignoring or
overlooking on another side, a
want of balancing and harmonious
exposition, a forensic rather than a
judicial presentation of his case,
has been said by other critics, and
we cannot say that we wholly dis-
agree with them. The set of men
attacked by Mr. Mallock find it
difficult to meet and controvert him
on the main issue. His logic is a
little too trenchant and powerful
for men whose drill and discipline
have not made them especially
strong or adroit in wielding logical
weapons. To criticise, point out
faults of detail, expend themselves
in rhetorical displays which bum
as much powder as Mr. Mallock's,
but propel no balls like his such
are the shifts to which his adver-
saries are reduced. Mr. Mallock,
as he grows older, may improve.
They never will. They are bound by
a logical necessity to become con-
tinually worse and more false than
they are, whether they are Protes-
tants or non-Christian rational-
ists and positivists of any descrip-
Is Life Worth Living?
723
tion. We do not mean by this
that any individual Protestant or
unbeliever, or any certain, definite
number of such, must necessarily
become worse by a continual pro-
gression in error. Individuals and
collections of individuals may be,
and often are, illogical in their be-
lief and conduct. But the drift of
logical sequence acts irresistibly on
the whole and in the long run. The
logical necessity must carry down,
and is carrying down, all systems of
Protestantism and unbelief toward
the lowest deep, the abyss of nihil-
ism. But we must be careful not
to exaggerate the evil in respect
to concrete and individual persons,
as if they were doomed by a physi-
cal vis inertice to go down with
their systems.
Besides thus discriminating be-
tween systems and persons, we
must also distinguish, even in sys-
tems of opinion and belief, between
the logic of their false and that of
their true premises. It is true
that the Protestant premises in
Protestant systems, and the premi-
ses of negation and doubt in the
systems of unbelievers, have their
necessary sequences in worse and
worse heresies, and in negations of
rational truths which descend con-
tinually toward absolute negation.
But Protestant systems have also
Catholic premises and systems of
unbelief have rational premises.
When Protestants reason from Ca-
tholic premises they can confute
those who are more heretical than
they are, or who are unbelievers.
So, also, those who reason from
sound rational premises can con-
fute the deniers of rational truths.
The more advanced and logical in
following the sequences of error can
only demonstrate the inconsistency
of their opponents, and point out
contradictions in their conclusions
to some common principles which
all hold alike in opposition to the
universal truth, rational and reveal-
ed, contained in Catholic teaching.
But they cannot confute or subvert
the truths themselves, or the sound
arguments which uphold them, by a
course of reasoning which really
proves only one thing viz., that
those who hold any portion of
truth ought to hold truth in its in-
tegrity, and by denying a part of
it are logically bound to deny other
parts and the whole, in order to be
consistent with themselves. Here
lies the gist of the argumentum ad
hominem with all those who occupy
the intermediate ground between
Catholicity and absolute scepticism.
The occupants of a position nearer
the abyss say to those who are
higher up : You ought to come
down to us because of that which
you deny. We say to them : You
ought to come up to us because of
what you affirm. To a believer in
revelation, whether Jew or Chris-
tian, we say : You ought to be a
Catholic, because you believe in
revelation. To a theist we say :
You ought to be a Catholic, because
you believe in God. To any man
who has not totally abjured reason
we say: You ought to be a Catho-
lic, because you are a reasonable
being. But it is not in accordance
with sound philosophy or theology
to make out that the divine autho-
rity of the Catholic Church is the
sole and indispensable preliminary
truth and first premise from which
the proof of revealed or natural re-
ligion depends,, or that the exis-
tence of God stands in> a similar re-
lation to all metaphysical and ethi-
cal truths ; although, the depen-
dence of rational: truths on the
principle of causality which virtual-
ly contains the truth of the exis-
tence of G.od, is nearer and closer
724
Is Life Worth Living?
than the dependence of revealed
theology on the doctrine of the au-
thority of the church.
We say this, lest Mr. Mallock's
readers should suppose that all his
broad and sweepingassertions are ac-
ceptable to Catholics. They are not
so ; and are frequently such as a Ca-
tholic cannot possibly assent to. For
instance, on p. 27 Mr. Mallock as-
serts that "the doctrine of a future
life was first learned by the Jews
/rom their masters during the Cap-
tivity." In his twelfth chapter, he
asserts that " criticism has robbed
the Bible of nearly all the supposed
internal evidences of its supernatu-
ral character, it has traced the chief
Christian dogmas to non-Christian
sources," and more in the same
strain, and develops these statements,
which are mere assumptions, and in
fact unprovable and false, with con-
siderable rhetorical amplitude, but
without producing anything to con-
vince any mind not already pre-
pared to accept his statements
without argument. So, also, in his
(postulates and the reasoning which
lie deduces from them against the
^defenders of a merely natural and
irataonal theology, there is the same
fallacious assumption of a complete
.inability on their part to sustain
'their ground against positivists and
scientific sceptics. The utterly
ibaseless pretence of the whole sub-
versive and destructive school of
critics and scientists, that they"
-have demolished the evidences of
the credibility of natural and reveal-
. eid religion, lies at the basis of the
.whole course of argument by which,
in all- his writings, Mr. Mallock en-
deavors to convince the world that it
r is >bouBd to go headlong and speed-
ily to- the devil, unless it can be res-
cudd-by-some absolutely supernatu-
ral intervention. This supernatural
*-.rescufi,iibe.,argues, if at all possible,
must come through the infallible
authority of the Catholic Church.
But here, also, he appears to have
a notion of infallibility and authori-
ty which is a creation of his own
imagination, and quite different
from that of Catholic theology and
4 of the church herself. He seems
to confuse infallibility with inspi-
ration, authority with the power to
reveal doctrines by virtue of imme-
diate communication with the very
primal source of truth in God.
Historical, metaphysical, tradition-
al, documentary evidences are put
aside, as insufficient for an intel-
lectual conviction. A divine au-
thority, submitted to by a purely
moral and voluntary act, a spon-
taneous, mystical, logically unveri-
fiable act, which no exact and in-
tellectual criterion of truth can
measure and justify, must super-
sede rational light and knowledge,
and a faith which is self-supporting
become the basis of all certainty in
respect to supra-mundane realities.
There is a striking similarity in
this view to that of another philo-
sophical sceptic, De Lamennais.
The backward swing from extreme
rationalism to extreme fideism,
from doubt to a blind faith, is fre-
quent and natural. But the one is
no more a place of rest than the
other. The sound Catholic doc-
trine discriminates between the
natural, the rational, the purely
human, and the gifts of grace, the
illumination of faith, the superhu-
man elevation of nature through
the Incarnation. It does not sub-
vert the lower, or substitute for it
the higher, but completes and cor-
roborates it in its own order. In
respect to all things within the do-
main of reason and the natural will
of man, revelation and grace are
morally necessary to supply a defi-
ciency and strengthen an infirmity
Is Life Worth Living f
725
and alleviate a difficulty, so that
nature may be efficaciously aided
and supported in the work of which
it is inherently capable ; but are not
absolutely necessary as first princi-
ples of all knowledge and virtue.
For the disclosure of truth abso-
lutely superrational, and the com-
munication of a faith, a hope, a
love, absolutely supernatural, reve-
lation and grace are absolutely ne-
cessary. But even here a pream-
ble of rational conviction, and a
correspondence of free-will with
grace, are requisite, for reasonable
and free acts of faith and obe-
dience.
The veracity of God revealing is
the direct object of faith, and not
the authority of the church. The
voluntary submission of the will to
God's authority presupposes a rea-
sonable motive for believing that
he exists, that he is veracious, and
that he has revealed the doctrines
proposed. The authority of the
church is the ordinary external
criterion for determining what God
lias revealed. Philosophy, and the
inspired documents of revelation,
are to a great extent weak and
inefficacious instruments for pro-
ducing the intellectual and moral
improvement of the mass of man-
kind, without the authority and the
powerful agency of the church.
And especially, when heresy and
unbelief and scepticism have done
a long and desolating work in the
world, we may affirm it as morally
certain, that regeneration and re-
novation cannot be effected by
any power except that which Christ
has lodged in the Catholic Church.
So much as this Mr. Mallock has
very conclusively and powerfully
proved, and his argument is not
substantially damaged by his exag-
gerations and omissions.
He is as one who has been de-
prived of the positive traditional
belief of English Christianity, and
is searching anxiously through the
intellectual world for a substitute
which shall be better and more
satisfactory. The result of his
search has left him with the con-
viction that all things are being
swept toward shipwreck, and can
only be saved by a divine, super-
natural religion. The only reli-
gion which presents the appear-
ance and awakens the hope of be-
ing true and adequate, is the Ca-
tholic religion. The alternative is
between Catholicity and Nihilism.
In the present volume this alterna-
tive is expressed under the more
general and abstract form of the
question whether life is worth liv-
ing or is not worth living. Its
worth, if it have any worth, is mo-
ral. It cannot have moral worth
unless the soul is immortal and the
offspring of God its first and final
cause. Moreover, if God has given
to human life this supreme worth
derived from its end and object,
the Catholic Church must be the
medium of its attainment. Such is
the partial solution of the question
proposed by the author : Is Life
Worth Living? which is given in
the present volume, and is a sum-
ming-up of all he has written in his
previous works.
No one has ever asked the ques-
tion seriously of himself whether
life is worth living, until he has
begun to doubt that it is, and to.
feel discontented with life. Yet,,
a great many have asked and are
asking the question, and some
have determined it for themselves
in the negative. One of our most
famous generals related to the wri-
ter the following incident of the late
civil war. Visiting his outposts
one night, he found a sentinel fast
asleep. The man was awakened,
726
Is Life Worth Living?
and the general asked him if he
knew lie was liable to be shot then
and there for his delinquency. He
replied in a very nonchalant man-
ner that he was perfectly aware of
the fact. " Suppose, now, I should
have you shot!" said General
R . " I would not care one
single God damn !" answered this
model soldier, a fair specimen of
the large class who were the dregs
of our volunteer army. Plainly,
that sort of men did not consider
their life worth living. There are
millions of such human beings,
whose life, taken as it is in the
concrete, present, and actual value
which it has, and prescinding from
any higher virtual worth latent in
its possibility, is as worthless to
them as the life of this miserable
wreck of manhood was to him.
Moral and physical wretchedness,
idiocy, lunacy, hopeless disease
and irrexnediable pain, make the
mere animal life which is all that
remains to those who live in abject
misery, not only worthless but a
nuisance to themselves and to all
others who are burdened with the
care of them, if we look merely to
the present and sensible good of
living. If we exclude the moral
motives for respecting the persons
and the lives of these unhappy be-
ings, we must reasonably conclude
that the best thing for all parties
would be to put them out of exis-
tence, as one does justly and mer-
cifully a suffering animal. There
are many cases in which this would
be the greatest act of kindness we
could perform, even for the inno-
cent, the good, the tenderly loved,
as for instance in a case like that
of Virginius and his daughter, or
in the case of one who had the
hydrophobia.
For a still greater number, in
fact for a great multitude, life, ta-
ken in its totality, is certainly, for
the present good which it contains,
not worth living, although not so
completely miserable.
That there is a great deal of
good and enjoyment naturally con-
tained in sound and healthy hu-
man life, is unquestionable. Let
all the good which is suitable to
human nature be possessed in suf-
ficient abundance and in perma-
nence, and, assuredly, life is worth
living for its own sake ; and its
indefinite, even endless prolonga-
tion is desirable. Take it in its
most favorable ideal aspect, and it
is a great good, if only its perpe-
tuity can be secured. Take it in
its practical aspect, and we doubt
if the constant and habitual enjoy-
ment of life which even the most
happy persons can possess through
any long period after their youth
has terminated, suffices to make
life really worth living for its own
sake alone. Let any one who is
pretty well on in life, who is not
looking forward to any great change
for the better after the manner of
young people, and who is not at
present in the enjoyment of some
special temporary pleasure, but in
an every-day and commonplace
mood of mind, ask himself if he
would care to go back to infancy,
or wish to live for ever exactly as
he is now living, without any change
for better or worse. For ourselves,
we freely confess that we would
not willingly live over again the
past, or any part of it, for the pJea-
sure of it, or care to have a per-
petual existence no better than the
present one. If in this life only
we are to find the be-all and end-
all of existence, then for each indi-
vidual and all mankind life is a tri-
vial, unimportant thing at the best.
At the worst, it is a nuisance,
only not a frightful tragedy, a
Is Life Worth Living?
portentous evil, an insupporta-
ble misery, because its brevity
makes its miseries as insignificant
as the disturbance created in a
hornet's nest by placing a bunch
of lighted matches in the aperture
of its floor. Probably, every one
of our readers can recall some days
of tediousness or pain, or at least
some hours of that sort, which
seemed at the time of interminable
length and scarcely endurable. It
is to be hoped that we have all
sometimes felt happy enough to be
able to sympathize with the excla-
mation which a little girl of the
writer's kin once uttered : " O
mamma ! I am so glad it's to-day ! "
What, now, are those past pains
and pleasures, unless they have
left something lasting in our life
by their effects? They are as if
they had never been. If all things
are evanescent, like a boat's track
in the water, and all human beings
suffer an extinction of life when
they expire, then nothingness is
the only absolute reality, and all
the good and evil of life is a
triviality. Trivial and evanescent
tilings may be worth something,
and commonplace life may be
worth living, in relation to that
which is permanent, and suffi-
ciently good to correspond to a
high, ideal conception of being.
Apart from this, they are assuredly
not worthy of being esteemed as
something desirable in themselves.
Let life be all made up of that part
of it which is enjoyable, if it comes
to an end at death, it is really not
worth living. An Eastern legend
relates that an angel appeared to
Mathusalawhenhewas five hundred
years old and advised him to build
for himself a house, instead of biv-
ouacking under a tree, as he had
done hitherto. The patriarch, hav-
ing inquired how long he had yet
to live, and learned that it would
be less than five hundred years, re-
plied that he did not think it worth
his while to make the change.
" We have here no continuing
city," and unless we " seek one to
come," the old patriarch's indiffer-
ence to the comfort of this life is
the most reasonable sentiment one
can have about life in general.
Considering the other side, the evil
of life, especially for the majority
of persons, it would be better not
to have existed.
" After this opened Job his
mouth, and cursed his day. And
Job spake, and said, Let the day
perish wherein I was born, and the
night wherein it was said, There
is a man-child conceived. Where-
fore is light given to him that is in
misery, and life to the bitter in
soul; which long for death but it
cometh not ; and dig for it more
than for hid treasures ; which re-
joice exceedingly and are glad,
when they can find the grave ? "
Such is the language of an afflicted
saint of the olden time, who was
not in despair, and did not murmur
against God, but gave plaintive ut-
terance to the sentiment of the na-
tural heart when oppressed with
pain, that this present life consid-
ered by itself alone is a nuisance
to the miserable.
St. Paul, too, declares that " if in
this life only we have hope in
Christ," such as he was, and such
as were his persecuted fellow-Chris-
tians of that time, " are of all men
the most miserable." So far as
present enjoyment is concerned,
the same may be said of a great
number of the best people in the
world.
One of our popular novelists
shall furnish us with another illus-
tration of the same sentiment which
we have just now lighted upon by
'28
Is Life Worth Living?
chance at the beginning of a story
which as yet remains unread : .
" ' Now I am going to ask you another
question,' said Mrs. Beresford. ' Suppose
you had a patient very ill I mean hope-
lessly ill, beyond all cure do you think
it is right to keep them alive as you do
now, struggling to the last, staving off
every new attack that might carry them
off in quiet, fighting on and on to the
last moment, and even prolonging that,
when it comes so far, with cordials and
stimulants? Keeping their breath in
their poor suffering bodies till you get
to the end of your resources your
dreadful cruel resources, that is what I
call them. Do you think this is right ?
I'll tell you what I should like you to
do if it were me,' she said eagerly.
' When it was all over, when you were
sure I could not get better, when there
was nothing more in life but to suffer
suffer, then I should like you to make a
strong, sweet dose for me to put me out
of my trouble. I should like James to
give it me. Do you remember what was
said that time in India, in the mutiny?
I don't know if it was true, but people
said it. That the husbands of some of
the poor ladies kissed them and shot
them, to save them ; don't you remem-
ber? That is what I should like you to
do a sweet, strong dose ; and James
would bring it to me and kiss me, and
put it to my lips. That would be true
love! ' she said, growing excited, the pale
roses in her cheeks becoming hectic
red ; ' that would be true friendship, Mr.
Maxwell ! Then I should not be afraid.
I should feel that you two stood be-
tween me and anguish, between me and
agony.' " *
We do not know anything fur-
ther about the history of the Beres-
fords. But, when it comes to such
a point of wretchedness with a wo-
man that she begs of her husband
to kill her, and with a man that his
wife whom he loves makes such a
request of him in earnest, we give
our opinion that if such is the final
conclusion of all the good of life
for them, they would have been bet-
ter off if they had never been born.
* Carita, : a Novel. By Mrs. Oliphant. Chap. i.
This morning, the newspapers
contained the sad news of the un-
timely and tragical death of the
ci-devant Prince Imperial of France,
who fell under the murderous asse-
gais of the Zulus. What a termi-
nation to an innocent and noble
young life, to aspirations looking
toward an imperial crown, to a
dynasty so renowned in history !
Was it worth living to the young
Louis Napoleon, to have enjoyed
his brief glory, or the illusions of
his vain hopes of a future recovery
of the extinct empire of his house,
if death at the hand of ferocious
Africans was the absolute end of
his existence? What shall we say
of the one for whose indescribable
sorrow there is no alleviation ex-
cept in the resort of a Christian
soul to the compassion of a merci-
ful God, and the hope derived from
Catholic faith of reunion in the fu-
ture life? Could life be worth liv-
ing which ends in such inconsol-
able grief, if these divine consola-
tions were a baseless vision of the
iaiagination ?
There can be no doubt what-
ever of the practical effect which
the universal abandonment of be-
lief in God and immortality would
have upon all or nearly all men.
They would look for the strong,
sweet dose to put them out of their
trouble, and rid them of the cancer
whose first symptom is discontent
and whose last torment is the an-
guish and loathsomeness of a cor-
ruption devouring both soul and
body. The strong, sweet dose is
the momentary pleasure which re-
lieves the gnawing of the disease of
life while it lasts, and ends in
death. As for moral worthiness in
life, the very notion of it must
vanish from a world completely
dereligionized.
Why, then, is life actually es-
Is Life Worth Living?
729
teemed and prized as worth living,
by those who live chiefly for this
world, and think little of any other
life? It is because they forget
that this life is not perpetual, and
do not think of death, so long as
they are occupied and concerned
with the present. Besides, they
have a latent and virtual religion in
their sentiments, and some unde-
fined expectation that they will
live for ever and be fortunate
enough to secure their happiness in
that future life, unless they have
become altogether reckless, or
wholly unbelieving. The convic-
tion of the moral worth of life is
universal, and survives the illusion
which makes it seem worth liv-
ing for its momentary enjoyments.
And even those modern unbelievers
who are called by Mr. Mallock the
positivists, who profess a great con-
tempt for the Epicurean view of
life as only worth living for its en-
joyments, and an equal contempt
for the religious view, avow a high
esteem for the moral worth of life.
This is, argues conclusively and
truly Mr. Mallock, because they
are not completely dereligionized.
They have latent and virtual reli-
gion in their moral sentiments, al-
though they have banished the pure
and simple form of it, just as we
have salt in our food, though we
abstain on purpose from using any
from the salt-cellar.
This is a singular phase in the
evolution of English Protestantism,
for it is in the English mind and
out of Protestant elements, mixed
with other elements the product of
scientific and critical investiga-
tions, that this new, curious form
of grave, serious, moralizing un-
belief has been produced. It is
not the unbelief which springs
from a desire to be wicked which
has evolved itself in this strange
shape. The cause lies in the un-
reasonable, incredible absurdities
of Protestantism, its contradictions,
its impotence, its utter failure to
give out a sound philosophy, a co-
herent and tenable theology. The
belief in God and immortality has
been swept away by the force
which has undermined the belief in
Christianity. Yet, there remains
the longing for an ideal world, the
anxiety to find the deepest causes,
the aspiration after the first truth,
the supreme good, the beautiful in
essence. On this account, the
doubters and unbelievers who ha^ve
got lost in the mazes of the physi-
cal and moral labyrinth into which
they have wandered, without clue
or light to enable them to emerge
at the other end or retrace their
steps, are worthy of compassion, of
kindness, of a kind of respectful
consideration, which wilful, impious
apostates from the Catholic faith
do not deserve.
Mr. Mallock, although he pours
out a torrent of unsparing ridicule
upon their absurdities, does, never-
theless, in the volume before us,
argue with them, patiently, serious-
ly, respectfully, and in a manner
which we may call, without mean-
ing any exaggeration, worthy of
Aristotle. We do not place him
on an equality with the greatest of
pagan philosophers, but we con-
sider him as one whom Aristotle
might have been proud to acknow-
ledge as one of his worthiest disci-
ples. His analysis of the moral
basis of positivism, and his demon-
stration of its worthlessness, can-
not be surpassed in the line of
metaphysical and logical argumen-
tation. It is more tersely express-
ed in the review articles than in
the volume. For general reading,
the more diffuse style and copious
illustration of the expanded form
730
Is Life Worth Living?
in which it appears in the book be-
fore us, is an advantage. It is a
very superficial criticism, however,
which ascribes an excess of the
imaginative over the reasoning fac-
ulty to Mr. Mallock. No man can
be a successful exponent of philoso-
phy to a large number of auditors,
who cannot bring a vivid imagina-
tion into play, as a subservient in-
strument to reason. Reason pre-
dominates in Mr. Mallock's mind
and in his writings. Let his critics
try to refute him seriously, and
they will find it out. This, how-
ever, is precisely what they cannot
do and will not attempt. For, as
he strongly and wittily says, " The
things we wrestle with are princi-
palities and powers, and spiritual
stupidity in high places " (p. viii.)
It is not a universal ignorance, or
any gross and revolting form of
vice, with which the contention is
waged. By an unheard-of moral
paradox and lusus natures, " the
insolence, the ignorance, and the
stupidity of the age has embodied
itself, and found its mouthpiece, in
men who are personally the nega-
tions of all that they represent theo-
retically. We have men who in
private are full of the most gracious
modesty, representing in their phi-
losophies the most ludicrous arro-
gance ; we have men who practise
every virtue* themselves, proclaim-
ing the principles of every vice to
others; we have men who have
mastered many kinds of knowledge,
acting in the world only as em-
bodiments of the completest and
most pernicious ignorance." We
have already given our explanation
of this phenomenon. The deform-
ed Christianity of Protestantism
has suddenly come into collision
with a superior force which has
* Say rather practise partially some of the
virtues.
shattered it. Bewildered by a
great accession of scientific and
historical knowledge, and a much
vaster mass of plausible theory
which surrounds the nucleus of
solid fact like a nebula, the Eng-
lish mind has been thrown from its
course by the shock of the solid
body, and dazzled by the haze of
its cometic tail, so that it has gone
flying toward the chaos of Atheism,
in a state of utter confusion. The
offspring of the English Church and
her universities, being without any
adequate theology or philosophy to
keep them steady and direct their
rational investigations, have gone
crazy over the mystery of human
life and human destiny. In the
higher philosophy, and the region
of the more spiritual ideas of ra-
tional truth, they have become
lunatics. They still continue to
use high-sounding moral phrase-
ology. They pretend to assert that
life is worthy to be prized and
venerated for moral reasons, and
to advocate moral motives of aspi-
ration and exertion. But they can
give no rational justification of
their declamatory rhetoric, when
they are pressed by close interro-
gation. They can only assert, and
declare, in a preaching and horta-
tory tone, spread themselves for
poetic and sentimental flights, re-
peat over and over their set of
choice phrases, but by no means
argue or furnish proof. They are
unwilling to give up all the ethical
part of religion, but they retain it
only as an effect of their Christian
education, and as a residuum of the
Christian tradition. They have
thrown away the pure salt and
broken the salt-cellar, but they
continue to set out their table with
dishes seasoned with the discarded
mineral, and invite their guests to
taste, and be satiated, and admire
Is Life Worth Living?
731
the wholesome flavor of their en-
tertainment.
Assuredly, the positivists are
bound to render a reason for the
faith and hope which they profess
respecting the moral value of life.
The question is not, whether
pains or pleasures actually over-
balance in human life taken in re-
spect to some portion or the whole
of the human race. It is not
whether life can be accidentally
made a desirable thing, or whether
many find it, in their personal ex-
perience, wortli living. It is,
whether, from moral motives, it
ought to be esteemed and found
worth living by all, for its intrinsic,
essential worth. "At present, as
we all know, it is called sacred,
solemn, earnest, significant, and so
forth. To withhold such epithets
is considered a kind of blasphemy.
And the meaning of all such lan-
guage is this : it means that life has
some deep inherent worth of its
own, beyond what it can acquire
or lose by the caprice of circum-
stance, a worth which, though it
may be most fully revealed to a
man, through certain forms of suc-
cess, is yet not destroyed or made
a minus quantity by failure " (p. 4).
Can this significance which men
actually attach to life stand a ra-
tional analysis? Is it wine of the
finest brand and highest cost, as
many suppose, or like gooseberry
champagne which a boy sniffs over
and slowly tastes with the delight-
ed and conceited air of a connois-
seur, because he is told that it
came from the choicest stores of
Epernay and cost two hundred
francs a bottle ? They who affirm
the high and sacred worth of life,
but deny that it springs from the
deathless essence of the spirit which
informs the human body, and the
eternal relation of man to the in-
finite and most perfect Spirit, are
bound to answer the question
What is this worth ?
Mr. Mallock puts them to the
question, but his analytic rack and
thumbscrew fail to elicit an answer
from the tortured victims of his
merciless logic. It is worth, it is
worth a great deal ! It. is the com-
mon, universal good of the human
race, which subsists perpetually as
a species, although its individuals
all singly become extinct. For
this common good all individuals
must live and work, and be con-
tented to sacrifice their private
good, abandoning all hope and de-
sire of any perfect and imperish-
able good for themselves person-
ally. This is all the answer which
can be extorted from the positivists,
and it is no answer at all, but ar-
rant nonsense and babyish prattle.
What we want to know is, what is
the good in its essence and quali-
ties, which being secured for all
mankind, will make their life in it-
self worthy and supremely desira-
ble. Whatever it may be, it is
evident that its final result and
consummation is some kind of
happiness which all enjoy in com-
mon. This common happiness in
the aggregate, can be nothing but
the sum of the happiness of all the
individuals who compose the whole
multitude of human" beings. All
are agreed in this, that every be-
ing having consciousness seeks for
happiness by a necessary propen-
sity and law of nature. By the
very same impulse which is the
motive power propelling him in the
direction of the object which is ap-
prehended as his desirable good,
he is impelled to seek for the
happiness of other individuals
whose happiness is a part of his
own, or subservient to his individual
enjoyment. A rational being, if he
732
Is Life Worth Living?
acts according to reason, must- seek
that happiness which is consonant
to his nature, and in a way which
reason approves. He will not
blindly follow a mere impulse, but
lie will consider what is the true
and proper object and end which
he ought to pursue; he will judge
reasonably and conscientiously that
he has a right to acquire and pos-
sess a certain good, before he will
strive to obtain it ; and he will
determine that certain ways and
means of securing it are just and
good, before he will adopt them.
Moreover, over and beyond his na-
tural sentiment of common life and
sympathy with other individuals of
his own kind, reason will present to
him the same intrinsic worth as
existing in the life of all rational
beings in proportion to their grade
and excellence, and cause him to
estimate the happiness of every
being possessing consciousness at
its just value.
We cannot, however, at one and
the same time, maintain the supre-
macy of ethical principles and mo-
tives, and also set forth happiness
simply ; merely regarded as consist-
ing in the gratification of a natural
appetite, as being only pleasurable
sensation or emotion ; in the atti-
tude and relation of a final term
and object, or, in other words, as
the highest good in itself, and with-
out reference to something deeper
and more ultimate. The considera-^
tion of the object of complacency
precedes the consideration of the
subjective, complacent rest in the
object, which is what we mean by
happiness. The consideration of
the worthiness of the object deter-
mines every moral judgment re-
specting the worthiness of the act
which tends toward or rests in the
object with complacent desire or
delight. Take away objective dif-
ference and distinction between
real and apparent good, superior
and inferior good, the good which
is consonant to reason and nature
and that which is dissonant from
both, founded on the idea of an
ultimate end for which all beings
exist, and the whole moral order
vanishes. The moral order is only
a spiritual, elevated railway, for
conducting rational beings safely,
speedily, and in a direct line, by a
road raised above the dirty high-
ways of sin, to their destination.
If men have no first and final cause
in God, no immortal destination,
no attainable good except the hap-
piness of a short life which be-
comes extinct in death, all words
which express moral notions or im-
ply a moral worthiness in life, are
empty sounds. Good means simply
enjoyment, without respect to any-
thing but your mere pleasure.
Evil is only a privation of some
pleasure. Reason dictates but one
common law. Whatever promotes
the common enjoyment of the
pleasures of life is good for the
community, whatever hinders the
same is bad for the community.
There is also but one law for each
individual. Secure the greatest
amount of enjoyment for yourself
which you can obtain without de-
priving your fellow-men of their
share, and do your part toward
promoting their enjoyment. Let
us suppose that all men really act-
ed out these rules, and that man-
kind in general, and all individ-
ual men singly, should attain the
maximum of that mere earthly and
natural happiness of which human
nature is capable, would life then
have the worth, the sacredness, the
solemnity, the highest good of
which the positivists preach and
write in such vibrating tones of
poetry and eloquence ? Mr. Mill
h Life Worth Living?
733
thought nor, and we think not ; and
if the reader still hesitates, let him
read attentively Mr. Mallock's
abundant and conclusive argu-
ments for the negative. We have
not space to pursue the subject
any further in this review.
The ethical school of positivism
will prove to be ephemeral. Its
leaders are men of exact thought
in so far as they are adepts in ex-
act sciences, and they have helped
the cultured world to appreciate
and require exact thought. But
in their moralizing essays they have
utterly abjured exact thought, and
therefore their ethics will soon pass
into oblivion. There must be some
movement on one or other of two
logical lines leading in opposite di-
rections. It is necessary to dere-
ligionize completely, or to return
to religion and faith. This is Mr.
Mallock's thesis. And the presen-
tation which he has made of the
extent to which the dereligionizing
process has gone on, and of the
results which must follow its fur-
ther progression, strongly corrobo-
rates what our Catholic theology
teaches, of the inefficiency of mere
philosophy, or of religion without
organic power and authority, to
sustain and promote the cause of
natural or revealed truth concern-
ing things divine among the gene-
rality of men. We have already
said that if Mr. Mallock's sweeping
assertion? of the destructive effect
of positivism are to be taken lite-
rally, in the sense that all sufficient
motives of credibility for rational
theism or the supernatural revela-
tion whose beginning is coeval
with the human race, except the
one motive of the infallibility of
the Catholic Church, have been
proved inconclusive ; we cannot
accept them. In a modified sense,
that they have been rendered prac-
tically inefficacious to convince
the generality of men, we as-
sent to them. Philosophers and
divines speak and write many rea-
sonable tilings, and they must ex-
ert some influence in retarding the
progress of error. But philosophy
and theology, even when they are
sound and do not contradict faith,
are weak for convincing the great-
er number of men, weak for resist-
ing popular errors, and impotent
for regaining lost territory, unless
they are integrated in the complete,
synthetical unity of Catholic doc-
trine, by subjection to infallible
Catholic authority. It is impossi-
ble to deny the fact of a deep and
general lapse from belief in reveal-
ed and even natural theology, and
it is proved that a lapse from all
ethical first principles must follow
the religious aberration. Mr. Mal-
lock's own mental attitude, as he
explains it candidly in his writings,
is an instance and a strong proof
of the way in which the great issue
is shaping and defining itself gra-
dually but quite rapidly as a choice
between all truth and no truth,
Catholic faith and total unbelief.
His very mistakes and misappre-
hensions make him all the better
representative of the multitude who
have been shipwrecked and left
struggling in a sea of doubt in con-
sequence of the disasters caused by
the Protestant mutiny. He can
see nothing firm and stable except
the divine and infallible authority
of the Catholic Church, no ade-
quate reason for anything except
the word of God bearing in itself,
and making audible in its very in-
tonation, its own supernatural evi-
dence that it is God's word, utter-
ed through his organ, the Catholic
Church.
This is God's way of converting
the world. The world never did
734
Is Life Worth Living?
and never will learn to know God
in a saving manner by wisdom.
It is necessary to know enough to
believe in a reasonable manner,
but perfect wisdom comes after
faith. We believe that we may
understand, and the true sages,
like St. Paul, their master, "speak
wisdom to those who are perfect."
This is the way which is suited to
the actual condition of mankind.
God might have made all men on
an intellectual level with the elite
of the human race, and made these
more intellectually perfect than
they are. The Son of God might
have kept himself hidden, and
taught men only through prophets
and apostles. The revealed truths
might have been so manifested, and
the intelligence of mankind so ad-
justed to the revelation, that the
divine light would strike all minds
immediately and compel their as-
sent. There would then be a cer-
tain and universal philosophy, am-
ply sufficient in respect to all ra-
tional truths for all men, and a
similar revelation equally immedi-
ate, clear, and certain to every man,
in respect to the supernatural mys-
teries. But it has pleased God to
appear personally among men, and
teach them through their miseries
that their only resource is in a Di-
vine Saviour. He has made the
mass of mankind dependent on in-
struction for wisdom, needing to
learn through revelation and reli-
gious teachers even the truth which
is knowable by natural reason, as
well as that which is supernatural.
He has so revealed the divine truths
that they are not immediately evi-
dent, but are made known through
a medium, in such a way that the
will is free to determine the assent
or dissent of the intellect. He has
made the church the medium, with
infallible and sovereign authority
to teach and command in the
doctrinal and moral order. The
light of reason does not practically
suffice for men without the light of
faith, or philosophy without reve-
lation, even in the natural do-
main of knowledge and virtue, al-
though it does accomplish some-
thing. Revelation itself, when dis-
sociated from the organic unity of
the church and the regular current
of tradition, and thus more or less
altered and corrupted, though nut
without power and efficiency for
partial good, does not suffice for
the complete result intended by
Providence, either in the natural
or supernatural domain of truth
and holiness. The perpetual ob-
jection by which this plea for the
necessity of Catholic authority is
traversed is, that even the Catho-
lic Church does not suffice. Suf-
fice for what ? Compelling the as-
sent of all mankind, and effectually
subduing the will of all men to obe-
dience to the divine law ? But
this is not the intention of God.
The freedom of the will and the
moral discipline of life are not su-
perseded, but elevated and aided,
by the law of faith and grace. Re-
ligion is spiritual and not wholly
physical; it is a dynamical, not a
mechanical, force. Liberty to re-
sist and struggle against it, scope
for the action of opposing forces,
intellectual, voluntary, and physi-
cal, are left intact, that they may
be, not reduced to nullity, but con-
tinually overcome in a conflict
which, through many vicissitudes,
is gradually progressing toward a
final triumph. The precise charge
of failure against theism and Pro-
testantism is, not that they fail to
suppress resistance, but that they
fail to show a force superior to the
resisting force, that they fail to
overcome in the conflict with this
Is Life Worth Living?
735
force, and are not tending toward
a final triumph ; but, on the con-
trary, are perpetually growing weak-
er, receding, and approaching to-
ward a surrender of their quadri-
lateral, and toward decisive defeat.
Are there very many highly intelli-
gent and educated men who confi-
dently expect that the mass of Ca-
tholic and Oriental Christians, of
Jews, Mahometans, Buddhists, and
other pagans, are ever going to be-
come Protestants, and that Protes-
tant Christianity will prevail through-
out the world as the universal reli-
gion ? Is it probable, even in the
opinion of any considerable num-
ber of enlightened Protestants, that
Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Cal-
vinism, Unitarianism, or any other
specific form of soi disant genuine
Christianity, is ever going to pre-
vail generally and be acknowledged
by mankind as the one, true religion
which came from heaven ? We
think not. And for ourselves, we
are convinced that there is a moral
impossibility, equivalent to a phy-
sical impossibility, that any such re-
sult should ever be accomplished.
On the other hand, it cannot
be shown impossible or unlikely
that the Catholic Church should at-
tain any given approximation to
this grand totality of success, in the
future. The argument from her
past and present, from her consti-
tutive elements, from the trending
of all events since the world was
created, from all that converges
from every side and is focalized in
her Catholic character, is entirely
in her favor. Supernatural inter-
vention is necessary, but this is se-
cured by the promise of Christ.
The alternative is chaos, the
Malebolge of scepticism and nihil-
ism. Mr. Mallock presents the
two alternatives in such a manner
that a person must shut his eyes in
order not to recognize them. We
have only dipped into, but not ex-
hausted, the great topics proposed
in the extraordinary book we have
been reviewing. We regret not to
have space for more extensive quo-
tation from its pages, and we hope
that many of our readers will be
induced to peruse it carefully for
themselves. In concluding a dis-
cussion which we leave with re-
gret, we borrow one of Mr. Mai-
lock's closing paragraphs, in which
his and our own argument is
brought to a fine point, gold tipped
with iridosmin, reasoning terminat-
ed by an aspiration of humility and
prayer, which we devoutly hope
may open the heart of the author,
and of readers like-minded with
himself, to the grace of God.
" It may be that faith will succeed and
conquer sight that the precious treasure
we cling to will nerve us with enough
strength to retain it. It may be that
man, having seen the way that, unaided,
he is forced to go, will change his atti-
tude; that finding only weakness in pride,
he will seek for strength in humility,
and will again learn to say : '/ believe,
although I never can comprehend' Once let
him say this, his path will again grow
clearer for him. Through confusion,
and doubt, and darkness, the brightness
of God's countenance will again be visi-
ble ; and by and by again he may hear
the Word calling him. From his first as-
sent to his own moral nature he must
rise to a theism, and he may rise to' the
recognition of a church to a visible
embodiment of that moral nature of his,
as directed and joined to its one aim
and end to its delight, and its desire,
and its completion. Then he will see
all that is high and holy taking a dis-
tinct and helping form for him. Grace
and mercy will come to him through set
and certain channels. His nature will
be redeemed visibly from its weakness
and from its littleness redeemed, not in
dreams or fancy, but in fact. God him-
self will be his brother and his father;
he will be near akin to the Power that is
always, and is everywhere. His love of
73 ;/ 3 In the Valley of the Pcmigt ivassct.
virtue will be no longer a mere taste of everywhere and for ever, and is exalte J
his own ; it will be the discernment and high over all things in one of like nature
taking to himself of the eternal strength with theirs, the Mother of grace, the Pa-
a*d of the eternal treasure ; and what- rent of sweet clemency, who will protect
ever he most reveres in mother, or him from the enemy, and save him in
wife, or sister this he will know is holy, the hour of death."
IN THE VALLEY OF THE PEMIGEWASSET.*
THE river flows from lofty fount,
The arid sands caressing ;
The mists that float above the mount
Have sent them down a blessing ;
The light of heaven, the sun's warm beam,
Deck fair this vale's pine-cradled stream.
The gracious rain that drops to-day,
On naked deserts falling,
From barest peaks of granite gray
A hidden life is calling
To bud and shoot in tenderest green,
Bear flower and fruit of men unseen.
Unseen by us the germs that start
To life beneath our sowing ;
But if within our souls one dart
Of love to God be glowing,
Although no blooms our cares confess,
Like heavenly dews our love must bless.
Pour forth thy best, O human soul !
No stint nor scantness knowing;
Who gives himself must give, not dole,
With measure overflowing,
Nor heed, if well the vase be filled,
How much be by the wayside spilled.
If minds seem dull, and hearts be cold,
Inflame them with thy loving ;
If arid wastes of self are rolled
Around thee, patience proving,
O'erflood them with the generous tide
Of good-will, pouring free and wide.
Good will, kind words, and blessed deeds !
Is not life worth the living
When such as we to human needs
May minister such giving?
When lowliest soul 'mid mortals placed
With such a regal crown is graced ?
* An Indian name, said to mean " The crooked mountain pine place."
Fear I.
737
PEARL.
KA.r.IL-23-V o'MiYRV, AUTHOR OF " IZ\'s STOXY," " A SALON IV T.i? L VST DAYS OF THE EMPIRE,"
'ARE YOU MY WIFE?" EIC.
CHAPTER XVIII.
LADY WYNMERE'S LITTLE SCHEME.
IT was certainly very tyrannical
of the War Office to refuse Captain
Leopold conge to come to Paris for
the marriage of his sister ; and
everybody was surprised that his
mother's zeal and his father's in-
fluence had failed to obtain so rea-
sonable a concession assuming, of
course, that they had applied for it.
Indeed, Mme. Leopold's lamenta-
tions over the disappointment plac-
ed the matter beyond mere assump-
tion. But, be it as it may, Leon
was not present at Blanche's wed-
ding. Pearl was, and looked
charming in pale-blue silk. Mme.
Leopold was very affectionate to
her, and smiled knowingly at
Blanche when that young lady
threw her arms round her brides-
maid and prophesied that she
would wear the bridal veil next
of any of the hundred wedding
guests.
AVhen the fuss of the preparation
and the excitement of the wedding
were over, and Blanche was gone,
the days were very dull to Mme.
Leopold.
" The house seems so lonely
without her!" sighed the mother to
Mrs. Monteagle.
"It is lonely without her," was
the emphatic rejoinder ; " every
place is lonely when the young life
that used to fill it is gone."
" You are carrying off Pearl next
week, are you not?" said Mme.
Leopold.
VOL. xxix. 47
" Yes. She conies to me on
Saturday. You all go off on Mon-
day, don't you ?"
" The baron must run down to-
morrow, but we sha'n't go till
Monday. There was a telegram
this morning asking for instructions
about the felling of a tree which
they say is in the way of the new
window, and it is impossible to de-
cide without being on the spot ;
the steward is always for cutting
down old trees, but I never let
them be touched if I can help it.
I think it is such a pity."
"It is a murder," said Mrs. Mont-
eagle ; ** the man who strikes down
a full-grown tree without necessity
is capable of any villany under the
sun. I hope the baron will stand
out against his tree being killed."
Mme. Leopold was amused at
the vehemence with which she
spoke, and glad too; it was more
like Mrs. Monteagle's old self. She
had lost some of her old spirit of
late, people noticed.
" You look better to-day than
you did on Sunday, chere ma-
dame," said Mme. Leopold.
" I am better to-day; not that I
was particularly ailing on Sunday."
" You looked tired."
" I was tired. I generally am
now. But I am getting used to it ;
one grows used to everything."
" Pearl will desennuyer you a
little ; you are too much alone. It
is bad to be alone. I know it now
733
Pearl.
by bitter experience." And she
heaved a deep sigh.
u Three days can't have taught
you much of the bitterness of it,"
said Mrs. Monteagle with a chuckle ;
whereupon Mme. Leopold discov-
ered that it was time for her to say
good-by.
The minister set off to Gardan-
valle next morning by an early
train. The distance was only four
hours by rail ; he would arrive at the
chateau in time for dejeuner ; if
the day was fine he was to sleep
there and return the next morning.
Mme. Leopold expended a vast
amount of pity on herself for this
bereavement of four-and-twenty
hours, but she managed to pass the
day without absolutely dying of
ennui. She had multitudes of vis-
itors coming to congratulate her on
her brilliant new maternity, to all
of whom she responded by a re-
proachful appeal for condolence.
" Ma chere fille was everything
to me ! Now that she is gone, I
feel as if there were nothing for me
to do in life. But I draw courage
in my isolation from the thought
of her happiness. The dear child
always declared she would never
make any other marriage than one
of affection. This gave me much
anxiety; those ardent young na-
tures are sometimes carried away
by their imaginations, and I could
not but tremble at the danger
which my Blanche's sensitive heart
held for her peace. But she has
chosen well, and I have reason to
be thankful that I left her free to
follow her own instincts. The
dear child is so happy !"
Many believed this. Perhaps
Mme. Leopold believed it. It is
so easy to persuade ourselves that
what flatters our self-love is true.
Mme. Mere and Pearl were to
have dined with her that day; but
Pearl begged off. She was suffering
from headache, and preferred to re-
main at home. Headaches are a
most useful institution. It is hard
to see how society could get on
without them ; they are messengers
ready at a moment's notice ; they
start up like danger-signals to avert
fatal collisions, to create happy co-
incidences ; they furnish opportu-
nities, excuses, combinations; and
they are so quiet and unassuming
that they escape notice where
more important agents would be
sure to provoke it.
Pearl's headache was not one of
these social auxiliaries ; it was a bo-
na-fide pain in her head. But she
was thankful to it, though it was
very disagreeable and compelled
her to go to bed the moment Mme.
Mere had left the house. The
misery and excitement of the last
fortnight had put a great strain on
her, and she began to feel her
strength giving way a little ; she
had suffered from intense headache
for several days, but this evening
she was utterly worn out and gave
up struggling.
The next morning the pain, in-
stead of being better, was worse,
and she was so feverish that Mme.
Mere grew uneasy.
" You are not well, ma petite; I
will send for the doctor. I don't
like this headache lasting so long."
Pearl made a faint protest, but
she was not sorry to be ordered to
her room to lie down till the doc-
tor came.
An hour passed, and she had
just fallen into a restless doze,
when the shrill tones of Mme. Leo-
pold's voice roused her, and Mme.
Mere entered the room hurriedly.
" Mon enfant, we are starting
for Gardanvalle, my daughter and
I. My son has met with an acci-
dent."
Pearl.
739
Pearl sat up and pushed the hair
from her flushed face.
" What has happened to him ?"
" He was thrown from his horse
on his way to the train this morn-
ing. The- steward says there is
nothing to be frightened about, but
we are going off with a surgeon.
Ma petite, I am so sorry to leave
you alone ; but you won't mind it
for a day or so? Marianne will
take every care of you, and old Pierre
says he will watch over you like his
own child till I come back. The
doctor will be here before I go, I
hope ; but if not, you know what a
kind old man he is. You will not
be afraid of him."
" Of course not. But don't think
of me. I am so sorry about M.
Leopold ! You will write a line to
say how he is when you get to Gar-
danvalle?"
Pearl was on her feet in a mo-
ment, losing all thought of herself
in anxiety for Mme. Mere. She
did not wait to arrange her disor-
dered dress, but hurried out, with
her hair tumbling about her, to
Mme. Leopold, who was waiting in
the drawing-room, counting the
minutes impatiently.
"Has a telegram been sent to
Leon ?" said Mme. Leopold when
they were ready to start.
"Yes. Pierre ' took it. Now
;ood-by, ma petite !" And she em-
>raced Pearl.
"An revoir, mon enfant, au re-
roir," said Mrne. Leopold to Pearl,
ind kissing her with a kindness
twakened by the pain that craved
for sympathy. " Priez pour moi,
pour nous tous !" she added, her
voice trembling.
And Pearl returned her caress,
forgetting everything except that
the woman who had been unkind
to her was in trouble.
The brougham drove away with
the anxious wife and mother.
Pearl stood and watched it out of
sight from the window, and then
her own pain, which sympathy with
a greater one had momentarily sus-
pended, came back with increased
violence. She grew faint, and it
was all she could do to get back to
her own room and fling herself on
the bed.
The doctor came in the course,
of the afternoon, and the cook, in?,
her new capacity of sick-nurse, as--
sisted at the consultation.
" Nothing serious ; with care and
rest she will be all right in a few
days," was the medical man's ver-
dict. Marianne rose at cxace to
the emergency ; she entered on her
functions quite naturally. She put
Pearl to bed, administered the pre-
scribed tisane, and was at once as
much at home in the sickroom
as amongst her saucepans in the.
kitchen.
Pearl felt as if she were- in a
troubled dream for two- or three
days. She was too weary to care
much what they did with her; but
she was docile, and let Marianne
have her way in everything. It
was a relief to be alone and qliiet,
and if it had not been for the pain
in her head and the feverish nights
the enforced rest would'! have been
enjoyable. Mme. Mere had writ-
ten to say that the fracture, though
not dangerous, was serious, and it
was impossible for her to leave
Sophie alone with the sufferer until
he was past all cause for anxiety.
" So you had better go to Mrs.,
Monteagle without waiting for my
return, ma chere petite," she added.
"I shall be spared, at any rate, the
pain of seeing you go out of my
house that lonely house which
you so brightened by your youth
and sweetness during the too short
time I had possession of. you. But
740
Pearl.
it is not adieu, only au revoir, n'est
ce pas ?"
Pearl's first impulse was to send
off this note to Mrs. Monteagle ;
but there was no one near her at
the moment, so she put the letter
under her pillow, intending to give
it to Marianne by and by. Before
the cook returned, however, Pearl
had changed her mind. If Mrs.
Monteagle came she might write to
them at home, and there was
trouble enough for her mother with-
out that. With the boys just get-
ting through their typhoid fever,
and Polly and the colonel away,
what could Mrs. Redacre do ? She
would want to come over imme-
diately to nurse her, and this was
impossible. Confused as her head
was with that hammer at her tem-
ples, Pearl was able to follow this
chain of reasoning, and it led her to
the determination to send no mes-
sage to Mrs. Monteagle. Several
days went by, and she was feeling
better, and then she began to
wonder that Mrs. Monteagle did
not come to see her. Saturday
was the day they had fixed for her
to leave the Rue du Bac for the
Faubourg St. Honore, and it was
odd that not a sign had come from
Mrs. Monteagle either to herself
or to Mme. Mere. She would not
,'be fit to make the change on Satur-
day ; the doctor said it would be a
risk for her to venture out for some
'days later. .But Mrs. Monteagle
.knew nothing of this, and it was
strange, moreover, that she should
not come to repeat her welcome
. at least. On Saturday morning
Pearl wrote a line, telling her old
1 friend that she wanted to see her.
''She waited all day for the answer,
tout it did not come. In the even-
ing she said to Marianne :
" I begin to think Mrs. Mont-
-eagle -must be ill ; Pierre must go
to-morrow morning and see if there
is anything the matter."
Pierre did go, and came back
with the news that madame had
slipped on the stairs and sprained
her ankle, and that she was con-
demned to her chaise-longue for at
least a month. She was not able to
write, being obliged to lie on her
back, but she hoped mademoiselle
would come to her as soon as pos-
sible that is, as soon as she had
the doctor's permission.
Pearl was wild to be off that very
day to nurse her old friend ; but
Marianne waylaid the doctor on the
stairs, and he came in with a vio-
lent protest against such an act of
rebellion. She was much too weak
and nervous to undertake the fa-
tigues of the office of sick-nurse ;
he would not hear of it ; there was
no foreseeing what might come of
it if, in her present state of nervous
exhaustion, she had another fever-
ish attack ; it might end in typhoid
fever; he would answer for nothing.
Pearl justified the assertion as to
her nervousness by bursting into
an hysterical fit of crying; but the
threat of typhoid, and the thought
of what this visitation would be to
her mother, cowed her, and she
made no attempt to rebel against
the doctor's commands.
She sent loving little notes every
day to Mrs. Monteagle, and receiv
ed verbal answers through Pierr
who acted as postman. Lette
came from home, also, that cheered
her in her weariness and made the
days less long. Her mother wrote
in her usual tone of cheerful cour-
age and thankfulness : the boys
were getting on beautifully ; this
warm weather would help on their
convalescence better than anything.
The colonel was very happy with
Cousin Bob, and had hopes of get-
ting " something to do." Polly was
ry
:
Pearl
well and in great request ; the
county was doing its best to cheer
her under these trying domestic
separations.
But Polly had her own troubles
that Mrs. Redacre knew nothing
about. Even Polly herself was far
from knowing the full extent of them
yet. She saw that a change had
taken place in Mr. Danvers, but
she did not know to what to attri-
bute it or how deep it really went.
He had not returned to Lamford
since that day when he had opened
his mind to Lady Wynmere ; he
had gone back to London the next
afternoon, and not written her a
line since. She had no idea what
he meant to do, or if he had made
up his mind to do anything ; he
had seemed to her too evenly sway-
ed by conflicting motives to be
able to come to a decision, unless
some new influence were thrown
into the scales to make them dip to
one side or the other. His con-
duct was open to severe blame ;
but there was something to be
said in excuse of it. Polly should
have told him the truth ; its un-
pleasantness did not justify her
withholding it, though it excused
her to a certain point in Lady
Wynmere's eyes, and she could not
help wondering that it did not do
so in Percy's. When a man is
really in love with a girl he is
ready to invent excuses for her
where they don't exist. But that
was just it. Was he really in love
with Polly? And Polly did she
love him ? Lady Wynmere, after
watching her closely during the
period of quarantine, when Polly
and she were thrown into such
close companionship, came to the
conclusion that she did. This
conclusion was the result of no di-
rect or indirect admission on Polly's
part. Nothing could exceed the
dignified indifference which she
displayed concerning Mr. Danvers.
She never alluded to him, but if
his name was mentioned she was
in no haste to dismiss the subject
as if it were an awkward or a dis-
agreeable one ; if Lady Wynmere
praised his good looks, or his fine
horsemanship, or his pleasant man-
ners, she acquiesced, moderately :
" He was very agreeable and good-
natured ; but was he not a little
bit conceited ? Most good-looking
young men were, and that was the
reason, perhaps, why they were some-
times less popular than ugly men.
Besides, the ugly men were gene-
rally cleverer ; and it was the busi-
ness of a man to be clever : beauty
belonged to women . It did not mat-
ter what sort of looks a man had,
so long as he looked like a gentle-
man. Did not Lady Wynmere
think so ?"
Lady Wynmere would qualify
her assent to these remarks, and
Polly did not feel interest enough
in the matter to discuss it further..
But her little hostess saw through
this. Qui s'excuse s'accuse. It
was all too studied to be genuine.
Young ladies don't take that serene
tone of criticism in speaking of an
avowed admirer, unless they wish
to convey the idea that he and his
character and other people's esti-
mate of him are matters of com-
plete indifference to them ; and no
young lady cares to convey this,
idea unless she feels in her heart
that it is a false one. Moreover,,
with all her proud pretence of not
caring, Polly's face was betraying
her. Her brow grew clouded ; her
lips had a hard expression that
told tales ; she was pale and trou-
bled, and she took unnecessary
pains to make Lady Wynmere un-
derstand that anxiety about the
boys kept her awake of a night.
742
Pearl.
" I am not clever," thought Lady
Wynmere, as she noted these signs.
"If I were clever I might find a
way out of this trouble for them
both; but I don't see what I can
do. If I meddle I may do mis-
chief."
But she was too fond of Polly to
be satisfied with this negative poli-
cy. Something must be done to
bring Percy to reason. After ma-
ture deliberation she decided that
Polly's personal influence would do
more than anything else, so she
wrote, begging him to come down
to Lamford, as she wanted particu-
larly to see him.
Mr. Danvers wrote back to say
that he was so pressed with busi-
ness it was out of the question his
leaving town for the next fortnight ;
could he not, meantime, know by
letter what Lady Wynmere had to
say to him ?
"He is too clever for me,"
thought the unsuccessful diploma-
tist ; "he saw through my little
scheme."
But Polly was looking so de-
pressed because she was so de-
pressed, as Mrs. Monteagle would
have said that Lady Wynmere set
to work again for a remedy.
"You are worrying too much,
my dear ; you will fall ill yourself
if you fret about the boys like this.
I have a great mind to carry you
offto London for a change. Would
your mother entrust you to me for
ten days or so ?"
Polly brightened up at this pro-
position.
u Of course mamma would entrust
me to you, dear Lady Wynmere !
But it would be selfish to go away
while she is shut up alone here."
"What use are you to her?"
said Lady Wynmere. " If there was
any anxiety of course I would not
dream of proposing it ; but the
boys are quite over their illness,
and it will be just the thing for
them and your mother to come
over here for a change while we
are absent and the Hollow is being
aired and fumigated. We will stay
away till everything has been done
that is necessary, and then we can
all come back together the colonel
and Lord Ranperth and ourselves.
It is a capital plan !" She clapped
her tiny hands and danced on her
chair, and Polly kissed her and
said it was certainly the kindest
plan that could possibly have been
devised.
" And there is to be a charming
ball at Lady R 's on the 26th,
and we shall be just in time for it ;
and the last ball at the palace is to
be on the 28th, so we sha'n't have
our journey for nothing," said Lady
Wynmere, who began to feel quite
elated at her own cleverness.
" Oh ! I sha'n't think of going to
balls," said Polly ; " besides, I have
not a dress fit to go in."
" There will be time for that ;
leave all that to me, my dear." And
her ladyship flitted across to the
writing-table and despatched a let-
ter to Mrs. Redacre, while Polly
looked out of the window and
dreamed. Perhaps the mental
operation in which she was engag-
ed was too active and wide-awake
to be called dreaming. She rapid-
ly ran over the probabilities this
visit had in store. It was probable
she should meet Percy; it was proba-
ble she would brin g him to his senses ;
it was probable she would have op-
portunities of making him madly
jealous, and it was absolutely certain
that she would turn them to the best
account. These reflections had
such an exhilarating effect on her
that when Lady Wynmere, having
finished her note, turned round
and saw the young face alight with
Pearl.
743
the glow of anticipated victory, she
again congratulated herself on the
success of her scheme.
Her next note was to Percy Dan-
vers. It was better to let him
know they were coming ; it might
vex him if he met them suddenly
somewhere without knowing before-
hand that they were in town.
" I am taking her up for a little
change," she said. " The poor little
thing has been looking very pale and
unhappy lately, and I think a little go-
ing out will do her good. If she is
thinking of a certain person, who does
not think so much of her, it will help to
put him out of her head. I shall take
her to a few dances, and she is sure to
make a sensation, especially coming
towards the end of the season, when a
novelty produces such effect. She is in
great beauty, and more sweet and charm-
ing than ever. I have no doubt but that
she will take the feather out of every
belle's cap, and have you all fighting
duels about her before we return.
" I have not dared say a word about
the subject of that conversation. I am
not clever, you see, and I am so afraid
of making mischief !"
Not clever, indeed ! Percy Dan-
vers took the next train to Lam-
ford, and arrived there just as
Lady Wynmere and Polly were re-
turning from their afternoon drive.
" Mr. Danvers ! What a nice
surprise !" exclaimed Lady Wyn-
mere, as the carriage drove up and
Percy came forward to assist them
to alight.
" You gave me a general invi-
tation to come whenever I could
break loose," said the young man.
" Of course I'm not going to offer
an apology for having accepted it.
I know you better than to suppose
you expect one. Am I not right?"
he added to Polly, as he assisted
her from the carriage.
" People who know Lady Wyn-
mere always take her at her word,"
said Polly gaily, with head erect,
and obdurately blind to the ador-
ing look in Percy's eyes. Let him
adore ! She would show him
whether she was a tame bird to
come hopping to his finger when
he whistled for it.
" Come in and give us some cups
of tea before you go up-stairs,
dear," said Lady Wynmere, who,
being off her guard, was letting Mr.
Danvers see too plainly that his
arrival filled her with delight.
But Polly was never off her guard,
and was in no hurry for tea " she
hated taking it with her bonnet
on " so she walked up the great
wide stairs with a leisurely step,
while Mr. Danvers dawdled in the
hall, hanging up his hat, and watch-
ing to see if she would not turn and
look down at him from the landing ;
but Polly swept on and out of sight
without casting a glance at the
guilty, disconsolate one.
Lady Wynmere took advantage
of the opportunity to read Percy a
lecture while they were alone. He
bore it meekly, but made no pro-
testations of penitence or remorse.
He had been badly treated, and it
had taken him some time to get
over it and make up his mind
whether he would make it up with
Polly or not ; but he had decided
on granting her a free pardon, and
he had come down to tell her so.
" But Polly thinks she has some-
thing to forgive, too," said Lady
Wynmere, who, for a person so
wanting in cleverness, was conduct-
ing Polly's affairs very discreetly.
" She is evidently very much hurt
by the way you have behaved. I
know this, though she never even
hinted at the subject ; she has such
a proud spirit I should not be sur-
prised if she refused to take your
pardon now. You saw how she
received you ? Nothing could be
more cold and indifferent than her
744
Pearl.
manner. You don't know what a
haughty little spirit she has !"
This was a check that Mr. Dan-
vers had not foreseen. He was
quite taken aback by it, and look-
ed so surprised and mortified that
Lady Wynmere began to purr in-
wardly and to think that perhaps,
after all, she was not so wanting in
wits as she had imagined.
" You think she won't give in
when I explain how I took her
want of confidence to heart ?" he
said. " What has she to complain
of? If I hadn't been so fond of
her I should not have minded it
half as much. Any man would
have resented being treated in that
way."
" Well, you must plead your own
cause. I can't help you. You
went away in a huff, and she does
not know why, and so has every
right to be angry."
"A friend can always help a
friend like you," said Percy. '* I
expected you would have taken my
part all this time while I was away.
I did indeed."
" You never said so ; and I was
afraid of meddling. You see I am
not clever, and so I prefer not to
run the risk of saying or doing the
wrong thing. Besides, I saw Polly
was very angry and unhappy ; but
this prospect of going to London
and seeing new sights and faces
has revived her wonderfully."
" But you don't mean to take her
to London now ? " said Percy, un-
able to repress a start.
" Why not ?" inquired Lady
Wynmere innocently. " I am sure
the change will do her good. She
has fretted about her brothers, too,
poor child ! I shall be as vain as a
peacock chaperoning her about the
town. I ought to have thought of
it sooner."
The butler came in with a note,
so the conversation was cut short,
and Lady Wynmere went up-stairs
to take off her bonnet, leaving Mr.
Danvers alone in the drawing-room.
He was in a very bad humor ; he
felt himself an injured man, and
Lady Wynmere, instead of smooth-
ing down his feathers, had taken a
most unkind, a malicious pleasure
in ruffling them. She had, in the
first instance, agreed with him that
Polly had behaved badly, and that
he deserved sympathy and she
blame ; and here she was now all
on the other side, and bent on tak-
ing the girl off to London.
u She will have a dozen men
ready to blow each other's brains
out for her before the end of a
week," was his angry reflection.
" She sha'n't go to London, if I can
help it until she comes there as
my wife."
Lady Wynmere was a long time
having her bonnet taken off so
long that Polly had time to write
a letter to Pearl, leaving it open
for a possible postscript to-morrow
morning, and then to dress for
dinner and to come down-stairs,
when to her surprise she found no-
body in the drawing-room. She
went into the conservatory to get
a camellia. Lady Wynmere liked
her to wear one in her hair of an
evening. She was fastening it in
the silky coils, with the help of a
narrow strip of looking-glass in one
of the pillars that supported the
roof, when some one said, " May I
help you to do that ?"
And there stood Percy, look-
ing wonderfully handsome and tall
and strong, but with a deprecat-
ing, subdued air about him that
melted Polly. She let him fasten
the camellia in her hair, and he
did it so awkwardly that it fell
out the moment she moved her
head. They both laughed, and
Pearl.
745
then he tried it again ; and when
Lady Wynmere came down dress-
ed for dinner he was appar-
ently trying it still, for they still
were in the conservatory, and in
the distance, through the screen of
flowers and tropical leaves, she
could see the two figures very close
together ; and when they entered
the drawing-room that unfortunate
camellia looked as if it had been
sat upon.
*' We have made it up," said
Percy, leading Polly to Lady Wyn-
mere, who had discreetly retired to
the window. " I have gone on my
knees and eaten the dust at her
feet, and she has forgiven me."
" He is telling stories," said Pol-
ly, tossing her lovely head, with
a blush soft as a rose. " There
wasn't a grain of dust on the mar-
ble to eat, and he didn't even go
on his knees."
" Shall I do so now?" And Percy
made a movement as if he were
going to drop down before her ;
but she fled away to Lady Wyn-
mere, and hid her face on that lady's
shoulder.
" Go off and dress ; you will keep
us waiting for dinner," said her
ladyship. And Mr. Danvers hur-
ried out of the room, and reap-
peared in full evening attire in a
shorter space of time than it had
ever taken him to perform the
change before.
CHAPTER XIX.
REST AND PEACE.
POLLY had kept her own coun-
sel, and said nothing to Pearl about
her quarrel if quarrel it could be
called with Percy Danvers ; but
now that all was right between
them, and their engagement for-
mally announced to Colonel and
Mrs. Redacre, she indulged in the
luxury of a long lamentation to
Pearl, dwelling pathetically on her
own sufferings, and extending a
magnanimous pardon to Pearl, who
had been the immediate cause of
them.
" Of course you will now come home,"
wrote Polly. " Percy, who is the very
essence of good nature, volunteered at
once to go to Paris and fetch you. You
will all meet in London, and come down
here together papa and Cousin Bob,
and you and Percy and we will stay at
Lady Wynmere's until the Hollow is
ready for us. The whole house will
have to be washed and smoked, and I
know not what, to get rid of the infec-
tion, they say ; and the boys' room must
be repapered, etc. ; and all this will take
some time. Lady Wynmere is very nice
and kind, and she and I get on very well
together. You would call her silly ; she
thinks a great deal too much of birth and
race, and that sort of thing, to suit your
radical taste for heroes and self-made
men ; her ideas are so thoroughly aristo-
cratic that she is intolerant of everything
vulgar or that savors of ' the people.'
But I expect Percy will convert you
from all these crotchets, you dear old
Pearl ; he would never stand his sister
being a radical, and I musthaveyou and
he great friends. I mean my marriage
to make you all very happy at home.
Percy will be very rich by and by, you
know. His uncle's death will put him
in possession of the estate ; and, though
we are in no hurry to send the old gen-
tleman to heaven, he is in wretched
health, poor man ! and past seventy ; so,
in the course of nature, we can't have
very long to wait.
" I hope mamma will now give up wor-
rying papa about getting something to
do, as she calls it. I am sure he has
had lots to do, poor papa ! ever since we
have been poor. Somebody wrote a
story called A Schoolmaster Abroad. If
I were clever I might write one and call
Pearl.
it A Schoolmaster at Home. You, who
are so fond of heroes you ought to
raise a statue to papa. The way he has
slaved away with those boys is quite
wonderful. And yet, to hear mamma
lamenting over his having nothing to do,
one would think he sat in an arm-chair
all day smoking ; she is always saying
that he would be so much happier if he
only ' did something.' I dare say you
think so, too, for you never rested until
you went off and did something your-
self. There is one comfort, you didn't
do much good, so I hope you are cured
of heroics for the rest of your life. Give
my love to Blanche and Mrs. Monteagle.
I am glad Blanche has made such a glo-
rious match. I like my friends to be
prosperous and happy, and I am glad
those designing old frumps who were
laying traps for M. de Cholcourt have
all been disappointed. Blanche will
make as good a Marquise de C. as any
of the Faubourg girls, and it will be nice
to go and see her in her chateau. She
said I must go and stay with her when I
am married ; so I shall tell her now that
I mean to accept the invitation sooner
than she expected. I wonde\ whether
Mrs. Monteagle would ask me over with
mamma for a fortnight to get my trous-
seau? I can't bear the idea of getting it
in London, and it would be fun to go
and order it in Paris, Mme. de Kerbec,
I am sure, would take us in if I asked
her; but she is such a goose and so
vulgar that I should not care to be par-
aded by her as the bride-elect. Still, if
Mrs. Monteagle can't, or won't, Mme. de
K. would be a pis-aller ; so I shall write
a palavering letter to her, announcing
my engagement. Don't you say a word
about it till she hears it from me. As I
am not making a very bad match, she is
sure to be full of congratulation and
sympathy. She is a worldly old thing,
Captain Jack ; but she is good-natured
after a fashion, and she may turn out
useful just now.
" I have no news. Fritz is kept chained
to his kennel, and he does not like it,
and ' struggles and howls by fits,' poor
little man ! Sometimes to quiet him they
let him up to see the boys for a moment,
and then they wash him, and he is allow-
ed to dash over and pay me a visit. I
tried to keep him here in quarantine ;
but the struggling and howling that he
kept up were simply unbearable.
" Good-by. Let me have a letter saying
when you will be ready for Percy to go
and fetch you.
" Your affectionate sister,
" POLLY."
Pearl got this letter in the morn-
ing, after her breakfast, as she was
sitting in the garden, where the
sun was shining warmly a hot
noon July sun. It was the first
time she had been out since her ill-
ness it scarcely deserved so big a
name, for it had been merely a col-
lapse of strength from the strain
put upon the nervous system ; yet
it had pulled her down a good deal,
and she felt absurdly weak as she
sauntered along under the shade
of two venerable chestnut and two
elm trees. The neglected old gar-
den was cool and pleasant, with its
stone fountain where the water
used to play in the time of the
great Revolution. She sat down on
a rusty iron chair, and read Polly's
letter for the third time. Of course
she was glad of this news of the
engagement, formal and open now ;
everything in the letter was cause
for gladness, and yet it brought her
a strange mixture of pain with the
pleasure. The worldliness and
selfishness that Polly avowed with
a sort of cynical frankness were not
pleasant ; but the off-hand censure
of her mother, mocking her anx-
iety about their father's discontent-
ed idleness, and the covert sneer
at Captain Darvallon all this gave
Pearl positive pain. Poor Pearl had
too fine an ear for the undertones
of life; they reached her and pene-
trated, echoing long after many a
louder, joyous strain that should
have drowned them had died away.
She had got into a state of chronic
alarm about Polly, as we are apt
to do about a person whom we
know to be afflicted with some
organic weakness which, under
certain conditions, may at any
Pearl.
747
moment develop to a fatal issue.
Would not this intense worldliness
grow to a passion that would choke
all nobleness out of Polly's nature ?
Misfortune had not improved
her; she had been hardened, not
purified, by passing through the
fire. It is true that different na-
tures require different experiences ;
some flourish best in the sunshine,
some in the cold ; the tropics give
us flowers and birds with the plu-
mage of the rainbow ; the ice-clad
mountains give us gems and mar-
bles. Polly was one of the rain-
bow-feathered creatures that per-
ish when they are exiled from their
own burning skies. Born in luxu-
ry, she had been loving and good
and free from all defects while she
breathed her native atmosphere ;
she would regain her natural char-
acter when she was restored to it.
Her marriage would replace her in
her true element; the rebellious
spirit would disappear when there
was nothing to provoke it; her
heart would expand when it was
satisfied, and she would cease to
be absorbed in self when the strug-
gle was over and self had attained
its end. This was very poor phi-
losophy, but in her despair Pearl
took refuge in it, and it comforted
her. The song of the lazy sum-
mer birds sounded cheerier, the
lights grew brighter on the flow-
ers, the shadows softer beneath the
trees, as she read the letter for the
third time, and reflected that the
period of dark probation was now
over for Polly, and that she would
soon be her own sweet self again.
" I wish I could see Mrs. Mont-
eagle at once and tell her about
the marriage," she thought. It was
evident that Polly left the asking
for that invitation in her hands,
and she had no doubt but that it
would be volunteered without the
asking. Why should she not take
a cab, and drive over at once and
see Mrs. Monteagle ? It was a
heavenly morning, and the drive
could do her no harm. The doc-
tor had said he preferred she did
not attempt more than a stroll in
the garden until the day after to-
morrow, wh.en Mme. Mere was
coming back ; but Pearl felt so ex-
hilarated by the balmy air and the
bright horizon which this letter
opened out that she was inclined
to defy the doctor and steal a
march on Marianne and old Pierre.
It would be such a pleasant sur-
prise to Mrs. Monteagle to see her
walk in ! With her mind full of
treason she was crossing the un-
tidy old garden, sniffing at its beds
of sweet-smelling flowers here and
there, when she looked up and
caught sight of Marianne scraping
a carrot at the kitchen window.
" Mademoiselle does not feel too
tired, does she?" said the kind
cook, bending forward and looking
down at her patient.
" Not a bit, Marianne ! I should
like to walk to the Bastille, only I
am afraid you would scold me."
" I should not scold mademoiselle
if she walked to the Bastille. I
should weep over her, because she
would be dead. And then Mme.
la Baronne would scold me !" .
" Then I will not have you
scolded, my good nurse. I will
give up the Bastille for this morn-
ing; but it is a pity, the day is so
lovely!"
She sauntered on round to the
courtyard, to enter by the front
stairs, which was less steep than
the back. The wide gates were
open, and a little victoria was
crawling down the street. Pearl
cast a longing look at it ; the
coachman stopped and held up his
hand.
748
Pearl.
(i Bonne voiture, madame ! Un
beau temps pour se promener !"
Pearl crossed the yard, and got
in and drove off to the Faubourg
St. Honore. She would get well
scolded by Marianne, but the fun
of the escapade and the delight of
surprising Mrs. Monteagle were well
worth it. Dear Mrs. Monteagle !
What a loving, faithful friend she
had proved herself! It would be
like going home, returning to her.
And how delightful it would be to
have her mother and Polly there get-
ting the trousseau. It was nonsense
to talk of her going back to the Hol-
low at once ; she must come and stay
with Mrs. Monteagle and bully her
into good spirits, as she had prom-
ised, and then they would all re-
turn together, and carry her with
them and keep her for the wedding.
How strange that Polly had not
suggested this ! But Polly was too
full of her own mighty concerns to
have room for anybody else's. All
this would come right, however;
everything was coming right. The
dark days were over, and the beau-
tiful earth was covered with flowers
and full of sunshine and summer
shade. How happy they would all
be when they were together again !
She had suffered a little since she
had taken to playing at heroics, as
Polly called it ; but it was over now,
and nothing but the sweets remain-
ed. Mrs. Monteagle had provided
nearly all the sweets, and precious-
ly Pearl meant to preserve them
loving, tender memories of helpful-
ness, and sympathy delicate and
strong, and counsel always wise and
true.
" Numero quarante sept, madame
a dit ?" called out the coachman.
"Quarante cinq," corrected Pearl,
and the victoria drew up, and she
alighted at the house where the
bright years of her young life had
run their happy course ; where, at
the door above, so many affection-
ate welcomes had awaited her.
" You will wait ; I won't be long,"
she said as the coachman assisted
her out.
Marianne was right about the
Bastille ; she certainly was not in
force for a walk there yet.
The concierge saw her through
her small window, and stood up
with a surprised face.
" How are you. Mme. Labarre ?"
said Pearl at the open door of the
dark lodge. " I have been poorly
these last ten days ; that is why you
have not seen me. I need not ask
if madame is at home. I know she
is not allowed out yet."
" Out ! Mademoiselle does not
know?" said the woman, coming
forward.
"Oh! yes. I know she had a
bad accident, and that she is not
to be moved for some time yet."
She was turning away when the
concierge called her back.
" Mademoiselle, I see, knows no-
thing. Mme. Monteagle has had
no accident; she is dead."
Pearl put her hand to her fore-
head and reeled against the door.
The woman caught her by the arm,
and steadied her, and called to her
husband, who was working at his
shoe-mending trade in the next
room.
" Make her sit down, and get her
a drink of eau sucree and fleur
d'oranges," said the man kindly,
and he almost carried Pearl to the
one arm-chair in the place.
She had not fainted ; she had
her senses fully about her ; but her
limbs had nearly given way, and
there was a sensation in her throat
as if she were strangling.
"Go and call Mile. Parkere,"
said Mme. Labarre. The man
Pearl.
749
called to Mrs. Monteagle's maid
from the court, and she came in an
instant.
"O Miss Pearl, Miss Pearl!"
cried the woman, bursting into
tears.
" Is it true?" said Pearl, looking
at her with horrified eyes out of a
face as white as a corpse.
" Indeed it is, miss ! She died
this very morning ! At ten o'clock.
Just two hours ago !"
" My God ! what does it all
mean ? Why did you not send
for me?"
"I didn't dare, miss. They
wouldn't let me. The doctor that
was attending her was the same
that was with you, and he said you
were so poorly it might kill you if
you heard she was dying. I begged
him hard to let me go and tell you.
I promised him I'd break it very
gentle. I said it would be harder
an you to hear the worst without
having seen her; I did indeed,
miss ! But he wouldn't hear of it ;
he said you were all alone here,
with no one to help you to bear
the bad news. He was very kind,
and seemed so sorry; but he
wouldn't go out of the house till we
all of us promised we wouldn't take
you or send you the bad news.
O my dear mistress !"
Parker broke down into passion-
ate sobs. But not a tear came to
Pearl ; she was too stunned.
" How long was she ill ?"
" Just a week, miss. There was
no hope from the first. It was the
heart, they said ; she hardly ever
spoke, but slie had her senses
about her almost to the last."
" And was no one with her ?
Was no member of her family sent
for ?"
" No, miss. You see we didn't
know where to send. None of us
had Mr. Percy Danvers' address,
and he was the only gentleman of
her family that ever came over.
Mme. Leopold was away with the
baron, who's got his leg broken,
and M. and Mme. de Kerbec went
to the country somewhere just af-
ter missus was taken ill. There
was only you could have given us
the addresses, and we couldn't ask
you."
Pearl listened quite calmly, still
in that dreamy state, stunned, not
realizing yet the horrible truth.
" Take me to see her. I must
see her," she said, rising with a
sudden energy ; and she caught
hold of Parker's arm, as if to lead
her away.
" O Miss Pearl ! my dear young
lady! I'm afraid it might be too
great a shock to you. And, now
I look at you, you look very ill !"
said Parker.
But Pearl, with an impatient
movement, drew her on and out
across the porte-cochere and up
the stairs. The door was ajar, as
Parker had left it ; the drawing-
room was darkened ; all the shut-
ters were closed in the front rooms.
Nothing was changed anywhere;
there was the embroidery-frame,
with its silks and wools on the little
table beside it, as the worker had
left them when she drew her last
needle through the canvas. The
flowers were faded in their glasses ;
this was the only semblance of
death that was to be seen, and yet
the room was as desolate as if it
had been the death-chamber.
" Are you sure you are not
afraid, miss ?" said Parker, speak-
ing under her breath, with her
hand on the door of the inner
room.
" No, I am not the least afraid.
Let me go in. But tell me first,"
Pearl said, as with a vague idea that
the power of speech might be taken
750
Pearl.
from her by what she was going to
see, " did she never mention me
from the time she fell ill ? She
never asked to see me ?"
" She never spoke almost from
the first, miss," replied Parker eva-
sively, and gently turning the han-
dle, as if to avoid further ques-
tioning.
"'But I want to know. I must
know if she never spoke of me
at all. Did she not try to send
me a message ? Parker, as you
loved your mistress, tell me the
truth !"
"Well, miss, she did; but it
wasn't my fault, indeed it wasn't !"
protested the maid, sobbing.
" I know that. I'm not going to
blame you ; but I want to know
what she said."
" Well, miss, the truth is, we
were all in such a confusion that
everything got upset ; but I'm cer-
tain it'll turn up. When the funeral
is over and the place is properly
cleared out, I'm sure as I live the
letter '11 be found ; I can't con-
ceive "
"The letter! It was a letter?
She was able, then, to write to me ?
Oh ! why, then, could I not have
seen her? Parker, for heaven's
sake, tell me the truth !"
Pearl was trembling all over.
" You're going to faint, Miss
Pearl!" cried Parker, frightened
out of her wits.
" No, no," said Pearl. " When
did she write that letter?"
" She didn't write it, miss. It
was a letter that came the morning
she fell ill. She put it on her little
writing-table, and before she had
time to do anything with it she
fainted, and we had to send for the
doctor. It was the next day she
told me to take it and put it into
an envelope, and then she said I
was to go off with it to you, and to
give it into your own hands. * And
give her my love, Parker,' she said,
* and tell her she has been a great
comfort to me ; I send her my bless-
ing ' But she broke down and
couldn't finish; the tears came and
choked her."
Parker herself broke down here,
and Pearl, as if some string had
been snapped by the tender mes-
sage from her lost friend, gave a
great cry, and the tears rained
down her face in a bitter flood.
" But the letter what did you do
with it?" she said, when the par-
oxysm was over and she was able
to speak.
"Well, miss, I can't for the life
of me think where it went," said
Parker. " The doctor came in just
at the moment, and I had to fuss
about, and somehow or other I
dropped the letter, and, though I
looked everywhere for it, I couldn't
find a,trace of it!"
" O Parker, Parker !" cried Pearl,
wringing her hands and sobbing
passionately.
"Indeed, Miss Pearl, I could
have cried myself for vexation ; but
it's sure to be found, for I missed
it the moment the doctor went, and
I hadn't stirred from the room."
" What sort of a letter was it ?
Was it an English one ? Had it
English stamps on the envelope ?"
" No, miss ; they weren't queen's
heads. There were a lot of stamps,
but I don't know what was on
them ; it was a large letter, and
fine, bold handwriting ; that was all
I saw when I was putting it into
the other envelope."
This was dreadful. There was
no use upbraiding Parker ; but if
the letter was not found it would
add a life-long regret to Pearl's
sorrow. She turned the handle of
the door softly, and went in. The
room was darkened, but one spot
Pearl.
751
was appallingly luminous ; it was
as if every ray of light had been
gathered up from the surrounding
gloom to make more distinctly visi-
ble the figure lying with upturned
face upon the bed. How still it
was ! What a royal peace sat on the
wan features, what a placid smile on
the closed lips, what a beam of im-
mortality on the smooth brow !
This was the first time Pearl had
looked on death. She had entered
the presence filled with a kind of
shrinking horror that was only
overcome by a longing stronger
than fear ; but as she gazed on the
white, cold face, white as nothing
else is white, cold as nothing else
is cold, her terrors vanished, and
something of the solemn peace of
death fell upon her heart. Gone !
Dumb ! Those lips that had spo-
ken so many kind words to her
would never speak again. Those
ears would never again be opened
to her voice. Those hands would
never feel the pressure of hers.
Gone ! The gates were past. The
veil was drawn back ; but only for
the spirit that had fled. Nothing
could follow it beyond that thin,
impenetrable screen, nothing could
pierce the darkness. What a soli-
tude that going forth made for
those who were left behind ! How
overpowering the presence of the
departed one was ! It seemed to
Pearl that her heart ceased to
beat, that everything was hushed
to an unearthly silence, listening to
the silence of that figure on the
bed. She looked, and looked, un-
til she fancied the lips moved.
Were they asking for a kiss ? She
stole gently round to the bedside,
and bent down, and kissed the
cold, white forehead. The touch
went through her like a sting of
ice. She dropped on her knees,
and buried her face in the bed,
and wept bitterly.
" Come away, miss," said Parker
in a whisper, and attempting to
raise her.
Pearl let herself be lifted, and
then bent forward and imprinted
one more kiss on the white brow,
hertears flowing abundantly all the
time. She was moving away when
at the door she missed her hand-
kerchief.
" Go in, miss ; I will fetch it,"
said Parker, turning back. In a
minute she reappeared.
"Here it is! Here is the letter,
miss. It had slipped in between the
mattress and the wood, and in get-
ting at the handkerchief I pulled it
up."
Pearl took the letter almost joy-
fully. It came like a message from
the silent lips. She sat down and
opened the blank envelope. The
letter within was addressed in an
unknown handwriting, but the post-
mark was Vienna. Her heart, that
had seemed stricken with paraly-
sis a moment before, gave a sud-
den leap, and then went on beat-
ing so violently that she had to
hold her hand to her side to still it
before she could bring herself to
read the letter :
" MADAME :
" The mission on which I was so hastily
despatched is now nearly at an end, and
I expect to be in Paris in less than a
week. Meantime, I come to you for ad-
vice and help in a matter of deep impor-
tance to me, and to one dear to you one
of whom I have heard you speak as of an
adopted child. Am I mistaken in sus-
pecting that my love for her is no secret
to you ? If so, I confide it to you now.
I love her, and it is the ambition of my
life to win her love and to make her my
wife. I dare not flatter myself that
she cares for me, but she must know that
I love her, and she has not resented my
boldness in venturing to do so. This is
752
A Mission Mass.
all I have to build upon. But when a
man loves as I do, this same is much.
And I am patient. My love is strong
enough to live a long time on hope.
There is no trial she can put me to, no
sacrifice she can ask of me, that I am not
willing to accept ; if only she gives me
leave to work for the greatest happiness,
the highest privilege this world could
bestow on me, that of one day calling
her my wife. I am a poor man ; she also
is without fortune ; and this is the only
point of equality between us. I am a
son of the people ; my blazon is my sword
and a name that can boast of no illus-
tration beyond that which honor lends
to the most plebeian. I believe that her
soul is great enough to overlook these
shortcomings, and to bestow her hand
where her heart found a love worthy of
it ; but I cannot ask her to do this. I can-
not ask her to decide her own fate with-
out having first the consent of her father
to address her. Is it perfectly hopeless
forme to ask for this consent? You
know him, and you can advise me. I
have the possibility of getting an ap-
pointment which would considerably
increase my pay, and which I should
apply for immediately if I could hope
that she, whose name I do not even dare
to write, would consent to share my
poverty, and give me with her love a pos-
session that I would fling away wealth
and fame, and risk even life itself, to buy.
If you could read my heart, you who
love her, you would not be afraid to en-
trust her to me.
" Madame, I place my cause in your
hands. If you believe that you can
further her wishes and her happiness
by pleading it, you will do so. If not,
throw this letter into the fire, and for-
give the boldness that prompted it a
boldness that draws its only strength, its
only justification, from a love stronger
than death. I will not pursue her ; I
will not resent her rejection ; I will never
intrude myself upon her presence ; I will
go away to Africa, if she so wishes it ; but
one thing she must not ask me to do
that is, to cease to love her.
" I have the honor to remain, madame,
" RAOUL DARVALLON."
TO BE CONTINUED.
A MISSION MASS.
THE fog slow lifted o'er the hills,
Their wooded crowns unveiling,
Slow lifted from the inland stream
Through widening meadows trailing;
The busy little white-walled town,
To ragged hillside clinging,
Woke not with restless start to hear
The work-day summons ringing ;
The mill-race poured no eager flood
For clattering wheel's full-feeding,
And youth and maiden wandered by
The factory door, unheeding ;
From belfries, crowned with cock and vane,
The service bells were pealing,
The Sunday rest the day had brought
In jangling notes revealing.
A Mission. Mass. 753
Beyond the village' dusty edge,
On bluff the river crowning,
Where path-worn greensward and gray fence
Marked still some human owning,
Here humble wanderers gathered near
A cabin rude and lowly
The August sunshine in the town
Shone on no spot so holy
Within whose rudely sheltering walls,
Beneath whose darkened ceiling,
Rough-seeming hearts with reverent thought
Awaited Heaven's healing ;
Awaited Him who came of old,
No grander refuge claiming,
His worshippers, the shepherds meek ;
His guard, the angels flaming.
This day again he came with train
Of angels, all adoring ;
The modern town, like Bethlehem,
His presence sweet ignoring.
Within the Irish workman's hut
Knelt Erin's faithful people ;
In vain for them the swinging bell
Called from the village steeple.
Too scant the cabin's log-bound walls
To hold the flock adoring,
Whose sturdy members stood without,
Recked not the sunshine pouring
With summer's passion on the sod,
From skies clean-swept and glaring ;
Who knew the presence of the Lord,
Their heads before him baring.
No common Sunday this for them,
This joy they knew but rarely,
Who on the iron pathway's track
Hard labored late and early ;
For whom no sacred house of God
Its broad-armed cross uplifted-
So far from faith's pure Sacrifice
St. Patrick's children drifted.
Yet ever when their Lord drew near,
Their hearts' warm shelter seeking,
They held his priest their dearest guest,
Their homes his altar making
VOL. xxix. 48
754 A Mission Mass.
An altar bare of earthly pomp,
Yet rich in loving tender,
And perfect in the Sacrifice
That God to God should render.
No less was theirs who knelt about
That spot so poor and lowly
Than stirred the consecration bell
Of Old-World shrines most holy.
Though through no painted window fell
The tale of saint's devotion,
Nor organ's low and lengthened swell
Stirred reverent air to motion,
Yet even to this pauper state
Would come the Lord of Heaven,
His perfect presence, love-disguised,
In grace divine be given ;
Yet blessing not alone with love
Brave Ireland's sons and daughters
Soft gleamed silk robes of matrons fair
Who dwelt by distant waters,
Who sought the green New England hills
For loved one's health retrieving,
Who late had learned the beauty strange
Of these poor hearts' believing.
Here maiden knelt to whom the faith
^ Taught noble w^s of duty,
Showed wondrous paths, illumined fair
Beyond all earthly beauty ;
Knelt little child, with childish awe
And simple wonder gazing,
Whose memory e'er hath kept the lines
Of that day's sunny tracing
The glitter of the summer sky,
The soft mists slow unfolding,
The humble cabin's narrow walls
The perfect worship holding;
The quaint Franciscan's robe of brown
Beneath his vestments gleaming,
The stranger-matrons' broideries soft
Like Gentile monarchs seeming
The pure, true-hearted courtesy
The simple people proffered,
The inborn grace of chivalry
With Celtic fervor offered ;
The Tomb of Magdalene.
755
The bending down in her own land
Amid the'foreign nation;
The half- felt wonder of the heart
At truth's sad isolation :
And still she keeps, the wonder lost,
The far-off childish vision,
The fair New England hills made glad
With poor Franciscan's mission.
Strong sound to-day within that town
Bells pealed from cross-crowned steeple,
And where once knelt a handful scant
Now throngs a growing people
Winning the fulness of the soil
While richer harvest sharing,
Still on the railway's smoke-wreathed path
The cross's standard bearing.
THE TOMB OF MAGDALENE.
WE descended from the Sainte
Baume on foot, following our guide
through the low bushes and sharp
rocks that cover the steep sides, by
intricate paths it required no little
sagacity to trace. We hope the
way was better when the Grand
Monarque and his court came
down to dine at Nans because he
would not eat meat on the holy
mountain. Nans is a little hamlet
at the foot. It was there, at a fork
in the road, we took the diligence
to the town of St. Maximin. We
arrived after an hour's drive ; but
it was already too dark to see any-
thing of the place, and, having no
hungry courtiers in attendance to
urge on us the necessity of dining,
we went at once, footsore as we
were, to the chapel of the Domini-
cans. They were saying Complines
behind a veiled screen in their
measured recitative way, with a
numerous congregation in the out-
er part silently praying in the ob-
scurity. There was only a -feeble
lamp before the pale statue of Our
Lady, with a taper or two by which
some old people were reading their
prayers. At the Salve the screen
was withdrawn, according to the
custom of the Dominicans. The
altar was lit up, and we could see
the fathers in their white woollen
robes and shaven crowns, as they
sang the evening hymn to a grave,
sweet air peculiar to themselves.
Then, as they knelt, the prior gave
them his benediction with the as-
persorium, and afterwards to the
congregation : Noctem quietam et
finem perfectum concedat nobis
Dominus Omnipotens May the
Almighty God grant us a quiet
night and a perfect end. Amen.
The screen was closed, the lights
were extinguished, all but that be-
fore the tabernacle, and the people
stole quietly away in the darkness,
as if peace had descended upon
them with the prior's blessing. It
75 6
The Tomb oj Magdalene.
was like a mediaeval picture un-
veiled for a moment, and then con-
cealed from our view. Going out
in our turn, we passed beneath the
dark shadow of the church of St.
Maximin, so interesting to the arch-
aeologist and pilgrim, which we had
come to visit, and were soon in a
narrow cell under the guard of St.
Dominic. The next morning at
an early hour we went to the church,
where we spent the greater part of
the day, for there is little else of in-
terest in the place.
St. Maximin owes its origin and
celebrity solely to a tomb. It is a
small Provencal town that stands
in a solitary plain enclosed among
hills that descend from the three
ranges of Mt. Aurelian, Mt. St.
Victoire, and the mountain of the
Sainte Baume. The plain of St.
Maximin is dry and monotonous,
the roads that traverse it are daz-
zling white from the chalky rocks,
but it has a picturesque outline,
and a history of its own exclusively
religious and legendary. For here
was buried St. Mary Magdalene in
a tomb of alabaster, suited to her
who broke -the precious vase over
the feet of the Son of God. This,
says Lacordaire, is one of the three
great tombs in the Christian world.
Not to speak of the Holy Sepul-
chre, it comes immediately after
the tomb of St. Peter at Rome ; for
she who, out of the mists of death
that barely veiled her brightness,
was raised to the triumph of her
Assumption, left no tomb on earth,
and the disciple so dear to the
Sacred Heart was allowed to remain
buried, as it were, in his Gospel.
No woman, except her " above
all women glorified," has been
more venerated in the Christian
world than Magdalene. All the
doctors, all the Fathers of the
Church, every nation that has re-
ceived the light of the Gospel, have
sounded her praises. In England
alone there are one hundred and
fifty churches that bear her name.
Poets and artists have celebrated
her beauty, her golden hair, and
her penitent life. Christian chival-
ry took her for a patroness. Her
name was a watchword for the Cru-
saders. It was natural for those
who went to the rescue of the Holy
Sepulchre to choose as their guide
one who, by her repentance and
love, merited to lead the disciples
to the tomb of the risen Saviour.
A whole race of princes, as Lacor-
daire says, consecrated themselves
to her service. The first of them
discovered her remains, so long
concealed through fear of the bar-
barians, digging the ground with
his own royal hands. Bishops re-
moved her body with respect. A
king sent his own crown to adorn
the brow a divine hand once touch-
ed. Gold, silver, and precious
stones were lavished on her shrine.
An immense crowd hailed the dis-
covery. Rome, source of truth,
consecrated the solemn triumph by
her approbation. The greatest of
the French monarchs, after the ex-
ample of his race, came to render
homage at her tomb. In one day
it was visited by five kings ; in
one century, by eight popes.*
According to the old Provencal
legend, Magdalene, after spending
thirty years in the sublime solitude
of the Sainte Baume without hold-
ing any intercourse with mankind,
was transported by the angels, ac-
customed to bear her to the Saint
Pilon, to an oratory several leagues
distant built by St. Maximin on
the Aurelian Way. This place is
now marked by a tall stone pillar
on the roadside, curiously sculp-
tured, likewise called the holy Pie-
* Lacordaire's Sainte Marie Madeleint,
The Tomb of Magdalene.
757
loun, or Pilon. The processions
from St. Maximin at Rogation time,
etc., stop here to sing" the Gaudez
in her honor. This pillar was set
up centuries ago with a statue of
Magdalene on the top completely
covered by her long hair, sustained
by four angels. When brought
here her face reflected so much
of the dawning glory of heaven
that St. Maximin was filled with
awe and dared not approach her.
But she told him she was only
Magdalene, the sinner whom he had
baptized in the Jordan, who had
come with him to Marseilles. God
had preserved her all these years
that she might have space to do
penance. Then with streaming
eyes she begged for the Viaticum
of souls, as she was about to pass
to the heavenly life. He gave her
the divine food, and then, says St.
Antonin,she expired in the oratory
where she received her Lord, in
the presence of St. Maximin and
all the clergy, on the eleventh day
before the kalends of August, leav-
ing behind her, says the Golden
Legend, so sweet an odor that the
oratory remained perfumed for
seven days. St. Martha at Taras-
con saw her soul borne to heaven
by the angels, and cried : " Goest
thou to enjoy without me the sweet
presence of the Lord Jesus, whom
we both loved so much, and who
so loved us ?"
The clergy bore her body to a
chapel near the ancient Villa Lata,
or Tegulata, and St. Maximin, af-
ter embalming it, buried it in a
tomb of alabaster, and over it
erected a basilica. A holy guard,
with a few short intervals, has al-
ways kept prayerful watch around
it. Cassian, we know, or his fol-
lowers, established a convent here
in the fifth century under the invo-
cation of St. Maximin, the first
apostle of this region. It after-
wards belonged to the Benedic-
tines. It was not till the thirteenth
century it was given to the Domi-
nicans, and became one of their
most important establishments in
France.
It was in the time of the Cas-
sianites that the Saracens invaded
Provence. It was then that Mag-
dalene's remains were taken from
her tomb for safety and buried in
the ground, where they remained
till 1279. The precise spot was,
in the course of ages, forgotten,
but that they lay somewhere in the
precincts was a constant tradition.
In spite of this it began to be ru-
mored that Gerard de Roussillon
had removed them to Vezelai. Per-
haps some other holy body had
been mistaken for hers some
sainted nun who had borne the
name of Magdalene. The church
at Vezelai where the great penitent
was honored began to be famous.
In the time of the Holy Wars many
of the Crusaders, as did Richard
the Lion-hearted, went there to
receive the cross. St. Bernard
preached the second Crusade there
to a multitude of lords and knights.
The bishop of Autun formally pro-
tested against pilgrimages to Veze-
lai in view of the constant tradition
at St. Maximin. And though St.
Louis went there before going to
the Holy Wars, the Sire de Joinville
unhesitatingly says her body re-
posed a short day's journey from
Aix. The popularity of Vezelai,
which, after all, only confirmed the
tradition of Magdalene's coming to
Provence, died out after the dis-
covery of her real tomb, and the
relics honored there were burned
by the Calvinists in the sixteenth
century at the instigation of Theo-
dore de Beza, a native of Vezelai.
A portion of Magdalene's re-
753
The Tomb of Magdalene.
mains had always been kept for
veneration at St. Maximin in a
wooden coffer called the Arche des
Vertus the Ark of Power, or mi-
racles which used to be carried
in procession on Ascension day,
the people passing beneath, kissing
the rich drapery that veiled it.
It was a nephew of St. Louis,
Charles of Anjou, Prince of Saler-
no, afterwards King of Naples, Si-
cily, and Jerusalem, as well as
Count of Provence, who, out of
hereditary devotion to Magdalene,
resolved to bring her tomb once
more to light. A legend says she
appeared to him and told him he
would find it beneath a bush of
fennel still green in spite of the
frosts of winter. He took the
spade and dug himself with the
workmen till the tomb was found.
When the clergy opened it a won-
derful odor was diffused around,
as of sweetest aromatic spices,
which is thus alluded to in the an-
cient liturgy of Aix :
" Sacrum corpus balsamum
Transcendit odore."
The skin still adhered to the
forehead on the spot touched by
the risen Saviour, as if from a
remnant of life. This became
known to pilgrims as the Noli me
tangere. The tongue also that an-
nounced the resurrection of Christ
was well preserved. In it had
taken root, says the legend, the
fennel plant that grew green above
the grave the giant fennel in the
stalk of which Prometheus brought
to earth the fire stolen from hea-
ven. The lower maxillary bone
was wanting. This was at the
church of St. John Lateran at
Rome, and was found to corre-
spond exactly when Magdalene's
head was taken there for the Sove-
reign Pontiff to venerate
In the tomb was a box of cork
containing an inscription on parch-
ment, put in by the Cassianites,
stating that December 6, 710, dur-
ing the reign of Eudes, King of the
Franks, the body of Magdalene,
out of fear of the Saracens who had
invaded the country, was secretly
transferred in the night from her
sepulchre of alabaster to the mar-
ble tomb of St. Sidonius, in which
it was buried. Critics long object-
ed to this inscription on the plea
that there was no king of the name
of Eudes, or Odo, in the eighth
century ; but it is now known this
was Eudes, Duke of Aquitaine, the
great-grandson of Clotaire II., who
declared himself independent when
Pepin le Bref took possession of
the kingdom of Austrasia, and
reigned as sovereign over all that
part of France between the Loire
and the ocean, and even beyond
the Rhone. Many old documents
call him king, and his charters bear
the date of his reign. It is not
surprising that the very clergy of
later times should be staggered by
this objection, when even experts
in history a century ago were un-
aware that Eudes ruled over this
part of Provence and styled him-
self king. This very fact only
serves now to prove the authenti-
city of the inscription. The Do-
minicans had nothing to do with
the discovery of the tomb. They
were not established here till six-
teen years after.
A second inscription was found,
written on a wooden tablet faced
with wax. Such tablets were in
common use in the early ages. We
know that St. Honorat wrote St.
Eucher on waxen tablets. St. Hi-
lary of Aries tells how the latter
replied on one occasion : " You
have restored the honey to its wax
or comb," alluding to the sweetness
The Tomb of Magdalene.
759
of St. Honorat's style. This in-
scription simply said : " Here lies
the body of Mary Magdalene," but
Charles could scarcely read it on
account of its antiquity, whereas
he had no difficulty as to the one
on parchment.
Magdalene's remains were divid-
ed into three portions. For the
body Charles had a silver shrine
made, ornamented with gold, and
six bishops of Provence placed it
reverently therein the Sunday after
the Ascension, 1280. A silver arm
was also made for two bones of the
right arm. And for the head there
was a bust of silver and gold, set
with diamonds, sapphires, emeralds,
topazes, rumes, and pearls. On
a plate of gold was inscribed :
" Stained first by sin, but after-
wards purified by holy love, Mary,
the admirable hostess, the devoted
follower of Christ, after traversing
the seas, filled this land with the
splendor of her sanctity. The
prince of Salerno in 1283, out of
love to the Supreme Goodness,
placed this holy relic in its chasse
of gold, and adorned it with 'a royal
crown. O Mary ! protect Charles
during his life, and open Paradise
to him at its close." It was his
father, Charles of Sicily, who sent
his own crown to be placed on the
bust.
Charles II. founded the church
of St. Maxirain, on the site of the
ancient one, but it was not com-
pleted till the time of King Rene,
two hundred years after. He had
the Dominicans placed here in
1295, exempting them from all but
a nominal tax, out of honor, as he
says, to the remains of St. Magda-
lene, which he had discovered, and
which now reposed in the church.
He gave them his library, in which
were many valuable manuscripts,
including a Bible in seven langua-
ges, now at the Vatican. He trans-
mitted his devotion to Magdalene
to his fifteen children, especially to
St. Louis of Toulouse. He him-
self was regarded as a saint, and
his tomb in a monastery he found-
ed at Aix was resorted to by many
people for cures.
The church of St. Maximin was
contmued by the pious liberality
of the counts of Provence, who in-
variably assigned as their motive:
Ob reverentiam beatae Marias Mag-
dalense, cujus beatissimum corpus
'requiescit ibidem. They even sac-
rificed a portion of the public reve-
nues for the purpose. King Robert
set apart the gabelle at Nice for ten
years. And two thousand florins
that had been dishonestly appro-
priated by the fiscal agents during
his reign, and restored through the
confessional, were also given to the
work. The pious Marshal Bouci-
caut, whose valor was of so much
service to his country, repaired the
ancient crypt and built one of the
chapels. But its completion was
chiefly due to King Rene, who is
regarded as its second founder.
He had a great veneration for the
early apostles of Provence, espe-
cially Magdalene, and showed his
passion for the arts by building
and adorning numerous churches.
He imposed great sacrifices on him-
self to complete that of St. Maxi-
min, and founded, moreover, four
lamps to burn in the church two
before the high altar, and two in
the crypt before the shrine of Mag-
dalene assigning two measures of
oil for this purpose from the royal
domains, afterwards acquitted by
the lords of Carqueirane. This
beautiful custom among the princes
and nobles of the middle ages of
making a foundation for a lamp
before the Blessed Sacrament, the
altar of Our Lady, or the shrines of
760
The Tomb of Magdalene.
the saints, has not wholly died out
in Catholic lands. Scarcely a cele-
brated sanctuary but has its perpe-
tual lamp or taper due to pious
liberality. Who that has visited
Lourdes has not been struck by
the enormous candles, the offering
of the rich, slowly consuming in
the grotto as well as the meagre
tapers, the more affecting offerings
of the poor ?
King Rene also founded a col-
lege in connection with the con-
vent. He usually spent the Great
Week of the Holy Passion at St.
Maxirnin's in solemn recollection
and attending the religious exer-
cises in the church. He left six-
ty-six hundred florins * in his will
to continue the works, enjoining
on the friars to give hospitality
to the counts of Provence, as
patrons "of their house, whenever
they came to St. Maximin's, and
desiring that the prior and breth-
ren, in their turn, should be freely
entertained whenever they went to
court, and as long as they chose to
remain. The Dominicans at the
end of every office used to say
the Absolve ', quczsumus, Domine, for
Charles II., Robert I., Louis II.,
and Rene, as the four chief bene-
factors of the house.
The kings of France were no
less generous, and down to the
time of Louis XV. confirmed all
the ancient privileges of the
church. Louis XL allowed it an
annual revenue out of devotion to
Mme. Saincte Marie Magdaleine,
la glorieuse dame et amye de Dieu.
Charles VIII. gave five silver reli-
quaries to contain the heads of
five saints entombed in the church,
among whom were SS. Marcella
and Susanne, who came from the
East with the family of Bethany,
and SS. Blaise and Siffrid, disci-
* A florin is equivalent to 8.25 francs.
pies of St. Maximin. When Anne
of Brittany came here she gave four
angels of silver gilt to support the
bust of Magdalene. She had her-
self represented kneeling on the sil-
ver pedestal a statuette of enam-
elled gold, a work of remarkable ex-
ecution.
Francis I. visited the church
with a great train to give thanks
for the late victory of Marignano.
He was accompanied by his mo-
ther, Queen Claude, his wife, and
his sister Margaret, Duchess of
Alenpon, afterwards Queen of Na-
varre ; they were not permitted
to enter the crypt, which was for-
bidden to women, but the king and
lords went down to pay their de-
votions.
Louis XIV. visited St. Maximin '
in February, 1680, with his mother,
Anne of Austria, and a numerous
retinue. They arrived at six
o'clock in the afternoon, and, ac-
cording to Pope Boniface's orders
in 1295 as to the reception of the
king, the monks, sixty in number,
each with a lighted candle and
wearing his richest cope, went out
in procession to meet him. The
church was lit up with more than
five hundred flambeaux. They
conducted the king to the high al-
tar, and the Te Deum was sung.
His devotions completed, he was
taken to the hospice of the con-
vent, where he was served at table
by the prior and the chief of the
brethren. The next morning he
heard Mass at the high altar, but
the queen went down to the crypt
and there received holy commu-
nion, showing that the custom of
excluding women had been abol-
ished. But men were still obliged
to lay aside their arms before en-
tering it, and the king and all his
lords conformed to the rule. They
afterwards ascended to the Sainte
The Tomb of Magdalene.
7 6i
Baume in spite of the snow and
ice on the mountain, and at their
return Magdalene's shrine was
opened, her remains were taken
out by the clergy and examined by
the king's physician, and the king,
torch in hand, followed them from
the crypt to the high altar amid the
acclamations of the multitude, and
there they were placed in a porphy-
ry urn, the gift of the archbishop of
Avignon. This urn rested on two
dogs with flaming brands, the cog-
nizance of the Dominican Order,
and was surmounted by a bronze
statue of Magdalene reclining, the
work of Algardi. The king set his
seal to the urn. Fifteen days after
he returned here from Toulon.
The queen gave three thousand
livres to the church, and the king
drew up a proces-verbal concern-
ing the translation of the relics :
" It having been thought proper
that the bones of St. Mary Magda-
lene, the incomparable penitent,
who once received from the lips of
Truth itself the assurance of her
perfect contrition and the remis-
sion of her sins, which, according
to tradition and many ancient
documents, repose in the church
of St. Maximin, should be trans-
ferred to an urn of porphyry, we
hold it to be our duty, having been
present at the translation, to give
this testimony to the public, re-
garding it as a great glory to ren-
der, as we do with reverence, hon-
or to the sepulchre of this great
saint, trusting that she who poured
out her precious balm with so much
love and effusion of soul against
the day of the Saviour's burial that
he desired that which she had done
to be told wheresoever the Gospel
should be preached in the wrfole
world, will also render our offer-
ings and tribute agreeable in his
sight."
The relics of Magdalene had,
from the time of their discovery
by the prince of Salerno, been al-
ways guarded with the most jeal-
ous care, and in seasons of danger
were frequently concealed, as in the
time of the Saracens. In 1357 they
were secretly conveyed to the
Sainte Baume, where they lay hid-
den three jars. A century later
some people from Marseilles made
an attempt to carry them off as they
were borne in procession ; but the
citizens of St. Maximin, aided by
the stout arms of a band from
Aries, succeeded in defending them.
The people of St. Maximin were
so grateful for this assistance that
they every year invited the captain
of the city of Aries with several of
the prominent citizens to attend
the celebration of St. Magdalene's
day. The keys of the town were
presented them and their expenses
paid. This was kept up nearly
two hundred years. King Charles
VIII. forbade the monks giving
away the least portion of the relics,
unless they were authorized by the
king. When some Italian monks,
who perhaps thought the pious
theft no robbery, took off the gold
masque and attempted to carry
away a portion of them, they were
seized and actually hung by the
parliament of Aix. The Emperor
Charles V. tried to get possession
of them when he came to Provence
in 1536, but the Dominicans hid
them in a pit. One of the verte-
brae, however, was offered Queen
Anne at the translation under Louis
XIV. She received it with grati-
tude, and left it to the nuns of Val
de Grace at Paris. When these
holy remains were verified by the
religious and civil authorities in
1780, the people assembled with
loud cries around the church, de-
manding with threats to see the
762
The Tomb of Magdalene.
great saint. They were only kept
out by an armed force, and at
length they grew so violent that,
fearful of a riot, the cpnsuls in-
duced one of the Dominicans to
put on his stole and go forth to ap-
pease them by promising to expose
the bust in one of the side chapels.
Whereupon the fathers began to
intone the Lauda, Mater, and, after
carrying the shrine around the
cloister twice, bore it into the
church, where the crowd was ad-
mitted to venerate it. At nine
o'clock in the evening the magis-
trates, desirous of repose, attempt-
ed to carry the chasse away, but
the crowd renewed their outcries.
Accordingly it was borne across
the square to a public hall, where
the people, who had by this time
collected from the country around,
had an opportunity of approaching
it. Then, for the" first time, the
Noli me f anger e fell from the fore-
head. It was placed in a crystal
case. The porphyry urn, however,
was not opened till 1781, when, by
order of Louis XVI., a bone was
detached in presence of the monks
and consuls for Don Ferdinand,
Duke of Parma, to whom it was
carried by the prior. This was
providentially sent to Paris many
years after by Napoleon among the
spoils of war, and in the time of
Mgr. de Quelen was placed in the
beautiful church of the Madeleine.
At the Revolution the church of
St. Maxim in was despoiled, the
urn broken open, and the contents
scattered. The head of Magda-
lene, however, was borne secretly
away by the sacristan, as well as
the arm, some of the hair, the
Sainte Ampoule, the head of St.
Sidonius, and fragments of other
holy bodies. But the ancient doc-
uments were all burned, and the
gold and silver shrines carried off.
The tombs, too, were opened and
the pavement torn up to extract
saltpetre ; but, thanks to the pru-
dence of Lucien Bonaparte, the
church itself was saved by his put-
ting Fournitures militaires over the
door and filling the interior with
hay and provisions. It was finally
sold by the commissary of the re-
public for one hundred livres to a
person honorable enough to restore
it to its proper use at the reopen-
ing of the churches.
The church and convent of St.
Maximin were restored to the Do-
minicans in 1859. The head of
Magdalene, on which Charles of
Anjou, the brother of St. Louis,
had placed his royal crown, and
before which stood the golden
statue of Anne of Brittany, was
then in a poor wooden reliquary,
given by peasants. It was decided
to transfer it to a more suitable
one of bronze. This was done in
1860 in the presence of eight bish-
ops and a great number of priests
and laymen. The whole town on
this occasion was adorned with
flowers, evergreens, and banners.
The streets were crowded with
people. The relics were borne
through the town by the Domini-
cans, surrounded, as in the olden
time, by a guard of honor carrying
their pertuisanes a kind o'f halberd
once forged at Pertftis, a village
not far from St. Maximin. The
Pere Lacordaire was to have made
an address, but was prevented by
his . health, then, failing. The
streets were illuminated in the
evening, and the church lit up with
a thousand lamps.
The church of St. Maximin is of
the Gothic style, and remarkable
for its majestic nave and harmonious
proportions. There are two aisles,
but no ambulatory. The right
aisle terminates in the Chapel of
The Tomb of Magdalene.
763
the Rosary, the mysteries of which
are painted in the compartments of
a frame around the Madonna. At
the end of the other aisle is the
altar of the Corpus Domini, which
has a very remarkable retablo of
the Crucifixion surrounded b^ six-
teen scenes of the Passion, painted
by Breughel d'Enfer, and curious
for the costumes of the painter's
time. The apsis of the church is
occupied by the choir. Over the
high altar is the urn of porphyry
that once contained the remains of
Magdalene, and at the sides are
bas-reliefs framed in rich mosaic
one of the Assumption of Magda-
lene, by Puget ; the other of the
dying penitent receiving the last
communion from the hands of St.
Maxim in. This is of terra-cotta.
There are ninety-four stalls in
the choir, admirably carved by an
artist of the Dominican Order, and
furnishing quite a page of Chris-
tian symbolism. On the panels are
the saints of the order. There are
St. Antonin weighing the word of
God against bread ; St. Vincent
Ferrer preaching on the last judg-
ment, lightning flashing in the
heavens ; St. Raymond de Pefia-
forte crossing the sea on his mantle;
the Blessed Henry Suso with his
discipline ; St. Marcolin with the
name of Jesus in his heart ; St..
Ambrogio Sansedoni of Sienna
preaching to convicts in the gal-
leys ; St. Hyacinth with a trumpet
of victory, bearing the ciborium
and Madonna across the Dniester ;
St. Peter Martyr with the knife in
his head and the palm in his hand;
St. Thomas of Aquino with the sun
on his breast ; St. Pius V. miracu-
lously witnessing the victory of
Lepanto ; St. Agnes of Montepul-
ciano stealing the cross from the
Infant Jesus ; St. Catharine of Sien-
na with pierced hands and a crown
of thorns ; St. Margaret de Castello
with the eye on her heart ; St. Mar-
garet of Savoy, to whom our Lord
offered the choice of three things,
with her three darts; St. Rose of
Lima holding the Infant Jesus ; St.
Dominic with his lily, etc.
Out of the north aisle you go
down into a little crypt barely large
enough for you to pass between the
four sarcophagi that once contained
bodies of the saints. Popes and
kings have descended here. There
was a lamp suspended from the
vault, and the sacristan lighted a
torch that we might see the head
of Magdalene, which is on the altar
beneath a Gothic baldacchino. The
Bras de Ste. Madeleine was also
shown us. The old sarcophagi are
very curious, particularly that of
Magdalene, which is of calcareous
alabaster, and worthy of study on
account of the ancient sculpturing.
It resembles in style the beautiful
tomb of Junius Bassus, taken from
the catacombs, which every one
will remember who has visited the
crypt of St. Peter's at Rome.
Corinthian colonnettes divide the
front into five compartments, in
each of which is a scene from the
Passion in high relief. The tombs
of St. Maximin and the Holy Inno-
cents are also interesting, but the
largest and most beautiful is that
of St. Sidonius, which has a relief
of Tabitha restored to life, and
others with their lesson of hope
beyond the grave.
It was fortunate we visited the
crypt in the morning, for a regi-
ment of soldiers that had halted in
passing through St. Maximin kept
it full all the afternoon, as only two
or three could go down at a time.
Meanwhile, when not watching
them with some curiosity, we ex-
amined one chapel after the other,
and visited the sacristy. In the
764
The Tomb of Magdalene.
latter we were shown the cope of
St. Louis of Toulouse, a remark-
able piece of needlework, said to
have been done by Queen Blanche,
and left by the holy bishop to the
church founded by his father. Un-
fortunately it has been injured by
an attempt to modernize the shape.
The groundwork is of gold tissue,
and on it are embroidered, with
silk of different colors, thirty scenes
relating to the life of Christ and
the Blessed Virgin subjects the
middle ages loved to paint on its
windows and sculpture at the por-
tals of its churches. M. Rostan
calls this piece of " needlework
sublime " a poem in three cantos.
The first relates to the happy por-
tion of Mary's life the ineffable
joys that pertained to her mater-
nity. The second paints the infini-
tude of her grief at the time of the
Passion. The third has reference
to her supernatural joys in hea-
ven. Around these medallions is
a cloud of angels with censers, en-
veloping the sacred mysteries, as it
were, with an atmosphere of celes-
tial delights.
There is also one of St. Louis'
sandals (he was a Franciscan), but
so worn by the pious curiosity of
pilgrims that the outer texture is
no longer to be distinguished.
The first chapel finished in the
church was dedicated to this saint
at the request of King Robert, his
brother, who was carrying on the
work of its completion.
But the most precious relic at St.
Maximin's is the Sainte Ampoule.
This is a crystal tube of the thir-
teenth century, containing the frag-
ments of a far more ancient ampul-
la, with some earth and little
stones, tinged with the holy Re-
deemer's Blood, that were gather-
ed up by Magdalene at the foot of
the cross. They were found with
her remains when discovered by
Prince Charles, but are known to
have existed before, being spoken
of in a cartulary of the eleventh
century. Nicephorus. Callixtus
speaks of an Oriental tradition
whicji says Magdalene preserved
and bore about with her a fragment
of the stone on which our Saviour
was placed when taken down from
the cross. Nothing is more reason-
able than to suppose such relics
were preserved by the disciples
and holy women. The Sainte
Ampoule, as M. Faillon says, has
always been the object of a constant
public and solemn cultus. This
was known to the popes who re-
sided at Avignon, and virtually
authorized by those who made a
pilgrimage to St. Maximin, without
speaking of the great number of
cardinals, bishops, and priests from
different Christian lands, who never
failed, when honoring the relics
here, to show supreme veneration
to this. Louis of Tarento gave it
the highest rank, always designat-
ing it as the most precious Blood of
the Lord. The cylinder that con-
tains it is of octagon shape and
mounted in silver gilt. It used to
be kept in a rich vase with the
arms of King Rene graven on the
gold foot. This was lost at the
Revolution. It is now in a curious
coffer of silver gilt of the thirteenth
century, with the attributes of the
apostles on the sides.
So frequent were the miracles
formerly attributed to this sacred
relic that it acquired great cele-
brity. It was shown on Good Fri-
day after the reading of the Pas-
sion, and the Blood, like that of
St. Januarius at Naples, used to
liquefy and boil up till the vial was
filled. This was called the saint
miracle, and drew a great crowd,
sometimes amounting to five or six
The Tomb of Magdalene.
765
thousand people. They were al-
lowed to go close to the vial to
see the miracle, as they passed out
through the cloister to prevent con-
fusion. Belleforet, in his Cosmo-
graphic Uiriverselle, says : " This
vial is shown every year on Good
Friday, the day of the Lord's Pas-
sion, and this not without great
marvel and astonishment on the
part of all who witness it. For, the
office being over, the prior of the
Jacobins exposes the said vial,
the blood of which is seen, little by
little, to rise till it fills the vase, as
has been witnessed by many, even
the Huguenots, who, thinking there
was some monkish subtlety in it,
wished to see for themselves, and
in fact beheld what they had con-
sidered incredible, and were con-
fused, after keeping guard over the .
sacred vase all night, to see before
their face and eyes the hard sub-
stance in the bottom soften and
liquefy, then grow clear, manifest-
ing visibly the blood and water
that flowed from the side of our
God when the soldier pierced it
with his lance. For this miracle
we have the testimony of the Sire
de la Burle, who, for our greater
satisfaction, has placed in our
hands a letter of attestation he ob-
tained from the Seigneur de Ger-
migny of Burgundy, who visited all
these holy places, not out of curi-
osity, but with a religious spirit,
and had the privilege of witnessing
the said miracle April 13, 1571,
there being, as M. de la Burle de-
clares, scarcely a good Catholic in
Provence who has not witnessed
what is so uncommon and miracu-
lous."
When the Sainte Ampoule was
exhibited or carried in procession,
it had, as a guard of honor, the
captain of the town and twelve
citizens " of the best quality," arm-
ed with pertuisanes. These pro-
cessions took place several times a
year. The priest in a cope bore
the Sainte Ampoule under a cano-
py, and it was constantly incensed,
like the- Host on Corpus Christi
day, which was never done to the
relics of St. Mary Magdalene. The
captain was paid thirty livres each
time, but he had to furnish a band
of players on the viol. After the
procession this guard took dinner
with the consuls of the town, and
were given, moreover, twelve pots
of wine and twenty-four loaves of
bread. The Dominicans at length
tried to be exempted from furnish-
ing this supply, but the magistrates
insisted that it had been the im-
memorial custom, and they consid-
ered its fulfilment of inviolable ob-
ligation. Accordingly the Domini-
cans yielded.
When the relics of Magdalene
were carried in procession they
were met at the door of the church
by the mayor of the town at the
head of the municipal corps. The
former offered Magdalene a bou-
quet of flowers which was attached
to the bust. The magistrates al-
ways took an oath, when they
entered upon their duties, to re-
spect the privileges of the church
and convent, formally declaring it
" propter singularem devotionis af-
fectum quern ad ipsam Mariam
Magdalenam apostolam incessanter
gerimus."
La Madeleine used to be a day
to date from, like Michaelmas,
Martinmas, etc., and was chosen
for the performance of special
things. On that day all work
ceased and the holy relics were
brought forth. The church of St.
Maximin, now stripped of its an-
cient splendor, must have present-
ed a most imposing spectacle at
such times. The triple range of
;66
The Tomb of Magdalene.
windows, now partly walled up,
were rilled with stained glass that
only imparted a greater charm to
the obscurity of the long aisles ; the
splendid shrines were gleaming
with countless lights; the cunning-
ly wrought stalls were filled with
white-robed friars; the numerous
chapels were occupied by the dif-
ferent confraternities in their va-
rious picturesque costumes; and
the offices of holy church were
celebrated in all their ancient
splendor that nothing can rival this
side of heaven, if, indeed, such rites
be not heaven itself begun. One
of the old confraternities used to
be called the Compans de Notre
Dame de Grands Cierges. It
owned property, and furnished the
large candles that burned around
the ancient Virgin of Misericorde.
It also distributed garments among
the poor, and attended funerals
with the great candles peculiar to
this devot illuminaire. The Illumi-
naire de Corpus Domini also owned
land, and used to furnish candles
for the procession of the Blessed
Sacrament.
Among the ancient coin of this
region was a gold piece weighing
six grains, called Magdalins, struck
by Charles III. of Sicily to per-
petuate the remembrance of the
coming to this country of the great
penitent always considered, in the
ages of faith, the chief glory of
Provence. On some of these the
saint is represented half-length,
only covered with her hair, holding
in both hands the vase of alabaster.
On others she wears garments and
holds the vase in her left hand.
Her head is bent down and the
right hand extended. On the back
are the cross of Lorraine and the
fleur-de-lis of Provence, with the
legend : In hoc signo vinces.
It is said no one was ever killed
by lightning at St. Maximin and
at the Sainte Baume, and the peo-
ple attribute this preservation to
the power of Magdalene. It has
been the custom from remote times
in Provence to say the following
prayer in a thunder-storm :
Sainte Barbe, Sainte Helena,
Sainte Marie Madeleine,
Preservez-nous du tonnerre, s'il vous plait.
Joanna I., Queen of Sicily, being
overtaken by a furious tempest on
her way to Provence, invoked St.
Mary Magdalene and made a vow
to give nine hundred florins to her
church, if delivered from danger.
She escaped and scrupulously ful-
filled her vow. Cardinal de Cabas-
sole, her minister, finding his life
endangered on the Mediterranean,
vowed to make a pilgrimage to St.
Maximin and the Sainte Baume as
soon as he should be permitted to
land. He relates this in a work
composed in honor of the protect-
ing saint.
It is also said that no one was
ever killed by lightning at Aix, and
the people believe the town pro-
tected by St. Maximin, to whom
they have great devotion. He was
the first bishop of Aix, and one
of the seventy-two disciples. St.
Nymphe, his niece, came to Pro-
vence with him. It was she who
evangelized the colony that gather-
ed around the old Roman Castra
Pinorum, now called Pignans. She
built an oratory in honor of Our
Lady on a height the people call
the Montagne Sainte, from which
you can see the Mediterranean, the
islands of Hyeres, the mountains of
Corsica, the Sainte Baume, and the
glaciers of the Alps. Thierri, the
son of Clovis, built a new chapel
here in 508. In his act of founda-
tion he alludes to the ancient ora-
tory built in the time of the Beata
Nympha, niece of St. Maximin.
Souvenirs of Madame Le Brim.
767
Cardinal de Bouillon, in a petition
to Louis XIV. , speaks of this chapel
as having existed about twelve hun-
dred years. In. it is an ancient
statue of the Blessed Virgin, of
Oriental type and costume accord-
ing to popular tradition, the work
of the first Christians. Thierri
expressly says : u Here is honored
an image of Mary, carved out of
wood in the time of Christ's disci-
ples." The chapel of Notre Dame
de Pignans has been specially pat-
ronized by the popes. Clement III.
called it the privileged daughter
of the Roman Church. The old
counts of Provence endowed it
with lands, and the king of Aragon
gave it a village and an entire
mountain.
SOUVENIRS OF MADAME LE BRUN.*
THE ante-Revolution days in
France are fast becoming social
and historical curiosities. Their
conditions have the interest of an-
tiques, and their politics no longer
rouse any save the spirit of investi-
gation. Very few living men and
women remember them ; still fewer
have taken any part in them. Tra-
ditions which seemed ineradicable
have wholly lost their influence,
and the historical metamorphosis
of the country which first disturbed
" the balance of power " in Europe
is as complete as any of the natural
metamorphoses which we witness
year by year. The life of Mme.
Vigee Le Brun, a portrait-painter
patronized by the court of Louis
XVI., and afterwards by that of
Catherine II. of Russia and of the
great Napoleon, became, like that
of many others among the younger
emtgr/s, an epitome of tha quick
changes leading from one phase of
society to the other. Born in 1755,
when fashionable atheism was still
securely playing with fire as a draw-
ing-room experiment, she died in
1842, during the reign of the citi-
zen-king, Louis Philippe, when
* Souvenirs of Mme. Vigee Le Brun : an Auto-
biography. New York : R. Worthington. 1879.
France was a republic in all but in
name. Her travels through Europe
are interesting as illustrating the
different degrees of rapidity with
which other European states fol-
lowed the democratic lead of
France, and also the measure of
real change which distinguishes the
march of each, irrespective of appa-
rent and violent alterations. She
saw Rome in 1789 as it remain-
ed until 1848, but Venice she knew
as a republic long before it fell
tinder the Austrian yoke, which is
now the oldest tradition there.
Nelson and Lady Hamilton were
powers at Naples, where the queen,
Marie Antoinette's sister, ruled
with a strong hand and a skilful
tongue, doing her supine husband's
duty better than she did her own.
The Russia of Catherine II., essen-
tially " Holy Russia " in those days,
and apparently a successful result
of strong paternal government, of-
*fered a field for endless study.; and
though only the outward details of
its life and the startling personali-
ties of its court appear in Mme.
Le Brun's narrative, the extraordi-
nary contrast between its various
classes, and the chaotic possibilities
shaphig themselves into a nation-
;68
Souvenirs of Madame Le Brim.
al sentiment and foreshadowing an
independent movement towards
Western modes of thought and
politics, cannot fail to strike the
reader. Prussia gains a foretaste
of its present supremacy by being
the first on the Continent to stand
up against Napoleon ; and England,
still a country of conservative ten-
dencies and stiff, antique social
ways, appears very different from
the pushing, levelling, hurrying
England of to-day. This picture
of European society, here rigidly
withdrawing into a shell of preju-
dice, there startled into the wildest
bravado of innovation, is the most
interesting outcome of the book
in which Mme. Le Brun has re-
corded her souvenirs ; otherwise
the narrative is disjointed, the de-
scriptions conventional, and the in-
terest uneven. She herself lacks
individuality ; her standard of con-
duct is not very high, though per-
sonally she was blameless ; her ex-
periences do not strike one as
thrilling, because she was as much
disturbed by the noise of a pump
or the practice of a violin early in
the morning near her bedroom as
by her husband's habit of appropri-
ating her earnings, or her sorrow at
her daughter's marriage to a hand-
some, penniless Russian diplomat.
She spoiled her little girl terribly,
and then lamented that at seven-
teen the child did not make a
friend of her, but persisted in cry-
ing for the moon in the shape of
this romantic lover, who after all
treated his little wife very well.
Mme. Le Brun had
of the kindly, merry
inherited from her father ; but un-
less you call her wanderings trials,
she had no adversity to tone down
her character. Early and persis-
tent popularity followed her, and
her travels, though she called them
exile, gave her both freedom from
her worthless husband and wealth
for herself and her daughter. Her
frequent moves in the cities she
visited must have drawn on her
resources, as she was persecuted
in each house she lived by a suc-
cession of the most unpleasant
sounds and smells (to which most
Frenchwomen are too sensitive),
from the frying of tripe in bad oil
to recent corpses, and from street-
cries to birds in the chimneys.
Everywhere royalty gave her com-
missions to paint portraits, and the
society of each place followed suit.
Louis XVIII. (then Comte d'Ar-
tois) sang vulgar comic songs dur-
ing the sittings which Marie Antoi-
nette gave her, and the Emperor
Paul I. of Russia played monkey-
tricks and made faces over the top
of a screen during his wife's sit-
tings to the artist. Madame Mu-
rat tormented her with caprices
and unpunctuality such as the ar-
tist complained no " real princess "
ever stooped to, and the Queen of
Naples confided to her her plea-
sure at having arranged two good
matches for her daughters. Not-
withstanding so many familiar in-
sights into court life, Mme. Le
Brun remained an enthusiastic roy-
alist, and tells many anecdotes of
royal personages with the gusto of
a thoroughly undemocratic yet not
cringing observer. Statesmen, ar-
tists, and actors all met her on
equal terms, and her salon in Paris,
Rome, and St. Petersburg was the
rendezvous of brilliant and witty
a good deal * people. Even in London she man-
artist nature aged to overcome some of the stiff-
ness of her acquaintances and to
gather Englishmen and foreigners
together in lively parties.
A few anecdotes of famous places
or people will give the reader the
best idea of th e book, and of the
Souvenirs of Madame Le Brun.
769
society it describes. Some of the
Paris amusements before the Revo-
lution sound strangely modern.
The Palais Royal garden was a
fashionable resort, day and night,
Sunday afternoons included, when
custom did not forbid the men
paying evident court with their
eyes to every pretty woman, wheth-
er protected or not by a father,
brother, or husband. After the
opera, which in summer was over
at half-past eight, the " world " ad-
journed to the garden and stayed
there often till two in the morn-
ing, the heavily-scented hair-pow-
der and enormous bouquets of hot-
house flowers overpowering the cool
morning breeze, while music and
refreshments made these gatherings
a fashionable prototype of the beer-
gardens of to-day. The Boule-
vard du Temple was, on Thurs-
days, a regular "Rotten Row."
Hundreds of carriages rolled slow-
ly up and down or drew up in
shaded alleys, and flirtation was the
chief pastime; but democracy had
invaded the charmed circle, and
established a file of highly-rouged
fishwomen, who gambled at loto all
day, and affected to think the navi-
gator La Perouse, who was starting
for his tour round the world, a
very idle man, at a loss what to do.
The Coliseum, a rotunda in the
Champs Elysees, with broad, sand-
ed pathways and armies of seats
round a miniature lake used for
aquatic sports, had an additional
attraction in its music-room, where
the Paris dandies lounged on the
steps, criticising the women as they
came in. This hardly sounds like
" the good old times," but people
forget, when they extol the past at
the expense of the present, that, if
we are not yet perfect, we have at
least got rid of the idea that gross-
ness is fashionable. On the other
hand, a queer simplicity prevailed
which is foreign to our present
straining after the perfection of
material adjuncts, to the neglect of
the intellectual elements of society.
For instance, Mine. Le Brun had a
very small room for her receptions,
and her guests often had to sit on
the floor or the bed, which in
France it is sometimes the custom
to place in the sitting-room, a
dressing-room being reserved for
the uses to which we put bed-
rooms. Her suppers, too, were very
frugal, and even rich and titled
people commonly asked their
friends to informal meals where
two or three vegetables, a soup,
and a bit of fish or fowl, with a
bottle of light wine and a salad,
were the utmost delicacies. The
famous Greek supper which mali-
cious report said cost Mme. Le
Brun eighty thousand francs, in
reality cost fifteen francs, and was
distinguished only by two sauces
made after ancient Greek recipes.
The guests draped tunics and
shawls round their figures, and a
few Etruscan vases skilfully ar-
ranged completed the background ;
some " Greek " odes (in French)
were sung and recited, and a bot-
tle of Cyprus wine, an opportune
and recent present, was opened.
The whole thing was an impromptu,
moving tableau ; but exaggeration,,
as usual, turned it into a dangerous
and " fast " proceeding, the fame of
which preceded the hostess at St.
Petersburg. Mme. Le Brun had the-
natural artistic dislike to fashion-
able costume, and preferred to paint
her sitters in flowing robes and
graceful scarfs. Good taste, how-
ever, was not yet developed in this
direction, and full dress seemed so
much the correct thing that one
of the relations of a young married
woman whom the artist painted
VOL. xxix. 49
770
Souvenirs of Madame Le Brun.
as Iris flying through the clouds
complained of the beautiful bare
feet, when her husband laughingly
put an elaborate pair of slippers
below the portrait, saying, " She
has just let them drop-" The inno-
vation of Talma's appropriate his-
torical costume on the stage met
with the approval of all the artists
in Paris, and as a "classic " mania
came in soon after with the Em-
pire, the anomaly of actors going
through the parts of Greek heroes
in the dress of eighteenth-century
exquisites was done away with.
Everything that Mme. Le Brun
describes from Rome is familiar to
the tourist and the newspaper-rea-
der ; the city was full of the motley
crowd it drew for nearly a century
later ; savants and idlers of all na-
tions flocked to it for widely differ-
ent purposes ; the carnival and
the ceremonies of Holy Week, etc.,
were the same we know, the people
the same picturesque, strong-pas-
sioned, good-humored yet shrewd
population we read of, the society
a little more mixed and vivacious
than the writer remembers it, but
in its main features the same. The
ruins and the pictures are enthusi-
astically but somewhat convention-
ally described ; so is Naples and
everything strangers visit there.
The Russian ambassadress figures
rather as a sultana than a modern
diplomat's wife. " Her happiness
was to lie stretched on a sofa,
wrapped in a large black pelisse.
. . . Her mother-in-law ordered for
her . . . boxes full of the most
exquisite dresses, . . . and when
[she] entreated her to wear them,
the Comtesse Scawrouska answered
carelessly, ' What is the use ? for
whom ? for what ?' " Her uncle,
the famous Potemkin, had given
her jewels of enormous price, but
she never wore them. Although
Mme. Le Brun mentions the festi-
val of the Madonna dell' Area as
original and better than most vil-
lage festivals, she gives no detail
which is not reproduced in all
popular Italian festivals ; of course
the richness of local costume was
greater then than now in all parts
of Italy, and added to the pictur-
esque effect of the pilgrimage. At
Perugia she saw a bull and dog
fight, which by custom was re-
peated every six years in honor of
a local patron saint; at Florence
she saw one of the best collections
of wax models of various parts of
the human frame, prepared by the
great anatomist, the Abbe" Felix
Fontana, a Tyrolese, who was di-
rector of the Museum of Anatomy
and Natural History of Florence,
to which he added fifteen hundred
pieces of wax representing anato-
mical sections of the human body.
At Venice an improvisatore made
upon her the impression of an en-
raged lunatic, though many other
specimens of improvisatori are too
mild and affected to suggest any-
thing but school-boys at a " com-
memoration " ; and at the Char-
treuse, near Turin, she was regaled
with frogs dressed in various ways,
and exhibited a disgust to this
food which would have astonished
a credulous John Bull.
Vienna, the headquarters of the
greatest social exclusiveness, has
changed less (except Rome) since
the days of Mme. Le Brun than any
other place she visited. Here,
among other celebrated men, she
met Prince Kaunitz (then eighty-
three years of age), nicknamed
"Europe's Coachman" from his
having been so long a prime minis-
ter and a mover in all diplomatic
missions and delicate transactions.
When Maria Theresa said to him
of a man whom he recommended
Souvenirs of Madame Le Brun.
77*
to be president of the Aulic Coun-
cil, " But he is your declared
enemy," he replied : " Madame, this
man is the friend of the state, and
that is the only thing I ought to
consider." It would have been well
if those Frenchmen who confused
loyalty to their king with patriot-
ism, and not only took diplomatic
but even military service against
their country under foreign royal
governments, had had something
of this spirit. It was the custom
at Vienna for the women to take
knitting and sewing to the opera
with them a fact which surprised
Mine. Le Brun till she found that
the work was for the poor. The
homeliness of many details of life
among the Viennese, where her art
and occupations gave her the
entree to the real privacy of the
court circles, made the customary
magnificence of St. Petersburg all
the more dazzling. At the latter
place, she says, " Numbers of the
nobility possessing colossal fortunes
prided themselves on keeping an
open table, so that any well-recom-
mended stranger never had occa-
sion to dine at a restaurant. . . .
Prince Narischkin, grand equerry,
kept an open table of twenty-five
to thirty places every day for visi-
tors who had brought letters of in-
troduction." Everything was on
the same scale ; pleasure seemed
the only business, court favor the
only treasure. Catherine II., like
Elizabeth, was more of a sovereign
than a woman, thoroughly national,
popular, and practical. Her im-
provements were solid, and her
paramount passion the good of
the people, though she allowed her-
self all the reprehensible or puerile
caprices of commonplace women.
A capital woman of business, she
was domestic enough to light her
stove and make her own coffee
at five in the morning, and weak
enough to succumb to the little
tyrannies of servants who acted to-
wards her as spoiled children or pet
dogs. One of her earliest favorites,
Potemkin, followed her example in
public lavishness, though the ob-
jects of his generosity were less
worthy. It is said that at a birth-
day feast, supposed to be given in
honor of the empress, but really to
his right-hand guest, Princess Dol-
gorouki, he had crystal cups filled
with diamonds set on the table at
dessert, and the jewels served to
the ladies in spoonfuls. At another
time he sent a courier express
to Paris, travelling night and day,
to get a pair of shoes for the prin-
cess, as she would wear no other
kind. The balls and suppers at
the palace were like those of the
Arabian Nights Russian costumes
encrusted with jewels were com-
monly worn, the empress especial-
ly adhering to the national dress
and ostentatiously discarding for-
eign manners. At dinner, she fas-
tened her napkin to the front of
her dress with pins, like a child's
bib, and laughed at the ladies who
placed theirs on their knees, saying :
" Mesdames, you will not follow
my example; you only make a pre-
tence of eating. For myself, I al-
ways take the precaution of fasten-
ing my napkin under my chin, for
otherwise I should not be able to
eat an egg without throwing it all
over my collar." A quarter of an
hour before dinner a servant, in Rus-
sian houses of distinction, brings
in a tray of liqueurs with slices of
thin bread and butter; and after
dinner, when the French take li-
queur, the Russians (of that day)
take Malaga. The customs of pre-
cedence also differed a little from
the French ; the hostess went in
to dinner before the guests, and, if
Souvenirs of Madame Le Brim.
a female guest was to be specially
honored, the hostess herself took
her arm and they went in together.
The chief luxury, then as now, was
a tropical temperature and appro-
priate vegetation within doors, so
that it was commonly said that in
St. Petersburg one only saw the
cold; but the artificial life thus fos-
tered could hardly make up for the
lost delight of watching the spring.
Snow lay thick in June, and the
warm season burst upon one like a
miracle, to disappear with equal
swiftness. Mme. Le Brun had only
surface opportunities of learning to
know the people of Russia; ser-
vants and peasants were childlike
in their behavior, gentleness and
patience seemed part of their
natural disposition, and a deep in-
stinct of religion characterized their
daily life. Their aptitude for im-
provement in every direction belied
their supposed contentment with
their lot ; but so far as this aptitude
proved useful to the higher classes,
and allowed itself to be guided by
them, the lowest serf found his
master a generous patron. Perhaps
this is true of every country where
class differences exist ; a surrender
of the claim to equality generally
enlists in a man's favor the interest
and patronage of his social supe-
riors, but it is too high a price to
pay, for a man of spirit. The
power of the purse, however, is one
which existed in Russia under the
old regime as practically as it does
at present, and it was not unusual
for the steward of a large estate to
become his master's creditor.
The good-fellowship which Cath-
erine wisely encouraged at her
court was followed by a social
reign of terror such as reminds one
of the perversities of Nero or Cali-
gula. When Paul I. ascended the
throne he issued ridiculous and
vexatious ordinances: forbade the
wearing of round hats; ordered
even women to get out of their car-
riages or sleighs to do him hom-
age in the streets (which was the
more perplexing as he was to be
met with at all hours and in all
costumes, lounging or careering
through the city) ; exiled and im-
prisoned any one he disliked for
trivial reasons, and as capriciously
freed or recalled them, loading them
with favors; and compelled men to
wear powder and to bow to his pal-
ace, even when he was absent. On
the whole, Paul was fond of foreign-
ers, especially of French artists and
actors, and employed many at his
court, delighting in their sayings
and allowing them liberties no
Russian would have dared to take,
even at his express desire. Doyen,
Mme. Le Brun's old friend and
master, was living in St. Peters-
burg, and got as many commis-
sions from Paul as from Catherine ;
he was famous for his readiness of
speech, as is illustrated by the an-
swer he made to a critic who, in
the emperor's presence, said, as he
was painting a ceiling :
11 You are painting the Hours
dancing round the chariot of the
Sun. I see one over there much
farther off, smaller than the rest ;
and yet the Hours are all alike."
" Sir," said Doyen gravely, " you
are quite right, but the one you
speak of is only half an hour."
Of Moscow Mme. Le Brun says
very little, except that the national
costume was almost the only one
worn at all times and on all occa-
sions by the higher classes, the
women going to balls in cashmere
tunics edged with gold fringe, and
Greek head-dresses with narrow
bands covered with diamonds.
She met Prince Bezborodko in
Moscow, and tells the following in-
Souvenirs of Madame Le Brun.
773
stance of his readiness : Catherine
having once ordered him to draw out
a new ukase, or order, he forgot it,
and when she saw him again she
inquired for it. He coolly took a
paper from his pocket and read off
a draft of the proposed law ; but the
empress, on demanding the paper,
found it a blank page. The next
day she made him a privy coun-
cillor.
Mine. Le Brim's notes from
Germany on her way home from
Russia are scanty ; at Berlin the
same welcome she always received
from crowned heads awaited her,
and at Dresden she met again the
'Russian millionaire, Demidoff, whose
chief concern was that he could not
manage to spend a thousand crowns
a day. The Paris of the Consulate
(and later on of the Empire) greet-
ed her with mingled dismalness
and magnificence ; the former illus-
trated by wall-inscriptions such as
'Liberty and fraternity, or death,'''
the latter by the assemblies and
outward show of the foreign em-
bassies. The beauty and wit of the
leading women in society were still
conspicuous, and the elasticity and
recuperative power of the French
character were evident even in such
small matters as the revival of poli-
tical and literary salons.
Since Louis XIV. no embodi-
ment of sovereignty had so secure-
ly controlled and fascinated the
country as the court which a clever
Russian called " not a court, but a
power"; and, much more than Louis
XIV., Bonaparte owed this power
to' his unique individuality. The
great emperor was the ideal of a
self-made man ; he reigned by the
right of manhood in an age of
pitiable disintegration. Mme. Le
Brun, like most legitimists, felt
more or less uneasy under his rule,
and once again migrated to Lon-
don, where the court was as much
a contrast to Napoleon's as the
society was to that of Paris. She
gives some very odd sketches of
the customs of the time, which it
is needless to say have since so
changed as to be more of a curi-
osity to Englishmen at present than
they were to Frenchmen at the
time. The separation of the men
from the women at evening parties,
and the silence of couples when
they did walk arm-in-arm, seem
apocryphal ; but having no means
of testing the truth of the state-
ment, we take it as it stands. She
also says that conversation was
rare after dinners ; men took books
and women embroidery and sat in
silence ; but she adds :".... This
is not caused by the impossibility
of talking agreeably ; I know many
English who are very witty, and I
may add I never met one who was
a fool" (in which experience she
was perhaps exceptionally lucky).
Holland House was in its glo-
ry during Mme. Le Brim's three
years' stay in London ; Fox came
repeatedly to her studio, Reynolds
and West were her friends, and
Mrs. Siddons occasionally relaxed
her tragedy-queen airs while ad-
miring her portraits. The Prince
of Wales (George IV.) made her
paint his likeness for Mrs. Fitz-
herbert, and some of the royal
princes sought her out to help them
in their generous care of the poor
French exiles. The English coun-
try-houses were a source of curi-
osity and delight, and the customs
of the watering-places, a social in-
stitution now greatly lessened in
influence, amused the lively and
critical giver of impromptu suppers ;
but the most interesting thing she
mentions is her visit to Herschel
and his sister Caroline, to whose
"learning and noble simplicity"
774
The Bridal Ring of Our Lady at Perugia,
she adds one more among the
thousand well-earned tributes of-
fered to the astronomers. The de-
tails of the visit are not striking,
but are such as any one can ima-
gine for himself. Sir James South,
an English astronomer who died a
dozen years ago, lived a somewhat
similar life at a retired, old-fash-
ioned house in Kensington, Lon-
don, and his microscopes, which we
remember his exhibiting at a pri-
vate visit one evening, were almost
more marvellous than his telescopes
and other instruments in the ob-
servatory built in the large, tan-
gled garden.
Mme. Le Brun returned to Paris
when the Bourbons were finally re-
established there, and speaks in
warm terms which her political
sympathies sometimes color too
strongly not only of the popular
enthusiasm that greeted them, but
of their individual qualities.
She lived to see the elder branch
suicidally cut the ground from un-
der its feet, and to witness the ac-
cession of the son of Philippe Ega-
lite, whose radical gatherings at the
Palais Royal had not saved his
head during the " Terror," any
more than the son's affectation of
bourgeoisie saved him from deposi-
tion in 1848.
The warm-hearted, unworldly,
generous portrait-painter died in
1842, having lost her husband and
her daughter some years before, and
leaving most of her art treasures
and some of her own works to her
niece (on her husband's side), Eu-
genie Le Brun, married to M. Tri-
pier Le Franc, herself a good art-
ist and wealthy collector.
THE BRIDAL RING OF OUR LADY AT PERUGIA, AND THE
PARDON OF ST. FRANCIS AT ASSISI.
I INDITE the following in fair Um-
bria, in the very heart of the vale
of the Tiber ; with Assisi, blessed by
holy Francis, on yon mountain-
side easterly, and, beetling over me
in the west, the strong walls of
Perugia the "august "; in the north
remote the gorgeous mountains of
Tezio, and to the south the river
ever journeying to Rome, yet nev-
er tarrying there ; when the sun
shines brightest on the ripening
corn ; when the vine is heaviest
with the luscious grapes ; when the
fig-tree is in its glory, yielding fruit
a thousand-fold, striving, as it would
seem, to undo the curse laid by the
Lord ages ago upon its barren fel-
low ; when the olive-tree is proud-
est ; when there is a mellow glow
abroad upon plain and hillside
which tells you, as conclusively al-
most as your consciousness of place,
that you are in " sunny Italy."
The genius of the place has in-
vested me the spirit of the Catho-
lic Church. At Rome the genius
loci is too majestic, too awful for
my comprehension. I cannot cope
with it. The church there is a
sort of Transfiguration ; eternal
dogma and historic grandeur are
there hand-in-hand. So I stand
afar off believing and admiring.
Here the genius loci is more
tempered to one's incapacity. It
and the Pardon of St. Francis at Assisi.
775
comes through a medium, so to say
gently takes possession of one
through the unobtrusire shrines of
Our Lady by the wayside, through
the homely traditions of saints like
Francis of Assisi over there, like
Bernardine of Sienna, and through
pious legends such, for instance, as
that which tells us that the bridal
ring of the Madonna still exists in
the Cathedral of Perugia. And
here the word legend is not used in
the uncomplimentary sense attribut-
ed to it by the present age, but in
its old meaning, such as it bore at
the time of the renaissance of Ital-
ian letters, when it was applied to
narratives written in candid faith
and simple style ; when ingenuous-
ness was the beauty of the Chris-
tian and the writer. Though my
purpose is not to establish the au-
thenticity of so important* a relic,
but to portray a few scenes and in-
cidents illustrative of great faith
which accompanied its exposition
in the old cathedral, yet I would
intimate to the reader that the
ring of onyx now pendent from a
miniature crown of gold set with
diamonds has its history. How
the bridal ring of Our Lady found
its way to Rome is a matter of con-
jecture. But how a holy Christian
matron, Mustiola by name, and
cousin of the Emperor Marcus Au-
relius Claudius, carried it to Clusi-
um, now Chiusi, where it was vene-
rated for a thousand years, is the
subject of positive tradition. How,
in the year 1473, a German Fran-
ciscan friar called Brother Winter
stole and bore it thence to Perugia,
where ke gave it up to the decem-
viri of the city ; how religiously
they preserved it and fought for
it with the magnificent signiors of
Sienna, which held Chiusi tributary,
suffering, for a period of thirteen
years, reprisals and acts of ven-
geance characteristic of the middle
ages in Italy ; how popes, kings,
and princes were appealed to by
the contending parties for a settle-
ment of the feud; how the Perugians
finally carried the point, kept the
ring with jealous magnificence, and
gratefully gave honorable sepulture
beneath the chapel of the relic to
the unfortunate Brother Winter ;
how the pencil of the immortal
Pietro Perugino depicted the altar-
piece, the Espousal of Mary and
Joseph (afterwards stolen by Na-
poleon I.), and the Rossetti bro-
thers, worthy rivals of Benvenuto
Cellini, wrought the reliquary ; how,
in fine, the power of God was made
manifest time and again through
that ring by astounding and incon-
testable miracles these are histori-
cal facts a notion of which, while
lending any interest of their own
to the scenes herein described, may
also serve to keep the sceptical
spirit aroused by the first part of
the title in abeyance until you
choose to read somewhat on the
matter say the work of Adamo
Rossi.*
The principal exposition of the
ring is made on the 3oth of July,
the anniversary of its coming to
the city. Of old, Perugia used to
receive within its walls on that oc-
casion thousands of pilgrims of
every social grade from all parts of
Italy, and even from beyond the
Alps. The day was a civic as
well as religious festival. Prisoners
were released, pardons granted,
and all customs abolished at the.
city gates until the pilgrims had
departed. The usual itinerary
was, first, to visit the Holy House
at Loretto ; then go to Perugia, stop-
ping on the way at Assisi for the
great fair ; and, lastly, to return to
* VAnello Sponsalizio di Maria Vergine,
Dall' Ab. Adamo_Rossi. Perugia, 1857.
The Bridal Ring of Our Lady at Perugia,
Assisi for the Indulgence of the
Portiuncula. In our own day,
when the magnates of the land
have become of little or no faith,
the pilgrimage to Perugia is limited
to the poorest of the poor, the
ciocciari (so-called from the doccie,
a sort of moccasin they wear strap-
ped across the foot and around the
leg) from the province of Naples,
from Terra di Lavoro Land of
Labor and from Calabria in the
extreme south. But these come in
shoals, observing the ancient itin-
erary, and performing nearly the
whole journey on foot.
For the foregoing information,
as also for much edification and
genuine pleasure, I am debtor to
my kind host, the worthy Capuchin
friar who has the care of this little
wayside church. When, therefore,
at midnight of the 2pth of July, I
was gently awakened by hearing
the name of Mary sung from afar
in a sweet yet never so melancholy
cadence, I knew it was the pil-
grims, and I arose and went out
into the night. They came along
in little bands, some telling the
beads, others singing the refrain of
St. Leonard's hymn to the Ma-
donna :
Evuiva Maria,
Evviva Maria,
Evviva Maria, e Chi la creb !
There is a vigor and enthusiastic
ring to these words as I have
heard them sung elsewhere, but as
produced by these pilgrims it was
a threne tender and sweet, if you
will, but so expressive of their
hard lot on earth, children from
the Land of Labor, who anticipate
the early summer sun, and still
toil on when he has gone to rest !
Seen in the starlight, they were but
a dusky mass, moving slowly up
the hill towards the city. But in
the waxing dawn, and outside the
Roman Gate of the city itself a
picturesque monument of the mid-
dle ages they presented a motley
appearance not devoid of interest
to the artist. They were all short,
thickset, sturdy, and apparently of
one age ; for hard toil and expo-
sure had hardened and furrowed
the cheek of the maiden and the
youth till they looked as old as
their parents. But the many-hued
tartans of the women, their quaint
head-dresses and snowy jackets,
formed a splendid contrast of color
to the dull gray walls of the city,
to the unromantic costumes of the
men, and to the numerous carts
and wagons waiting for admission
into the city. But they all looked
dusty and weary, and many of the
women walked in threes and fours,
arm-in-arm, for mutual support ;
otherwrte they would have sunk
on the way. One poor girl had
fallen and swooned away from
sheer exhaustion, and so weak were
the poor creatures who supported
her thus far that they were unable
to carry her to the roadside. Was
it a wicked thought in him who
lifted her up and bore her aside to
think it a blessing for her if God
would bid her weary heart, there
and then, to be silent for ever ?
An old, old woman in the first, or
at most the second, of her teens !
Her hands were horny and large-
jointed, like those of the men ; and
when they took off the heavy woollen
head-dress, they displayed a head
already nearly bald from the enor-
mous weights it carried. Oh ! this
is the " proletariat " which is a liv-
ing, crying sin in the land, and not
that composed of hardy men like
yonder wheelwright who is just im-
mersing his mug in a measure of
wine.
A worthless lot they seemed as
they entered the city gate ; and yet
and the Pardon of St. Francis at Assisi.
777
the minions of the custom-house
pried into their dusty bundles with
officious zeal, and even felt about
the vesture of the women, lest the
mighty state, forsooth, should be
defrauded of one centime. It was
not thus in other days, contemptu-
ously styled dark by those of the
present generation who know least
about them. The steps of the
cathedral presented in the dawn
another picture hundreds of pil-
grims, who had arrived in the early
night, sleeping in a singular variety
of postures, supine, procumbent,
kneeling, couchant. Meanwhile,
when the arriving pilgrims filed in-
to the square in sight of the pile
which housed the relic, they went
on their knees and so walked up
to the yet unopened door of the
temple. Daylight came on apace,
and the sleepers felt the spirit of
the day and awoke. The women
washed their faces and combed out
their hair at the great fountain in
the square. The men contented
themselves with a shrug, a prolong-
ed yawn, and a stretching of the
limbs. Their general appearance
betokened that they had performed
no other manner of matutinal ablu-
tions for an indefinite period as
unlaved an assembly as eye ever
rested upon. The doors of the
church were opened at half-past
four o'clock, and then ensued a rush
towards the Chapel of the Ring,
situated on the left of the general
entrance. A mercy that it was well
fended with a stout, lofty iron rail-
ing. As it was, they charged against
this as if they would bear it down,
shouting " Evviva Maria /" Again
was the ear affected tenderly by
that melancholy chant, which was
borne to and fro undulatingly on
the night wind in the valley below.
And when the last strophe of holy
Leonard's poetic emanation was
sung, one of the young men nearest
the railing went on, as if under the
influence of an inspiration, impro-
vising and singing. Here is the sen-
timent of one of his verses :
" Bright and beautiful are thy eyes, dearest Mother !
But ne'er so lightsome and lovely,
As suffused with tears of compassion
For thy down-trodden children of labor."
Anon came other pilgrims to the
door of the church. But before en-
teringtheystopped, men and women,
loosened their sandals, and walked
into the church barefooted. The
women of this band were an impos-
ing contrast against the rest. Erect,
tall, impressive, they seemed an-
other race, not of Italy but of Egypt
as we know it from her monu-
ments. Their costume, too, was
unique : A skirt of black cloth cu-
riously frilled behind, and tucked
up by strings pendent from the
shoulders ; a white bodice elabor-
ately embroidered with gold thread,
and a long white veil hanging down
behind over the shoulders and
fastened around the brow by a red
fillet. Their eyes were singularly
piercing yet kindly ; the nose Ro-
man. But labor had left its mark
on the lower part of the face, con-
tracting the under jaw, sharpening
the chin, and hardening the lines
of the mouth. They excited no
little curiosity among the strangers
there, and one of these approached
the tallest and asked her whence
she came. She looked down upon
him calmly, giving no answer. But
the shaggy, villain-visaged man who
stood beside her stepped around
to the questioner, and said in a
curt, decisive way, "Ask me, sir."
"Where do you come from .'"re-
peated the stranger. " Campobas-
so," replied the pilgrim, and he re-
sumed his former position. The
stranger understood the hint and
77 8
The Bridal Ring of Our Lady at Perugia,
moved to another part of the
church.
At five o'clock one of the canons
of the cathedral, habited in sur-
plice and stole, and attended by
two acolytes, came out of the sa-
cristy and entered the chapel by a
side door. Candles were lit about
the shrine high up over the altar.
Then a rattling of heavy keys was
heard ; a pair of gilded iron doors
slid aside, revealing a red veil.
This too was removed, and, in a
crystal case, the people beheld
the ring, hanging by a chain of
gold from a miniature crown of
gold set in diamonds, and support-
ed by four columns of gold chi-
selled in the cinquecento style. At
that moment repeated cheers of
Evviva Maria ! rang through the
edifice. The women clapped their
hands, waved handkerchiefs, and
addressed Our Lady in the most
endearing terms, as if she were
present in the flesh. But the tall
pilgrim-women from Campobasso
sang an anthem of their own, clear
and weird. It had not the regular,
easy cadence of Italian song, but
suggested Araby, Egypt, the Nile
what you will that is Oriental.
And it was prayerful, too. It was
in the following strange rhythm :
and placed upon a table. But
when the iron gates of the chapel
swung back to admit the surging
throng, a strange commingling of
the terrible, the edifying, and the
ludicrous ensued. Terrible was
the spectacle of that multitude of
stalwart men and women crowd-
ing, jostling, pushing, even buffet-
ing each other in their eagerness to
get into the chapel. The men
nearest the railing laid hold of the
iron bars with desperate grip, and
pulled themselves up until they
were man's height above the crowd,
and then literally walked into the
chapel on human heads. The wo-
men shrieked with pain and fright,
the men puffed and tore, and the
police, stationed inside the railing
to moderate the inrushing tide,
shouted. But, despite the turmoil,
it was edifying to behold the faith
and piety of those peasants. High
above the brawl of the strugglers,
and more tenderly than ever, rang
the melancholy chants of the Nea-
politans and of the Oriental-look-
ing women. They produced a
strange harmony. How they held
aloft their hands in supplication;
how many who were too faint to
hold them in a prayerful position
had them supported by those near
Yer - gi - ne pie - to -
The excitement reached an in-
describable pitch when the entire
apparatus within which the reli-
quary is enclosed was slowly low-
ered down upon the altar by an
arrangement of ropes and pulleys,
and the reliquary itself taken out
per noi pre - ga, pre - ga !
them ; how they wept with holy
emotion, and poured forth litanies
of the sweetest epithets in honor
of their Queen, was enough to
move any heart; and I know of
one, a cold, callous-souled, calcu-
lating American, who turned his
and the Pardon of St. Francis at Assist.
779
head to the wall to hide the honest
tears of emotion which welled into
his eyes, while he prayed God, did
the doubter, to give him but the
faith of those creatures, who be-
lieve much and question little.
Ay, and he had the courage there-
after to plunge into the throng and
elbow his way into the chapel, un-
mindful of the consequences and
these were not inconsiderable to
one averse to having his ribs knead-
ed, shy of personal contact with
the unlaved, and the veriest thrall
to a repugnance for the odors in-
digenous to an Italian crowd. The
sight within the chapel amply re-
paid him. Those rude, ungoverna-
ble men, on approaching the relic,
knelt down and kissed it reverent-
ly, then walked out by a side door.
The women were more demonstra-
tive. Not content with imprinting
repeated kisses on the relic, they
applied their beads, their scapu-
lars and handkerchiefs to it; and
so reluctant were they to leave the
chapel that the police had to push
them out. The ring, as has al-
ready been intimated, is of white
onyx. It is very thick almost too
much so, one would fancy, to be
worn save as a thumb-ring. And
yet its inner circumference seems
too small for any but the little, or
an exceedingly delicate annular, fin-
ger. It is without any embellish-
ment, if exception b made to a
slight depression in one spot, once
probably an intaglio, but now ut-
terly indistinguishable.
There was a touch of the ludi-
crous to be witnessed at the side-
door of the chapel, out of which the
pilgrims passed after having seen
and venerated the relic. Here
comes a burly, thick-headed little
fellow whom we have observed
swinging himself aloft by the iron
bars of the railing. He has al-
ready been in the chapel twice, and
now he undoes the button of his
shirt, displaying a throat like that
of a young bull ; he hitches up his
short netherlings with a- jerk, and,
tightening his belt another hole,
charges again for the chapel, shout-
ing out the usual cry, Evviva
Maria ! evidently impressed with
the notion that the oftener he be-
holds and venerates the ring the
greater the merit. He may be
right. An old woman is escorted
out of the chapel by her son. She
is almost on the point of fainting
from exhaustion. But the boy will
not hear of it. He locks his arm
in hers, brushes back his shaggy
locks, and says : " Now, madre,
once more. Courage ! Your son
is at your back. Evviva Maria !"
She responds to the cheer feebly,
and again they are lost in the
crowd.
I had been observing with some
interest a quiet young creature
who stood in a remote corner of
the church, keeping guard over a
huge pile of shapeless bundles,
wallets, sandals, and an old woman
or two who were tired out and in-
sensible. Apparently she did not
relish her task. She walked to
and fro with a short, impatient step.
Then she would stop and scan the
struggling multitude, as if in search
of some one who would relieve her.
To and fro more impatiently than
before. Then another cheer re-
echoed from portal to apse of the
temple. She stopped quickly, look-
ed at the crowd excitedly, stooped
down, unstrapped her cioccie and
kicked them upon the pile, and
then whipped off her jacket, threw
it from her recklessly, and ran like
the wind towards the crowd ; and
the voice of a girl rose buoyant
and clear over the great roar, Ev-
viva Maria! These are realities.
;8o
The Bridal Ring of OILT Lady at Perugia,
They may provoke a smile border-
ing on the contemptuous. Repress
it in consideration of the moun-
tain-moving faith which underlies
this strange demonstration. Call
to mind some of the scenes enacted
when Jesus walked in Judea, when
the crowds pushed and jostled
against him and he rebuked them
not. The taking of the roof off a
house, and the letting down with
ropes a sick man, bed and bedding,
into the presence of Christ, did not
smack of the contemptible or the
fanatical to any one bating the
Pharisees.
The streets of Perugia are al-
ready thronged with pilgrims hur-
rying back towards the Roman
Gate en route for Assisi. Their
staves, their rosaries, their wallets,
their dusty appearance excite im-
moderate laughter in the Perugians.
They seem to feel so good and
happy in the sun of liberty, pro-
gress, and civilization which dawn-
ed upon, them with the revolution.
But we all know how dearly they
pay for these luxuries which have
no reality, and we do not envy
them the 33 per cent.* Besides,
we know an item or two touching
their social, civil, and political
status. The gate of the city pre-
sented a bustling scene. Waiting
there was a large number of oxen-
wains about to set out for Assisi.
With the owners of these the pil-
grims at once entered into spirit-
ed negotiations for a ride. They
talked fast, but gesticulated faster.
A Neapolitan only expresses one-
third of his ideas in speech; the
other two-thirds find utterance in
gestures. On this occasion the
manipulation of the fingers of a
hundred men and as many women
*The average tax of the government upon the
earnings of every Italian subject amounts to 33
per cent.
overpowered the Umbrian drivers,
and they consented to take the pil-
grims on their own terms. Such a
charge as they made on the wa-
gons ! A happy crowd they were
when all found places. The meek
white oxen bellowed inquiringly, as
if they wanted to know what was
amiss. But the pilgrims began a
litany, and to its cadences the
wains moved off. All that after-
noon, and far into the night, carts
and wagons laden with happy pil-
grims bowled along the high-road
through the valley of the Tiber,
and far and wide might be heard
that lonely threne which was borne
to me on the gentle wind the night
before.
Two days after that is, on the
ist of August bright and early in
the morning, I was on the road to
Assisi. I went over the same road
trodden by St. Francis and his
companion, Masseus, six hundred
years ago when they sought Pope
Honorius III. in Perugia, and beg-
ged of him the indulgence of the
Portiuncula. It is called by the
people here " // Perdono di San
Francesco " the Pardon of St.
Francis. The why and wherefore
of this indulgence cannot be bet-
ter told than in the words of the
Franciscan Breviary, in the office
of the 2d of August, feast of the
dedication of the Portiuncula :
" At the second Nocturn, Lesson IV.
Albeit the blessed Francis as long as he
lived always loved all churches exceed-
ingly, and held them in the greatest
honor, yet with especial zeal and singu-
lar piety did he venerate that little cha-
pel near Assisi which is called the
Church of St. Mary of the Angels and
of the Portiuncula. And that for many
reasons. First, on account of his in-
credible devotion to the most blessed
Mother of God and his great veneration
for the holy angels. Then, in that he
had not only known from others that
in this chapel most sweet songs of the
and the Pardon of St. Fran&is at Assisi.
angels were often heard, from which it
was thought it received its name, but
also he himself had experienced it, and
enjoyed their presence, their commu-
nion and comfort. Lastly, because it was
the church, long before prepared by the
Lord, in which he would begin his or-
der ; which church, therefore, he wished
called the Portiuncula, because it would
be the future mother and head of the
lowly flock of the Friars Minor. Where-
fore he greatly desired that it should be
held in the highest veneration by all.
" Lesson V. When, therefore, on a
certain night he was praying in his habi-
tation near the above-named church, it
was divinely made known to him that
the Lord Jesus and his most holy Mo-
ther, with a great multitude of angels,
was in the church. At which announce-
ment, affected with incredible gladness,
he arose quickly ; and entering the
church with the greatest reverence, when
first he beheld that ineffable majesty and
glory of the Son of God, he fell down be-
fore his sight and adored him with the
greatest possible humility of soul and
piety. Whom the Lord most graciously
called, and admonished that he should
ask some benefit from him for the salva-
tion of men. But he, aided by the patron-
age of the Mother whose assistance he
had implored, suppliantly asked him to
grant to all who would enter that church
pardon and remission of all their sins
whereof they had made confession to a
priest. The Lord made answer that
such was pleasing to him ; and he com-
manded him to go to his vicar and ask
the indulgence from him in his name.
" Lesson VI. In the morning, there-
fore, the blessed Francis, accompanied
by Brother Masseus, set out for Perugia,
where the Sovereign Pontiff, Honorius
the Third, then was. Entering into whose
presence, he exposed the order, asking
that what was pleasing to Christ, whose
stead and person he held upon earth,
might not be displeasing to him. At
first the thing asked seemed hardly just
to the pontiff, because it was sought as
free that is, without any offerings and
besides the greatest favor, and the same
absolute and perpetual. For he said
that he who wished to obtain pardon for
his crimes should in part merit it, and
denied that the Roman Curia was wont
to grant such an indulgence. The car-
dinals also who were present were op-
posed to its concession. For they said
it would come to pass that the indul-
gences of the Holy Land and of the holy
apostles Peter and Paul would be neg-
lected. At length the pontiff, know-
ing the divine will, granted it to the
blessed Francis, plenary, too, and free
and perpetual, but only for one natural
day of every year to wit, from the Ves-
pers of the kalends of August until the
Vespers of the following day, which is
the anniversary day of the consecration
of the above-mentioned church. And
when he wished to give him a diploma,
he (Francis) said that his word was
enough, for that the Lord would publish
and magnify his own work through him-
self. Which, indeed, we see has wonder-
fully come to pass."
A no inconsiderable part of the
Lord's work in regard to holy
Francis is that stupendous convent
with its three-storied church, part-
ly hewn out of the living rock of
the mountain-side, and the other
part built so massively that it
seems to vie with nature's mason-
ry. In the lower church, deep in
the mountain, reposes the body of
St. Francis ; above this another
church where the great Giotto will
live in his matchless frescos for
ever, if it please the Lord to hold
in thrall the sacrilegious, vandalic
spirit ; and above this a third
church, lofty, airy, and elegant in
Gothic forms. The revolution has
already invaded part of the glo-
rious convent in the name of edu-
cation. Over the great portal glare
the arms of Savoy, recently intrud-
ed there, bearing on an appended
scroll the announcement, that with-
in is a college named after the
Prince of Naples (son of King
Humbert). And when death
shall have reduced the present
community of monks to the num-
ber of three for they dare not re-
cruit, says the law of suppression
then will the great convent and
triple church of St. Francis be
taken by the government entirely,
782
The Bridal Ring of Our Lady at Perugia,
and rented out, mayhap, to an en-
terprising manufacturer of matches,
as befell the monumental convent
Delia Giustizia in Perugia. Yet
the middle church spoke gloriously
and eloquently of God and St.
Francis on that morning of the ist
of August at the numerous con-
fessionals, around which flocked in
hundreds the pilgrims anxious to
confess ; at the altars where as many
more were receiving Communion ;
outside in the cloisters, where many
more waited for their companions ;
and away down in the plain, where
the crowds of pilgrims moving to-
wards the Portiuncula were con-
founded with the great shadows of
the fleeting clouds above.
A lowly chapel by the wayside,
with a pointed roof and narrow
pointed windows, low and unadorn-
ed, save by the little cross which
arose from the roof over the en-
trance ; a solitary altar within, poor-
ly furnished such was the Portiun-
cula six centuries ago. I forgot to
mention an ancient picture of the
Madonna which served as an altar-
piece. Such, too, is the Portiun-
cula to-day, with the exception of
two angels and a Madonna painted
in gold on the front gable, and a
few ornaments within. But instead
of being shaded by friendly trees
as of yore, it is completely housed
in by a magnificent church in the
Romanesque style, under whose
great dome it looks more lowly
and humble than ever. From the
central portal of the basilica up to
the door of the Portiuncula extends
a strong double fence, and the
space within the two railings is
packed with living beings standing
in platoons and waiting for the
Vesper hour, when the doors of
the little chapel will open and the
Pardon commence. On the right-
hand side of the little chapel is a
door of the same size as that in
front, through which the pilgrims
pass out. To gain the indulgence
it is sufficient to enter the chapel
and pass out at this door. The
right aisle of the large church is
kept clear by carbineers, for the
pilgrims will rush down there, out
at the corresponding door, and in
again at the principal entrance.
Hark! a cheer. The doors have
opened ; the Pardon has begun. In
rush the excited pilgrims to the
sacred shrine, only to be seen the
next instant tearing pell-mell out
of the side door, and down the
right aisle of the large church, as
if the fiends were at their heels.
At this juncture I noticed that a
kind of order was maintained by
the pilgrims, despite the apparent
confusion. Acquaintances and
friends kept close together. Com-
panies of eight and ten women
moved inside of a square of men,
who held each other by the hands
and kept back the impetus of the
crowd behind. A faction spirit
seemed at work, too. Occasionally
a powerful young peasant would
break from his own ranks, rush for-
ward, and throw himself with all
his strength against the chain of
strongly-knit hands in front of him.
He was thrown back with redou-
bled force. Then the two parties
would glower at each other. But,
even if they had the will, they had
not the time, to adjust any differ-
ences there and then. That tide
of human beings was like the cur-
rent of the ocean, all action, all
motion, ever rushing forward. Ma-
ny a poor exhausted woman pray-
ed to be let out of the line ; but
before she had expressed her re-
quest to the men behind the power
still farther back pushed them all
forward more violently than ever.
I wondered when it would all end,
and the Pardon of St. Francis at Assist.
733
and even asked one of the friars.
He said they considered it essen-
tial to enter the chapel three times
(the old story; volumes might be
written about that mystic number).
I entered the ranks with a desire
of having " the handwriting eras-
ed." I was borne along as if by
a whirlwind, and found myself in
the chapel. There I backed into
a corner to breathe and pray. I
had barely time to observe that the
altar was behind an iron railing,
that the pilgrims threw coppers
over this and said the sweetest
things to our Lord and his Mother
so utterly unlike what they said to
each other outside, that the cost-
liest lamps burned before the al-
tar, when a carbineer, a kindly
fellow indeed, told me to " move
on." So I was floated into the
square outside, where the fair was
going on.
I shall not enlarge upon the
scenes and incidents I encountered
there, especially that of the enter-
prising " patriot " who inserted his
hand so clumsily into my breast-
pocket while I was drinking a
glass of the vilest beverage that
ever was distilled, sworn to by the
vender as "sincere wine of Um-
bria." Uncommented, too, I leave
the fact that never, in so short a
period, did I witness so much dis-
honesty as in the booth-keepers at
the Fair of St, Francis. These are
matters of the world which might,
without any great effort of one's
logical powers, be proved as kith
and kin to the nether kingdom.
No; let me think of those faithful
pilgrims with all their incongruities.
I love their wild, emotional devo-
tion. If it be faulty, it is on the
side nearest heaven.
As the twilight falls upon the
vale of the Tiber a gentle zephyr
springs up in the south, and it wafts
upon its wings that sweet, melan-
choly anthem of the pilgrims, the
weary children of the Land of Labor,
journeying homewards :
Ev - vi - va Ma - ri - a, Ev - vi - va Ma
1 I-7-! fc-1 ! 1 1-
- ri - a, Ev - vi - va Ma - ri - a e Chi la ere - 6.
784
The Major's Manoeuvre.
THE MAJOR'S MANOEUVRE.
BRAY is the Newport of Ireland.
Its cimiter-shaped bay, fringed with
snowy foam, is bounded by the
villa-crowned heights of Killiney
at its northern extremity, Dalkey
Island peeping timidly round the
corner, while at the south it is
guarded by a frowning headland,
stern and wild in winter, in spring
vine-mantled with the tender green
of the maidenhair fern, and in
autumn purple as the cassock of a
monsignor with glowing, perfumed
heather. In the near background
stand the Sugar Loaves, twin senti-
nels protecting the passes into the
lovely county of Wicklow, whose
hills are visible from Djouce to
Auchavana, while the far-famed
Dargle and lordly Powerscourt are
within " goodly bowshot " of the
trim little town that sits in the lap
of a mountain and gaily disports
itself by the surf. Bray is coquet-
tish in summer residences, from the
white-washed fisherman's hut, rent-
ed to Dubliners at ;io a month
while the landlord and his family
retire to the recesses of an inverted
boat, to the pretentious mansion
of bastard architecture let at over
ten times that amount. The strand
for three miles is studded by terra-
ces, whither during the dog days the
" upper ten " of the city by the Lif-
fey most do congregate, for Kings-
town is considered but second rate,
and Dalkey a degree lower still.
Bray boasts of two hotels, a club,
a bank, a pretty Catholic church,
half a dozen conventicles, a Turkish
bath, and other luxuries too numer-
ous to mention. It is struck by
two railroads, and being but ten
miles from the capital, and the gate
to the County Wicklow, presents at
all seasons of the year a bustle and
animation of a character peculiar
to itself. The best outside cars
and horses in all Ireland are to be
hired at Bray, and the drivers to
a man are merry, witty, rollicking
sons of the shamrock, who wheedle
the occupants of their respective
vehicles to their hearts' content,
and until the delighted Saxon is
willing to pay half a sovereign
extra for a song, and to stand as
much " rale Irish " whiskey as the
car-driver cares to call for.
The neighborho9d around Bray
is exquisitely picturesque, the roads
running between fern-caressed hills,
along the courses of brawling trout-
streams, or by domains skirted by
rare old elms, or ash-trees that
might have yielded lance- staves
when the O'Byrnes held the pass
of Auchavana against the bellige-
rent O'Tooles.
On the Dargle road, and situat-
ed about two miles from Bray
Bridge and close to the turn to
Enniskerry, stands Assam House,
the residence of Mr. Peter Bridge-
banke. You cannot fail to notice
Assam House. The gates and
massive iron railings are gilded.
The gate-lodge is plate-glassed,
with gilt wire blinds, and lace cur-
tains such as are not to be seen
outside of Merrion Square. Rows
of scarlet tubs with golden hoops,
containing blood-red geraniums,
fringe the avenue, white with Killi-
ney gravel, that leads to the house,
backed by ribbon-borders of the
newest and quaintest arrangements
in leaf floriculture. The house is
The Major's Manoeuvre.
735
square, with a mansard roof sur-
mounted by a gilded railing. Sun-
blinds of blue and yellow stripes,
such as one beholds at Naples, or
perhaps Florence, flare all over the
facade. The portico is a bower of
mediaeval brass-work and creeping
plants. In the middle of the close-
ly-shaven lawn is a pond, and in
the pond an out-of-proportion
fountain consisting of Cupids, with
corporations fit for aldermen, blow-
ing water from cheeks distended
like india-rubber balls. The pond
is a mass of shell-work, and closer
inspection reveals the existence of
numerous gold fish and a pair of
disconsolate-looking swans. Pea-
cocks and guinea fowl move across
the emerald velvet carpet, perch-
ing upon croquet-hoops or the
poles supporting the netting of
lawn tennis. A garden blazing
with color stretches away to the
right, relieved at intervals by mar-
ble statues and gilded seats. On
the left are the stables, mansard-
roofed, with a clock-tower fit for a
Belgian market-place, and a clock
large enough for a city hall. As-
sam House is built upon the top of
a hill, and can be seen for ten
miles in almost any direction. Not
a tree, not a shrub, breaks the sky-
line, and in the clear, cold eve or
the lovely summer twilight, when
the sun has gone down to rest be-
hind Boher-na-breema, the house
and clock-tower seem actually as
if they were painted against the
sky.
The owner of this striking and
showy residence is a Mr. Peter
Bridgebanke, a retired tea-merchant,
formerly of King William Street, in
the city of London. It so happen-
ed that about ten years prior to
the opening of this story Mr.
Bridgebanke, accompanied by Mrs.
Bridgebanke and his infant daugh-
VOL. xxix. 50
ter, paid a flying visit to Ireland,
principally for the purpose of tak-
ing a peep at an estate that he had
purchased in the county of Kil-
dare. Having one day to spare,
they were advised by the clerk at
the Gresham Hotel, where they were
stopping, to spend it in a short ex-
cursion in the County Wicklow.
" You can leave Dublin by the niiTe
o'clock train, get to Bray at 9.45,
hire a car, and do Sir George
Hodson's place well worth seeing
and by the Rocky Valley, up to
the Deer Park gate at Lord Powers-
court's. Then you can drive to the
Waterfall, lunch there I'll put up a
basket for you and, after saunter-
ing about for a couple of hours,
come to Powerscourt House, and
from that to Tinnehinch, the estate
that the country bought for the
great Henry Grattan. You'll cross
the road on foot, and get into the
Dargle by the upper gate ; walk
through it along the road they
made for George IV. when he was
here in the year '21, and get back
to the Bray gate and into Bray in
time for dinner at the International
Hotel, kept by an American, or to
do the 6.20, which will put you to a
better dinner here," said the clerk,
who was a man of parts and had a
careful eye to business.
Mr. Bridgebanke, who had writ-
ten down the clerk's instructions,
followed them to the letter, his
pretty little daughter doing her
seven Irish miles of walking " like
a Throjan," as the car-driver re-
marked; but Mrs. Bridgebanke, who
rarely allowed herself the luxury of
a walk, remained on the car, and
it was while her husband was pow-
dering along the dusty road that
leads from the Dargle to Ennisker-
ry that his eyes encountered the
words, printed on a white board,
" This land to be sold. Lease 999
;86
The Major s Manoeuvre.
years. For full particulars apply
to Thomas Walsh, Solicitor, 79
Harcourt Street, Dublin."
" Wot a spot for a 'ouse !" ob-
served Mr. Bridgebanke, thinking
aloud. " The 'igh 'ill ; the woods
in the valley ; and yes, a trout-
stream running right in the 'ollow,
and a pond for perch. If that 'ill
was at 'Ampstead or Tghgate, or
within fifty miles of London, I'd
'aveit before four-and-twenty hours.
I wonder what they're asking for
it?"
The car containing Mrs. Bridge-
banke drove slowly up, the wor-
thy lady clinging to the rails at
both ends of the seat in a very
unclassical and spread-eagle atti-
tude.
"Wot a spot for a 'ouse, Mary
Anne !" cried the tea-merchant,
pointing with his stick, a black-
thorn, purchased at the railway
station for half a sovereign.
Mrs. Bridgebanke, who was of a
languid and aristocratic turn, and
who, like Mrs. Malaprop, aspired
to be a queen of the dictionary, ex-
pecting all the difficult words to
come and go at her bidding, and
who usually found them exceeding-
ly rebellious subjects, exclaimed,
after a lazy glance through a pair
of pi-nee nez not that she requir-
ed them, but they were considered
distingut
" Yes, Peter, the diorama from
that hill ought to be very rekerkay,
and the perceptive worthy of a
painter."
" 'Ovv stylish a 'ouse like Alder-
man Buggins' would look right on
the brow of the 'ill!"
" If I owned that promontory I'd
erect a Swiss shalot or an Italian
pagoda."
" No; Buggins' 'ouse is the 'ouse
for my money." And Mr. Bridge-
banke, requesting of his wife to
allow him a few minutes' grace, as-
cended the hill, puffing and blow-
ing like a stranded whale.
"Come up 'ere, Mary Anne !" he
yelled, after he had been on the
summit a few moments. "There
an't such a view this side of the
Crystal Palace or Bolong. I say,
cabman, just 'elp the lady up for
'arf a crown, will you ?"
" I'd rowl her up to ye for no-
thin', av I cud get some wan for
to mind the mare's hed. There's
a new county inspecthor, mam, an'
the poliss is leppin' mad for some-
thin' to do. But here goes," he
added; "I'll not see himself bet
for all the poliss in Ireland." And
tying the reins to the branch of a
tree, the carman gallantly assist-
ed Mrs. Bridgebanke to where her
perspiring lord awaited her com-
ing.
" The age of chivalry is not
dead," observed the gratified Mrs.
Bridgebanke to the car-driver.
" You are a Savoyard, sir, without
fear and without reproach."
The view from where they stood
was perfectly enchanting. The
blue, crescent-shaped bay with its
white-laced edge ; the Hill of
Howth in the hazy distance; the
foliage-covered heights of Killiney,
dotted here and there with curi-
ously-peeping villas ; the vale of
Shangannah bathing in the amber
rays of the setting sun, and below
them the white houses of the little
town of Bray, and over against
them the purple, keen, rich, lumi-
nous, and glowing, of Bray Head.
They turned, to be encountered by
the pine-crowned mountains over-
hanging the Waterfall, and the luxu-
rious foliage, its deeper tints mark-
ing the beauteous valley of the
Dargle; the great Sugar-Loaf, its
needle-like summit piercing the
azure sky, the road winding to
The Major s Manoeuvre.
737
Togher up its steep shoulder like
a piece of white tape ; the lesser
Loaf modestly hiding from the last
glances of the amorous sun behind
its larger brother, and away in a
plume of purple clouds, seeming of
the clouds themselves, the hills of
Luggelaw and Glendalough.
" We needn't start till the seven
o'clock boat to-morrow night, Mary
Anne," said Mr. Peter Bridge-
banke, when he had seated himself
on the car beside his wife ; u for I'll
have a talk with this Mr. Thomas
Walsh, Solicitor, about the price of
this 'ere 'ill." And the tea-merchant
was as good as his word. The in-
terview proved satisfactory to both
parties. Mr. Walsh was instructed
to forthwith prepare the deed of
surrender and the new lease, ^10,-
ooo being the sum agreed to be
paid for the property; and Mr.
Bridgebanke was not twenty-four
hours in the city of London until
he had had a chat with his friend
Alderman Buggins over a dry bis-
cuit and a bottle of tawny port.
" I tell you wot it is, Bridge-
banke," exclaimed the turtle-fed
civic father, "I wouldn't let any
man build a 'ouse sich as mine in-
side the wooden walls of hold
England; but as you are a-goin' to
build in h'Ireland, amongst them
savages as will pot you from be'ind
your 'ouse 'edge some fine mornin',
I don't mind lettin' you 'ave my
plan, and I'll give you a note to my
architect, Mr. Valentine Pitcher,
F.R.A.A., of 'Igh 'Olborn, that'll
do the trick for you. But h'Ire-
land h'an't fit for a true-blooded
Englishman, and you'll be a-comin'
to me afore this day twelve-month,
a-sayin', * Buggins, you was right ;
h'Ireland h'an't the country for a
true-born Englishman. I've drop-
ped my money, but I've saved my
skin. 'Ere we are again.' '
The grim prophesyings of Mr.
Alderman Buggins failed to shake
the tea-merchant's resolve. Mr.
Valentine Pitcher, F.R.A.A., re-
ceived a commission to construct
at Knock-na-Kill, in the county of
Wicklow, Ireland, a house similar
in every respect to that erected for
Mr. Alderman Buggins on Herne
Hill ; and when the purple heather
again came to bloom on Bray
Head, Assam House was inhabited
by Mr. Peter Bridgebanke and his
family, who became so attached to
it and its surroundings that the
tea-merchant three years subse-
quently retired from business, and
instead of merely passing the sum-
mer and autumn months in Ireland,
went to reside there permanently.
ii.
It was a broiling day in the sum-
mer of 1876, and even the showy
sun-blinds failed to keep the stove-
like heat out of the ordinarily well
and scientifically ventilated apart-
ments of Assam House. Every
Irish summer is gilded by a few
such days, as a bouquet is here
and there studded with a flower a
little too warm in tone per se. It
is such suns that fill the corn-ears,
and render ragged boys hoarse as
ravens from shouting at brigand
birds.
In an elegantly but too copiously
furnished drawing-room sat two
young ladies. One of them is the
girl who did her seven Irish miles
on the day that her father first laid
eyes on Knock-na-Kill. She is
now a young lady of eighteen, with
blue eyes, yellow hair which she
wears, like a skye-terrier, down over
her forehead, a nose inclined to be
tip-tilted what a champion in the
cause of cocked noses Mr. Tenny-
son has proved by this redoubtable
;88
The Major s Manczuvre.
thrust of his lance! a peevish
mouth, and a figure, if built upon
the lines of the Venus de' Medicis as
regards the waist, utterly outside
the model of the goddess with re-
spect to the remaining portions of
her frame. She is attired in a
white robe that extends its pro-
tecting shelter to half a dozen
pieces of furniture, so ample are
its dimensions, and is engaged in
writing a letter on very showily
monogrammed note-paper at an in-
laid and costly secretaire.
In a corner upon &fauteuil, and
in an attitude of indolent grace
such as Sarah Bernhardt would set
herself to study, and perhaps mo-
del in clay, if she could, reclines
another young lady, also attired in
ample but less Alpine peaks of
white ; in fact, her dress was a
plain white muslin in dainty folds,
and adorned with those leg-of-mut-
ton sleeves which Josephine Beau-
harnais wore when she first met
to her cost "Le Petit Caporal."
This young lady has a classical-
ly-shaped head, classically-sitting
chestnut hair, and a classical "one
inch of forehead." Her eyes are
dark gray, widely divided, heavily
lidded, and black-lashed. When
she raises her eyes they are in-
tensely luminous, and she looks at
you from beneath the upper lids
a long, earnest, and, to susceptible
mankind, destructive glance. This
is in nowise done for effect. It is
perfectly natural, and, as a certain
gentleman says, who shall be pre-
sently introduced to the reader,
'"awfully fetching, you know."
This young lady is Marguerite
.Bridgebanke, niece of the retired
tea-merchant, an orphan, and with-
out " a shilling to her fortune," her
father having died of the vomito at
Vera Cruz, in which city he had
settled in order to .carry on a trade
in the much-vaunted Cordoba cof-
fee.
Marguerite gazes compassionate-
ly at her cousin as she murmurs :
" If / were engaged to a gentle-
man who did not think it worth
his while to visit me for three
weeks, I would give him his conge
in a few short words, sharp as
steel and cold as ice. Louisa is
too proud to admit that she is
slighted, and too tender and true
to the man she loves to impeach
his conduct even to me." Then,
as a gong sounded, she said aloud,
" That's the luncheon-bell, Louey."
" I hear it," was the snappy re-
sponse.
" Finish your letter, dear. You
should be hungry. You ate no
breakfast."
"I hate eating; you can go."
Marguerite knew that sympathy
is the heart's safety-valve, and she
resolved upon forcing her cousin's
confidence. Rising from the fau-
teuil, she crossed over to where
Louisa Bridgebanke sat, her face
buried in her hands.
" Louisa dear," she began.
" Do not interrupt me, please,"
moving her shoulders like a naugh-
ty child.
"I must I shall," persisted
Marguerite. " What have I done,
that you should shut me from out
your heart, closing the gates of
confidence upon me ?"
" I have no confidences worth
confiding to anybody."
"You imagine that you have a
secret hidden from me. You de-
ceive yourself, dear. I am too fond
of you to permit any sadness to
press upon you without craving to
bear at least a portion of the bur-
den."
" If you are so very clever, why
trouble yourself by questioning
me ?" retorted Louisa.
The Major s Manoeuvre.
789
" Because when a pretty little
bird ceases to sing, and refuses its
food, and pecks wickedly at you if
you approach it, is it not natural
that those who care about it should
begin to feel anxious ?"
" I hate birds. I always hated
birds."
" I will come to the point, Louisa:
your fiance, Mr. Byecroft, is "
Louisa sprang to Her feet, while
an angry flush passed rapidly over
her face as she hotly exclaimed :
"If you are going to say any-
thing against Mr. Byecroft, Mar-
guerite, I shall leave the room."
" I will save you, that trouble,"
said her cousin, as with suffused
eyes she softly glided from the
apartment.
Mr. Byecroft is a lieutenant in a
rnarching regiment, living upon his
pay and an allowance from his
maternal uncle, Majd Bagshawe.
He met Miss Bridgebanke at a pic-
nic in the Dargle, heard she had
"no end of tin," got permission to
call at Assam House, called pretty
often, and finally offered his flabby
heart and still flabbier hand to
Louisa, both of which that young
lady accepted con amore. Jimmy
Byecroft is weak, vain, and foolish.
He is a mere puppet in the hands
of his uncle the major, a wiry, un-
scrupulous veteran, who " looted " to
his heart's content while in India,
and retired from the service, selling
his commission at the highest price,
resolving to live on the best of
everything for the remainder of his
natural life, a fig for' the cost.
The major possessed another
nephew, Fred Stonleigh, a high-
bred, handsome young fellow, hav-
ing five hundred pounds a year
and nothing to do. Fred was
rather weary of existence, al-
though he lived that butterfly life
of which so many examples may be
found in the city of Dublin. In
winter he attended the Castle balls
and the receptions of the best fami-
lies in Merrion and Fitzwilliam
Squares. He hunted with the
Ward Unions and the Wicklow
Harriers, and belonged to the Ste-
phen's Green Club, within whose
palatial walls he spent the major
portion of his time. In summer he
ran up to London for a slice of the
season, coming back to Dublin for
the Kingstown regatta, and the 2oth
of August found him in the County
Wicklow pursuing the grouse on
the heather-clad hills of Auchavana
or in the hooded hollows of Derry-
lossany. He is for I use the pre-
sent tense in introducing him an
idle man about town, highly edu-
cated, cursed with a competence
for if he had to make his own way
he would do the state some ser-
vice and, as this story opens, in-
clined to yawn double yawns over
everything.
One lovely summer day Major
Bagshawe. his light gray trousers
strapped tightly beneath his var-
nished patent-leather boots, his hat
brushed till it shone again, his
black frock buttoned military fash-
ion up to his chin, called at the
Stephen's Green Club and " drew "
his nephew.
"What's up, major?" asked
Stonleigh.
" I want you to come out to Bray
and pay a visit to the Bridgebankes.
I'll present you."
"Jimmy's people ?"
"Hum! yes."
"I don't mind."
Fred Stonleigh had met Margue-
rite Bridgebanke, and her earnest
eyes had fascinated him, despite his
habitual and blase indifference. It
was at the annual dance given by
the St. George Yacht Club, where
he danced with her twice, and
The Major s Manoeuvre.
had a long half hour's delightful
chat on the balcony that hangs
over the flashing waters of Kings-
town Harbor.
" Saw you dawncing with the tea-
man's daughter," exclaimed a friend
of his. " Doing duty for Jimmy ?"
" What do you mean ?"
" Mean ! Don't you know that
Miss Bridgebanke is about to be
handed over to your cousin with
forty thousand pounds and a tea
plantation on the Peiho River ?"
" Ah ! I don't see much of my
cousin." And Fred turned on his
heel, an angry wave of envy break-
ing over his heart.
The major's offer to take him to
Assam House was bitterly sweet.
Yes, he would like to see Miss
Bridgebanke again, to gaze into her
wondrous gray eyes, to hear her
speak, even of his idiotic, selfish
kinsman. She was just the one
girl worth Pshaw! And he dug his
heel into the soft grass they were
taking a short cut through Stephen's
Green to Harcourt Street station
as though he would crush any sen-
timental feeling as he had crushed
a timid daisy beneath his boot.
They were soon speeding past
Dundrum, with the Throne Rocked
Mountain frowning down upon
them ; past Stelligan ; past Step-
aside, the rugged Scalp clear cut
against the soft blue sky, flecked
here and there with fleecy clouds
white as the driven .snow ; past Cas-
tlemines and its Druidical altars;
past the beautiful vale of Shangan-
nah, slumbering in sunshine, its feet
laved by the caressing waters of
Killiney Bay ; and onwards till
Bray was reached.
" We'll walk over, Fred ; and as I
never can speak in a railway car-
riage, I'll take this opportunity of
parading the Bridgebankes for your
especial information."
The major is a small, wiry little
man, with a winky eye, a port-wine
nose, and a hard-shaved chin. He
wears a black satin stock of the
time when George IV. dressed a la
Brummel, and holds his head in the
air as if there were traps set be-
neath his jaws, the avoidance of
which was his especial mission in
life.
" Old Bridgebanke is a retired
vender of Souchong and Bohea.
He's a well-meaning old chap, al-
ways fishing for one particular
trout, which he never catches; and
he's as vulgar as boiled mutton in
July. Mrs. Bridgebanke is about
the same thing. She takes steady
aim at all the big words in the
English language, and, like Mrs.
Malaprop, piques herself on ' a
nice derangement of her epitaphs.'
This worthy couple are blessed
with one daughter, and it is this
young lady who has brought me
here to-day. I have a little busi-
ness on hand to transact with her,
but it is of so exceedingly delicate a
nature that it requires to be manipu-
lated in primrose-colored gloves."
" What can this mean ?" thought
Stonleigh.
" You are aware* Fred," con-
tinued the major, " that your cou-
sin Jimmy stands to me in the dou-
ble-barrelled relationship of nephew
and godson. Well, I do as much
as I can for Jimmy consistent
with my own comforts, for I'D* at
that time of life that demands the
best, the very best, of everything.
To deny myself anything in reason
would be equivalent to perpetrat-
ing a heartless practical joke upon
a very refined and gentlemanly set
of feelings. I am at the claret age,
and nothing short of a comet vin-
tage, a bottled velvet, will soothe
me."
"You haven't much to accuse
The Major s Manoeuvre.
791
yourself on the score of self-de-
nial, major !" laughed his nephew.
" No, Fred, no," observed the
other placidly ; resuming: "Jimmy
must be kept in the front rank,
must dress well, horse well, club
well, and marry superlatively well.
Such a marriage is on the cards,
and as soon as I get him out of
this scrape I'll "
" Has Jimmy got into a scrape ?"
interrupted Stonleigh.
" Of course he has," replied the
major. "I got him into it, and
I'm bound to get him out of it.
This is how it happened : I intro-
duced Jimmy to the Bridgebankes
a good commercial stroke of busi-
ness. No family, not so much as
a beggarly city knight, but lots of
tirr. Jimmy swallowed the pill,
and went in to fascinate; succeed-
ed, as a matter of course, and, be-
ing something of an ass, became
spooney. Parents consent, every-
thing goes like a dozen of oysters,
when in a lucky moment I meet
Jack Flint, who served with me in
the 42d, just returned from India.
Jack has no liver, but, what is bet-
ter, he has a charming little daugh-
ter with a lac of rupees. Jack's
daughter was evidently born for
Jimmy, and Jimmy was evidently
born for Jack's daughter." And the
major chuckled behind his black
satin stockade.
" And what of the young lady to
whom he is already engaged? Is
she not to be considered ?" asked
Fred indignantly.
" Certainly not. There is no
one to be considered in this case
but Jimmy and myself."
" But the poor girl's heart ?"
"Putty, Fred, putty !"
" Girls do pine sometimes and
fade like flowers."
" Tight-lacing, Fred ! tight-lac-
ing !"
"Ay, and die."
" Thin shoes, Fred, and ball cos-
tumes, my boy."
" And do you mean to tell me,
major, that my cousin, James Bye-
croft, consents to this ?" demanded
Stonleigh almost fiercely.
" Of course he does. He knows
on which side his bread is but-
tered."
" Is it not worse than shabby,
your lending yourself to this pitiful
business, major?" observed Fred
after a pause.
The major stopped; they were
just at the gilded gates of Assam
House.
" My dear Fred," he said, " I've
seen a*few things in my time-*
startling things, too but I'll tell
you two things I never met with, and
I never knew any man in the service
who did : a ghost is one, and a lady
die for love another. That sort of
thing is played out, my boy."
The two men walked up the
flower-bordered avenue in silence,
the major engaged in flicking the
dust off his varnished boots, giving
a rub to his hat, and generally set-
ting himself to rights, while his ne-
phew indulged in reflections in no
wise flattering to his kinsman.
" Miss Bridgebanke has given my
cousin her heart," he muttered be-
tween his clenched teeth, "and
he dares to trifle with it as though
it were a sixpenny bauble. He
shall not. Cost me what it will,
I'll checkmate this disgraceful ma-
noeuvre."
A pert English housemaid re-
sponded to the major's ring.
" Ah ! my blooming Hebe, is your
master in ?" demanded the warrior
in a jocose tone.
" He 'ave gone a-fishing to the
pond, sir."
" Still after that famous trout,
eh?"
792
The Major s Manoeuvre.
"Yes, sir, mawster 'as 'igh 'opes
of 'ooking 'im to-day."
" It's most astonishing, Fred,"
chuckled the major. " To my own
knowledge Bridgebanke has been
after that fish these four months.
The trout knows him as well as I
do, and they stare at each other
like country cousins for hours to-
gether. Wait till you see Bridge-
banke's Irish fisherman. Hes a
character fit for the stage. Ladies
in, Chloe ?"
" My name an't Chloe, Major
Bagshawe," retorted the nymph of
the spider-brush. "It's Miss Kate
Flip."
" Ah ! here's Bridgebanke crossing
the lawn. Now you'll see, Fred,
how adroitly I'll prove to him that
it will be to his daughter's advan-
tage that this engagement should
be broken off."
"And is this young lady to be
humiliated, huckstered, and tortur-
ed in this shameful way, major ?"
" Ah ! here he is," cried the other,
giving his nephew what is popu-
larly termed "the bothered ear."
Mr. Bridgebanke's face was a pic-
ture of sorrow, dismay, and dejec-
tion. " You see me in great trou-
ble, major," he almost moaned.
** I'm awfully sorry to find you
out of sorts, Bridgebanke, old boy.
What's the matter ?"
"He's gone, major; he's gone !"
" Who's gone?"
" My trout, sir," groaned the
other. " I missed him, sir, after
'aving fished for him since ever the
season opened. It was only last
Saturday week as 'ow I got a rise
out of 'im. Since that he was more
familiar, and this very day I put up
an elegant worm, wriggling like the
tail of a kite on a windy day, which
he kept eyeing for about two hours,
when all of a sudden he gives a
great bounce and swallows it, 'ook
and all. Away he run, and I gave
'im as much line as ever he wanted ;
but O major ! wot was my 'orror
to find my line all go, and that it
wasn't fastened to the reel." And
the discomfited disciple of Izaak
Walton rubbed his perspiring fore-
head a slow and melancholy rub.
" Never mind, old boy ; there's as
good fish in the sea as ever was
caught. This is my nephew, Bridge-
banke."
" I'm proud to see you, sir, in my
'ouse, sir. Are you a fisher ?"
" I'm very fond of fishing."
" Then 'ang up yer 'at 'ere, sir,
in this 'all. There's a freemasonry
about us brothers of the rod and
reel."
Mr. Bridgebanke led the way
into a very showy dining-rom,
with a quantity of plate on exhi-
bition in a glass case. The table
was already laid for dinner. Three
massive epergnes, silver giraffes
craning their elongated necks up
into cocoanut-trees in search of
fruit as large as plums, occupied
two-thirds of the snow-covered ma-
hogany, while a superb Louis
Quatorze clock stood with its back
to a mirror that stretched from the
mantel to the ceiling.
" You'll 'ave a little drop of
something after your walk ?" sug-
gested Bridgebanke, giving the bell
a vigorous tug as he spoke.
" Wot's the use of pulling the
bells up by the roots ?" exclaimed
a sharp, shrill woman's voice, while
at the same moment a little, elder-
ly lady of waspish aspect bounced
into the apartment. " La, brother
Peter !" she exclaimed, " I didn't
know as how you had strangers
here."
The host duly presented his
guests, adding sotto voce to the ma-
jor :
"My sister Patty is a very blunt
The Major s Manoeuvre.
793
sort of person. Speaks her mind
and calls a spade a spade."
In good sooth, Miss Patty Bridge-
banke was about as brusque a little
old maid as dwelt between Lug-
gelaw and Wicklow Head. Very
rich, very self-opinionated, very full
of common sense, she dealt the
foibles of her fellows severe raps
on the head whenever she got a
chance, which was pretty often ;
and were it not for her money,
Miss Patty would have been put in
Coventry or mercilessly sat upon
by the victims whose pet corns she
so relentlessly trampled over. The
major, finding himself alone with
this dangerous female Mr. Bridge-
banke had taken Stonleigh to show
him the exact spot where he had
lost the trout essayed to make
himself as agreeable as possible ; but,
after uttering some commonplaces
about the weather, the beauty of
the surroundings, and the passion
Mr. Bridgebanke had for fishing,
discovered that he could not get
an inch further, and that Miss
Patty merely listened with an occa-
sional " Humph !" while she prepar-
ed a hank of colored worsted which
had become entangled in her work-
basket. He was about to beat a
retreat in the direction taken by
his host when Miss Bridgebanke
interposed with :
" Here, major ! make yourself
useful for once in your life. You're
not ornamental. Hold up your
hands until I roll off this worsted !"
This was an occupation wholly
at variance to the major's inclina-
tions, so he courteously replied :
" I should be delighted beyond
measure to be of the slightest
utility to Miss Bridgebanke, but
might I suggest that the back of
the chair would be more suited to
your purpose."
"Not a bit of it," retorted Miss
Patty. " The worsted would slip
off the back of the chair, but it will
be held on by the knobs of your
knuckles."
" Knobs of my knuckles !" thought
the major. " I shall lose patience
with this uninteresting person."
" Hold up your fingers, major."
The gallant warrior deemed it
more prudent to comply. u Sold!"
he muttered " sold most infernally,
tied neck and heels, like a wretch-
ed human fly in the worsted web of
a most villanous female spider."
Miss Patty drew her chair direct-
ly opposite the wretched major,
and, as she commenced to unwind,
observed :
"So you're in the army ?"
" I was, madam."
" And why on earth aren't you
in it now ? There are some men as
old as you in it."
" I am on half-pay, Miss Bridge-
banke."
"Whole pay would be better
than half-pay. Were you at the
battle of Waterloo?"
"Waterloo, madam?"
"Yes, Waterloo."
" Why, madam, Waterloo was
fought in 1815, and this is '72."
"You might have been there for
all that."
The major stared at her. Were
her ideas as to dates so hazy, or
did she put him down at seventy-
five ?
" Were you ever in a battle,
major ?" continued Miss Bridge-
banke.
" I never had the good fortune
to be in action, madam," replied
the major tartly.
" Then you're what is called a
fireside general. Are you married
or single ? Hold up your hands !"
His elbows ached as he respond-
ed to her mandate and her ques-
tion :
794
The Major s Manoeuvre.
** I am still unlucky enough to be
a bachelor, madam."
"That's a wonder. Girls are
such fools nowadays and so
plenty that they'll marry anybody
who asks them. I am an old maid,
major."
" Say rather an unappropriated
blessing," gallantly retorted the
warrior, whose joints were now
creaking.
"Anybody marrying me would
be after my money," said Miss
Patty.
The major wondered to himself
how much coin the elderly damsel
had at her disposal.
"Yes," observed Miss Bridge-
banke, " any single woman with
money is nothing but a target for
every Jeremy Diddler to try his
chance at."
" I trust that your capital is well
and safely secured," said the major.
"It's in the funds."
"You prefer the simple elegance
of the three per cents to a risky
five or six."
"I prefer safety, if that's what
you are driving at."
" There are a lot of men who
would marry this old girl for her
money, and might do worse,"
thought the major, as he anxious-
ly watched the dissolving worsted.
" She'd pass for forty, if she only
tried it on with a bunch of curls,
or a chignon, or something in that
way."
" You're wondering how much
money I have ; now an't you ?"
suddenly demanded the lady.
" Really, I"
" I'll tell you. I have thirty
thousand pounds not a pound
more, not a penny less. There,
now, I'm done with you," she add-
ed, as the last thread of worsted
unwound itself from the major's
paralyzed fingers.
" Thirty thousand !" thought the
major when he was left alone. " A
snug thing in a cake ; and at her
own disposal, too absolutely at
her own disposal. Even at three
per cent it's a cool thousand a year,
and a thousand a year is a thou-
sand a year." \
While the major was busy with
his calculations Mrs. Bridgebanke
glided into the room, attired in a
rich moire antique it was a broiling
July day her fat wrists covered
with heavy gold bracelets, her neck
surrounded by a corpulent locket
and chain.
" Ah ! Major Bagshawe," she ex-
claimed. " So you 'ave found your
way to Assam House. You are a
little strange. I thought you had
turned hermit or anchobite."
" Neither, my dear madam, I
assure you. And how do you find
yourself?"
" Poorly, major, poorly. An as-
siduity on the chest. Dr. Darby, of
Bray, proscribed me a bottle, as I
was threatened with a guitar. But
I feel quite reverberated. I feel as
if I could dance a minaret. In my
younger days I was quite a voter
of Terpsichory, and my mother
danced almost to the last; and she
was very old, almost a centurion.
But what has become of your ne-
phew, Mr. James ?" demanded the
good lady in an anxious tone.
" He has been much occupied,"
replied the major: "balls, parties,
routs, drives, picnics, 'at homes/
croquet matches, lawn-tennis match-
es, cricket matches, and billiard
matches. He is asked out tremen-
dously. To-day he's at the Vice-
regal Lodge, and to-morrow he
goes to Malahide Castle to spend a
week with Lord Talbot de Mala-
hide." And the old fox watched the
effect his communication had upon
his listener. His object was to
The Major s Manoeuvre*
795
pique the family, put them on
their pride, cause them to give his
nephew his conge, and enable him
to retreat with the honors of war.
" It's all very well for Mr. James
to mix in that spear, but his de-
vour is here," said Mrs. Bridge-
banke.
"He's young, my dear Mrs.
Bridgebanke, and fast and giddy ;
and when youth and folly get to-
gether, they generally manage to
make a mess of it."
" His folly ought to bring him
here. See what a diploma Louisa
would be in if he didn't turn out
all that her fancy painted him."
The wily old warrior, resolving to
carry his project into execution,
asked Mrs. Bridgebanke to take a
turn with him in the garden, in
order to be free from interruption,
and then and there proceeded to
paint an imaginary picture of the
misery that must ensue from the
mating of a very foolish young man
who didn't know his own mind
with a young, innocent, and charm-
ing girl who in all probability did
not know hers.
Fred Stonleigh, leaving Mr.
Bridgebanke at the pond, strolled
back to the house. As he passed
the lawn-tennis ground he perceiv-
ed his uncle in close confab with
Mrs. Bridgebanke.
"So, so! The major is pouring
the leprous distilment into this
foolish old lady's ear, wily diplo
matist that he is. He's just the
man to wind father and mother
round his finger like pack-thread
induce them to believe themselves
a pair of wiseacres, and to consider
him as the fool in the middle. Can
Miss Bridgebanke really care for
an empty-headed coxcomb whose
heart must be in the wrong place,
or he'd never stoop to the double
treachery of humiliating the girl
who loves him, and to deceive an-
other to whom he is to sell himself
for his daily bread ! I cannot real-
ize it. It's an enigma."
Mr. Stonleigh passed into a
drawing-room through a window
that opened to the ground. His
heart leaped as his eyes met those
of Marguerite Bridgebanke.
"The last time I saw you, Miss
Bridgebanke, I uttered prophetic
words," he laughed. " I said that
we should meet again."
" Does it not strike you, Mr.
Stonleigh, that your prophecy was
one singularly easy of fulfilment?
she retorted, a bright blush man-
tling her cheeks.
" Not quite so easy as you im-
agine. An astronomer watches for
the appearance of some especial
star upon the horizon, and just as
he is about to pursue his investiga-
tions an inky cloud comes between
him and his hopes."
" Perhaps if the star were aware
of the astronomer's good intentions
she would prove more gracious by
shining through the cloud."
"What if the cloud were too
dense?"
" Every cloud has a silver lin-
ing, Mr. Stonleigh."
They laughed and chattered,
and chattered and laughed ; and
yet Fred Stonleigh, still under the
impression that he was speaking to
'the daughter of Ue house and the
fiancee of his worthless kinsman,
had uttered no warning note, al-
though while crossing the lawn he
had made up his*mind to give Mrs.
Bridgebanke to understand that
Major Bagshawe was not to be
trusted implicitly, and that his
cousin, being more or less under
his uncle's control, was sound at
the core.
This he resolved to do; and yet
The Major s Manoeuvre.
was he justified or warranted to
interfere ? What was this marriage
or break-off to him ? He was not
consulted. It was no affair of his.
Let things take their course. The
major was pretty near the truth
when he declared that broken vows
never produced broken hearts.
Fred Stonleigh looked at Mar-
guerite's earnest eyes, and then he
suddenly exclaimed :
" May I tell you a story, Miss
Bridgebanke ?"
" A fa/ry story ?" she asked with
a light laugh, perceiving the heavy
shadow that suddenly and like a
veil fell upon his face.
" Yes, a fairy story."
" By all means."
He sat facing her, his elbows on
his knees, his hands clasped, his
body bent, his eyes under hers.
" Once upon a time that is a
good beginning, is it not?"
" Most orthodox ; pray proceed."
" Once upon a time there lived a
king"
" The originality of the opening
promises well," she laughed.
" And queen, Miss Bridgebanke."
" That's better. Every king
should have a queen."
" And they possessed an only
daughter, and she was beautiful."
" Naturally ! All princesses are
beautiful. 1 '
"And a young prince fell in love
with her."
" Violently, I hope, as becomes a
prince."
" Right royally. But the prince
had a wicked uncle."
" Oh ! there's a villain in the
piece ?"
" A cruel genius," continued
Fred, " who considered that
wealth alone constituted happiness,
and who resolved that the prince
should wed an uglier but wealthier
princess, although he had plighted
his troth "
" To Princess number one,"
laughed Marguerite, adding : " And
the prince, in the most commercial
manner possible, assented to his
uncle's proposition."
tl Wrong, Miss Bridgebanke."
" What ! did love triumph over
lucre ?"
" Esptrons"
TO BE CONTINUED.
An Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth Century. 797
AN ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY IN THE TENTH CEN-
TURY.*
IN the legends of the saints and
in 'Holy Scripture a great stress is
laid upon names. They are shown
to be full of significance for the
future career which they are to
adorn. It will be seen in the
course of these pages whether our
English St. Dunstan did not justify
his name in his life. Dunstan
signifies a mountain and a rock,f
and in Holy Scripture a very par-
ticular meaning is attached to both,
the one signifying the desire after
eternal things, the other the im-
mutability of the soul which seeks
after God in the storm and whirl-
wind of this world.
Herstan and Kynedritha, Dun-
stan 's parents, were both noble.
They lived in the neighborhood of
Glastonbury, a monastery where-
of popular tradition ascribed the
foundation to angelic hands, but
which at that time bore few signs of
the angel's workmanship about it,
being an insignificant building in
the midst of a swamp. On the
feast of the Purification which pre-
ceded Dunstan's birth his mother
was assisting at the Candle Mass
which gives its name to the solem-
nity, when suddenly the tapers of
the whole congregation went out.
Before conjecture had shaped itself
as to the cause of the occurrence,
Kynedritha's candle enkindled as
of itself, and communicated fresh
light to all in the church. The
sign fitly expressed the particular
work of the child who was so soon
to be born to enlighten not Glas-
* Memorials of St. Dunstan. Edited from
various MSS. by Professor Stubbs.
t Quod et montem et petram sonat.
tonbury only, nor even the mon-
astic order in England, but the
whole Saxon nation. The child
was brought into the world under
the reign of Athelstan in the year
925. When he had grown up to
be a boy his parents brought him
to Glastonbury, in accomplishment
of a promise concerning him, pro-
bably, which they had made to
God. Here whilst they prayed in
the church Dunstan had a dream.
An old man in white, of shining ap-
pearance, conducted him round the
monastery, drawing a plan of build-
ings which, he said, the boy should
one day erect on that spot. Long
years afterwards Abbot Dunstan
remembered the heavenly lesson.
But on this occasion he was left by
his parents to be educated at Glas-
tonbury. He seems to have been
no idle scholar, but to have taken
only too kindly to his studies.
Irish monks, in the ardor of their
philosophical pursuits, much fre-
quented Glastonbury at that time.
Under their guidance Dunstan ate
and drank his fill of Holy Scrip-
ture.* The ardent boy had a soul
full of poetry and the thirst for
knowledge, yet his body was
weaker than his desires. His over-
taxed brain gave way, and he be-
came so ill that both parents and
doctors despaired of returning
health. Yet God used extraordi-
nary means to raise his young ser-
vant to life and strength. One
night the sick youth got up out of
his bed and left the house, meeting,
says William of Malmesbury, a
pack of barking dogs, who ran
* William of Malmesbury, p. 257.
798
Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth Century.
straight at him.* Dunstan recog-
nized something more than a dog
in one of the most savage of the
troop, and he administered a sound
beating with his stick, which he
seems to have used the convenient
precaution of taking with him. He
climbed a mason's ladder, and
reached the end of his nocturnal
journey, the church, by means too
unaccountable to be explained.
The next morning he was found
asleep in a portico between two
watchmen, perfectly sound and
well. If ' the heaven-enkindled
flame on the Purification denoted
the coming of one who should re-
store light and purity to the sanc-
tuary, the mysterious dogs and his
illness so preternaturally cured may
be taken as a further illustration of
his energetic and powerful work-
ing.
Once more Dunstan set himself
to his former studies with an ar-
dor so undiminished that its fame
reached the ears of King Athelstan.
He acquired a special proficiency
in two sciences which apparently
have no very strong analogy, music
and mathematics. The harp be-
came Dunstan's constant compan-
ion, his relaxation, and the instru-
ment which he was never weary of
using to sing the divine praises.
Dunstan's vocation seems to us
to be one of the strange things in
his strange life. It might have
been supposed that the extraordi-
nary graces he had received would
have naturally engendered a call to
the service of the altar; but it was
not so. In this case it was Dun-
stan's parents who moved him to
receive minor orders, lest he should
slight the evident tokens of divine
pleasure; and Dunstan agreed to
take up the yoke for fear of seem-
ing ungracious to those who so
* William of Malmesbury, p. 256.
pressed him.* But about this time,
being fifteen or sixteen, he was in-
troduced to Athelstan, who held his
court in the western shires, and so
managed to combine attendance on
the king with service at the altar.
The talented boy soon rejoiced in
the highest favor shown to any
courtier. His melodious harp
charmed and soothed the royal
spirit. In the house of a certain
noble matron the same harp, un-
touched by human fingers, executed
an antiphon to the words, " The
souls o/ the blessed rejoice. "f In
the height of Athelstan's favor
Dunstan's purity of heart did not
forsake him. As he listened to the
heavenly strain he prepared his
soul for tribulation. His enemies
had, indeed, taken umbrage at his
excellence, and they determined to
get rid of him ; for as long as he
stayed at court he absorbed their
master's attention. They mooted
an accusation of sorcery which forc-
ed Dunstan to retire; but they
moreover tried to put a violent end
to him and his fascinating manners.
They waylaid his horse, trampled
him under foot in the mud, and left
him there to help himself as best
he could. Dunstan managed to get
up in order to gain a friend's house
which was near at hand, but he was
so unsightly an object that the said
friend's dogs would have sprung
upon him had not his caressing
voice made them think better of it.
They brought him to the house
with their canine signs of approba-
tion, wagging tails, which caused
Dunstan to say in the sadness of
his heart : "I see that the order of
nature is reversed ; for whilst my
friends are as cruel as beasts, dogs
are as kind as men."J After this
* Ne prsecipientibus durus videretur.
t " Gaudent in coelis animae sanctorum.'
$ P. 260.
An Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth Century. 799
first painful experience of court
Dunstan retired to Winchester,
where a near relation of his, Elfege,
was bishop. Although in minor
orders, Dunstan had renounced
neither the world nor the flesh,* so
that when Elfege urged him to be-
come a monk he put the bishop
off with playful answers, sometimes
even pretending to see no merit in
the religious life. Good Bishop
Elfege, however, took the matter se-
riously to heart, and he prayed ear-
nestly that Dunstan might be brought
to graver thoughts by bodily sick-
ness. His petition was heard.
Dropsy, or king's evil, had the merit
of working a thorough change in
Dunstan, who rose from his bed
with the resolution to embrace the
counsels. In the silence and soli-
tude of Glastonbury he was to pre-
pare for his future career that is,
in order to become the counsellor
of kings he was to begin by learn-
ing obedience. William of Malmes-
bury paints in one single line a
graphic picture of his working at
the already ancient monastery :
" There he applies his hand to
work, his lips to prayer, his soul
to heaven."!
Another biographer describes the
cell which Dunstan built for him-
self at Glastonbury, though, he says,
"I cannot find a word which will
at all express it, as it was much more
like a tomb than a human abode. "J
It was not more than fifteen feet long
by two and a half wide, its height
about that of a man. An aperture in
the wall served as a door and a win-
dow ; but, concludes the monk bio-
grapher, " the wide and spacious
walls of cities may not be compared
to this narrow cell, by the grace of
* Irrepserat enim jam adolescent! voluptatum
fomes. Ibid.
t''Ibi manus applicabat open, labia psalmis,
animos coelis," p. 262.
$ Vita, auctore Osberno, p. 83.
which many forms of disease are
now cured and the fury of demons
is assuaged."
In the meantime Athelstan died
at Gloucester, in 941, and was suc-
ceeded by his brother, Edmund I.
How long a time elapsed before
Dunstan was again called to court
does not transpire, but we should
place it not earlier than 944, when he
would still have been full young to
act as a royal counsellor. But now
he had the additional strength and
maturity which are gained from a
religious training, and there is some
difference noticeable between the
harp-playing youth whose music
had found the way to Athelstan's
heart, and the professed monk
whose motto at Edmund's court
seems to have been, " Render to
Caesar those things which are Cse-
sar's, and to God those things which
are God's." The king's special
choice of Dunstan was, it must be
remembered, the sole ground for
the influence which he exercised
over the affairs of the nation. His
whole soul was bent upon a strict
administration of justice, which
cardinal virtue he found in a singu-
larly languid condition. In this
matter he was altogether as good
as his word, causing transgressors
to be punished with severity ; but,
not unnaturally perhaps, the cour-
tiers revolted. The ardent monk
with his sweeping reforms could
not be tolerated, and Edmund, for-
getting his own gracious invitation,
hastily ordered Dunstan to quit the
court. Shortly afterwards there
was a royal hunt at Cheddar. In
the heat of the sport the king pur-
sued the deer over hill and dale
till at length he was led to the
brink of a steep declivity, and
could no longer rein in his horse.
On the point of certain death, he
bethought himself, as is the wont
Soo An Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth Century.
of men at these critical moments,
that he had wronged no man but
Dunstan, his friend, whom he had
condemned without hearing. He
resolved that, if God would save
him by Dunstan 's merits, he would
make good his bad treatment. He
had hardly come to this determina-
tion when the horse, whose hoofs
were already on the edge of the
descent, became as tractable as a
lamb ; the king regained his mastery
over the animal, and was delivered
from all danger. His gratitude
was royal. Without any delay he
called for Dunstan and proposed
that they should proceed together
to Glastonbury. Arrived there, he
offered up fervent prayers of
thanksgiving, and, pressing Dun-
Stan's hand with great affection, he
led him to the vacant abbatial
chair, and proclaimed him abbot,
promising at the same time to sup-
ply all possible needs from his
treasury. This event is referred
by Professor Stubbs to the year
946.
The date of Dunstan's ordina-
tion is very uncertain, though the
event was rendered noteworthy by
Elfege's prophecy. Dunstan re-
ceived Holy Orders from the same
Bishop of Winchester who had
taken so paternal an interest in his
vocation, and who now bestowed a
similar dignity on two others. He
distinctly foretold the future career
of the three youths anointed as
priests of -God by his episcopal
hands. "To-day," he said, "by
the grace of God I have imposed
hands on three men, the first of
whom will be the archbishop of
Canterbury; the second will one
day succeed me in this see; the
third will throw off the veil of reli-
gion and end his life in a mire
of licentiousness." * Even the
* Auctore Osberno, p. 262.
number three will not always ex-
clude a Judas.
To pass over in silence Dunstan's
holy charms to gain the hearts of
great ladies to God would be to
omit a very characteristic feature
of his life. A certain Ethelfleda,
who was, it seems, related to King
Athelstan, having once listened to
Dunstan's burning words, was so
enraptured with the sweetness of
eternal life that she could not
make up her mind to return home
or to leave the spot, but chose to live
and die near to blessed Dunstan.*
In our own days many would be
the criticisms on such a step. It
might be called running after a
priest, or a silly attachment which
should be nipped in the bud by its
object; but friendships vary in their
nature somewhat after the fashion
of souls, and if our Lord drew all
men after the odor of his oint-
ments, why should not his servants
have the power of discerning the
true love of God from the idle seek-
ers after a vain-glorious excite-
ment ? Ethelfleda then establish-
ed herself in the vicinity of Glas-
tonbury, giving herself up to pray-
er and good works. When the
hour of her departure drew near
she sent for Tier holy confessor, and,
having made her confession with
many tears, Dunstan exhorted her
to detach herself from all earthly
things, that the prince of this world
might find no part in her heart.
He returned to Glastonbury for the
night, and there in the church had
a vision of the Mystic Dove, who
entered with great brightness into
the house of the dying Ethelfleda.
The vision caused him to go back
to his royal penitent, whom he
heard conversing behind her cur-
tain with an invisible guest. Who,
Dunstan asked, was her visitor?
* P. 86.
An Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth Century. Soi
It was God, answered Ethelfleda
in quiet ecstasy, who came to take
away all her fears of death. The
noble lady's last recorded words
to Dunstan explain what kind of
friendship theirs had been : " I
thank you heartily, my dearest and
best friend, because, owing to your
advice and to your prayers, I am
now going to God. There is one
thing which I still ask, and beg for
if I may, as a last favor : that at
early dawn you would bring me
the precious Body and Blood of
our Lord, that, fortified by these
life-giving mysteries, I may not be
confounded in the gate when I
shall speak to my enemies." * When
on the morrow Dunstan had car-
ried her last Communion to Ethel-
fleda, she happily departed to eter-
nal rest.
It was during the peaceful days
at Glastonbury that William of
Malmesbury places Dunstan's fa-
mous encounter with the devil
which has given rise to the story
that the saint "pinched his nose."
The young monk then for the in-
cident properly occurred before his
nomination as abbot being very
clever with his fingers, was often
solicited by the neighboring peo-
ple to do a little smith's work for
them. One evening, as he was thus
engaged, the devil, under the ap-
pearance of a petitioner, appeared
at his window. Dunstan did not
discover the fraud, and set himself
to do as he was asked, when the
devil began to insinuate very bad
thoughts, though always under the
gloss of a certain decorum. The
saint accordingly heated his tongs
and caught the arch-deceiver by
the jaw. ." Nor would the pestilent
creature have escaped," quaintly
remarks William of Malmesbury,
" unless he had resorted to his
* P. 88.
VOL, XXIX. 51
usual artifices and melted away in
the night air."* It is a curious
fact that at a retired village in Pro-
testant England the tongs where-
with " St. Dunstan pinched the de-
vil's nose " are still produced as a
sort of victorious trophy, f
Dunstan's dream as a child will
be remembered. Thrice he re-
ceived supernatural warnings of his
future career. As a boy he was
shown his work as abbot of Glas-
tonbury ; as a monk he again look-
ed on a sort of panorama of his
life in the silence of the night ;
and once more, at King Edred's
court, he had the most significant
vision of all concerning his future
primacy. These particular signs
have the merit of showing Dun-
stan's vivid faith in the communion
of saints; for in general dreams
form the subject of our daily
thoughts. A monk called Wulfred,
whom a close friendship had unit-
ed to Dunstan, died. After a short
time he appeared in his earthly
form to his friend, and foretold to
him all the events of his life in de-
tail. But Dunstan was of a prac-
tical mind, and heard the prophecy
with caution, saying in his charac-
teristic way : "These are fine things
which you promise, but by what
sign am I to trust them,?" J Then
Wulfred seemed to take him by the
hand to the place before the church
which was almost entirely covered
with the tombs of the dead. " Here,"
he replied, " a priest shall be bur-
ied in three days who is now per-
fectly sound. His body shall be
brought from the western side to
be buried." Having uttered these
words, he vanished, and Dunstan
awoke. On the morrow he had
scarcely recounted the dream to
* p. 263.
t At Mayfield, in Sussex.
*P.26 S .
So2 An Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth Century.
the other monks when a priest
came to the monastery seemingly
for no other purpose than to fix
upon his tomb. Having seen the
small space still left unoccupied in
the church-yard, he asked the
monks as a great favor that his
t>ody might there be laid to rest.
He had hardly departed before he
was taken ill, and in three days
Wulfred's prophecy was accom-
plished to the letter.
The young abbot now remember-
ed the specific vision he had had as
to the enlargement of Glastonbury,
and, with his eminently practical
mind, he set himself to add a tower
and aisles to the church, whilst at
the same time' he bethought him-
self of the monks who should pass
from their earthly to their hea-
venly paradise. He enclosed the
cemetery, which became under his
rule " like a beautiful garden se-
cluded from all noise or thorough-
fare," * where the bodies of the
monks might truly be said to rest
in peace. But Dunstan's ardent
spirit rejoiced rather in the spiritu-
al weal of the living than i* the
temporary repose of the dead.
From all parts vocations flocked to
Glastonbury. It was the centre
which formed holy monks, abbots,
and bishops who perpetuated Dun-
Stan's example throughout England.
He had a strong comprehension of
-the axiom that vice is fostered by
ignorance, and to this conviction
must be traced the impulse given
.to learning under his rule. Some
notion maybe gained of the scheme
carried out at Glastonbury by cit-
ing the example of Ethelwold, one
of the monks thus formed by Dun-
stan. About this Ethelwold Dun-
stan had one of his significant
dreams. He thought that within
the monastic enclosure he saw a
* P. 27*.
tree whereof the branches embrac-
ed the whole of England. They
were laden with monastic habits,
but one at the extreme top appear-
ed to be larger and more prominent
than all the rest. The abbot gazed
and was perplexed, when a vene-
rable old priest in his dream thus
enlightened him : " The tree/' he
said, " is this island ; the habit at
the top signifies the religious merit
of thy monk Ethelwold. The oth-
ers are the souls of those monks
whom he shields from the devil by
his piety, and whom he protects
under the shadow of his righteous-
ness."* These words are full of
meaning when it is considered how
many Ethelwolds were formed by
Glastonbury.
Under these circumstances it can
hardly be wondered at if Dunstan's
relations with the devil were of
a somewhat unpleasant character.
The persecution he endured from
"that pestilent creature" bears a
strong resemblance to that inflicted
in our own times on Jean Baptiste
Vianney, the holy cure of Ars.
Thrice in one night he was assailed
by the devil, who appeared to him
under three different forms ; but
Dunstan, whose courage is proved
by the legend itself, quietly laugh-
ed him to scorn for changing his
form. The abbot had a brother,
Wulfric by name. He died, and
on the day of the funeral, for some
cause which is not specified, Dun-
stan stayed behind with one boy,
who survived to recount the extra-
ordinary fact which took place.
They were walking in the court,
awaiting the return of the monks
from the cemetery, when an im-
mense stone was flung at Dunstan.
It carried off his cap or cowl, roll-
ing heavily beyond him ; but the
unseen agency which had hurled it
* P. 273.
An Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth Century. 803
was fully revealed when the monks
came to examine it. The stone
could hardly be lifted from the
ground, and was of a kind entirely
unknown in Somersetshire.
Soon after the accession of Ed-
red to the throne in 947, Dunstan
seems to have taken up his partial
abode at the king's palace, divid-
ing his time between Glastonbury
and the court. During the nine
years of his reign Edred suffered
from the most persistent ill-health,
which caused him to look to Dun-
stan as to his right hand for the ad-
ministration of his kingdom, and he
made him his treasurer. Accord-
ing to William of Malmesbury,
those were palmy days for Eng-
land. This time Dunstan met
with no opposition from the spirit
of envy and unrighteousness. He
possessed the king's ear and gov-
erned his counsels, and practically
worked out the Biblical precept,
" Fear God and honor the king."
Edred wished very much to see
his favorite Dunstan a bishop, but
the prime minister was inflexible
even to the prayers of Queen Elf-
giva, the king's mother, who had
been charged by him to use her
powers of persuasion. " Be assur-
ed, lady," said Dunstan, "that I
will never become a bishop during
your son's lifetime."* However,
Dunstan's high-minded resolution
was not apparently ratified in hea-
ven. The following night he had
a curious dream. He seemed to
be returning from a pilgrimage to
Rome at a spot from which its
walls are visible, and which used
in consequence to be called by
pilgrims the Mountain of Joy, as
the place whence they could de-
scry the bourne of their desires.
Here he was met by the apostles
St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Andrew,
*p. 279.
each holding a sword. On those
of St. Paul and St. Andrew their
names were written, but St. Peter's
sword contained the words in gold-
en letters, " In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with
God." Whilst the apostles offered
their swords to Dunstan, St, An-
drew greeted him as a special
friend, and, partly in allusion to his
name, partly to give a point to his
words, he said, " Take up my yoke,
for I am meek and humble of
heart." Then Dunstan received a
sharp blow on his hand from St.
Peter, with the intimation that this
was the punishment for the bishop-
ric refused, and that in future he
was not to be so stubborn. After
this chastisement Dunstan awoke,
and inquired of a monk sleeping
near who it was that had struck
him. Upon a negative answer he
said confidently: "Now, then, I
know, my son, who it was." He
did not sleep again that night, but
passed it in prayer till the early
dawn, when he imparted his dream
to Edred. The king, possessed by
a spark of prophecy, explained the
words written on St. Peter's sword
as signifying Dunstan's future pro-
motion to the archbishopric of
Canterbury, where the principal
church is dedicated to our Lord.*
But in spite of the familiarity ap-
parent between the king and his
chief counsellor, Dunstan was ab-
sent at the time of Edred's death.
The sickly king was carried off
suddenly at last, and Dunstan had
his wish not to be burdened with
fresh cares whilst his ailing master
required all his energy. On his
way to the royal death-bed Dun-
stan received a supernatural inti-
mation that the king " slept in
God,"f and enjoined his com-
*p. 281.
t "Modo," inquit, " Edredus rex obdormivit in
Domino."
804 An Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth Century.
panions to pray for Edred's soul.
When he reached the palace he
found a sad instance of the pro-
verbial self-seeking of courtiers.
They, who had formerly flattered
their master during his life, fled
from his corpse, which could give
them nothing. Dunstan mourned
over the sight. He and his monks
watched by the royal remains till
they were buried with becoming
honors at Winchester. The abbot
retired to Glastonbury for a short
breathing-time. " Yet, although,"
says his biographer, " he had chos-
en Mary's part, he did not disdain
Martha's solicitude."* A beam
from a tower in course of erection
was stopped in its descent by the
holy sign of the cross which Dun-
stan made upon the air; but where-
as the good rejoiced at his miracu-
lous power, the wicked were there-
by moved to greater envy of his
gifts.
With Edred's decease in 955 a
new phase begins in the life of Dun-
stan. Hitherto he had served de-
serving sovereigns, and had been
generally treated by them with
grateful appreciation ; but now an
unworthy successor ascended the
throne of Alfred. Edwy or Edwin
the Fair, whose short reign began
by profligacy (956) and ended in
grief (959), brought discord into
his kingdom by bad and ambitious
women. The scene of his corona-
tion has been often described.
The spiritual lords of England, its
bishops and abbots, were gathered
together for the ceremony, but, as
they sat afterwards at the banquet,
the king suddenly retired. A cer-
tain woman, Elgiva, who was near-
ly related to him, and her daughter
had inspired the lust of the king,
and for their company he forsook
the great ones of his land. Who
* p. 282.
would go and call him back to his
duty ? To do so implied the ha-
tred and revenge of a bad woman
in power, which revenge would
last as long as the king's passion
for her. Dunstan and his kinsman,
Bishop Kinsige, offered themselves
for the perilous task, but it was
Dunstan who used a gentle vio-
lence with the king. The crown
of England was on the floor, strange
emblem of its wretched possessor.
Replacing it on the king's head,
Dunstan drew him by the arm back
to the banqueting-hall ; but Elgiva,
turning to him with a dreadful
look, exclaimed : " Because you
are impertinent enough to draw
the king away from the couch
whether he will or no, / will take
care that you never forget this day
nor me as long as I can help it." *
The queen's words for she at-
tained the object of her ambition
were not vain. Her vengeance pur-
sued Dunstan and made England
an unsafe place for the courageous
abbot of Glastonbury. Dunstan
set sail for Flanders, narrowly es-
caping the loss of his eyes a pun-
ishment ordered by Elgiva to be
inflicted on her enemy. At that
time the monastic life in Flanders
flourished under Count Arnulf,
whose father had married a daugh-
ter of Alfred ; and thus it came to
pass that on different sides of the
German Ocean two of his grand-
sons, Edred and Arnulf, were simul-
taneously carrying on monastic re-
vival. Dunstan's cause, therefore,
was warmly adopted by Arnulf, who
received him at Ghent and allotted
him a monastery, where, far from
being looked upon as a stranger or*
an exile, he was treated as a friend
and a superior, f A less kind treat-
ment, as he learned by revelation,
would have been his at Glaston-
*p. 284.
t P. 285.
An Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth Century. 805
bury. He seemed one night to be
in the choir there, and to hear his
monks singing an antiphon from
the words of Job : " Why have you
detracted the words of truth, where-
as there is none of you that can
reprove me?" but they could not
complete the chapter, in spite of
various attempts which they made.
Then Dunstan urged them to go
on : " However, finish what you
have begun." But he heard a
voice saying : " These words are
hidden from them because they
shall never carry out what is in
their thoughts that is, to depose
thee from thy post in this monas-
tery." His flight took place in
the year 956.
In the meantime affairs did not
prosper with Edwy. The Mer-
cians revolted against him, and
peace was only arrived at by the
division of the kingdom (958),
Edwy retaining the country south
of the Thames only, and his broth-
er Edgar taking the rest of Eng-
land. Edgar was but sixteen when
he became king, and already he
showed some decided character by
recalling Dunstan, the devoted
friend of his family.
After Dunstan's return to Eng-
land his life shapes itself into two
principal aspects his work as an
ecclesiastical reformer, and his la-
bors as a politician who had before
his mind's eye a great principle to
which he was always and singularly
faithful. It is only from this double
point of view that we can form an
adequate notion of the man, and
defend his memory from the impu-
tations of those who have pretend-
ed to trace a fanatical hand in his
reforms, or an inordinate desire to
meddle with state affairs in his
undoubted capacity for guiding the
counsels of a young king. More
weight was in the first instance
given to his position by the episco-
pal consecration which he received
on his return from Flanders. Ac-
cording to a custom in force at the
time, he was probably consecrated
a shire-bishop, pending the vacancy
of a see. Three years elapsed be-
tween this and his final dignity as
primate ; for in 959, after the death
of Edwy, his mysterious dream was
fully accomplished and he became
Archbishop of Canterbury. He
had previously governed the dio-
ceses of Worcester and London.
There is perhaps no better test
of an apostolic spirit than the fear-
less correction of those who occupy
high places. King Edgar himself
seems unfortunately to have been
no model in his private life, and
once he fell into the sin of seducing
a noble maiden at Wilton, who, if
not a nun, subsequently took the
veil to free herself from his impor-
tunity. Dunstan, moved to holy
anger, went to remonstrate, when
Edgar, putting out his hand, would
have led him to the throne. But
the archbishop, evading his touch,
said with spirit : " Do you dare to
touch the pastor's hand when you
did not fear to seize a virgin given
to God ? You have seduced the
spouse of your Creator, and do you
think to please the spouse's friend
by a bit of flattery ? I will not be
the friend of one whom Christ
opposes."* When Edgar had be-
wailed his sin Dunstan imposed a
penance with no sparing hand.
The king was not to wear his
crown for seven years ; he was to
fast twice a week and to give large
alms. In short, he who had robbed
God of one virgin was to found a
convent which would give him back
many spouses.
If, as we are proud to boast, the
English character becomes early
* Osbern, p. in.
806 An Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth Century.
apparent in the nature of its free
and healthy laws for the good of
the lowest British subject, then we
must acknowledge that Dunstan
was a representative Englishman.
Edgar's constitutions bear the im-
press of a strong and thoroughly
English individuality, except, in-
deed, the institution of the Hundred,
which seems to have been an ad-
ministrative idea inherited from the
old German system. Peace, order,
and the rights of the subject are
the undercurrent of Edgar's secu-
lar ordinances concerning the re-
medial jurisdiction of the king, the
regular holding of the popular
courts, the general system of se-
curity for appearance in the gemots,
and the uniformity of coins and
measures. The claims of the indi-
vidual English citizen are fairly and
clearly recognized in these early
ordinances : " I will that every
man be worthy of folk-right, as
well poor as rich, and that right-
eous dooms be judged to him."
And again in the Supplementum
three points are insisted upon
which are of fundamental impor-
tance to the prosperity of the state :
First and foremost come duties
towards God and religion ; sec-
ondly, the proper balancing of
power between the sovereign and
his thanes ; and, thirdly, the legal
freedom of the Danes. The de-
velopment of these early principles
points to the religious mind of the
English even amidst the errings of
heresy, the independent English
monarchy, the free and generous
nature of English hospitality toward
strangers. Edgar's words in one
instance at least mark the guidance
of Dunstan. He says : " I and
the archbishop command that ye
anger not God." The ecclesiasti-
cal laws enacted may be divided
into two classes ; the first are call-
ed the sixty-seven canons of Ed-
gar, and concern religious obser-
vances and the guidance of the
clergy. Professor Stubbs recog-
nizes Dunstan's hand in some of
the number. For instance, " That
no priest receive a scholar without
the leave of the other by whom
he was formerly retained " ; ** that
every priest do teach manual arts
with diligence " ; " that no learned
priest reproach him that is less
learned, but mend him if he know
how"; " that no noble-born priest
despise one of less noble birth ; if
it be rightly considered, all men
are of one origin." * The peniten-
tial canons form the second class
of which we spoke, but they are
much less individual. Dunstan's
claim to be viewed as a spiritual
ancestor of the great St. Gregory
VII. lies in the apostolic strife
which he waged against the ex-
cesses of the clergy. It is not easy
to explain the falling away of the
Anglo-Saxon priests without a
deep knowledge of the period, but
certain causes of degeneracy ap-
pear on the surface. Civilization,
in its first stage, does not always
act favorably upon the moral life
of a country, and it may safely be
said that the refining process be-
gun by St. Augustine had been in-
terrupted by two and a half centu-
ries of internal growth impeded by
foreign invasion. The ceaseless in-
cursions of the Danes had had a
depressing, not an elevating, effect
upon the Saxons ; and now, at the
latter end of the tenth century,
they were little more than half-civ-
ilized barbarians, knowing, indeed,
those things which they ought to do,
but possessing not energy where-
with to do them. Fear had cast
out love, instead of the reverse.f
* Preface.
t Perfecta autem charitas foras mittit timorem.
An Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth Century. 807
Thus William of Malmesbury de-
scribes the clergy as " given up to
worldly things, addicted to games
of chance, equal to or surpassing
seculars in their love of dress and
in their licentiousness, intent upon
food even to shameful excess, ig-
norant of letters as if it were a
disgrace to priests to be learned,
scarcely knowing the meaning of
the words their sacred calling or-
dered them to say so often." In
this state of things any man cour-
ageous enough to set up a high
ideal of perfection would deserve
more gratitude than the founder of
a world-wide empire. Yet this is
what Dunstan did by the illustra-
tion he gave to monastic life, in
itself a faithful carrying out of the
counsels. He enacted that every
see should be rilled by a monk or
an abbot, who should be able to
serve as an example to his dioce-
sans, pending the time when the
secular clergy awoke to the nature
of their sacred vocation. Dunstan
would tolerate no compromises, no
half-hearted attempts to serve God
and the flesh; it was to be a ques-
tion of living according to the
canons or of expulsion from the
service of the altar.* He was also
the stanch enemy of any violation
of the sacrament of matrimony,
justly regarding the purity of
Christian marriage as the tie-beam
in the frame-work of society.
Dunstan himself founded five mon-
asteries, and the monks formed at
Glastonbury, or put forward by
his exertions, carried the vigor of
their primate into their new dioce-
ses. Ethelwold, a monk of Glas-
tonbury, and Abbot of Abingdon,
and afterwards Bishop of Winches-
ter, built innumerable monasteries,
raising Ely and Thorney from their
foundations. His clergy at Win-
* " Aut canonice vivite aut ecclesiis exite."
Chester, placed before Dunstan's
alternative, had chosen to leave
the spot rather than to be reform-
ed. The same course was pursued
by Oswald at Worcester, and by
Wulfsige at Sherborne.* Dunstan
put great zeal into the work of visi-
tation, but no monastery attracted
him more than Glastonbury. Pri-
mate though he was, he became a
simple monk within those peaceful
walls. On one of these occasions
a story is told which is touching,
as revealing the nature of Dun-
Stan's relations with his former
brethren, and the simplicity of
heart to which God loves to con-
fide the secrets of his providence.
He had gone out one day into the
court-yard before the church, where
a single monk was walking. Ar-
rived at a certain spot, Dunstan
heard a voice from heaven saying,
" Come, come, Elfsige, come.'*
The archbishop, understanding the
intimation, turned to the monk
with the words, " Prepare yourself,
brother, and make ready the viati-
cum which will enable you to un-
dertake so important a journey.
For your hour is at hand."f In a
very few days Elfsige went indeed
to his reward.
But the good times of Edgar and
Dunstan were drawing to a close.
The king died in 975, and was
succeeded by his son, Edward
II., the Martyr. A great reac-
tion heralded in the new reign.
By the help of the nobles the ex-
pelled clergy sought to recover
their footing, and the archbishop
was publicly confronted with his
numerous enemies at a council held
at Winchester. According to Wil-
liam of Malmesbury, a crucifix.
spoke thrice to relieve the arch-
bishop's mind from the anxiety
caused by the unruly priests. J And
*P. 3 o 2 .
tP. 306.
808 An Archbishop of Canterbury in the Tenth Century.
as if that were not enough, a second
palpable sign confirmed the justice
of his claims. At a second coun-
cil the floor gave way beneath the
assistants who were upbraiding that
" strong pillar of the church, Dun-
stan," * he alone remaining safe and
erect. This miracle silenced at
last the angry tongues of his ene-
mies, and caused the archbishop's
decision to be universally accept-
ed.
The history of England during
the last twenty years of the tenth
century is disastrous in the ex-
treme. No sovereign appeared
with the capabilities of Edgar, and
the country's energies were sapped
by Danish invasions and by an in-
competent and worthless ruler at
home. Ethelred the Unready de-
served his nickname. The shadow
of the cruel murder by which he
came to the throne hung over his
reign, as Dunstan had prophesied
that it would. On the day of his
coronation the archbishop is said
to have predicted the disasters
which subsequently came to pass :
" Because you aspired to the throne
through your brother's death, whom
your ignominious mother stabbed,
the sword eager for your blood
shall not be taken away from your
house all the days of your life. It
shall slay some of your kindred un-
til the kingdom shall be transferred
to a strange nation whose language
and customs are foreign to the
people you govern." t The peace
and glory of Dunstan 's legislation
were soon forgotten in the weariness
of present strife, but his holy life
remained as a shining light after the
fame of lower things had passed
away.
To those alone it is given to
*. . . Validissimum ilium Ecclesise murum, Duns-
tanum dico.
t Osbern, p. 115.
shine to others who have first con-
sumed all seeking of self in the
love of God. In his archiepisco-
pal palace Dunstan divided his
time between prayer and study, de-
voting the early hours of the morn-
ing to the correction of faulty
manuscripts. The equal distribu-
tion of justice, the preservation of
the sacred character of matrimony,
the protection of widows and or-
phans, the pacification of those who
were estranged one from another,
were the objects which lay nearest
to the archbishop's heart. Charity
towards the poor and zeal for the
monastic order constituted, as. it
were, the flames upon which his
ardor spent itself. His preaching
was forcible and earnest, tender to
the good, but unsparing towards
sin. Dunstan never performed any
great ceremony without shedding
abundant tears. " In the day,"
holy David says, " the Lord hath
commanded his mercy, and in the
night his song." * Nocturnal pray-
er has a special value in God's eyes,
and in it the archbishop was pro-
ficient, never, as his biographer
records, taking his full allowance
of sleep. Thus, after the turmoils
of his life, he tasted before death
of the peace of God, which surpass-
eth all understanding. The end
was at hand, though there was no
appearance of a decline. It was
Ascension day, 988. Dunstan
preached three times to his people
with an unwonted vigor and unc-
tion, and at the third sermon he
left them his legacy. Let them,
he besought them, have charity and
love one for another ; it was the
only means of becoming united to
God. This brotherly tenderness
was the pledge our Lord had be-
queathed to his disciples, and now
he left it to them as his parting
* Ps. xli.
The End of Man.
809
gift. Then he told them that he
should be no longer with them, for
that he was to depart to his true
resting-place in heaven. After
Mass, nevertheless, the archbishop
went to dinner, where he was full
of a holy mirth, making himself all
things to his brethren. A sudden
illness fell upon him, and he grew
constantly worse till the Saturday.
When Matins were over the arch-
bishop knew that the hour was near
at hand when he should see God
face to face. He summoned his
household for the parting, bitter
indeed to them, but sweet to
one whose heart had been for so
long fixed on heaven. Extreme
Unction was administered, then
the holy Viaticum, and, whilst the
hidden God still dwelt within his
breast, Dunstan cried out : " Me-
moriam fecit mirabilinm suorum
misericors et miserator Dominus,
escam dedit timentibus se." They
were his last words, a farewell to
earth, full of gratitude to God for
the greatest of his gifts. Dunstan
was in his sixty-fourth year.
This short record would fulfil its
aim could it fix the attention of
some future biographer of St. Dun-
stan. The broad outlines only of
his career have been given here,
both because the details would re-
quire a larger space, and because
in a sketch we feared by dwell-
ing too much upon them to take
away from the vigor of the sali-
ent points. The indifference and
rudeness of the age, the vices of
those who should have supported
him, make Dunstan's own sanctity
all the more forcible. It is as if in
a poor collection of pictures we
were to come upon the work of a
great master. Another attribute of
his holiness must be borne in mind.
At a time when men left the world
because it was so bad that their
hearts sickened at the prospect of
bettering it by their presence, Dun-
stan sanctified himself in the at-
mosphere of courts, thus showing
forth in his own example the
strength engendered by obedience,
and the weight carried with it by a
steady purpose which looks to God
for its accomplishment.
THE END OF MAN.
O SEERS and sages ! ye have read
Unnumbered volumes through,
And Knowledge hides his head
With you.
Deep-pondering and far-seeing,
Ye know the mystery of this being,
Its origin and end.
Tell me, then, what I am ;
Tell me from whence I came;
Tell me whereto I tend ;
Yea, why I am at all.
8 io The End of Man.
In vain I call.
From sage or seer
No answer cometh to my ear.
Why ask of them that cannot give ?
Why call for light
To them that grope in the night?
In God I live,
Draw breath, have sense and motion.
I came from God ; to God must I return,
As the rain, ocean-born,
Returneth to the bosom of the ocean.
I am all his, and his alone.
No other maker names me ;
No other master claims me.
Nay, I am not my own.
Lord of my life and destiny,
I do confess, my God, in thee
Full sov'reignty and absolute domain.
n.
Why was I made ? God had no need of me.
I was not necessary, had no claim to be.
Without consulting me or mine,
But of his royal pleasure,
And as the by-plan of a vast design
Including me and my scant measure,
From a deep mould
As infinitely old
As his eternal mind he brought me,
And into being wrought me.
A delicate complexity
Of spirit and machinery,
Of matter, force, and faculty,
A frail and feeble creature,
But with a destiny above my nature,
He designed me,
And assigned me
To a station, service, and vocation
In the great feodary of his creation.
There, to my post and duty tied,
Let me abide,
Calm and content ;
Indifferent
Whatever may befall me ;
Ready to stay and labor on
Until my work be done ;
A Martyr of Martyrs.
811
Ready to go when God shall call me.
He that made me and my destiny
Is wise and true ;
He knows what is his due
And what is best for me.
Oh ! what should be the end of man
But to fulfil
That holy will
In which man's being first began ?
My end, the reason of my being, yea,
My soul's true bliss,
All lie in this :
To live for thee, my God, for thee.
A MARTYR OF MARTYRS.*
BELLS were ringing jubilantly,
cannon were pealing, the shout of a
mighty multitude echoed to the
heavens, where in an" oriental sky
the stars were blazing. Below
them torches of scented wood
flared red, lines of many-color-
ed lanterns ran like webs of fire
from tree to tree and from bough
to bough, turning the groves to
fairyland. The road, on either side
of which the myriad people tore
the air with clamor of eager ex-
pectation and of welcome, was
carpeted with fabrics of regal splen-
dor. Whatever an Eastern realm
could lavish of gorgeousness and
grandeur seemed spread forth that
night, for the monarch of an an-
cient kingdom was bringing home
his bride.
On came the royal procession.
Banner and pennon, lance and
spear, went proudly by ; high-step-
ping war-horse, plumed warriors,
courtiers in gay attire, nobles in
* There is an historic basis for this story.
robes of state, princes of royal
blood, were there. Then appear-
ed the unsurpassed white elephant,
bearing on his broad back a throne
of state, where sat the king of the
vast multitude with his veiled bride
motionless beside him.
Behind them was a throng of
retainers, bearing gifts from pro-
vinces far off and near. With
these there came long lines of
slaves, sent too as gifts. Upon them
searching looks were bent by men
jealous of their sovereign's honor,
and desirous to judge if they were
worthy to be given to him upon
such great occasion. One among
them attracted every eye, and
caused in all hearts unwonted feel-
ings of reverent amazement.
In that long-drawn procession of
unveiled women slaves, walking
each after each singly and slowly,
so that the beauty of each might
be seen by all present and re-
dound to the monarch's greatness
among those women, some
haughtily defiant, some indifferent,
some despairing, some most vile to
812
A Martyr of Martyrs.
see in their Eastern tarnished beau-
ty, wholly of the clod one walked
quietly, looking neither to right
nor left, and men and women held
their breath at sight of her.
Tall and slight, and fair with
lily fairness, she was clad in a
robe of soft white wools, and over
it her hair fell to her feet in a
golden veil. Her features were
perfectly formed, her face clear-
cut and oval. She never raised
her eyes, but kept them bent upon
a little child who lay sleeping in
her arms. That sweet face bore a
look mysterious to the people, fill-
ing them with strange emotion.
They loved her as they saw her,
but they loved her with the love
we give to angels. It was the face
of one who has suffered acutely,
who has loved and still loves with
intense devotion ; but the sign of a
higher love was on it, and men, not
knowing what it meant, did rever-
ence to it.
A louder clamor of drum and
horn, and cymbal and trumpet, a
mightier shout upon the echoing
sky. The king has brought his
bride to their palace home. The
carven doors are open to her ; the
bridal feast is spread ; music rings
around her amid fragrance of flow-
ers and fruits and costly wines.
Never has bride of that kingdom
known such rapturous greeting, or
been treated so nearly as the equal
of her lord.
They brought her gifts before
her dais, displaying each one to
her. They brought the slaves be-
fore her, men and women, whose
lives hung on her slightest whim.
It was her fancy to choose one
that very night to wait upon her,
and the king watched her pretty
perplexity with gratified pride.
Yet in a moment her doubts van-
ished when the pale stranger stood
before her. Even the king felt the
amazing spell. A hush fell over
the heathen court, but now alive
with wine and passion. What un-
earthly vision was there ?
lt I weary of the noise, and light,
and heat," the -queen said, looking
at the stranger wistfully. " Beau-
tiful mother, let us be alone for an
hour, that my head and my heart
may rest."
And queen and slave passed
forth together from the banquet,
ending unwittingly the first act of
a drama wherein no less than hea-
ven was to be risked and won.
n.
" The woman is a Christian, your
majesty a Christian surely."
The king knit his brows and
looked wrathfully at the speaker.
" You do not know whereof you
speak," he said.
" Pardon me, sire. I am your
oldest counsellor. I was your
royal father's counsellor before you.
I know whereof I speak. You
have never seen a Christian. We
banished them from the kingdom
before your majesty's most happy
birth. Believe me, they are more
dangerous than the plague. One
single follower of the Nazarene
sets a whole realm on fire. 'Tis
even said, sire "
The old man hesitated.
" Speak on !" was the imperious
cry.
" I fear, sire, that my life is
worth nothing if I say the rest."
" It is worth nothing if you do
not."
" 'Tis even said, then, your ma-
jesty, that she has already tainted
with her errors the mind of our
most gracious queen."
The king strode to the casement
and leaned forth as if stifled. In
A Martyr of Martyrs.
the sheltered, glorious gardens be-
low he beheld the two persons
who filled his thoughts. Where a
fountain sprang upward in glitter-
ing, lace-like spray ; where birds
sang blithely, flitting like gorgeous
tongues of flame from bower to
bower; where the trees cast quiet
shadows, and flowers of magnifi-
cent color and wondrous fragrance
lit up the greensward, his young
queen sat in her dark and brilliant
loveliness so worshipped by him,
and close beside her shone like a
star the Christian's exquisite fair
face. Surely it was of no common
matter they talked together; no
court gossip was sullying their lips.
Sometimes their eyes were fixed
earnestly upon each other, some-
times they lifted them as earnestly
towards the sky. And on either
face was a look not earthly. So
might St. Monica have talked with
Augustine and gazed towards
heaven.
Vehement in anger, yet strong
to control it till he knew most
surely how and when to strike, the
king watched and thought. This
work must stop; yet how to stop
it ? His young wife loved this wo-
man as her own soul, and upon his
wife's life now the hopes of the
nation centred. The slave, being
necessary to the realm, must live.
Yet she was tainting the queen's
mind with her errors, and the king
remembered to have heard strange
stories of these Christians. Tor-
ture meant little to them, death
meant nothing, riches counted for
dross, compared with something or
some one invisible, to whom they
gave themselves. If the queen
were a Christian she would rather
see her husband and her children
slaves and dead, so only they were
Christians also, than to see them
crowned kings of the universe.
The nation would be in commotion.
What could be done ?
He turned sharply to the coun-
sellor. " Prepare the torture-
chambers with all speed," he com-
v manded, then looked again to the
gardens.
Through flash of fountain and
song of bird no words could reach
him. He could only note that the
conversation was as intent and as
free from levity as before. God
heard the words they spake.
" It is a land more fair than this,
then, Aime ?"
" This land is an idle dream
compared to it, your highness."
" How can that be, Aime ? Tell
me ; for I dream of naught more
beautiful than this."
" There is no scorching heat
there, lady, and the flowers never
wither, and no storms come nigh.
And God is there always, lady, and
his Blessed Mother, and the saints
and angels. It is the court and.
the country of the King of kings."
" And he is mightier than my
king, and wiser and more loving ?
How can that be, Aime ? I dream
of none more strong and tender
than my king."
"He is fairer than any child of
man, this King of kings, your high-
ness. He loves us as no man can
love us. He loved us so that he
died for us, and now for evermore
he lives and reigns, and he asks
our love. We shall never have to
part with him."
"Poor Aime!"
The queen understood that pa-
tient sigh of the widowed heart.
She could not understand the smile
of joy which triumphed over it.
" God is good," cried Aime glad-
ly. "His will is best. He has
given me you to love, he has given
me my child, he has given me him-
self, and heaven waits for us."
8 14
A Martyr of Martyrs.
Heaven ! At the word it was
as if she saw the celestial country
opening before her rapturous gaze.
She, a captive in a strange land,
saw the fatherland of God before
her, and the gates of pearl flung
open to her, and the King who
waited on his throne.
The earthly monarch, watching,
started as her face, lifted more
clearly into sight, flashed its
seraphic beauty on him. Then,
through the sounds which had
made their voices inaudible to him,
the shrill cry of Aime's infant
reached his ear.
All the mother-love flew back
into her face. She caught the
baby from its grassy cradle at her
feet, fondled it, hushed it, then
nursed it at her bosom, drawing
her veil closely round it, while the
queen said caressing words and
played with the small pink feet.
It touched a chord of pity in the
strong man's nature.
" I will save her, if I can," he
mused. " She will forget her folly.
Now must I summon the queen
away, and find an opportunity to
work my will."
"His majesty awaits your high-
ness."
The queen turned to the kneeling
slave who had brought the message.
" Tell him I come at once," she
said.
But she bent again over the
baby, and whispered to the mother :
" If I obey your King, and am a
Christian, Aime, then I may surely
pray to him, and he will surely
hear ?"
" He surely will."
" And that everlasting kingdom
will be mine for ever, with no end
or sorrow surely ?"
" Most certainly, dear lady, if
only you hold firm unto the end."
Was it of reward she thought
this queen whose cup of earthly
ambition was filling to the brim ?
" It has seemed to me," she said
slowly, " that if I were a Chris-
tian my dearest lord would be a
Christian also I would pray so
hard for that! and then that
heavenly country could be his for
ever also. I would be glad to win
all that for him."
They went together, through the
shadows and the sunlight, out of
the joy and abounding life of na-
ture, into the palace glittering with
barbaric pomp, and the heart of
each was yearning for a higher life
and an eternal splendor. And as
the great doors closed behind them
an awful highway opened to them,
even the King of king's own royal
highway, leading for ever from
earth's gardens to the garden of
the Lord.
in.
They had led her two spectral
figures clad in hideous masks and
garments of linked mail through
long galleries and vaulted cham-
bers, amid instruments of torture,
nameless, horrible as the work of
fiends. She had been summoned
from her child to attend the queen,
but no queen was waiting for her.
There was no one to be seen ex-
cept these men, who walked one on
either side of her, holding her by
the arms. Neither spoke then, but,
as they walked, one told the other
what the nature and the uses of the
engines of horror were.
They brought her by and by
was it after many hours they
brought her? through these ante-
rooms of cruelty, to the presence
of the king.
"You are no Christian ?" he said
to her abruptly.
She made no reply.
A Martyr of Martyrs.
815
" I told you so," he cried to the
aged counsellor. " She is no
Christian, say what you may, and
I will save her."
Smiling sardonically, the wily
statesman took from his robes
something which, in the late king's
reign, he had known how to play
his part with well in discerning
gold from dross, something which
had been unseen in the kingdom
for many years, and he laid it down
at Aime's feet.
It was only the figure of a Man,
thorn-crowned, nailed to a cross.
" If you are no Christian trample
on that," he said.
She lifted up her hands in hor-
ror. She, who had passed through
all the torture-chambers with no
sign of fear except her whitening
face, uttered now a sharp, agonized
cry like one who has been struck
on a raw wound. And she flung
herself on her knees before them,
and she kissed the crucifix on feet
and hands and face.
" Is that your God ?" cried the
king contemptuously.
" It is the likeness of my God,"
she answered hirru "My God
died on a cross for me, and I am a
Christian."
Rack and fire, and scourge and
shame, they tried them on her, cau-
tiously yet sharply. They could
force no other answer from her,
could not bring that frail, fair wo-
man to do that simple thing : to
place her beautiful, her small, her
harmless foot upon that piece of
wood and silver.
" It was a priest's crucifix," the
counsellor said meditatively. " He
was an old man, I remember, and
he died hard for it. He died hard-
er even than common. These are
a strange people."
The king, who had been used to
conquer men by thousands on the
field of battle, and who had sub-
dued provinces to work his will,
stood baffled here. And then he
deigned to plead with her :
" The queen loves you. Deny
your faith, give up your folly, and
you shall be her best and dearest,
nearest to her throne."
But it was as if she did not hear
him.
Suddenly he bade the torturers
cease. A new plan had occurred to
him. He gave whispered orders to
the counsellor, who departed; then
shortly after the king bade the
torturers lift their victim and fol-
low him. And so they brought her
one more stage upon her journey
to the court of the King of kings.
IV.
A small room, but, where all
was magnificent, most marvellous to
see in its luxury and display. Ta-
bles were there, piled with most
tempting viands, wines to warm the
fainting heart, perfumed waters to
refresh the racked and quivering
frame, couches of down to give it
tenderest repose.
In a princely cradle lay the
Christian's child.
Weak as she was, she would have
sprung to clasp it to her bosom ;
but they held her back, gently
but firmly, and they laid the
crucifix before her feet.
" Now," said the king in mild
and courtly accents, " you may go
to your little child."
She did not stir.
Gently they laid her down on
one of the soft divans; they gave
her wine to strengthen her, they put
a healing salve upon her wounds.
And they left her hungry eyes free
to feed upon her baby's innocent,
rosy, happy face ; they left her
tongue free to speak, to call to him ;
8i6
A Martyr of Martyrs.
they left her cars open to hear his
slightest cry. And they only
bound her . feet with a painless
golden chain whose links they
would quickly loosen for her on
one small condition : they only
laid the crucifix in the path be-
tween her child and her.
The child cooed and laughed,
and talked his baby talk to himself
contentedly for a time yes, for
time long enough to revive in the
racked heart of the mother (if she
needed it) the memory of his beau-
ty, and his love, and his amiable,
exquisite baby-ways; long enough
for her to note again his perfect
health, his unusual strength and
activity, his unusual beauty.
By and by one of the torturers
rang a sweet-sounding silver beil
above her head, and drew the eyes
of the child to the mother's face.
He sprang up in his cradle, laugh-
ed out delightedly, stretched his
hands to her, allured her to come
to him, and lift him and play with
him.
She, like a mother, crushed down
her faintness and her longing, and
answered back to him with smiles
and tender gestures and most ten-
der words.
But such devices could not long
satisfy a baby. He wanted his
mother to touch him and hold him,
and he wanted to be fed. Why
did she not come to him this
mother always so ready to attend
to his slightest wish? He cried
loudly.
Aime looked with imploring gaze
to the monarch.
"You are free to go," he an-
swered.
Free, with the warders' eyes
upon her free, with the crucifix
lying in her pathway free, by one
touch of her foot, one effort of her
will.
She did not move, except to fold
her hands, and pray, and pray.
The child cried much. It cried
itself to sleep at last, and lay flush-
ed and restless even in sleep, with
tears on the plump cheek.
In the stillness memories of past
earthly joys, dreams of future earth-
ly joys and greatness, haunted her.
Once she had had a loving husband,
who protected her from so much
as a rough breeze, or a curious look,
or an unkind word. Once she was
a queen's friend and favorite was
it ages ago, or only that very day?
Once there was a prospect opening
to her of a fair future for her child,
a long and happy life for her with
him. What did these cruel people
mean to do with her? How long
would they, born themselves of
women, let a mother and her baby
suffer thus ?
Voices. Men are talking near
her men or devils. Their words
seem partial echoes of her thoughts.
" The queen loves her."
"Truly ; beyond all counting."
" Even now she asks for her."
" Yes ; but the king cozens her.
He tells her she has gone for a brief
time to bring some splendid pre-
sent to her. Yet the queen weeps,
and says no gifts can satisfy her for
the loss of her company even for
three days." *
" Can it last three days, then ?"
" They say so. 'Tis strong and
well, you see."
What is strong and well? A
vague horror chills her. But she
fights it off. Human beings could
not be so lost to all compassion.
The voices speak again :
" Fools, these Christians ! Look,
now. Here is a woman whom the
king honors and the queen loves.
She shall ask naught that they will
not give her. Her child shall be
the companion and the friend of
A Martyr of Martyrs.
princes, brought up and honored
with the queen's own children.
And she lets all go for sake of an
idle dream."
11 Will not put her foot upon a
stick!"
If she hears, she gives no sign
she hears them. They must touch
another chord than that of friend-
ship or of strong ambition. And
they are quick to try :
" The king is firm."
" Like rock itself."
"One way or other, he ever gains
his will."
" By any sort of torture."
Still no sign of fear.
But now, abruptly, plainly, words
unmistakable are spoken:
" It takes a strong man-child,
then, three days to starve to death
before the eyes of an unnatural
mother who refuses to 2;ive him
food ?"
" They say so three days or
more. But the king will not grant
her three days' grace."
" Hast ever heard or seen the
like? Naught to prevent her, and
she will not save him ! Let's try
once more."
^ And then try speedier ways."
She knows all now. She springs
up from among the silken pillows,
and her face glares on them, and
spring and face remind them sud-
denly of a tigress whom they wound-
ed but yesterday among the moun-
tains, and tore from her young cubs
in their den.
They loose the chain. She starts
: to her feet. What ! She is down
on her knees again, trembling and
shivering, beside that senseless
thing. Waken the child !
Yes, waken him. He cries with
sharp, real hunger when he wak-
ens. He sees her, and he holds his
hands to her. By and by they add
coarser cruelty to this double-dyed
VOL. XXIX. 52
refinement of cruelty. They begin
to torture with sharp instruments
the famished, thirsty little creature
before her eyes.
And the mother?
She does not rise again from her
knees where she has fallen. It is
strength to kneel there. Over and
over again she is saying in her for-
eign tongue words whose meaning
her torturers do not know. Even
the king, familiar with the language,
cannot understand their import.
Is the woman going mad? His an-
ger is blazing now, his obstinate
will is set; she shall be conquered.
But the very words which she is
babbling over and over, like a fool
as he thinks, have in them the
strength which shall set his strength
at naught.
" There stood by the cross of Jesus
his Mother" she says. u There
stood by the cross of Jesus his
Mother, his Mother, his very own
Mother, the Mother that bore him.
Do you hear that, my Jesus, my
Lord, my King of kings ?"
Whether it be night or day she
knows not. Sleep she will never
know again till the endless day
has broken, and the Queen of Mar-
tyrs gathers her sister-martyr unto
perfect, peaceful rest upon her bo-
som. She counts the leaden-foot-
ed minutes by baby-sobs that grow
more shrill, more faint, more pitiful
to hear. She sees the baby-hands,
once stretched in anguish to her,
fall clenched upon the cradle ; she
sees the baby-face grow old, and
haggard, and livid the once rosy,,
joyous face of her only child.
" Jesus!" she pleads, but there
is neither bitterness nor complaint
in the patient pleading, " thou
hadst a woman for thy mother.
Have mercy on a woman who
pleads with thee for her only son."
The Eastern monarch bows down
8i8
A Martyr of Martyrs.
before her marvellous fortitude,
compelled to do it homage ; he
deigns to expostulate with her ; he
begins to fear the end. She will
conquer at last, not he.
" Deny your faith," he entreats
her. " Say only one word. I ask
no more."
She does not look at him nor
-answer him. It is no longer this
Eastern monarch whom she hears
and sees. For a brief awful mo-
ment, into which the agony of ages
seems concentrated, she sees, and
hears, and feels through all her be-
ing the suffering of her baby,
her own flesh and blood, the child
to whom in travail pangs she had
given life, and to whom now, in
pangs compared with which those
counted as the merest trifles, she
is free to give life again at the
price of one little word.
The room grows dark around
her, except the tiny, livid face.
She rocks to and fro upon her
Tcnees in that horror of great dark-
ness, only lighted by that awful
sight. She clutches at her heart
with her two hands, then stretches
her arms out wide from side to
side. And once again they hear
'lier speak those foreign and myste-
rious words, but now distinct and
slow, as calling upon one unseen
by them, but seen by her, and sure
to heed and answer :
" There stood by the cross of
Jesus his Mother. Mother, I cry
to thee."
And as she spoke the soul of the
child departed, but she did not
know or heed.
v.
" Aime ! My Aime" !"
Like one returned from heaven's
courts she answered to the piteous
call, folded her hands, that had
been spread for hours as on a
cross, looked once again upon
things of time and sense, and lo !
the queen was weeping over her as
one weeps above the dead.
" Aime, my Aime, where hast
thou been ?" she cried.
And grave and calm the slave
made answer to her :
" I have been in the presence of
the King of kings."
The queen started. " Oh ! no,
my darling, my darling. They
have driven you mad with torture.
You are here, with me, my sweet
one. You are safe."
But grave and calm the slave re-
peated :
" I have been in the presence of
the King of kings.
" It was not the land we dream-
ed of, lady. It was the rock of
Calvary, most bleak and desolate.
A cross was on it. There hung
my Lord, my Love. And his own
Mother stood beside it ; close to
her aching heart she held me ; and
behold ! another cross was there,
and my son hung upon it; and she
and I watched, and wept, and
waited, and the will of God was
done.
" I saw the whole wide world
spread out before us, a great plain
filled with men who sinned, and
suffered, and sorrowed ; and be-
hold ! her Son was dying in torture,
and my son was dying in torture,
yet the will of God was done.
"And she prayed no prayer that
her woes should be ended, she
prayed no prayer that the woes of
her Son might cease. With her
whole yet broken heart she offered
him to the wise will of God. So,
clinging to her, I likewise offered
my son to him.
"Then, at once, I saw it, the
city we dreamed of, lady, only more
grand, resplendent, than any dream
A Martyr of Martyrs.
819
of ours. The throne of my King
was in it ; and my King I saw, I
heard him, though he spoke no
words. For my heart was one with
his Sacred Heart, and communed
with him without need of speech.
" I saw the length and breadth
of mysteries the mystery of suffer-
ing, of the innocent 'suffering for
the guilty, the mystery of the bro-
ken heart of a mother, the mystery
of the broken and Sacred Heart of
God.
"When I saw it all I loved it.
I bless your king for my torments.
Had I life to live all over again, I
would choose to endure such pain.
" I have seen my King in his
agony, and have seen him in his
glory. He has pierced my heart,
and wounded it through with his
sharp, sweet dart of love.
" I have offered myself and my
all with him for a soul's and a
realm's salvation. It is a free-will
offering, given through love to
Love.
" He works his will as he choos-
es. My son does reign with princes
in an eternal kingdom, for ever
safe from sin. And the Queen of
the kingdom calls me to perfect
rest beside her, dear to her for
ever, and near to her radiant throne.
Our Lord has made use of us for
thee, and we who have stood be-
side the cross are going home to
God."
" Aime !"
The queen's piteous cry broke in
upon the words the Christian spoke
like one inspired.
"Aime! look at me, love me.
Who will lead me home to God ?"
Silence in the palace, save for
the weeping of a queen left lonely
among heathen by the inscrutable
will of God.
Silence, save that the very still-
ness answered her. God had
plainly shown her a path that led
to him.
Silence, yet are soundless voices
chanting :
" O poor little one, tossed with
tempest, without all comfort :
" All thy children shall be taught
of the Lord : and great shall be
the peace of thy children.
" For my thoughts are not your
thoughts : nor your ways my ways,
saith the Lord.
" For as the heavens are exalted
above the earth, so are my ways
exalted above your ways, and my
thoughts above your thoughts.
" Alleluia : for the Lord our God
the almighty hath reigned."
820
Christian Art.
CHRISTIAN ART.
MURILLO.
THE position of Art, as the band-
maid of Religion, is as old as the
Mosaic ceremonial which enjoined
that the ornaments and accessories
of divine worship should be made
*' according to the pattern shown
on the mount " that is, by God him-
self. Minute indeed were the di-
rections given as to the gold and
silver and precious gems, the can-
dlesticks and the lamps, the in-
cense and the oil, to be provided
for the service of the tabernacle.
Impressive, also, were the gorgeous
colors prescribed for its hangings
and curtains ; the rich robes and
ornaments to be worn by the priests
in their great acts of sacrifice and
intercession. The " propitiatory,"
or mercy-seat, was to be made of
pure gold ; and over it were to brood
the outstretched wings of cherubim
covering the seat, or throne, of
mercy. Thus, even under the old
law, was qualified the broad pro-
hibition never " to make a graven
similitude or image, male or female,
of anything that is in heaven above
or on earth beneath " a prohibi-
tion which, in its literal interpreta-
tion, has affected Oriental art even
to the present day, but which, in
the opinion of the late broad-
church Dr. Arnold, was literally
abrogated by the Incarnation of
Jesus Christ, " the brightness of the
divine glory, and the figure or re-
presentation of the divine sub-
stance " (Life, by Stanley, i. 315).
More glorious still were the visions
revealed to the Beloved Apostle
in the Apocalypse as much more
so as the reality surpasses the
type, as the substance its fore-
shadowing. Among the golden
candlesticks moved u one like the
Son of Man, "attended not by gold-
en cherubim, but by living angels
of the Presence. The worship of
the enthroned Lamb was offered by
the " ancients " in white clothing,
wearing crowns of gold, accom-
panied by the symbolic evangelists,
the odors of golden vials, and the
harmonies of celestial harps.
In perfect accordance with this
representation of external art has
been the feeling of the church of
Christ since its foundation. Be-
fore it had emerged from the
Roman Catacombs their altars and
subterranean chapels were adorned,
as far as rude artistic skill permitted,
by sketches of the Good Shepherd,
by emblems of the Resurrection,
and other symbols familiar to archae-
ologists. Between figures of SS.
Peter and Paul is seen standing, in
the attitude of intercession, a ma-
jestic woman, known as the Donna
Orante, and, in the judgment of
Mrs. Jameson, an impartial Protes-
tant art authority of no mean rank,
designed to represent the great
Mother of Jesus herself. By and
by the church emerged from the
Catacombs and took possession of
the pagan temples and basilicas,
turning them into churches. Then
arose the early art of mosaic de-
coration rude, indeed, at first, but
often strikingly in harmony with
the solemn vaults and subdued
light of those old Romanesque
buildings.
We must then follow early Chris-
tian art to its new home in Byzan-
tium, or New Rome stiff in the
Christian Art.
821
beginning, and more quaint than
pleasing to a modern eye, but for
all that an important link in the
long chain that connects the great
masterpieces of sacred painting
with the rudimentary beginnings of
untutored draughtsmen. From this
point the history of Christian art,
if pursued, as it ought to be,
through the media of colored glass
in windows and illuminated minia-
tures in missals and prayer-books,
diverges into several paths, leading
in the direction of Italy for one,
of Germany and Flanders for an-
other, and of Spain. These three
great schools, as they are called,
have each of them their own
characteristics. It were hard to say
which of them best fulfilled the
high purposes of such delineation,
if, as a Spanish writer on art once
defined, these be to persuade men
to piety and lead them to God.
We turn first to Spain, for reasons
that will appear as we proceed.
The Spanish school differed from
every other in this among several
important particulars : that, owing
to the force of circumstances, its
chief artists confined themselves
nearly exclusively to sacred sub-
jects or to portraiture. Velasquez,
the great secular painter of Spain,
was never surpassed as a delinea-
tor of kings and courtiers, and
great ladies and their favorite
dwarfs and spaniels. They grew
out of his canvas with the spon-
taneity of a wish. Murillo, the
other eminent Spanish painter,
stands above the Van Eycks, above
Titian, nay, in some respects above
Raphael himself, as the delineator
of that which faith alone has yet
apprehended, of the supernatural
associations recorded in the lives
of saints. These, to his imagina-
tion, were as real, as completely
within the grasp of his genius, to a
certain point, as the incidents of
daily human life. His quiet and
uneventful career was eminently
favorable to the creations of his
brush. Few incidents marked the
progress of time for him, beyond
the completion of one great picture
or series of pictures after another,
during a period of nearly forty
years.
Seville, the chief city of Anda-
lusia, and once the capital of Spain,
was the place of Murillo's birth ;
its date, one of the closing days of
the year 1617. His parents, who
were persons in humble life, had the
lease of a small house in the Calle
de las ^Tiendas from the monks of
San Pablo. Their family name was
Esteban, or Stephen ; but their
eminent son afterwards adopted
the surname of Murillo, or Morillo,
from a paternal ancestor. Barto-
lome (that was his Christian name)
was left an orphan at the age of
ten, and fell to the charge of a
married aunt and her husband.
Showing at an early age a passion
for sketching, he was sent to learn
the rudiments of art in the studio
of Juan Castillo, a. painter of some
note in his day. When his master
left Seville for Cadiz, young Mu-
rillo, then about twenty-two years
of age, earned a precarious living
by painting little pictures for the
feria, or Thursday market, in which
dealers bought up all kinds of cheap
wares for sale in the Spanish colo-
nies of America. A " feria pic-
ture " came to signify a sketch of a
popular saint, of flowers, or of a
landscape, dashed off in such haste
as to be good for little but to " sell
to niggers." Many such rude me-
morials of art must even now ex-
ist in the remote churches of those
countries, and, if traced to hands
like Murillo's, might fetch their
weight in gold.
822
Christian Art.
Fortunately for the young paint-
er's fame, his mode of living by
dashing ottferia pictures was inter-
rupted by the return of De Moya,
a former fellow-pupil in Castillo's
studio, who had been to Flanders
and England to study art under
Vandyck. When Murillo saw his
sketches and copies he was fired
with emulation to become a pupil
of the great Flemish portraitist.
But to defray the necessary ex-
penses a good many feria pictures
had to be worked off; and before
money enough had been made in
this way the news of Vandyck's
death in London (1641) put an
end to the project. Murill^, there-
fore, contented himself with a short-
er journey to Madrid, where his
fellow-townsman, Velasquez, was
then residing, as the court painter,
at the summit of his fame. The
great artist, who was nearly twenty
years senior to Murillo, received
him with generous kindness, lodged
him in his house, and, while rec-
ommending him ultimately to look
forward to Italy as the best of all
schools for a young painter, assist-
ed him in the meantime, and at
less cost, to study the works of the
masters in the royal galleries at
Madrid : Titian, Rubens, Vandyck,
and Velasquez himself. Three
years were sedulously devoted to
the task ; and when the journey to
Italy was again proposed, Murillo,
now conscious of his powers, re-
solved to dispense with further
study, and to return to Seville and
establish himself there for life as a
painter.
He had not long to wait for a
commission. He was engaged by the
Franciscan friars to paint a series
of eleven pictures in the smaller
cloister of their convent. The last
of them was finished in 1646. One
or two of the most remarkable call
for a word of description. The
" Death of St. Clare " represents
the saint on her couch, surrounded
by her sisters and brethren in reli-
gion ; the rest of the picture, to the
spectator's right, is filled with a
retinue of crowned saints of the
devoted sex, gathered about the
Queen of Angels and the Lord of
glory himself. All of them. are ad-
vancing to clothe the dying nun in
the robe of her immortality, and
bid her beatified spirit welcome to .'
paradise. Equally conceived from
a point of view "within the veil,"
as St. Paul expresses it, is another
of those cloister pictures. A holy
Franciscan lay brother, who has
charge of the convent kitchen, is
discovered by three visitors in an
ecstasy, rapt in prayer, raised from
the ground, and shedding a super-
natural light, while the duties he
had suspended are performed by
angelic hands. Some are carrying
water ; others tending the fires ; oth-
ers, again, preparing food for cook-
ing. Their orderly bustle, con- \
trasted with the mute astonishment
of the visitors, one of whom is
a friar, and with the far-off preoc-
cupation of the lay brother, forms
a motif of rare interest and power,
from which the picture derives its
name of " The Angels' Kitchen."
Till the friars gave him this com- ;
mission Murillo was unknown. By
the time it was finished his reputa-
tion, in Seville at least, was estab-
lished. Other commissions soon
followed ; the painter's future was
assured, and in 1648 he married
Dona Beatrix de Cabrera y Soto-
mayor, of Piias, a lady of fortune
and position, but of whom not a
feature or a trace remains, unless,
indeed, tradition is not in error in
asserting that the St. Anne in the
" Education of the Blessed Virgin "
is a portrait of Dona Beatrix, as
Christian Art.
823
the Virgin herself is of Murillo's
only daughter, Francisca. Domes-
tic happiness attended him through
life. Thirteen years after the wed-
ding his eldest son, Caspar Este-
ban, was born ; and, after an inter-
val of several years more, Francisca;
and then, last of all, Gabriel, the
younger son, who eventually be-
came a canon of Seville Cathedral,
in holy orders. Francisca entered
the Dominican Order in the con-
vent of the Mother of God, at Se-
ville. Caspar emigrated to one of
the American colonies of Spain.
Dona Beatrix, their mother, died
several years before her husband.
To the first decade of Murillo's
art-career belong most of the secu-
Plar subjects he treated : the beggar-
boys, the gipsy flower-girls, that de-
light the artist and the uninitiated
alike. In humor, as in imitation
of natural objects, he stands on a
level with the genre painters of the
highest class in the Flemish school.
But even in the first decade of his
work he painted higher subjects,
such as the " Immaculate Concep-
tion " for the Franciscans' larger
cloister ; the " Virgin and the Rosa-
ry," now in the Louvre ; and several
other well-known reproductions of
sacred history. Murillo's style, up
to 1656, consisted of an unconscious
adaptation of the styles of other
great masters, and notably of Van-
dyck's. But slowly yet surely he
was working his way clear of obli-
gations to any one under the gui-
dance of his own native talent.
His attainment of an original
style all his own was marked by
the production of his great picture
of " St. Anthony of Padua " receiving
the Infant Jesus in his arms, ac-
cording to the legend. The date
of that picture is 1656. The saint
is kneeling in his cell, a half-open
door showing a long, whitewashed
cloister beyond. Up above hea-
ven is revealed, its glowing spaces
filled with groups of angels radiant
in their beauty. Down the centre
of the cloud-paved way the Divine
Child steps with infantine majesty
and grace, as he hastens to meet
the ardent desire of the saint to
fold him in his arms. Ecstatic
love, adoration, joy, longing for
union, throb beneath the Capu-
chin habit and flow from the up-
turned countenance of St. Antho-
ny, as he awaits with outstretched
arms the coming of his long-sought
Guest. " Never," says an eminent
French critic, " was the magic of
painting carried further." This
wonderful picture was placed in
the baptistery chapel of the cathe-
dral. A few years ago it was sur-
reptitiously cut out of its frame,
carried to New York, and sold.
The buyer who, by the way, could
have known little of Spanish art
to purchase a work so widely known
in Europe was amply compensat-
ed for his loss, when the picture
was traced and claime<3, by the lib-
eral reward of the cathedral autho-
rities for its recovery. Its restora-
tion to Seville was celebrated by
the whole city as an occasion of
general rejoicing.
The church of Santa Maria-la-
Blanca, in Seville, was dedicated to
Our Lady of the Snow a title
given to the Madonna in remem-
brance of the legend relating to the
ancient foundation of Sta. Maria
Maggiore on the Esquiline Hill, in
Rome. Murillo's patron, Don
Justino Neve, a worthy canon of
the cathedral, wishing to present a
picture to the church of La Blan-
ca, and perhaps thinking of his own
family name, commissioned the
painter to represent the legend of
the Esquiline. This was in 1665.
The painter rose to the height of
824
Christian Art.
his opportunity and executed two
chefs-d'oeuvre, medios puntos (twin
perfections), as they are called in
Spain. They were carried off to
Paris by Soult among the booty of
the French army, and are now in
the Academy of San Fernando,
Madrid. The pictures are respec-
tively entitled "The Patrician's
Dream " and "The Declaration of
the Dream." In the first picture
the patrician and his wife are shown
asleep, perhaps after a long reli-
gious vigil. The husband's elbow
rests on a table ; his fine, serious
head is lighted by the reflection
of the celestial vision. A little be-
hind him his wife lies easily asleep
on the edge of a couch, her head
leaning on her hand. A little white
dog rolls itself up at her feet among
the folds of her robe. The scene
of slumber is separated from a dis-
tant landscape over which the
morning dawn is just breaking.
High up is a luminous group in
striking contrast to the scene be-
low. The Blessed Mary, with the
Infant Jesus in her arms, and seat-
ed on bright clouds, is pointing to
the hill on which her new shrine
is to be erected.
In the companion picture we
are shown the Roman nobleman
and his wife relating their vision
to Pope Liberius, as in the legend.
The pope sits on a dais of state,
under a canopy, listening with at-
tention to the story. The patrician
kneels on one knee before him, and
gesticulates with his right hand. On
his left his wife is kneeling, in full
light, and, by the play of her hands,
confirming her husband's narrative.
On the other side stands an old
prelate (probably a portrait) lean-
ing on his crutch and adjusting his
spectacles as he takes in the marvel-
lous account. A friar also forms
one of the audience. Through the
portico of the palace is seen a
wide landscape ; in the full light of
a summer sun a long procession of
priests and prelates, ending with
the pope, is advancing to the snow-
covered hill in the distance, above
which the Madonna is directing the
clergy to the spot selected for her
temple. The whole scene is pass-
ing in the heated glow of a Roman
August, thus heightening the effect
of the unmelted snow on the hill.
A double action of this kind in
the same picture might perhaps be
pardoned in a mediaeval illumi-
nation or a pre-Raphaelite altar-
piece, but with greater difficulty
consistently with the canons of mo-
dern art ; as also the anachronisms
in dresses and accessories. Yet so
vividly is the story told, so becom-
ing are the attitudes of the figures,
so finely discriminated the varying
expressions of their countenances,
so superb the drawing and color-
ing, so correct and true to life the
impression produced, that the spec-
tator forgets to criticise, and in-
stinctively feels that in the medios
puntos, realistic as they are, Mu-
rillo has struck out for himself a
grand and, of its kind, unapproach-
able style. He never, we think,
excelled the art in those pictures ;
their masses of light and shade are
blended and united by insensible
gradations, by transitions effected
with such extreme delicacy as to
leave them barely perceptible. The
master's infinite resources are re-
vealed by the way in which he
marshals his tones, playing them
off one against the other in har-
monious combinations, or again
setting them off by happy con-
trasts, and even by fine dissonances.
Air and light circulate in all direc-
tions ; the painter's touch is rich
and bold, his emphasis delicate
and well chosen. His tones are
Christian Art.
825
full of vigor and depth in the sha-
dows ; his half-tones warm ; his
high lights refreshing and delight-
ful.
Another picture of high interest,
belonging probably to the same
year as the two last, is the u Nativity
of the Blessed Virgin," the finest
Murillo in the Louvre, and former-
ly in Seville Cathedral. The cen-
tral group in the foreground in-
cludes the. newly-arrived daughter
of St. Anne, attended by represen-
tatives of both worlds, the human
and the angelic. In the back-
ground are St. Anne and St. Joa-
chim, and overhead a group of
cherubs is exulting in the auspi-
cious event. The composition, as
a whole, is a study of color. Deep
reds prevail in the foreground;
orange tints in the near lights; the
high lights are a little subdued,
and are repeated or connected by
violets, pale roses or carmines,
passing into lilacs and lilac-grays,
and thence into tenderest greens
with an indescribable charm.
It was one of the distinctive pri-
vileges of Murillo's art to earn for
him the title of El Pintor de las
Concepciones (the painter of the
Immaculate Conception). At that
period the reception of the mys-
tery was an article of living faith
among the great majority of Span-
iards, with the Franciscans at
their head ; so much so that it grew
to be a customary form of saluta-
tion among acquaintances, when
they met, to say : Ave Maria puri-
sima. To which the reply follow-
ed : Sin pecado concelrida. Murillo
painted the subject upwards of
twenty times, generally represent-
ing the Mother of Grace alone, in
her radiant and girlish loveliness,
robed in a white tunic underneath
a mantle of celestial blue, rapt in
contemplation of her sublime des-
tiny, while angelic spirits wait upon
her with rapturous love and admi-
ration. The celebrated picture in
the Louvre, although a beautiful
work of art undoubtedly, was not
Murillo's first representation of the
subject. Seville possesses another,
still finer, called " La Perla." The
Madrid Museum has two of su-
preme beauty. In the same col-
lection there is also an " Annuncia-
tion," which has been described as a
" pure marvel." The Holy Virgin
and the archangel are relieved
against a background formed of
angels luminous as the sun. The
symbol of the brooding Spirit is
projected upon it with a yet keen-
er radiance "a finer light in
light."
We referred to the " Education of
the Holy Virgin " in the Museum at
Madrid, a work belonging to the
year 1675 or 1676. Apart from the
interest conferred upon it by the
tradition of its containing the por-
traits of the artist's wife and daugh-
ter, the group is in itself instinct
with the rare union of dignity and
homeliness which no one ever sur-
passed Murillo in depicting. The
young daughter of St. Anne stands
at her mother's knee, holding a
book in her hand, and points in-
quiringly to a passage. Her mo-
ther answers her and explains it
with a significant gesture of the
hand. The child much resembles
one of Velasquez' royal Infantas ;
and the mother's countenance is
engaging enough to make us wish
that Murillo's wife was like her.
An easel picture in the same
gallery represents the " Martyrdom
of St. Andrew." Murillo never
painted anything more brilliant.
The apostle is bound to his X-
cross, in the midst of soldiers and
the populace, outside the walls of
the Greek Patras ; his face radiant
826
Christian Art.
, with holy joy, as he sees angels
coming to him and carrying his
palm of victory. The scene is en-
veloped in an indistinct, golden
light as in a misty veil, which effa-
ces outlines and blends the tones
into general harmony, suggestive
of the fulness of the martyr's assur-
ed triumph.
Single works like those just nam-
ed were a species of hors-d'oeuvres,
filling up the intervals between
more important series of compo-
sitions. To another of these we
are next introduced in chrono-
logical order : his eight pictures,
in illustration of Charity, painted
for the hospital of La Caridad, at
Seville. A word, to begin with,
about the nature and origin of that
institution. A small chapel of San
Jorge (George), at Seville, served in
1662 as a place of meeting for a
lay confraternity entitled La Her-
mandad de la Caridad. Its mem-
bers devoted themselves to certain
works of charity, such as burying
the bodies of executed criminals,
and of persons from time to time
found drowned on the banks of the
Guadalquivir. Murillo, in the year
just named, applied for admission,
and three years later was enrolled
in the confraternity. At that date
the president was Don Miguel de
Manara Vicentello de Leca, a man
whose youth had been devoted to
pleasure and dissipation to such an
extent as to furnish the poets of
the time with a second Don Juan
of Seville Don Juan de Marafia,
as they called him. Divine grace
pursued and overtook him in his
erratic course ; he fancied himself,
on one occasion in a dream, pres-
ent at his own funeral, and eventu-
ally underwent a complete reform-
ation so complete that at his death
he directed that on his tomb shoulfl
be inscribed : Here lies the worst
man that ever lived. This reformed
sinner built the hospital of La Car-
idad, enlarged the chapel of St.
George, adjoining it, into a church,
and gave his friend and fellow-
member, Murillo, a commission to
paint eight important illustrations
of Charity, and a few more small
pictures, for the new institution.
Only two of the larger now remain
in their original position, " Moses
Strikingthe Rock "and tlte" Miracle
of the Loaves and Fishes." Soult
carried five away with him to Paris ;
and of these only one, " St. Eliza-
beth of Hungary Tending the
Diseased," ever found its way back
again to Spain. It now hangs in
the Royal Academy of San Fernan-
do at Madrid. Out of the remain-
ing four Mr. Tomline purchased
the " Christ Healing the Paralytic " ;
"The Angel Releasing St. Peter
from Prison " went to the Rus-
sian collection of pictures at the
Hermitage ; u Abraham Adoring
Three Angels " and " The Prod-
igal Son's Return " are in the
gallery at Stafford House, Lon-
don ; " The Charity of St. John of
God " in carrying a poor man on his
back, assisted by an angel, was
originally the companion picture of
the " St. Elizabeth," but seems now
to have dropped out of sight
(Wornum, Epochs of Painting).
The " Moses Striking the Rock "
and '* The Miracle of the Loaves
are of colossal size, some twenty-
six feet wide, and, being at con-
siderable height, are painted
in a sketchy manner, calculat-
ed for their distance from the
eye. But " there they still hang,"
says Ford, " like rich oranges on
the bough where they originally
budded." The Hebrew lawgiver
is surrounded by his people, who
are reduced to the last extremity
by thirst. Hence the work is known
Christian Art.
827
as " La Sed " (the Thirst). His mi-
raculous rod has touched the rock
and opened the fountain of water.
Moses gives thanks, and the thirsty
Hebrews press forward to fill their
vessels with the precious beverage.
A mother is seen quenching the
thirst of her exhausted child. A
boy on horseback, between two
large jars, in the foreground, points
to the opening in the rock, and is
said to resemble the painter him-
self when he was a boy. Although
the Moses is pronounced to be
disappointing, the rest of the pic-
ture is effective and masterly, its
tone fresh and bright.
In the companion picture, repre-
senting the " Miracle of the Loaves,"
Christ, attended by his disciples,
has the bread in his lap, while he
blesses the fishes presented to him
by a boy. A group of women look
on and wait. The background is
an extensive landscape, filled with
crowds who have come together to
hear the Divine Word. The com-
position is chiefly remarkable for
the skill with which Murillo has
managed to make a few figures, in
a space no larger than a common
room, assume the appearance of
thousands of people.
The great picture of " St. Eliza-
beth," now in Madrid, is one of Mu-
rillo's most celebrated works. The
saint is standing on the threshold of
her palace, among her attendants, to
receive the sick and the poor who
come. A child in rags is kneeling
before her, his head bending over
a silver basin, showing the repul-
sive nature of his disease, under
the beautiful hands of the land-
gravine.* In her expressive coun-
tenance may be detected the strife
going on between a cultured wo-
* The saint is often erroneously called a queen.
Her father was King of Hungary, but her husband
was the Landgrave of Thuringia.
man's natural delicacy and the di-
vine spirit of charity. Other ob-
jects of her compassion are gather-
ed about her ; while in the back-
ground, by a mediaeval art-license,
the saint may be seen with her at-
tendants waiting on her poor pen-
sioners at table. A subject inhe-
rently repulsive like this must un-
questionably be pronounced inar-
tistic, if we are to measure it by a
modern art standard or its p'agan
counterpart. The canons of beauty
and fitness bid us revolt against it.
Yet if moral beauty and sublimity
are to be taken into account, the
verdict of the critic must in this
instance be reversed, and the pic-
ture pronounced a marvellous suc-
cess. If moral qualities rank higher
than those which are merely phy-
sical, St. Elizabeth conquering her
repugnance and ministering to the
relief of suffering humanity, for
Christ's sake, is a nobler subject of
art than the loveliest forms ever
selected from Greek or any other
mythology. And, regarded from a
less exalted stand-point, Murillo's
picture is a great example of the
character of the Spanish school
generally at the period of its high-
est development a character in
great measure depending on much
that seems inherent in that of the
nation at large. Ease, naturalness,
the absence of all forcing, in the
composition ; a taste for the pic-
turesque in the selection of types,
with a decided predilection for
those of terror ; an eye for contrasts,
which are apt to associate the noble
with the trivial, the sublime ideal
with the boldest naturalism
"Qualities like these, not unfre-
quently running into serious faults,"
remarks a French critic, " are of
the very essence of the Spaniard's
. originality and his genius ; they
belong to him, like his rugged
828
Christian Art.
Sierras, his swarthy face, his eye
filled with sunlight, his mournful,
guttural songs, his proud and so-
norous tongue."
An artistic success like the La
Caridad series (finished in 1674)
naturally led to many more com-
missions from convents, churches,
nobles, and rieh citizens, who com-
peted with one another for the
possession of a work by Murillo.
About this time he painted for the
high altar of St. Augustine's Church
a series illustrative of the Latin doc-
tor's life and of the pious acts of
St. Thomas of Villanova; also a
" Conception " for the hospital of Los
Venerables the same, in all proba-
bility, which is now in the Louvre.
In 1678 Murillo began another
of his great series of illustrative
compositions, the last and the
greatest of them all. His patrons
were the Capuchins, whose convent
(now abolished) stood outside the
walls of Seville near the gate of
Cordova. Twenty canvases of
the master adorned their walls,
the greater part of them of first-
rate importance. Seventeen are
included in the Seville Museum.
Ten of them were grouped around
the high altar; others were placed
in the choir, and in the aisles and
lateral chapels. To describe them
in detail would unduly lengthen
our article ; yet a word or two
about the most important may not
be unacceptable. Several of Mu-
rillo's best-known works originally
formed part of the Capuchin trea-
sure-house of art. Here, as the
companion picture to his " St. Mi-
chael," hung the " Guardian An-
gel," now in Seville Cathedral, rep-
resenting a simple, trustful boy led
by the hand of one of the heavenly
host across a gloomy desert, and
guided by a light breaking through
the clouds, to which the angel is
pointing. Seville Museum now
contains a Madonna and Child,
called " La Servilleta " (the table-
napkin), which formerly belonged
to the series we are examining.
Tradition asserts that it was paint-
ed on a common napkin at the re-
quest of the convent porter for
some memorial of the painter ;
hence its name. " The Child,"
says Ford, " almost struggles out of
the frame. What a creative power,
what a coiner, was our Murillo,
thus to convert into a banknote a
napkin, in which most Spaniards
bury their little talent !" In the
Capuchin choir there hung two
companions, an "Annunciation"
and a " Pieta," or " Mother of Sor-
rows " ; the second decided and
severe in outline and strong in
contrasts far beyond the painter's
habit at this period of his career.
Upon the tabernacle was placed
the beautiful "Madonna," carrying
the Infant Jesus, now in the Seville
Museum a picture which even a
tyro in art could not pass without
recognizing its supreme excellence
as an inspiration of genius. Its
full significance, however, can be
best appreciated when it is taken
in connection with two other pic-
tures, also painted for the Capu-
chins, and representing two other
Christ-bearing saints, "Anthony of
Padua " and " Felix of Cantalice,"
both carrying in their arms, ac-
cording to the legend, the Child
of Mary. With him to paint, no
fresher, rosier, more exquisite type
of infantine beauty was ever imag-
ined by painter's mind or created
by his brush. Neither could any-
thing excel the tender and impas-
sioned devotion, the delicate ca-
resses, in which those later Christo-
phori * strain and fold and gather
* " Christ-bearer, Christopher, thy name shall be :
Thy love of little ones was love of me. 1 '
Christian Art.
829
him to their hearts. " Instead of
ascetics," says a critic, "you would
take them for young mothers ex-
ulting in the treasure of their first-
born."
In a Capuchin church we natu-
rally look for some memorial of St.
Francis; nor shall we look in vain.
"St. Francis at the Foot of the
Cross " is Murillo's version of the
mystic scene of the Stigmata on
Mont' Alvernia. He has depicted
with marvellous power the profound
humility, the adoration, the utter
abandonment of the saint in the
supreme moment described by the
legend. The protecting and ca-
ressing attitude of the Redeemer,
as he removes his right hand from
the cross and lays it on St. Francis'
shoulder, reciprocates all the love
of the other, and more. Every
light and shadow in this astonish-
ing and captivating picture attests
the hand and mind of a master.
The glooms of the background
lend an air of mystery to the
scene, and contrast with the high
lights in which the affecting " fel-
lowship of the Redeemer's suffer-
ings " is rendered. The saint's foot
tramples on a globe an action
corresponding to a scroll borne
aloft by a cherub, on which we
read: Qui non renuntiat omnibus
qua possidet, non potest meus esse dis-
cipuhis (Luke xiv. 33).*
We close this brief notice of the
Capuchin series with a picture of
" St. Thomas of Villanova " distribut-
ing alms a work which we may
suppose the painter to have valued
above all the productions of his
life when he called it su cuadro,
his own picture. The holy bishop,
vested in cope and . mitre, gives
away money at the porch of a large
church to a number of beggars and
cripples assembled for the purpose.
* This picture is now in the Museum at Seville.
The Madonna in glory, with her
Infant Son and St. John Baptist,
appears seated among luminous
clouds above the saint's head. It
was a favorite subject with Muril-
lo ; he painted it several times.
Thus, between the years 1670
and 1680 the closing decade of his
busy life Murillo, in addition to
numerous single works, had put
the finishing stroke to two impor-
tant series of his pictures in La
Caridad and the Capuchin con-
vent. " Both the series are admi-
rable," remarks M. Latour. " The
first has more grandeur, the second
greater charm. In the hospital
the Gospel maintains all its gravity,
in the convent all its legendary
gracefulness. Under this more fa-
miliar form the delicious genius of
the painter expands with more com-
plete abandonment. These scenes
of tender mysticism are so inex-
pressibly luminous that the mind
penetrates into them with hardly an
effort, and the soul is gently carried
away by them into the regions of
Paradise."
Such was Murillo, in all the power,
and the characteristic tenderness
of his art in its full maturity, in
the perfection of his natural genius,
cultivated by the assiduous labor
of a lifetime. It was his privilege,
even at an advanced age, to pass
away without showing a trace of
having outlived his powers, or the
smallest sign of their decay or di-
minution. He had long engaged
himself to paint for the Capuchins
at Cadiz a large altar-picture of
the mystic " Marriage .of St. Cath-
erine of Sienna." A wealthy mer-
chant of Cadiz, Juan Violate, a
Genoese by birth, had bequeathed
a sum of money, amounting to
,120, which was destined to de-
fray the cost of the work. The ex-
ecution of the commission was be-
830
Christian Art.
gun at Cadiz early in 1680. The
famous legendary subject, so fami-
liar in Christian art, was well sketch-
ed in when a serious illness ac-
cording to some accounts, or, to
others, a bad fall from a scaffold,
put an end to the painter's work
and obliged him to leave its com-
pletion to Meneses Osorio, his fa-
vorite pupil. Murillo, feeling, no
doubt, that the end was not far off,
returned home to Seville to die in
peace. Only Gabriel, his younger
son, remained to him ; but he had
many friends about him, and the
thousand memories and associa-
tions which gather about a place
during a residence of about sixty
years. Murillo's house at that time
was situated in the parish of Santa
Cruz ; and he passed several hours
of most evenings in his parish
church, meditating before a re-
markable picture, " the work of
Campana, a Spanish artist, re-
presenting the " Descent from
the Cross." * This picture is men-
tioned by Pacheco, in his Arte
de la Pintura, as so vividly realistic
that he felt uneasy when he looked
at it alone in the evening gloom.
Not so Murillo, who had lingered
one evening longer than was his
custom. The AngeJus had rung;
the sacristan went up to remind
him that the doors must be shut,
and asked him what he was waiting
for. " I am waiting," replied the
painter, " till those holy men have
finished taking down our Lord
from the cross."
He lingered, occasionally in great
suffering, far a couple of years.
On the 3d of April, 1682, in a state
of extreme weakness, he sent for
the notary, Guerrero, to make his
will. After declaring his adher-
ence to the Catholic faith, and
* Painted 1648 ; now in the sacristy of Seville
Cathedral.
commending himself to the protec-
tion of the Blessed Virgin, he pro-
ceeded to give directions about his
funeral. His body was to be bur-
ied in the church of Santa Cruz,
and opposite to Campana's " De-
scent." So many Masses were to be
offered for his soul's repose. A
statement of bequests and personal
debts followed, together with sums
owing to him by several of his
neighbors. He named as his execu-
tors Don Justino de Neve, his old
friend ; Don Pedro de Villavicen-
cio, his pupil ; and his son. His
two sons were to be his universal
legatees. While the notary was
inquiring the exact names of his ?
elder son he perceived that Mu-
rillo was sinking. To the usual
question as to whether he had
made an earlier will he returned
no answer, and in a few moments
he expired.
The will was, of course, infor-
mal, .but, after an official inquiry as
to the circumstances of its dicta-
tion, it was allowed to stand. Next
day his remains were buried with
much ceremony in his parish
church in the vault of the noble
family of Hernando de Jaen, and
opposite the picture he had studied
so well. A plain marble slab, bear-
ing the inscription Vive moriturus
(Live as having to die), marked
the spot. During the French oc-
cupation of Seville the church of
Santa Cruz was demolished ; and
when search was made for what
remained of Murillo, the vault was
found to contain a promiscuous
collection of bones.
Of the schools of sacred art the
Spanish was the last to reach its
highest point of excellence. Mu-
rillo's Italian contemporaries, Carlo
Dolci, Domenichino, Guido, and
Guercino, cannot be placed in an
equal rank with Titian, Raphael,
Christian Art.
831
Michael Angelo, Da Vinci, and Fra
Angelico as painters of sacred
subjects ; and the latest of these
was a 'whole century earlier than
Murillo. A similar interval sepa-
rated him from Albert Diirer, in
Germany. Holland, indeed, pos-
sessed a Rembrandt at the time
that the Seville school was most
famous ; but the Van Eycks and
Memling had raised the Flemish
school of Christian art to its pin-
nacle of fame nearly two hundred
years before Murillo was born. If
we ask who succeeded him, and
are referred to Goya and Fortuny,
it is equivalent to saying that
Christian art in Spain died with
Murillo and his pupils. Neither
of the painters named professed it.
In its highest form it has died out
of every European country as com-
pletely as out of Spain. Neither
the formal Academical studies of
Flandrin, the affected poses of Schef-
fer, nor the feeble imitations of
Overbeck can for a moment arrest
the critic's judgment that in Eu-
rope Christian art, in its best and
perfect development, is virtually
dead. It would require more space
than is at our disposal to attempt
an answer to the question, Why is
it so ? It would probably be idle
to inquire, Will it always be so ?
Is there no resurrection for the
elevating and purifying conceptions
of their art which were struck out
by the great Christian painters
from the fourteenth to the seven-
teenth century ? The subjects that
inspired their genius and animat-
ed their pencils are as real, as
true, as great to our generation as
to theirs. Can those subjects still
affect the intelligence of our age,
but fail to kindle the imagination
as of old ? Or has the pictorial
art exhausted itself? Is it no long-
er the teacher it once was, con-
veying to the multitude impressions
of the past, the distant, or the fu-
ture ? We shall not attempt to
discuss these questions now. We
shall confine our remarks for the
present to the expression of a
hope that in the New World, if
not again in the Old, a school
of art may some day arise to
emulate what its predecessors
have done, perhaps to surpass it ;
and aiming at something higher
than portraiture, landscape, or se-
cular history, to find a nobler field
for invention, a worthier incentive
to the most soaring art-ambitions
" In all that faith creates and love desires,
Terrible, strange, sublime, and beauteous things. '
832
The Catholic Church and Modern Liberties.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND MODERN LIBERTIES.*
THE campaign undertaken by
the revolutionary sect against lib-
erty of teaching has already had a
result on which we cannot but con-
gratulate ourselves : it has placed
on its proper footing the contest
which for a century has been wag-
ed between the Catholic Church
and the anti-Christian spirit. There
is no longer room for disguise : the
church is indeed the object of at-
tack ; it is Jesus Christ whom they
presume to outlaw. The Jesuits
are here but the shadow of a name,
and the great crime with which
they are reproached, the only one
to which their accusers grant some
faith and attach some importance,
is the firmness with which they
sustain the sovereign rights of re-
vealed Truth. That they have
created this truth to experiment on
it for their own benefit ; that they
have inspired the Syllabus; that
the Holy See allows itself to be
dominated by their influence of
all this those who allege it believe
not one syllable ; and it is only by
an old habit that they cover with
such absurd charges the attacks
directed against the church. More-
over, those who advance these pre-
texts are careful to lay bare their
real thought ; and from the outset
of this campaign not a speech has
been delivered in which the ques-
tion has not been more or less
clearly laid down.
We ought to thank our adversa-
ries for their frankness, for it is in-
deed time that this question should
be solved ; and how could it have
been solved so long as it was not
even understood ?
* Rev. P. H. Ramiere, S.J., in the Etudes Reli-
gieuses.
Systematically misstated by the
enemies of the church, it became, in
the eyes even of a great number of
Catholics, obscured by regrettable
prejudices. Hence arose divisions
still more to be regretted, which are
the chief cause of our weakness. We
shall recover all our strength as soon
as we are all of one mind as to the
solution of the problem, which the
revolution sets before us to-day
more clearly than it ever did be-
fore.
The present paper will, we trust,
prepare the way for this solution,
and thus facilitate the agreement
of Catholics, and break the chief
arm of the revolution.
The difficulty lies in the opposi-
tion which exists between the prin-
ciples of Christian law and those
of modern societies. The first
principle of Christian law is the
social royalty of Jesus Christ ; the
principle of modern law is the
independence of the social from
the religious order. Following the
first principle, nations, as well as
individuals, must submit to the
evangelical law interpreted by the
church ; following the second, reli-
gion is a purely individual affair,
and the state should remain neu-
tral with regard to Christianity as
to all other religions. If this latter
principle is not already inscribed
in all the constitutions, it is almost
universally admitted in practice.
The conspiracy whicti has for its
object to remove from Jesus Christ
first the empire of society and after-
wards that of souls, has accomplish-
ed the first of these two enterpri-
The Cat ho lie Church and Modern Liberties.
333
ses : Christendom no longer exists ;
it has given place to the universal
reign of social anti-Christianism.
From this there results to Chris-
tians a situation full of obscurity
and suffering. For them, it seems,
the peril is equal, of withdrawing
or of mixing in the fight. If they
withdraw they leave to the enemies
of the church full power to turn
all the forces of society towards
the complete destruction of the
church ; while, on the other hand,
they run the great risk, in accept-
ing public functions, of compro-
mising their faith and conscience,
both of which reprobate the very
principle of the laws which it is
the mission of public functions to
execute. There is thus apparent-
ly no place for them among the
divers parties who struggle for the
direction of modern societies.
Obliged to fight all round, they
must resign themselves to the fate
of having all for foes. They could
not form an alliance with them
without sacrificing something of
their principles, and consequently
without denying their faith and
giving just grounds for suspecting
their sincerity.
Such is the thorny problem which
for more than half a century has
been the torment of Christian think-
ers and divided the Catholic army.
From it have arisen the deplorable
strifes between the liberal and the
pure Catholics, and the divergen-
cies more deplorable still which
have more than once set the least
liberal Catholics wrangling. On
the one hand, they regarded above
all things the interest of the church ;
and, to save at least a portion of its
rights, they thought they might dis-
pense with insisting on the integri-
ty of those rights. On the other
hand, the integral claim was re-
garded as the supreme interest of
VOL. xxix. 53
truth ; and rather than compromise
this interest by any alliance what-
soever with the holders of error,
they preferred to condemn them-
selves to complete isolation. Thus
was transformed into a general rule
for the Catholics of all countries
the abstention from taking part in
political affairs which special cir-
cumstances have to this day im-
posed on the Catholics of Italy.
The Holy See has never sanc-
tioned so absolute an interdiction ;
nor is it imposed on us a whit
more by the demands of the most
rigorous orthodoxy. On the con-
trary, the defenders of the right
can occupy a position in the social
polemic which, without compromis-
ing their principles in the slightest
degree, may admit of their victo-
riously defending the interests of
the cause of God. Far from being
necessarily in a state of hostility
with all political parties, they may
ally themselves with that party
which has most chance of success.
The state of isolation to which we
are to-day reduced tends much less
towards our true principles than to
the false prejudices spread abroad
against us. As soon as our posi-
tion is well understood many of
those who are now against iis will
join with us in combating our real
foes, who are also theirs.
But to attain this it behoves us
above all to arrive at a common
understanding and to cease by our
mistakes exposing our flank to the
calumnies of our adversaries.
These mistakes do not date from
to-day, and in order to dissipate
them we must go back to the an-
tecedents of the present situa-
tion. Modern society is born of
the revolution, and the revolution
has been produced by repulsion
against the old regime. We may,
then, form a true idea of the doc-
334
The Catholic Church and Modern Liberties.
trinal position which we ought to
assume in the face of modem so-
ciety, in proportion as we know
the place we ought to occupy in
face of the old regime and of the
revolution which overthrew it.
But on all these points, the old
regime, the revolution, and modern
society, there exists, even among
the best minds, a confusion which
is the principal cause of the hos-
tility of which we are made the
butt, and of our internal divisions.
If we could only dissipate this we
should have gained for our cause
a double chance of success in de-
livering it from a double peril.
ii.
If there is one prejudice more
generally prevalent than another
in modern society, it is that the
upholders of Christian right aspire
after the re-establishment of the
old regime. Yet there could not
be a prejudice more ill founded.
What is the old regime? By this
word everybody understands, not
the middle ages, but the state of
affairs that immediately preceded
the Revolution of 1789. In France
it means absolute monarchy, such
as had been organized, after the
suppression of the States-General,
by Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis
XIV. This monarchy was Chris-
tian in so far as it recognized the
social royalty of Jesus Christ and
the doctrinal sovereignty of the
church. It held in its bosom the
useful institutions with which, dur-
ing twelve centuries, Christianity
had covered the soil of France. It
derived its chief force from the
faith and the Christian morals of
its people. But side by side with
these Christian elements the mon-
archy had allowed elements alto-
gether contrary to plant themselves
in its bosom. If the Christian
principle was accepted in theory,
making of the monarch the seivant
of Jesus Christ, of the church, and of
the souls of his subjects, in practice
the monarch was often guided by
the pagan principle which mak
the king the proprietary of h
kingdom. That is a point of hi
tory that does not admit of disput
At the close of the inauspicio
reign of Philip the Fair there w
formed around the throne a sch
of legists which to the end of th
monarchy constantly labored t
make the doctrine and the practi
of Csesarism prevail over the tru
idea of the Christian monarch
Reserving to themselves the dire
tion of the royal power, and n
hesitating to assail it when it w
not sufficiently docile to them, the
showed themselves, in regard to a
the other powers, jealous to exce
of their prerogatives.
To this hateful influence abov
all are the abuses to be attribute
which have rendered the old r
justly odious, and which ended b
bringing on the destruction of th
monarchy.
To appreciate justly those ab
ses, which were greatly exaggerate
by revolutionary writers, it suffic
to read the plans of reform concert-
ed between Fenelon and his virtu-
ous pupil, the second Dauphin,
There we see how the development
of the Csesarean idea had destroy-
ed at once the national liberties
and the most solid supports of the
monarchy, in order to construct
out of their ruins an edifice without
foundation, and even without the
equilibrium of royal absolutism.
As for provincial autonomy, save
four or five- departments which
had, at the price of constant strug-
gles, preserved a portion of their
liberties, all the other provinces
The Catholic Church and Modern Liberties.
835
were at the mercy of the king's in-
tendants; and these fixed the taxes
at their own. pleasure, regulated at
their own will the recruiting of the
militia, sold exemptions for their
own benefit, and increased in pro-
portion the burden of the less fa-
vored citizens. Municipal fran-
chises, if granted formerly, had
been almost universally withdrawn ;
and even Languedoc, the freest of
all the provinces in the French
monarchy, had only been able to
preserve to its communes the right
of choosing their chief magistrates
by repurchasing three times over,
and at a costly price, this right,
which the greed of the treasury
had made an object of traffic.
As for the aristocracy, properly
so called, the nobility, despoiled of
all the power which had made of it
a counterpoise to the royal abso-
lutism, no longer preserved more
than honorary and fiscal privileges,
which exposed them to becoming
hateful from the moment that they
were not justified by corresponding
duties. In place of allowing them
to reside on their estates, where
their good offices would have
shown their riches to be a blessing,
the monarch used every effort to
attract them to the court, where
they squandered in barren luxury
the revenue of their abandoned do-
mains.
One power alone had survived,
or rather had substituted itself for
the influences capable of temper-
ing the . absolute royalty of the
monarch. This power was that
of the legists, the parliament. But
far from being a guarantee for the
true national liberties, the develop-
ment of parliamentary prerogative
threatened the ruin of the holiest
of all liberties religious liberty.
In proportion as it extended its
jurisdiction in the political order
the parliament arrogated to itself a
more tyrannical jurisdiction in the
affairs of the spiritual order. The
bishops were no longer to be al-
lowed to communicate with the
pope or to assemble in council.
The abuses which the church was
no longer in a position to correct
multiplied and furnished pretexts
for new usurpations. The monas-
teries, given by favor to abbes
who had nothing of the eccle-
siastic about them but the name,
underwent a lamentable deca-
dence. Even the free adminis-
tration of the sacraments was no
longer allowed to the clergy, while
at the same time that the parlia-
ments condemned the bulls of the
popes and the mandates of the
bishops they commanded them to
absolve heretics, and compelled
them under threat of imprisonment
to administer the holy Eucharist to
them.
Such was the state to which the
growing influence of Csesarism had
brought the French monarchy and
society. Is it possible for people
in good faith to think the defend-
ers of Christian right are anxious
to return to such a regime? I
make bold to affirm, on the con-
trary, that their feeling of repulsion
for the old regime cannot but in-
crease the more they study with
serious purpose the traditions of
the Catholic school in the works of
the great doctors. That Gallican
monarchists of the school of Bos-
suet may be led to confound the
Christian monarchy with the abso-
lutism of Louis XIV., we admit ;
but the disciples of St. Thomas and
Suarez will range themselves by
preference on the side of Fenelon ;;
and allowing for everything, in the
re'gime that the Revolution over-
threw, which it had that was really
Christian and truly national, they
836
The Catholic Church and Modern Liberties.
I
will not hesitate to blame severely
the abuses which had rendered it
hostile to the national liberties, in
the degree in which it had depart-
ed from the traditions of the ages
of faith.
m.
If \ve can only distinguish in the
old regime the two contrary ele-
ments, which are too often con-
founded, we shall have no uncer-
tainty respecting the position which
we ought to assume towards the
revolution.
Here again we find ourselves
faced by a confusion which can
only be explained either by the
-success of this satanic conspiracy
<rn the midst of a people profound-
ly Christian, or by the different
;-manner in which, notwithstanding
fits crimes, it is interpreted by hon-
<est men.
Jn .the revolution one is apt to
confound the lawful aspirations
which gave birth to it with the
criminal tendencies which brought
on its bloody denouement. In this
juggling of the national liberties
the promises of the leaders and the
hopes of -the dupes are confounded
with the real designs of the first
and the terrible deception of the
second.
The univ-ersal aspiration of
France at the end of the last cen-
tury was a reform of the abuses of
the old regime, and a return to the
national traditions as modified by
the necessities of new times. In
his excellent work on the Vicissi-
tudes of France M. de Larcy sets
in parallel tables the scheme for-
mulated by the Third Estate of
Paris at the time of the reunion
of the States-General, in 1789, and
the plans of reform proposed by
Fenelon to the 'Dauphin eighty
years before. There is between
the one and the other complete
accord on all points of importance.
On both sides nothing else was de-
manded than the suppression of
oppressive institutions and the re-
establishment of the old franchises
regular representation of the n;
tion by States-General freely elect<
every three years ; a large decei
tralization and autonomy to tl
provinces and communes, by coi
ceding administrative functions
the provincial assemblies ; equalil
in legislation by a codification of
the laws and the customs ; equality
in the administration of justice by
the suppression of exceptional ju-
risdictions; a retrenching of the
abused privileges of the nobles, and
the opening of careers in which
they should win by useful labors
the honors attached to their rank ;
finally, freedom of the clergy in
regard to spirituals, accompanied
by a renunciation of a portion of
their temporal privileges.
Such were the true aspirations
of France in 1789, and assuredly
there is nothing but what is most
lawful in such aspirations. If they
had only been satisfied, as they un-
questionably ought to have been,
even before having been formulat-
ed, by the pupil of Fenelon, instead
of the terrible eruption which over-
turned everything we should have
had a real restoration in France.
Not only would the principle of
the Christian order not have been
altered, but it would have acquired
an expansion much more complete
than it had been able to attain
during five centuries. France
would have returned to the paths
which St. Louis had opened up
to it.
But this restoration, for which
the whole nation sighed, was the
very antipode of the purpose which
The Catholic Church and Modern Liberties.
837
the anti-Christian faction had pro-
posed to itself. In the Masonic
lodges, where the sect was organ-
ized, it was resolved to turn to-
wards the overthrow of the Chris-
tian order the movement which in
its principle only proposed to de-
stroy the abuses begotten of the
changing of the Christian order.
To accomplish this the senses of
words were changed ; they called
liberty, not the exemption from
trammels in the exercise of their
rights, but the negation of the
rights of God guaranteed by all
the others; authority was called
despotism ; in place of individual,
domestic, communal, provincial
liberties, which alone are fruitful
and real, they offered to the nation
as the supreme and only aim of all
their ambitions a pretended sove-
reignty, which proposed to invest a
central assembly with the right of
oppression. To this new sovereign,
as much less responsible as it was
multiform, was attributed a power
over one's goods, over families,
over communes, over provinces.,
over all associations, over the souls
and bodies of citizens a power in-
comparably more despotic than
that with which the most absolute
monarchs thought themselves in-
vested. Csesarism, in changing its
form, only became more oppressive ;
in denying the divine source of au-
thority it destroyed the sole effica-
cious guarantee of liberty ; and
soon the closed temples, the sup-
pressed educational establishments,
confiscated properties, the priests,
the nobles, citizens of every condi-
tion, the revolutionists themselves
cast into prison and hurried to the
guillotine, caused deceived France
to understand the true sense of the
word revolution.
They have since attempted to
make us forget this sense ; and
to-day again nothing is forgotten
which might increase the confusion
that constitutes the whole stock-
in-trade of the sect. By revolution
they would again wish us to under-
stand the abolition of abuses ; and
when we speak of a counter-revo-
lution they translate this term by
the re-establishment of the old re-
gime. To the impudent adherence
to such falsehoods it is necessary
to oppose the invincible resistance
of truth. It is necessary to say,
and again to say, that we detest the
revolution, not because it has de-
stroyed the old regime, but because
it has continued it in its most
odious abuses; because it has car-
ried incomparably farther than that
re'gime the contempt for all true
liberties, and that by very virtue of
the principle on which it is built.
Yes, in the revolutionary theory of
Rousseau and his modern disciples
we recognize the most tyrannical
doctrine which has ever dared to
be advanced ; and this doctrine
we repel with all the force of our
souls, in the name of the dignity of
man as well as in the name of di-
vine truth.
IV.
What, then, is our doctrinal posi-
tion in the face of modern society?
This position is very clear ; and
if it has-been so ill understood, it
is because to this very day society
itself has not been able to under-
stand itself. From the day of its
pretended deliverance its entire
existence has been but one lamenta-
ble misapprehension a mad pur-
suit of liberty by a road which leads
far away from the term so ardently
desired. It is not I who say this.
" Seventy-five years of combat and
sufferings to conquer liberty be-
hold our tradition !" says M. La-
838
The Catholic Church and Modern Liberties.
boulaye. The truly liberal insti-
tutions " which have made the
glory and the grandeur of our
neighbors France has been con-
stantly yearning for these seventy-
five years ; but, sad to say, ten
times have her efforts proved de-
ceitful and her hopes been lost."
In what, then, consists this con-
stant misapprehension ? In this :
that, deceived by the revolutionary
lie, modern society has confounded
under the name of liberty three
very different things : social liber-
ties, political liberty, and what it
calls religious liberty.
Social liberties are, to wit, the
liberty of the person, of action, of
goods, of the family, the commune,
of voluntary associations substan-
tial liberties which every man ought
above all to assure to himself, and
which every truly civilized state
ought to guarantee to its members.
Political liberty, or the partici-
pation of all citizens in the govern-
ment of the country, is plainly very
far from having for them the same
value as independence in the con-
duct of their daily affairs ; and it is
above all things as a guarantee of
social liberties that it behoves them
to preserve it.
As for religious liberty, which
consists in the power given each
one to make a religion for himself
and attack the religion which is
established, this is so far legitimate
and precious when the established
religion is purely human, and so far
destructive when the established
religion is certainly divine; for re-
ligious faith being the only solid
basis of morality, the attacks made
against it tend to destroy all rights,
and consequently to endanger all
true liberties.
But what has France been doing
for an age? Confusing these three
kinds of liberties, she is constantly
putting off the acquisition of the
first, the social liberties, whicl
alone could render her really free,
but the re-establishment of which
the revolution has rendered almost
impossible. As for the second, pc
litical liberties, France rejects ai
reconquers them successively, a(
cording as she feels too vividly th<
dangers of their exercise when she
possesses them, or regret for their
loss when she has been despoiled
of them. She thereupon attaches
everything to what she calls reli-
gious liberty, by virtue of which
she delivers up the religious basis
of all rights and all liberties with-
out defence to the attacks of error
and of vice.
Here, then, lies the great mis-
take of modern society ; here
is the explanation of its continual
agitations and deceptions unceas-
ingly renewed, in this constant
travail whose tortures, for ever in-
creasing, accumulate only in a per-
petual abortion.
Well, it is the defenders of Chris-
tian right who are for ever striving
to put an end to this fatal misap-
prehension. They alone have the
reading of the riddle whose ambi-
guity delivers up modern society
as a prey to the revolutionary
sphinx. Far from unintelligently
condemning, as they are charged,
the aspirations after liberty, they
present themselves for eighteen
centuries before freed nations, the
Gospel in one hand and history in
the other ; and they say to them :
We are not only not the enemies,
but by virtue of our principles we
are the defenders, of the true popu-
lar liberties, those which alone are
practical and substantial, personal
and social liberties. The Chris-
tian law alone has given them to
the world. Established by the
church, sustained and augmented
The Catholic Church and Modern Liberties.
839
by the monarcbs most docile to its
direction, they developed them-
selves in France parallel with her
influence; have declined with that
influence under the pressure of
monarchical Caesarism ; and have
ended by being completely sup-
pressed by the anarchical Caesarism
of the revolution. We only aspire
to make them live again, while the
revolution continues to ravish us
of them.
As for political liberty, we by no
means attach the same value to
it. At the same time we are far
from being hostile to it in princi-
ple. The church, which during the
course of its long existence has al-
lied itself with all forms of govern-
ment, has found in turn allies and
persecutors in monarchical as in
democratic governments. It is not,
then, a question of interest which
can lead it to prefer one to another.
What it demands of all is that they
respect the law divine and guard
safely human rights. The form of
government which shall maintain
them more efficaciously in their
duties, while giving them a strong-
er force to defend their rights, is
that which will obtain the prefer-
ence.
Everybody sees that on this dou-
ble ground there can be no quarrel
between the defenders of Christian
law and modern society. The true
tendencies of that society, its gen-
erous, lawful, and liberal aspira-
tions, in the best sense, we not
only do not oppose, but justify and
assist with all our power ; and in
pointing out the error which has
rendered them vain to this day we
indicate the only means of obtain-
ing their final and durable comple-
tion.
v.
There remains religious liberty ;
and this forms the real knot of the
difficulty.
WQ are told that religious liberty
is the basis of modern society ; of
all the conquests of 1789, it is that
to which society has attached the
greatest price ; and it shows plain-
ly enough, by the strifes which it
has sustained for four-and-twenty
years, that it is disposed to sacri-
fice everything rather than be strip-
ped of this conquest. But this
liberty is contrary to the principles
of Christian doctrine; you cannot,
therefore, be sincere and logical in
the profession of those principles
without declaring yourselves the
enemies of this liberty, and without
avowing that you desire its de-
struction.
Consequently you place your-
selves under the ban of modern so-
ciety, and declare yourselves un-
worthy of participating in the bene-
fits which religious liberty guaran-
tees to all sorts of opinions. With
what right, in fact, could you in-
voke it in your favor, when your
principles prevent you from grant-
ing it to others ? With what face
dare you proclaim it while the
weaker party, when we know that
you are resolved to suppress it if
in the ascendant ?
Here lies the great argument, I
may say the only argument, of our
adversaries. From the beginning
of the present contest the speeches
delivered in the tribune and the
articles in the journals are hardly
anything else than variations, more
or less stupid, of this one theme.
On this foundation alone they build
the speeches destined to set in mo-
tion the prescriptive laws.
These laws only strike at one
class of citizens ; but it is impor-
tant above all things to state clearly
the immense bearing that they
borrow from this principle. From
840
The Catholic Church and Modern Liberties.
the moment that a sufficient motive
is found for outlawing us in the ex-
ercise of the divine mission of the
Catholic Church, and in the pro-
fession that it makes of being the
only true religion, it is no longer
certain unauthorized religions that
the state proscribes, but the entire
clergy, since they cannot without pre-
varication cease from teaching the
doctrine of the church on this sub-
ject. They saw this recently in our
parliament ; they avowed that the
liberty allowed to the secular cler-
gy, while some of the religious con-
gregations were attacked, is illogi-
cal and a true evil ; and they ex-
cused themselves by saying that
the toleration of one evil might be
necessary in order to prevent a
greater.
We see, therefore, that the prin-
ciple is fertile, for it tends to de-
prive all Catholic priests of their
civil rights; but it has a bearing
wider yet, for in the question
which it raises the simple faithful
can only have the same belief as
their pastors. " These doctrines,"
said an uncompromising orator*
the oth'er day to the opportunist
legislators " these doctrines have
become the doctrines of the
church." They have long since
acquired this character, as our ad-
versaries themselves rightly trace
them back to the words of our Sav-
iour : Ite docete go and teach. But
listen to the conclusion : From the
moment that they become doctrines
of the church " all citizens who
become members of the Catholic
Church are bound to profess them.
Be logical, then, and extend your
interdict to the secular clergy."
"We say for our part : From the
moment that they have always been
* M. Madier de Monjau, quoted by M. Paul
Bert in the latter's speech in the Chamber of De-
puties during the session of June 21.
the doctrines of the church all
true Catholics are bound'to pro-
fess them and really do profess
them. Be, therefore, quite logical,
and make a law which deprives all
Catholics of their civil rights.
But you cannot stop even here
for Catholics are not the only ones
who consider the profession of
certain religious doctrine as nec<
sary to society. The prerogative
which we claim in favor of the su-
pernatural revelation, interpreted
by the church, others claim in fa-
vor of natural religion. M. Jules
Simon, for instance, maintains that
an atheist has no right to teach
in the name of the state. He
therefore also deserves to be de-
prived of the liberty which he re-
fuses to others. And if we are
wholly logical we must recognize
that only those ought to have the
liberty of teaching who, admitting
no absolute truth, attribute equal
rights to all doctrines ; in other
words, that there is only liberty of
teaching for those who have noth-
ing to teach, since the sole object
of teaching is the truth.
Is this enough ? No. The arm
which they borrow to strike us does
not menace all believers only ; it
has a higher and wider sweep yet :
it reaches to God himself. Let us
speak more clearly : it is against
God that it is directed from first to
last, since it only strikes us accord-
ing as we make profession of faith
in, and bear witness to, the word of
God.
If the argument has any worth
it is no longer permissible for the
Creator to reveal truth to his rea-
sonable creature nor to impose his
will on him ; for it is evident that,
if God has spoken to him, man is
compelled to obey his orders and
to proclaim the necessity of ac-
complishing them in a word, to
The Catholic ClinrcJi and Modern Liberties.
act as the Catholic Church has
been acting for eighteen centuries
in regard to the Word which it
knows to be divine. If the fidelity
with which it continues to fulfil
its mission furnishes modern society
with a just subject of proscription,
we must hold that modern society
has acquired the right to impose
silence on God and to interdict to
him all exercise of his authority.
Behold the true bearing of the
argument with which our adver-
saries think to confound us. We
lately heard the ablest of them de-
velop this thesis with a frankness
for which we had to thank him.
He proclaimed in emphatic terms
not only the right but the duty
of teaching as an imprescriptible
right and as a duty which is im-
posed on all virtuous men ; for, ac-
cording to him, " no one can, with-
out being a culpable egoist, re-
serve to himself a portion of the
truth." But immediately after he
refused to God in so many terms
the right which he claimed for
man ; and he condemned the infi-
nitely good God to the culpable
egoism which alone could hold the
truth captive on the lips of him who
possessed it. Lawful and obliga-
tory teaching, so far as it only in-
vokes human right, would become,
according to this theory, a criminal
usurpation if it proceeded from the
divine truth ! The man who pos-
sesses the smallest portion of truth
has the right and the duty to com-
municate it to his fellows, and God,
who is the eternal and infinite
truth, has neither this right nor
this power with respect to the
creature whom he made to know
the truth !
Behold whither the revolution
is borne when it searches for prin-
ciples in its attacks on liberty.
Indeed, a greater service could
not be rendered to us than to set
the question on these grounds.
Those who would accuse us of ex-
aggeration when we affirm that the
revolutionary doctrine implies the
negation of God will surely not re-
fuse to believe the titled defenders
of this doctrine. They no longer
leave us any doubt as to the true
motive of their hate ; and we ought
to esteem ourselves highly honored
thereby. It is no longer certain
obscure religions, it is no longer
the Catholic clergy only, it is no
longer the Christian religion itself,
that the revolution attacks. Be-
hold it at last showing itself in its
true colors and revealing to us the
depths of its thought : it is God
himself that it attack?, the absolute
truth, the first principles of all re-
ligion, of all morality, of all rights
and liberties ; and consequently it
gives us the right to count, in our
defence against its attacks, on the
support of all men for whom liberty,
right, morality, religion, God are
not vain words.
When the question shall be thus
understood by all, the hypocrisy of
the anti-Christian sect will be un-
masked, the illusion of modern
society will be dissipated, and the
era of true liberty will succeed to
the reign, already too prolonged, of
revolutionary tyranny.
VI.
We do not purpose contenting
ourselves with this reductio ad ab-
surdum of the sophism which con-
stitutes the chief doctrine of the
sect. Let us examine it in itself,
and conclude by placing in all its
light the attitude which the princi-
ples of Christian right impose on
us with regard to religious liberty.
There are here two distinct qties-
842
The Catholic Church and Modern Liberties.
tions : a question of theory and a
question of practice.
In theory our doctrine is known.
Constantly professed in the church,
and lately called to mind in the
Syllabus i it is to-day thrown in our
face by our adversaries, who seem
to think that we cannot hear their
exposition of it without blushing.
They deceive themselves : we ac-
cept it whole and entire, but not
the travesties of it which they deck
out. To remove every misappre-
hension we again sum it up in a
few words.
We believe that there is a re-
ligious truth as absolute and as im-
mutable as mathematical truth, and
that this truth is the basis of the
material order. To the orator who
recently maintained that there was
a morality of the state, but that
there is neither a religion nor
metaphysics of the state, we oppose
the truth of good sense perfectly
demonstrated by M. Jules Simon.
As there is no code without morality,
there is no morality without belief.
"From the time that the human
law is founded on justice, and not
justice on human law, there is a
God." You cannot, then, cause
faith in God and religion to be de-
stroyed without destroying at the
same time all morality, all legisla-
tion, all social order.
But we believe that no human
authority is capable of establishing
this religious truth which human
society could not allow to die out.
Every man being essentially fallible,
no one can teach with an authority
sufficient to impose on his equals
faith in his word. Here we are at
one with our adversaries : we de-
clare that the teaching of religious
truths is not within the jurisdiction
of human powers, and that the con-
science is independent of their ju-
risdiction. If a state without re-
ligion is an impossibility for us, a
state religion, understood in the
sense of a religion created, defined,
and governed by the state, is a
tyranny and an absurdity.
In what, then, consists our dissent,
and in what is our belief opposed
to modern principles ?
In this : that we do not admit
that society should be condemned
to perish, crushed out by this nec-
essity which it is essentially incapa-
ble of satisfying. This religious
truth which it cannot allow to die,
and which it cannot procure of it-
self, we believe has been given it
from heaven, and that a purely
spiritual authority has been estab-
lished on the earth to teach, define,
and defend it.
This authority being divine, like
religion itself, we believe that so-
cieties as well as individuals are
bound to submit to its teachings.
And since the sure possession of
moral truth is the most essential
condition of social peace, we be-
lieve that a society which enjoys
this advantage ought to consider
the maintenance of it not only as the
most sacred of its duties, but, more-
over, as the most vital of all its in-
terests.
We place, then, in theory, liberty
to attack the true religion in the
same rank as liberty to attack mo-
rality and the principles of social
right. We are persuaded that the
state cannot sacrifice the first of
these rights without placing itself
in the impossibility of defending
the others. We can only admit,
therefore, as an abnormal and nec-
essarily disturbed state of affairs
that wherein religious truth is de-
livered without defence to the at-
tacks of passion and of vice. The
ideal state of society is for us that
wherein the agreement of all intel-
ligences in the profession of the
The Catholic Church and Modern Liberties.
843
same beliefs guarantees their union
of will in respect to the same rights
and the accomplishment of the
same duties.
This ideal of intellectual and
moral unity which the Catholic
Church is alone capable of realizing,
and which it had partially realized
in the middle ages, we have hopes
will come one day to crown the
material progress which is the glory
of modern society.
If this hope is a crime, and if one
is a traitor to modern society be-
cause he desires for it what he
considers to be the most essential
condition of its true prosperity, in
very truth, then, are we culpable,
and we deserve to undergo the
civil incapacities which are the
chastisement of treason.
Meanwhile we may be permitted
to ask, In virtue of what law are
they so ready to punish our con-
victions and our inner aspirations ?
Place, if you will, religious unity in
the same rank with theft and assas-
sination ; it yet remains for you to
inform us since when have you the
right to cast a man into prison or
to conduct him to the scaffold sim-
ply because you imagine that you
have convicted him of a desire
of committing a larceny or a mur-
der. Human law can only touch
outward acts. Is there an excep-
tion alone in the case of religious
convictions ; and will the desire of
seeing our fellows accept the law to
which we ourselves submit be the
only internal act which ought to be
chastised by a rigorous penalty?
Strange crime indeed ! To lis-
ten to our accusers, it would seem
that we conspire to enslave all in-
telligences under the yoke of our
authority. But is it thus? Is this
our doctrine which we seek to
make prevail ? Have we invented
a single one of the articles of that
creed which we would wish to see
all our fellows profess ? But if,
on the other hand, our faith is im-
posed on us by a divine authority,
and if, freely submissive to this au-
thority by sincere conviction, we
have no other pretension than to
bring our fellow-men to share free-
ly in the light and the peace which
it affords to us, how is it possible
for any one to see therein an at-
tempt against society?
But they tell us that the pro-
scription with which they purpose
striking us is a measure of social
defence. Sincere or not, our con-
victions impose on us the duty of
combating all these liberties of mo-
dern society ; and consequently
society owes it to itself to preserve
itself from our attacks by depriv-
ing us of our liberty.
We have already said enough to
cause this incredible charge to be
appreciated at its just value. We
now know which are the friends of
true individual and social liberties,
the disciples of Jesus Christ or
those of Rousseau. But as far as
concerns religious liberty itself, how
can they prove that we seek to de-
stroy it in countries where it is
established or where the division
of faiths makes, it indispensable?
They have cited as propfs the com-
plaints wrung from the Sovereign
Pontiff by the efforts of heresy to
corrupt the Roman people. But
who does not see the essential dif-
ference between a country in which
unity in religious truth reigns and
countries where it does not exist ?
Where religious unity exists we
believe it to be a crime to strive to
destroy this unity ; and in Rome this
crime is aggravated by the infamous
means which heresy makes use of,
and by the certainty that in corrupt-
ing Catholics not honest Protestants
are made, but apostate Christians.
844
The Catholic Church and Modern Liberties.
A similar state of affairs has no-
thing in common with that of
France, where for a long period all
errors have acquired a right of
place. But it is with France we
are concerned just now; and it is
in France that we are accused of
conspiring against religious liberty.
In what, I ask, can this conspiracy
consist ? With what weapons, with
what hands, do they suppose we
could choke up liberty? Is it the
president of the republic or his
ministry whom we dream of invest-
ing with a power analogous to that
of the doge of Venice? Or per-
haps some may fear that one of
these days we may elevate a mon-
arch on a shield with the condition
that he permits us to make a new
St. Bartholomew's day. Criminal
as they suppose us to be, they
might at least do us the honor of
not believing us completely bereft
of our senses. But one must have
lost his senses to suppose that the
Christian order can be established
in society otherwise than by the
free and unanimous consent of so-
ciety itself.
And here is where our ac-
cusers persist in mistaking us.
When they hold up our beliefs
they confound theory with prac-
tice. The Christian order, which
we recognize as the only true ideal
of society, they pretend to believe
we are eager to impose violently on
our dechristianized societies, and
they are unwilling to understand
that the Christian order necessa-
rily supposes a Christian society.
The design which they attribute to
us of destroying religious liberty in
countries where it is established is
doubly absurd : in the first place,
because truth ought not and cannot
be imposed by violence; in the
second place, because among mo-
dern peoples who construct govern-
ments after their own image there
is no longer a Christian govern-
ment to impose the faith on the
nations which are no longer Chris-
tian. The Austrian Concordat,
which left full liberty to the dis-
senting sects, could not be carried
into execution, because it was found
too Catholic for a nation in which
the ruling classes had ceased to be
dissenters. How are we to sup-
pose otherwise that the re-establish-
ment of religious unity could have
been the work of the political au-
thority? No, no ; such is not our
hope. If the religion of Jesus
Christ ought to triumph over mo-
dern paganism as it triumphed
over paganism of old, it will owe
its victory to the free discussion
which shall demonstrate the truth,
and to the still more effective dem-
onstration of experience which will
disgust the peoples with error.
Such is, in theory and practice,
the conspiracy against modern lib-
erties in which they seek a mo-
tive to deprive us of the benefit
of our liberties. In theory it is a
striving after a state of affairs in
which the unity of beliefs will ren-
der possible the re-establishment of
all the substantial liberties which
the revolution deprived us of; in
practice it is an appeal, not to vio-
lence, which is only used to-day
against us ; not to the intervention
of the political power, which could
only be fatal to us, but to free dis-
cussion and experience.
It is to defend themselves against
this peaceful conspiracy that our
adversaries are not ashamed to
place themselves, by their own
admission, in contradiction with
their principles, and only find safety
in prescriptive measures. In truth,
they do us great honor, and, after
their fashion, render glorious testi-
mony to our cause. They have at
TJie CatJiolic C/iurc/i and Modern Liberties.
845
their disposal all the social forces ;
the thousand organs of the press
are at their beck ; any kind of wea-
pon is serviceable to them as a
means of attack : lying, calumny,
sophistry, the appeal to the lowest
lusts and to the most perverse ap-
petites. If, indeed, they sincerely
believed that they had truth on
their side, should they not be the
first to call for a free discussion ?
In falling back on violence to dis-
arm us they prove that they have
faith in the justice of our cause.
Let them, then, use this weapon,
which is the proper arm of injus-
tice, but let them not attempt to
justify the suppression of our free-
dom by our alleged conspiracy
against the freedom of others; for
we have just demonstrated that
this accusation, which has no real
foundation whatever, even in re-
gard to the supposed religious liber-
ty is the very opposite of truth in the
matter of all other liberties, social
and political.
VII.
I have no hesitation in believing
that the reconciliation of modern
society with the church will be
very near as soon as people shall
have grasped our doctrinal stand-
point as here set forth. From
that day forth we shall see a schism
work in the ranks of those who to-
day unite in attacking us under the
deceitful ensign of liberalism. We
shall continue to have for foes the
tyrannical sect for which liberalism
only serves as a mask, and which
in reality is no less the enemy of
the true liberty of men than of the
authority of God. For it there are
no other rights than those of the
state ; all powers are drawn thence;
all interests must be sacrificed to
its interests ; and as above its sov-
ereignty there is neither on the
earth nor in heaven any authority
that could limit its omnipotence,
so there is under it no liberty which
is not subject to its caprice. Has
no't this theory of the sophist of
Geneva, which we should have be-
lieved to be for ever discredited
by the bloody commentary on it
given by the Convention, dared
again to flaunt itself quite recently
in our national tribune ? Yes, it is
to France, to that nation which
has never been subdued by any
other tyranny than that of the de-
mocratic republic of 1793 it is to
France that, less than a century
after the legalized massacres of the
revolutionary tribunal, a man has
dared address these words : " I say
that there is reason to fear that
this power of the state, if it be
handed over to a monarch, would
have such fatal consequences that
it would degenerate into tyranny
(we know some examples of this) ;
but how could you entertain this
mistrust, justified by the single au-
thority of one man, in a democratic
republic ? For who is here mas-
ter, unless the nation ? Who issues
laws, imposes restrictions, unless
the universal body of citizens, con-
sulted and in a way condensed into
one or several chambers ?" For
these grand words let us substitute
the reality which they represent.
In place of the universal body of
citizens let us set a majority, like
that of the National Convention,
enslaved by a handful of wicked
wretches. Let us bestow on this
majority, which does not even own
itself, absolute power to dispose of
property, of life, of the very con-
science of citizens, and we shall
have the theory of revolutionary
liberty in its naked truth.
Clearly, between the defenders
of Christian law and liberals of this
846
The Catholic CJiurch and Modern Liberties.
stamp there is no possible means
of conciliation. We differ from
them as far by the idea we form of
the human rights of the state as
by our belief in the divine rights
of the church. For us the state
has created neither the rights of
the individual nor those of the fami-
ly ; it has, on the contrary, been cre-
ated to protect those rights, and
consequently it has of itself no
other rights than those which can
aid it in rendering this protection
more efficacious. From our point
of view, it is not civil society which
is the end of the individual, but
the individual who is the end of
civil society. It therefore cannot
attribute to itself an absolute pow-
er over its members. We recog-
nize no other absolute power than
that of God ; God is the end of
man, and all men being by nature
equal, all having immortal desti-
nies, eternal interests, there is in the
world no power which has the right
to refuse to the least among men the
liberty to administer those interests
and to accomplish that destiny.
Such is our belief regarding the
dignity and the liberty of man.
This doctrine, it will be seen, is
the antithesis of the revolutionary
theory, according to which the
state is everything and the indi-
vidual nothing. We resign our-
selves, therefore, to the misfortune
of having the holders of this theory
for adversaries ; but we cannot al-
low that in the battle which they
wage with us they should any long-
er bear themselves as the defend-
ers of liberty and make us its ene-
mies. It is time that words resume
their true sense and each one be-
take himself to his role. If France
would begin anew the experience
winch it underwent at the end of
the last century, let it deliver itself
up again to the disciples of Rous-
seau and confide its destinies to
the rivals of Robespierre. Perhaps
it lias not yet shed enough of blood
or accumulated enough of ruins !
Perhaps this new triumph of the
revolution is necessary to bring
about its final defeat. But if to
the role of victim it would not add
that of dupe, let it cease to wait
upon the liberty of a sect whose
doctrine only tends to organize
slavery.
Thank God ! all who wear the
livery of liberalism do not belong
to this tyrannical faction. There
are men outside of our ranks who
sincerely wish for liberty, and who,
in claiming it for error, are dispos-
ed not to refuse it to truth. If be-
tween those men and us there are
differences in point of opinion, we
have nevertheless many common
principles which may serve as cords
in a fruitful alliance on practical
grounds. Separated from us and
united to the liberals of the school
that calls itself authoritative by a
double misapprehension, they will
eome to us as soon as they become
better acquainted with our true
doctrines, and their hypocritical al-
lies shall have thrown off the mask
under which they hide their odious
despotism.
A Legend of St. Paschal Bay Ion. 847
A LEGEND OF ST. PASCHAL BAYLON.
A SHEPHERD-BOY, upon the hills of Spain,
Watching the wandering steps of silly sheep
O'er grassy upland, far up stream-washed steep,
Sang ever in his heart a sweet refrain :
Happy the sheep whom God, the Lord, doth lead,
And he my shepherd is ; I shall not need.
Soft mists were on the hills, and, wavering, clung
To far-off peaks that pierced the thin veil through,
Bright domes of silver 'gainst the heavens' blue
Where mild, ^Eolian winds an anthem sung:
Lo ! as from earth the stainless skies seem far,
So God's thoughts above man's uplifted are.
Paschal, the shepherd, praised with lowly heart
The lot that gave the flocks unto his care,
Thinking of crook the Shepherd true doth bear,
And wayward sheep that seeketh life apart
From Him that leadeth unto pastures sweet,
Softening the stony ways to bruised feet.
From far green valley rose the sound of bell
That told the daily sacrifice of Love,
The swift descent of Him who reigns above,
Yet loving deigns in earthly shrine to dwell.
Skipped all the little hills with joy untold
While sunlit domes seemed heaven's peace to hold.
As broke the sweet sound through the blessed air
Paschal knelt quickly on the rocks he trod,
Lifted his soul in ecstasy to God,
Serving God's altar through his longing prayer :
Oh ! praise the Lord, all living things below, 1
All fruitful fields, ye winds, and hail, and snow !
As low he knelt, unto the shepherd-boy
Was vision given of his soul's desire,
Kindling anew his seraph heart of fire,
Lighting his face with thought of holiest joy.
848 A Legend of St. Paschal Bay Ion.
O happy sheep ! that knoweth His true voice,
Hearing its sweetness bidding life rejoice.
An angel held the shining Host on high,
While humble Paschal's ravished soul adored
The Sacramental Presence of the Lord,
For whom out-rang the clear bell's harmony.
So sweet the waters where His footsteps lead,
The Shepherd true who knoweth all our need.
The vision faded ; Paschal led once more
His flocks o'er grassy heights, by waters clear;
The little lambs their shepherd drawing near
As, softly, he the weary-footed bore,
While still his heart un faded thought did keep
Of Him that His life giveth for His sheep.
The low winds breathed the bell's far melody ;
The white-starred blossoms, shining from the sod,
Seemed unto Paschal shadows frail of God,
And sweeter sang his heart in ecstasy:
Happy the sheep whom Christ, our Lord, doth lead,
And he my Shepherd is ; how shall I need ?
O shepherd saint, that on the hills of Spain
Didst watch the wandering steps of silly sheep,
Didst pure, through life, the wondrous vision keep,
Pray thou our colder hearts sing sweet refrain :
Happy the sheep whom God, our Lord, doth feed,
And he our Shepherd is ; how shall we need ?
Current Events.
849
CURRENT EVENTS.
CATHOLICS AND LIBERTY.
WE call the special attention of
our readers to Father Ramiere's
article on "The Catholic Church
and Modern Liberties," of which a
translation is given elsewhere. It
is a very courageous article, written
with even more than the usual ve-
hement eloquence and keenness of
vision characteristic of the learned
author. It is called forth by the
present situation in France, but its
scope is universal.
Father Ramiere complains that
the attitude, or, as he more forcibly
puts it, the doctrinal position, of
the Catholic Church towards mo-
dern liberties is both misunder-
stood and wilfully misrepresented.
It is misunderstood even by Catho-
lics themselves, and the misunder-
standing has given rise to those
deplorable dissensions from which
the Catholic family in France has
especially suffered, but which are
unfortunately by no means restrict-
ed to France. Father Ramiere's
object is to clear up this misunder-
standing and expose this misrepre-
sentation once for all. If he suc-
ceeds in this Catholics will be
brought to one mind, which is the
first necessary element for future
success; the honest-minded among
their adversaries will learn to ap-
preciate their position and join
hands with them against those who
use the mantle of liberty to cover
the most revolting tyranny.
We sincerely hope that Father
Ramiere may succeed in at least
one portion of his work: that of
bringing about unanimity among
Catholics regarding their position
towards modern liberties. For
VOL. xxix. 54
certainly Catholics in 'France have
suffered greatly from a disintegrat-
ing process, resulting, doubtless, in
great part from their political di-
visions. The chief weapon used
against them by those whom Father
Ramiere calls the revolutionary
sect is the constant assertion that
they hate modern liberties and are
always striving to go back to the
old regime. The old regime, to be
sure, is a rather vague phrase, but
phrases work wonders in France.
Father Ramiere begins by very
effectively squelching the stupid
charge regarding the old regime so
effectively, indeed, that one wonders
how even "the revolutionary sect "
had ever the courage to make it,
while he regrets that Father Ra-
miere's squelching process did not
come into act a little earlier in the
day. He then turns on " modern
liberties," and mercilessly exposes
the utter hollowness and falseness
of the title as used in the cant of the
day. And how thoroughly he does
all this the reader can judge for
himself.
The question remains, If the Ca-
tholics will not go back to the old
regime, and if they will not accept
modern liberties as expounded by
the present regime in France, what
in the name of peace and good
citizenship do they want ? Father
Ramiere shows very clearly what
they want. They want real liber-
ty ; political, social, and religious
liberty ; liberty of the person and
of goods, liberty of worship and
of conscience, and a proper share
in the government of themselves
These cannot come from haphaz
ard governments. They can come
from no government that is not
850
Current Events.
founded in its essence on the law
of Christ. These modern liberties
let not the phrase frighten
American readers ; it is only used
as interpreted by the revolutionary
sect in France and the world over
reject the law of Christ. They
will not accept Christ as the cor-
ner-stone of their constitutions.
They will accept no divinity but
the divinity of man, otherwise the
state. Man is to be the be-all
and the end-all here, and we may
"jump the life to come," if we so
wish.
Here lies the fundamental point
of difference between Catholics and
the sect. One believes in God ;
the other rejects God. If we be-
lieve in God we must believe that
he takes some interest in his crea-
tures; that he takes the very deepest
and most active interest in them and
their affairs ; that, let men legislate
as they may, he refuses to be legis-
lated out of his own world and out
of the hearts of his children. God
is not blind, or deaf, or impotent.
We cannot contemplate him as
making the world as a mere toy to
amuse a leisure moment and then
let go by. Believing in God at all,
we can only contemplate him as
living and working and ruling in
this world ; as the source of all
right and the inspirer of all good ;
as the fountain-head of truth and
justice. Nor has he left man to
discover all this. He has revealed
himself very plainly and fully, and
given laws that were meant to be
obeyed. His laws are the only
code of right morals, and no state
or government can be moral and
just which does not embrace them,
in their essence at least, in its con-
stitution.
But it is precisely against this
that the " revolutionary sect "
which to-day is triumphant in
France fights. Again let not
American readers be frightened at
mere expressions. What Father
Ramiere understands by "revolu-
tionary sect " they may easily disco-
ver from his article. If any man,
Catholic or non-Catholic, needs a
truer and larger measure of liberty
than Father Ramiere would grant
him 4 then he must go seek for his
liberty in other worlds than ours.
But while a vital difference as to
the very essence of government
exists and grows there must be
conflict. It is useless to cry peace
here where peace is impossible.
What Catholics want and demand
is seen in Father Ramiere 's bril-
liant exposition ; what the " revo-
lutionary sect " wants all the world
sees.
THE COURSE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE.
What the French government
wants in the Jules Ferry bill is
now clearly manifest. It is easily
told, and without circumlocution
may be described as no Christian
teaching in France. Refine and
define as they may, that is the sub-
stantial upshot of the Ferry Edu-
cational Bill which has been sup-
ported so heartily by the govern-
ment. The bill passed successful-
ly through the Chamber of Deputies.
The debates during its passage
were at once instructive, amusing,
and saddening. Some of the sup-
porters of the bill the learned sup-
porters took the rash course of ap-
pealing to Catholic books of theo-
logy in support of their thesis that
Catholic teaching was necessarily
immoral. It is strange to see how
fond anti-Catholic controversialists
are of treading on this, to them,
terra ignota, which, to one who is
not thoroughly acquainted with it,
is the most treacherous 01 all
Current Events.
grounds. Yet invariably they fall
into a pit at almost every turn.
Jules Ferry indulged in a little
of this ; but he was surpassed by
M. Paul Bert, who made quite a
learned and effective speech. The
theologians and doctors of the
church were all at the latter 's
fingers' ends. He quoted authori-
ties by the score, and matters look-
ed really alarming. It is hard to
rise up on the spur of the mo-
ment and refute a man who quotes
chapter and verse from your own side
for the most damaging statements
and propositions. M. Bert was the
hero of an hour and duly celebrated
by those extremely learned organs,
the newspapers. But when com-
petent men came to examine M.
Bert's speech in cold blood, and
test it, the usual result followed : he
had muddled things ; garbled, mis-
quoted, misunderstood all round,
and, as invariably happens, had
quoted as Catholic doctrines what
in the customary form were simply
propositions to be refuted, and
which were refuted by the very
authors quoted as laying them
down as doctrine. So much for
M. Bert's learning.
The bill was rejected in the
Senate, and M. Jules Simon, Free-
mason and theist, as Gambetta is
Freemason and atheist, according to
the Paris correspondence of the
London Times, was very instrumen-
tal in having it rejected. He de-
clared that the quotations from
clerical works made in the Chamber
were garbled, incomplete, or mis-
understood, and that the morality
taught by the Catholic Church is
unquestionably pure. In this he
was anticipated by so decidedly
anti-Catholic a journal as the Pall
Mall Gazette, and, indeed, by the%
common sense of all fair-minded
men. The bill was substantially
thrown out, and we still await re-
sults.
On the rejection of the measure
by the Senate the champions of
"modern liberties " took a charac-
teristic revenge. The annual vote
for the ecclesiastical stipends came
up. The average salaries of French
cures and prelates have been given
in this magazine. The entire sum
provided by the Budget for the
support of the Catholic prelates in;
France is 1,350,000 francs, or about
$270,000. The prelates number
eighty-seven, so that their average
salary is about $3,000. What the.
bishop of a diocese in France can
do with his $3,000 may be easily
imagined. There is certainly not
much left at the year's end. In-
deed, it is absurdly inadequate ;
and as for the cures, a beggar
would starve on their salary. The
generous deputies came to the res-
cue. They resolved on increasing
the cures' salary; and to do so ef-
fectually they cut down the pre-
lates' !
And this is legislation accord-
ing to ideas of " modern liberty."
These good people are playing,
fast and loose with the power
given them, and acting throughout
like vicious children entrusted for
the moment with interests that con-
cern mankind. All sane people
look on them now with distrust,,
not to say contempt. Everything
that men esteem as good they con-
temn ; everything bad they wel-
come. They refuse liberty of edu-
cation and expel Catholic teachers
from their schools ; they welcome
Communists. - They cut down the
meagre salaries of the bishops ; they;
indemnify Communists. They leg-
islate against God and Christian-
ity while they set a premium on.
wickedness. This is the French
republic. How can a man with a.
8 5 2
Current Events.
spark of freedom in his soul, not
to say a reverence for God, live
contentedly under the rule of such
men? A change must come, eith-
er from within or from without.
THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.
One cannot view without deep re-
gret the seeming hopelessness of at-
taining to any thing like a stable popu-
lar government in France. The po-
litical factions there are as wide apart
as the poles. The republicans now
in power, instead of attempting to
conciliate those of their country-
men who are confessedly hostile to
.the republic, seem determined on
.'showing that a republic in France
uneans neither liberty nor order.
Kerry's Educational Bill strikes at
the very root of liberty. It was
condemned from the outset by all
the organs of free opinion in other
.lands, by writers who may be sup-
posed to have as little sympathy
with the Catholic Church as Ferry
-or Gambetta. Yet the government
never hesitated in its action. The
unanimous opinion of free men in
all lands had no effect whatever
upon it. To justify its case it had
recourse to gross caluninies and
-charges that were both exploded
and stale. What are we to think
of a government whose leader can
find no higher or stronger watch-
word for his party than " Clerical-
ism is the enemy "? Or what of a
leading member of his cabinet,
Waddingtqn, who only the other
day resorted to the mean device of
supporting the anti-Jesuit clause of
the Ferry Bill on the ground that
the Society of Jesus was a political
and not a religious society? What
trust can be placed in statesmen of
this calibre, who presume on the
recognized loyalty, patience, and
long-suffering of -Catholics to ex-
periment on them at will ? An<
these gentlemen, who are so cour-
ageous towards the most orderly
body of the French people, tremble
at the faintest flutter of the red
rag. A measure involving a tenth
part of the hostility manifested to-
wards Catholics in the Ferry Bill,
if turned against the Reds, would
be the signal for barricades in Paris
to-morrow. Indeed, the French
government might not inaptly be
described as seated on a barrel of
dynamite, and from that lofty emi-
nence ruling the France of history.
The France of history is nothing
to them ; all they are concerned
with is the barrel under them. As
long as the dynamite does not ex-
plode they are secure ; but if it
should explode, where are they ?
They are trying to keep it down
by pressure ! They dare not leave ;
their seat for fear of the consequen-
ces ; and they care to make no al-
liances with respectable people.
The moral weight of the French
government was illustrated at the
death and funeral of the ill-fated
Prince Louis Napoleon. Not a
word of sympathy was addressed
by them to the boy's mother. Ha-
tred need not go so far as that. A
kind word at such an hour would
have cost the government little and
gained it much. The presence of
the ambassador of France., at the
grave of the last direct member of
a dynasty which after all must ever
continue illustrious in French an-
nals, and which is illustrious as hu-
man history is made up, would not
have derogated from the dignity
of the French Republic. But the
government went beyond this. It
refused permission to any of its
soldiers, high or low, to attend the
funeral and offer a last mark of re-
spect to the son of the man under
whom they had served and won
Current Events.
353
such distinction as they possessed.
The reason alleged was that they
'feared a popular emeute if such per-
mission were granted. If this be
the only reason it confirms our pic-
ture of the government sitting on a
barrel of dynamite. But even if
this were so it was hardly necessary
for M. Gambetta to use the sad
occasion for a counter-demonstra-
tion in Paris in honor of the taking
of the Bastile, and celebrating it
with something, according to un-
prejudiced accounts, not altogether
. unlike a bacchanalian feast. In
fact, approach from any side these
men who to-day rule France, and
we can find nothing that is great or
admirable about them. A republic
led by any such men cannot have
the elements of stability; for they
do not understand freedom, they
do not love greatness, and they do
not fear God.
NEWS.
The duties of a newspaper cor-
respondent, if that correspondent
happen to be a conscientious man,
are not always the most enviable.
His chief business is to supply
news. He must have it first, full-
est, and most accurate, otherwise
he will be behind his compeers.
If his news arrives late it is of no
use ; if it is constantly inaccurate,
however startling it may be for the
moment, in the long run it does
not pay, for it brings discredit on
the journal. We speak, of course,
of journals that have some regard
for their character and their read-
ers. In the matter of mere news
we believe the leading English and
American journals mean to be fair.
It is hard, however, to reconcile
this belief with the nonsense that
constantly appears in the daily
journals concerning Catholic mat-
ters abroad. Nor is the nonsense
always harmless. It is sometimes
of the most malicious description,
and evidently written by a prac-
tised hand.
One explanation of this peculiar
inaccuracy of the public press re-
garding Catholic matters of wide
import is that the telegraphic news
from abroad really comes to us
from one or two sources, and these
are of a character hostile to Catho-
licity. They lie, and lie with a
purpose. It gives them no con-
cern to be contradicted. They lie
again gaily the next day. They
live in and live on falsehood. Wit-
ness all the ridiculous reports cir-
culated about the present Holy
Father soon after his accession.
He was one day represented as
being in a state of deep melan-
choly and sighing for death. An-
other day he was afraid to eat lest
he should be poisoned. Again he
was to all intents and purposes a
prisoner and kept in confinement
by the Jesuits. He did nothing but
weep and deplore his fate. Every-
body had deserted him and he was
the victim of a conspiracy against
which he found it hopeless to con-
tend, and so forth.
It seems absurd to mention all
this now, yet it will be found
gravely set forth in the journals of
the past year, and the news cost
no small sum in the transmission.
There was never the remotest sha-
dow of a foundation for any reports
of the kind, yet they and others
like them were telegraphed from
Rome to London week after week
by correspondents of the London
Times > or the Standard, Pall Mall
Gazette, and Daily News, whence
they were transmitted to our jour-
nals in this country. And that is
how the world writes and reads
contemporary history nowadays.
854
Current Events.
These are the clumsier kind of
falsehoods, which have not even
the negative merit of malicious in-
genuity. Why they were circulat-
ed at all and at such expense no-
body save those who concocted or
used them can know. If a cor-
respondent who has been sent from
the London Times to Rome, to
keep his eye on the Pope and re-
port whatever was worth telling,
flies to the telegraph office and
sends a costly despatch announc-
ing that the Pope has had poison
administered to him, or is about
to have, that, of course, is to the
editor important information, and
so it appears in the paper. Next
morning the world is talking about
it, even the Pope himself; and that,
to a certain kind of journal, is a
great gain. It is rather provoking,
however, for a journal, with some
character to lose to be contradict-
ed point-blank the following morn-
ing ; and when this process has
been renewed time and again the
affair begins to grow disastrously
monotonous, and the journal that
does it too often loses caste.
Mr. Reid, editor of the New
York Tribune, recently gave a very
instructive address on the office,
the work, and the possible future
of the newspaper. In the course
of a long, interesting, and suggestive
speech he made no reference to
the particular point to which we
have referred. It had probably
never occurred to him. To the
average editor eating falsehoods, or
false news, is like eating dirt. It is
unavoidable. A certain quantity
must be consumed whether we like
it or not. The human system can
stand up against a fair amount with-
out any great harm being done.
Yet one would think that an intel-
ligent man who is the responsible
editor of a great newspaper could
not fail to be struck from time to
time by the systematic, and at cer-
tain seasons chronic, falsehood of
news from Rome or general news
regarding Catholic matters of wide
import. Indeed, now that we think
over the matter, the Tribune did
at the time of the Conclave write
to correct the absurd reports re-
garding the proceedings of that
great assembly which found their
way into the columns of the Euro-
pean press. But why is not such
intelligent supervision more often
exercised ?
The wild reports regarding the
Holy Father have for a long period
ceased of themselves. How they
originated is a mystery save in the
brains of fools, or demented per-
sons like Mr. Marsh, who chooses
to continue to represent this coun- 1
try in Rome. He does it at his
own expense, it is true ; but the
services of some persons are dear
at a gift, and Mr. Marsh is certain-
ly demented on the Catholic ques-
tion, for it would be uncharitable
as well as cruel to suppose that a
man guilty of the communications
with which Mr. Marsh favors Mr.
Evarts, our Secretary of State, could
be wholly master of himself. The
journals seem to follow the policy
of the government : they never send
a Catholic representative to a Cath-
olic country, for fear, doubtless, that
he should tell the truth.
Nevertheless, in Catholic matters
of national or home interest most
secular journals are courteous and
kind, and to speak more particu-
larly of those that we best know,
the New York daily papers es-
pecially anxious to be as accurate
as possible. It used not to be so;
but it certainly is so now, and, as a
rule, Catholics in this particular
have nothing at all to complain of
in the daily press. We do not
Current Events.
855
speak, of course, of matters of doc-
trine, with which they rarely deal.
An instance of what we mean is
afforded in the treatment by the
foreign press of the negotiations
going on between Prince Bismarck
and the Vatican. Prince Bismarck,
to be sure, is a treacherous man
to deal with. He has before now
used newspapers, even the London
Times, for his purpose, and after-
ward repudiated what he was repre-
sented as saying. His frankness is
treacherous. But it would be a
hopeless task to retrace or recall
the various rumors that throughout
the year have come now from
Rome, now from Berlin, regarding
the progress of the negotiations.
They are of the most contradicto-
ry nature possible and stated with-
out any authority whatsoever.
The reports during the last week
of July and the first week of Au-
gust were especially thick and con-
tradictory. On August 8, for in-
stance, was published a triple con-
tradictory despatch, as follows :
"A Berlin despatch to the Pall Mall
Gazette says : ' The latest proposals of
Cardinal Nina, the Papal Secretary of
State, do not satisfy Prince Bismarck,
who is willing to ameliorate the opera-
tion of the May laws, but is not willing
to repeal them.' The North German Ga-
zette's Posen correspondent denies that
the German ambassador at Rome has
caused afresh writ of the Prussian courts
to be served on Cardinal Ledochowski.
The Post's Berlin correspondent reports
that the Prussian government has caus-
ed summonses issued to Catholic priests
by the secular courts to be withheld for
a time. The government has also de-
termined not to appoint priests to va-
cant livings on its own authority."
The week previous it was finally
and solemnly announced that at
last a modus vivendi had actually
been established between the courts
f Berlin and the Vatican.
It is hard to discover the truth,
impossible, indeed, among the re-
ports of these " Macaulays of the
press " whom Mr. Reid is anxious
to welcome into the journalistic
fraternity. All that can be said
with certainty is that Dr. Falk's
resignation has gone into effect ;
that there are signs of a kindlier
attitude on the part of the German
government toward the Catholics ;
and, above all, that the Catholic
party has rendered important vo-
luntary service to Prince Bismarck.
The party is capable of doing him
equal injury; so it is worth his
while to conciliate them. On such
reasons rather than on the sense of
justice and right must Catholics
build their hopes : on a faithful re-
turn for faithful service. In the
present condition of Europe all
loyal hearts should be welcomed
and won to the service of the
government. The crowned heads
of the most powerful nations have
to go constantly surrounded by
guards to protect them from their
own subjects. Prince Bismarck
himself dare not move about un-
protected. He fears his old friends,
the socialists. Catholics do not
threaten his life. Their religion
secures their loyalty. Wise states-
manship would easily secure their
love.
856
New Publications.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
DE RE SACRAMENTARIA. Libri Duo
Posteriores De Pcenitentia, De Or-
dine, De Extrema Unctione, De Ma-
trimonio. ^Emil. M. De Augustinis,
SJ. New York : Benzigers. 1879.
This is a new volume of the Woodstock
Course. Father De Augustinis has his
own style and manner, quite different
from those of Father Mazzella. He is
very concise and clear, and what he
writes is specially well adapted for
young students. The treatises on Pen-
ance and Matrimony are comparatively
full and complete. In the treatise on
Penance, we should have been pleased
to find the question whether the love of
God as our own good suffices for perfect
contrition, or is only a motive of imper-
fect contrition, distinctly treated. The
treatise on Order has some remarkably
good points. The old scholastic doc-
trine that the sacrament of order is prin-
cipally constituted in the priesthood is
brought out, as we think, to advantage.
The episcopate is presented, in accord-
ance with this doctrine, not as an order
separate from and above the sacerdotal
order, but as the completion and perfec-
tion of priesthood, which is a bipartite
order, subsisting in the two grades of bish-
op and presbyter. The divine rights of the
episcopate suffer nothing from this man-
ner of stating the case, but on the con-
trary are much better defended and vin-
dicated from Presbyterian objections.
These objections are ably refuted by
Father De Augustinis, and the question
of the ordination of bishops per saltum
is likewise well handled. The author
defends an opinion which Perrone pro-
nounces to be obsolete, viz., that the
pope can delegate to a priest the power
of ordaining deacons. The point must
be considered as proved conclusively,
if the documents cited in proof can be
certainly determined to be genuine as
they now stand. This genuineness is,
however, precisely what is attacked and
denied by most respectable critics and
theologians. It is requisite, therefore,
to argue this point more fully and mi-
nutely, before any solid probability can
be claimed for an opinion which has a
primd facie presumption against it, and
is so generally condemned. This has a
bearing on another opinion which the
author has embraced, against St. Al-
phonsus, Perrone, and the prevalent mod-
ern teaching. He regards the five lower
orders of the ministry as having each
one a sacramental character. The minr
orders, as is well known, can be confer-
red by abbots on their own subjects, and
permission has sometimes been given to
abbots to ordain subdeacons. If we re-
gard the subdiaconate and the inferior
ministries as of purely ecclesiastical in-
stitution, then the exclusive right of
bishops to confer these orders is also
derived from ecclesiastical law, and the
same authority which made the law can
derogate from it, by authorizing priests
to confer in certain cases orders which
usually can be conferred only by a bish-
op. The diaconate is, however, certainly
of divine institution, and has a sacramen-
tal character. If it can be shown that
the pope has ever delegated to priests
the power of ordaining deacons, then
the lower orders may be considered as
sacramental, even though power is con-
ceded to priests to administer them.
Still, as the sacramental character of the
diaconate is only a preparation for the
sacerdotal character and not an essen-
tial part of it, it may be regarded as
similar to the character of confirmation,
and not absolutely requiring the exercise
of a power which can be given only
through episcopal consecration, in order
to its being validly and lawfully impart-
ed. Yet, even so, the other arguments
against the sacramental character of any
order below that of deacon remain in their
full force. These orders lack divine in-
stitution. Three of them do not exist in
the Eastern churches. There is no mat-
ter and form consisting in the imposition
of hands with words expressing the con-
ferring of sacramental grace, in the rite
of administration. Those who receive
them are not irrevocably bound to the
service of the altar, except in the case of
Latin subdeacons, who are bound only
by virtue of an ecclesiastical law and of
an implicit vow which they take vol-
untarily at their ordination. The only
Nezv Publications.
357
probability which Father De Augustinis
can claim for his opinion is derived from
the authority of theologians, and from in-
ferences drawn from official documents
which have never been considered as de-
nning any doctrine. It does not seem to
us that Father De Augustinis has succeed-
ed in proving that the general current
of modern opinion, sanctioned by such
high authorities as St. Alphonsus and
Perrone, goes against the preponderat-
ing weight of intrinsic and extrinsic pro-
bability. It is to be hoped that the
Council of the Vatican will be reassem-
bled, and will make some definitions re-
specting the Sacrament of Order among
other things. Questions about the sub-
deaconship and the minor orders are of
small importance in themselves, and
only acquire an accidental importance
when they provoke controversy among
Catholics and embarrass the discussion
of essential matters with Protestants.
The essential matters are the true na-
ture of the priesthood and the reality of
the Sacrament of Order, the divine in-
stitution and rights of bishops, and the
necessity of episcopal ordination to
make true bishops and priests. These
are all finally and irrevocably determin-
ed, nor is there any uncertainty respect-
ing the sacramental character of the dia-
conate. A few more explicit and posi-
tive definitions, especially in regard to
the matter and form of the sacrament,
would, nevertheless, we think, be very
serviceable to Catholic theology and
controversy. If we except the thorough-
ly high-church section, the more ortho-
dox among Protestants make their de-
fence on the ground that the episcopal
constitution of the church is either an
early alteration of apostolical order, or
at most not essential to the very being
of the church, and the valid administra-
tion of orders and the sacraments which
depend for their validity upon ordina-
tion. This error is connected with an-
other which denies the truly sacerdotal
character of the Christian hierarchy.
The Catholic doctrine of the essentially
hierarchical and sacerdotal constitution
of the church, derived from the apostles
and depending on the apostolical suc-
cession transmitted through the episco-
pal line from our Lord Jesus Christ, is
the one which is fundamental in this con-
troversy. Father De Augustinis has
handled it in a masterly manner, and in
some respects with an ability quite ori-
ginal and peculiar to himself. We ven-
ture to suggest, however, that his trea-
tise may be improved by expansion and
enlargement. We may say the same of
the treatise on Extreme Unction, and in
general of his whole work, especially in
regard to the answering of objections,
and the discussion of the arguments of
various schools. The succinct and com-
pendious form which he has given it
makes it, indeed, more available as a
text-book and a manual for young stu-
dents. We should prefer, however, over
this advantage, the greater one which
would accrue to professors and the cler-
gy from a more enlarged and thorough
treatment of topics.
RELIGION AND SCIENCE : their Union
Historically Considered. By Maurice
Ronayne, S.J. New York : Peter F.
Collier. 1879.
This modest little volume is as useful
as it is interesting. It takes us down
the stream of Christian history, points
out the great landmarks of science,
gives their history and the controversies
connected with them, and shows how at
every point the church regarded science
as a favored child and noble assistant in
the work of advancement and civiliza-
tion. To-day the child has risen up
against the mother who guided her so
long and so patiently. Science, in the
hands of unbelievers, has forgotten, or
tried to forget, what it owes to the church,
without which there would be no
science, for there would be no civiliza-
tion. And if there is one truth better
established than any other in history, it
is that the Christian Church is the great
civilizer of peoples.
It is to remind science of its deep
debts that Father Ronayne has written
his charming little volume, where learn-
ing and research and extensive reading
are so happily and deftly woven to-
gether that in the enjoyment of the nar-
rative one is apt to overlook the great
labor involved in such a work and the
ability with which it is wrought out.
The work, he tells us, " purports mere-
ly to sketch the relations which, during
the Christian era, have existed between
religion and science. Being of an ele-
mentary character, it deals only with
those facts with which scholars are gen-
erally acquainted, and which, for the
most part, can be found on the surface
858
New Publications.
of history. The aim of the writer has
been to present these facts in a connect-
ed view, and to confront them with the
exaggerated or unfair statements of
some modern scientists. In carrying
out this plan he has sought simply to ar-
rive at the truth and to point out the
scientific merits of some of the illus-
trious dead."
The plan is an admirable one and
has been admirably executed. The
story of the calendar, the rise and cha-
racter of the early Christian schools, of
Charlemagne and the Othos, of the dis-
tinguished mediaeval scientists, of Ca-
tholic scientists in modern times, science
and the Fathers of the church, reputed
"martyrs" of science, etc., etc., is full
of interest and profit for readers of all
classes and ages.
THE LIFE AND EPOCH OF ALEXANDER
HAMILTON : A Historical Study. By
the Hon. George Shea, Chief-Justice
of the Marine Court. Boston : Hough-
ton, Osgood & Co. (The Riverside
Press, Cambridge). 1879.
We cannot sufficiently commend the
literary style of this work or the typo-
graphical beauty of the book ; but we
scarcely agree with the spirit in which
the work is written from beginning to
end, being more than ordinarily praise-
ful and Carlyle-like in the worship of
its hero. And yet Alexander Hamilton
was by nature and circumstances a great
man, and deserves to be better known
and Judge Shea's work will assuredly
make him better known abroad than he
would seem to be, to judge from the
sneering allusion to him in an important
publication made at Edinburgh in 1863
(alas for the glory of the American Ham-
iltons in the land of their ancestors !)
as " a certain Secretary of the Treasury to
Washington, whose fame is not very
generally known on this side the Atlan-
tic."
The work treats not only of the life
but, as its title proclaims, of the epoch
also of Hamilton ; and for the general
reader the epoch part will be better
reading than the life proper, which is
rather tame up to the point at which the
author leaves it ; allusions to events and
men of the times and the numerous foot-
notes being very interesting. Apropos
of which Hercules Mulligan mouth-fill-
ing "name ! comes in (as a patriot, and
one who kept up a treasonable corre-
spondence with Hamilton then on
Washington's staff while enjoying Bri-
tish protection at New York) for a due
share of laudation, and is described,
presumably to settle his social standing
in the city, as " a junior member of
the firm of Kortwright & Company, to
which firm produce was consigned from
the West Indies to be sold," thus making
him out a merchant ; but among a large
number of receipted bills now before us,
ranging from 1776 to 1783, and which
formerly belonged to the Honorable An-
drew Elliot, Superintendent of the Port
of New York during the Revolutionary
War, we find two for tailoring done by
this same fellow. Hamilton made his
home at Mulligan's house when he came
first to reside in New York.
THE MYSTERY OF THE WIZARD CLIP :
A Monograph. Baltimore : Kelly, Piet
&Co. 1879.
This is a small but valuable contribu-
tion to a point in the early history of the
church in the United States with which
we have long been familiar, and par-
takes both of the Magnalia Chritti and
of Satan's invisible world revealed. It
is a curious and on the whole edifying
little book. We have always thought it
singular that the hero of the account, or
rather the subject of these visitations,
being " of Dutch [German ?] descent and
a Lutheran by profession," born in
Pennsylvania, bore the unmistakably
Scotch and noble name of Livingston.
Was it a corruption to suit Americans
of the not uncommon German name of
Lowenstein (the w being pronounced like
v), or may the man have been a descend-
ant of the Scotch exile, Rev. John Liv-
ingston, who passed the last nine years
of his life at Rotterdam, dying in 1672,
whence some of his race may have wan-
dered into Germany and thence to Ame-
rica?
A melancholy interest is attached to
this little monograph from the fact that
it is the last literary relic of the late Fa-
ther Finotti, who died in Central City,
Colorado, last January, while it was
passing through the hands of the printer.
It is dedicated to Dr. John G. Shea,
under whose auspices it now appears.
It is embellished with illustrations of
the scene of the mystery.
New Publications.
859
THE LIFE AND ACTS OF POPE LEO XIII.
By Rev. J. Keller, S.J. New York :
Benziger Bros. 1879.
We have looked over this well-printed
and handsomely-illustrated work with
great satisfaction. The reverend and
learned editor has performed his task
remarkably well, giving us such a num-
ber of pontifical documents and utterances
and such a mass of information about
the late Pope, Pius IX., about the Con-
clave, and about our present Holy Fa-
ther, Leo XIII., as cannot probably be
found elsewhere collected in one body
in the English language. The spirit of
loyalty to the church and of devotion to
the Holy See is just what we would expect
and be sure of finding in a book by a
member of the Society of Jesus ; and we
hqpe that Father Keller's work will have
considerable influence in directing at-
tention to Rome, the Papacy, and the
Pope, which ought to be the chief sub-
jects of our historical studies, as well as
the dearest objects of our thoughts and
affection. The work is written in an en-
tertaining and instructive manner, and
we have remarked only a few inaccuracies,
due doubtless to the difficulties of trans-
lation or to a want of personal acquain-
tance with the Vatican, and some errors
which will certainly be corrected in the
second edition, to which so interesting a
work is sure to run. For instance, on
the first page the birth-place of Pius IX.
is called " a little village," whereas Sini-
gaglia is an ancient city and very flour-
ishing seaport. On page 185 Blessed
Gregory X. is called (before his election)
" Theobald, Viscount of ^Piacenza," in-
stead of "Theobald Visconti, of Piacen-
za," which is something quite different.
EMERALD GEMS : a Chaplet of Irish Fire-
side Tales, Historic, Domestic, and
Legendary. Compiled from approved
sources. Boston : Thomas B. Noo-
nan & Co. 1879.
There is no folk-lore more pure and
beautiful, more tender and sad, more
quaintly mirthful and shrewd in moral,
than that of the Irish people. If Irish
fairy-stories only had a Hans Andersen
to tell them we should have a book
more popular even than that of the wiz-
ard Hans or the Arabian Nights. Not
that Irish stories have lacked good tell-
ers from time immemorial down to Fa-
ther Tom Burke or Mr. Boucicault. The
volume so carefully collected and pub-
lished by Mr. Noonan attests this.
Apart from the delightful legendary lore,
there are excellent stories founded on
historical events and characters in Eme-
rald Gems, which is just the book to
make a dull or lazy afternoon enjoy-
able.
THE CONSTITUTION " APOSTOLIC/E SEDIS
MODERATIONI " explained by the Rev.
Thomas J. Carr, Professor of Theology,
St. Patrick's College, Maynooth. First
Part. Dublin: M. H/Gill & Son;
London : Burns & Gates. 1879.
This first part of a treatise which,
when completed, will be a very useful
one for priests, though scarcely so for
any other class of readers, in this coun-
try at least, is in the form of a well-print-
ed pamphlet of about one -hundred and
thirty pages. It will probably have a
much greater circulation after the entire
work is issued and bound up in one
volume, outside of Ireland, than it can
be expected to attain in its present im-
perfect state. The title sufficiently
shows the scope of the learned profes-
sor's essay, for the ecclesiastical reader.
The fact that it emanates from Maynooth
is a strong prima facie recommendation
of its excellence. It is not easy to
examine and criticise with accuracy and
thoroughness a treatise of this sort in
midsummer, and, besides, it is always
more satisfactory to have a complete
work on hand, if it is to be carefully ap-
preciated. For the present we confine
ourselves to this simple notification, re-
serving a more ample notice for a future
occasion.
GOD THE TEACHER OF MANKIND : a
Plain, Comprehensive Explanation of
Christian Doctrine. ^By Michael Miil-
ler, C.SS.R. Vols. ii. and iii. New
York : Benziger Bros. 1879.
These are two new volumes of Father
MiAller's useful and popular explanation
of Christian doctrine, the first volume of
which has been noticed in THE CATHO-
LIC WORLD. Each volume, though part
of a series, is complete in itself and
published separately. The second vol-
ume is devoted to an explanation of the
Apostles' Creed, and the third to Grace
and the Sacraments. These are subjects
on which all Catholics should be intel-
86o
Neiv Publications.
ligently instructed, and popular man-
uals, such as Father Miiller's work
claims to be, intended to supply such
instruction, ought to be in great demand.
We have not yet had an opportunity of
giving these two later volumes the care-
ful examination so important a work
deserves.
LES DERNIERS JOURS DE MGR. DUPAN-
LOUP. Avec une preface de Monsei-
gneur L'Archeveque D'Albi. Paris:
Ancienne Maison Charles Dounoil.
Jules Gervais, Libraire-Editeur, Rue
de Tournon, 29. 1879.
We owe to the able pen of M. 1'Abbe
Lagrange this most interesting record
of the last days of the great Bishop of
Orleans, who died while on a visit to his
intimate friend, M. du Boys, in his cha-
teau at Lacombe-Lancey, the nth of
October, 1878.
Mgr. Dupanloup was a bishop who
was alive to the needs and the dangers of
his time, full of sympathy for every good
and holy work, and foremost among the
bravest defenders of the faith in this cen-
tury. The last time we had the singular
pleasure of meeting this distinguished
champion of the church was in the summer
of 1873 at the ancient Benedictine monas-
tery of Einsiedeln, which was so dear to
him, and where he was accustomed to
make his annual retreat. He was then in
feeble health, and his figure reminded
us of one of the noble knights of old,
bearing the scars of many a hard and
wel-lfought battle with the enemies of
faith, justice, and right. The lustre of
his eagle eyes was growing dim, his
movements indicated a falling off of his
accustomed strength, and the signs of old
age were perceptibly creeping over his
whole frame. But his bodily weakness-
es served only to make clearer the val-
iant spirit which filled his soul, and one
felt a grandeur in his presence which
could only have sprung from its secret
stores of heroic virtues. It might be
justly said of Mgr. Dupanloup that he
was a knightly Bayard clothed with the
dignity of a bishop.
Those who have learned to admire the
zeal and activity of Mgr. Dupanloup will
be led by this sketch to venerate him no
less as a Christian of assiduous prayer,
a model of sacerdotal virtues, and a pat-
tern of deep, genuine, fervent piety
sources from which he derived his ener-
gy. We look forward with great interest
for a full biography from the same com-
petent pen of this gi^at bishop of Catholic
France, and one who was an honor to
the whole Catholic Episcopate.
LEGENDS OF THE SAXON SAINTS. By
Aubrey de Vere. London : C. Kegan
Paul & Co. 1879.
We have been anxiously expecting the
arrival of this volume of new poems by
Aubrey de Vere. A few of them, thanks
to the extreme and constant kindness of
Mr. de Vere, saw the light for the first
time in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and we
are sure our readers will value the rare
privilege as highly as we do. As the
volume has only just been received, all
that can be done at present is to ac-
knowledge its receipt, a review being re-
served for a future number. We cannot,
however, refrain from giving, as a faint
index of what is to come, the dedication
of the volume " to the Venerable Bede " :
" 'Mid quiet vale or city lulled by night,
Well pleased the wanderer, wakeful on his bed,
Hears from far Alps on fitful breeze the sound
Of torrents murmuring down their rocky glens,
Strange voice from distant regions, alien climes :
Should these far echoes from thy legend -roll
Delight of loftier years, these echoes faint,
Thus waken, thus make calm, one restless heart
In our distempered day, to thee the praise,
Voice of past times, O Venerable Bede !"
THE FOUR GOSPELS UNITED INTO ONE.
Newly translated from the original,
and rendered into verse. By Elijah
H. Kimball. New York : G. W.
Carleton & Co. 1879.
The object of this work, the translator
tells us, " has been to render into verse
a faithful translation of the Gospels, and
to unite them in a connected and har-
monious form." The work has plainly
been a labor of love, and of the reverent
and faithful spirit in which the author,
who is not a Catholic, has approached
his task there is no reason to doubt. We
fear, however, that the work is destined
to stand as a curiosity of literature rather
than to move about and make its way in
the world. Readers of the Gospels will
always prefer them in the sublimely
simple form in which they were written.
A p The Catholic world
2
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v.29
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