Full text of "The Catholic world"

THE 



tax \o 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



OF 



GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 










VOL. XXX. 
OCTOBER, 1879, TO MARCH, 1880. 



NEW YORK: 

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO, 
9 Barclay Street. 

1880. 



Copyrighted by 
I. T. HECKER, 

1880. 




THE NATION PRESS, 27 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK. 



CONTENTS. 





193 Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity Gone 
515 Astray, 


675 
462 

21 

4 1 
5i9 
55 
389 
639 
,470 

796 
64 

99 
170 

505 
92 

272 
780 

433 
462 
312 
433 
376 

64 
275 
55 

665 
J45 
5'5 
79 
159 
US 

620 

577 

322 

491 
577 
79 

562 


American Side of School Question, 
An Episode in Russian History, 
Apprenticeship Schools in France, . 
Avezzana Affair, The, 

Belgium, New Educational Law, . 


653 Light Literature, Polemics of, . 
400 Loretto, A Day at, 


854 
Maguelone, . . . . . 

4 8 X Major's Manoeuvre, The, .... 
742 Man's Destiny, 
2(tQ Minerve, Ruins of, , 


Bre'beuf Family, The, 
14 Cain Patraic " . . 


Mount Melleray, 
7 8g Mr. Froude's Attack on Liberty, 
5 4 3 My Christmas at Barnakeery, . . . 412 

Napoleon I., The Court of, . 
gg Nature, The Religion of^ 


Castlereagh, 


Church Architecture, Relation of to Plastic 
Arts, 
City of St. John the Baptist, .... 


Noblesse Oblige, 


Current Events, . . . .132, 280, 


353 
Our Christmas Club, ... 
104 Our Lady of Ostra Brama, . 

3 6 p ear i 


Catholic Emancipation and its Results, . 

De Vere's " Legends of Saxon Saints," . 
Dexter A. Hawkins, An Exhibition of Mr., . 
Dickens' Life and Letters, .... 




692 p A f Ar *.>if M*f- maVpr 


Dunciad, The Need of anew, 
Educational Law in Belgium, .... 


99 Plea for Positivism, 
Polemics of Light Literature, .... 
4 81 Pombal, 
111 Positivism, The Plea for, 
6fo Protestantism, Novel Defence of, . 


English Society Journals, . . . . 

Fall, The, and its Transmission, ... 
Follette, .... 201, 299, 449, 598, 


75 3 Res Italicae, 


Foundation of Morality, The, .... 


334 
Sic Itur ad Astra, 
232 Sixteenth Century in France, Struggles of, . 
71 School Question, American Side, 
Schools and Scholars, Winchester, . 
2 3 2 St. John Baptist, City of, . 
Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France, 

3 6 
The Republican's Daughter, . 

?2I The Unknowable, What is? . . . 
6lo Votive Church of Brou, The, . 

Washington and the Church, . 
2 6o What is the Unknowable? . 
Winchester Schools and Scholars, . 

821 
289 Year of Our Lord 1879, . 








Ireland a Hundred Years Ago, 
Ireland within the Century, The Religious 
Struggle in, 
Irish Affairs in 1782, 
Irish Poverty and National Distress, 


Journey of a Greek Patriarch, 

Learning the Type-Writer, 
Leo XIII. on Scholastic Philosophy, 



IV 



Contents. 



POETRY. 



A Little Flower of St. Francis, 


659 
















. 350 



Rosary Beads, 78 

Sechnall's Praise of St. Patrick, . . .737 
Shadows, 219 

Tantum Ergo, ....... 54 

The Beatitudes, 561, 713 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



Art of Reading, 7*9 

Bible History, 287 

Catholic Family Annual, 431 

Development of English Literature, . . 431 

Drift from York Harbor, 720 

De Virtutibus Infusis, 287 



Emmanuel, 



717 



Father Ryan's Poems, 860 

Five-Minute Sermons, 426 

Four Months in a Sneak-Box, , . . .575 

Historical Sketch of St. Louis University, . 288 

L'Art de la Lecture, 428 

Life and Poems of Poe, 720 

Life and Works of Washington Irving, . . 718 

Life in Common, 143 

Meditations 430 

Moral Discourses, .... . 720 



O'Connell Centenary Record, 
Once Every Week, . 



429 



Pearl 573 

Preludes 718 

Reports, 719 

Science and Religion, . . . . . 428 

Shakspere's 1'ragedy of Hamlet, . . . 576 
Short Instructions in the Art of Singing Plain 

Chant, 859 

St. Joseph's Manual, 432 

Stumbling-Blocks made Stepping-Stones on 

the Road to the Catholic Faith, . . 858 

The Divine Paraclete, 718 

The Jesuits, 427 

The MacLaughlins of Clan Owen, . . .143 
The Metaphysics of the School, . . .715 

The O'Mahony, 720 

The Roman Breviary, 857 



Uncrowned Heroes, 



*< 



THE 




'!'. l.i'. (0 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXX., No. 175. OCTOBER, 1879. 



PEARL. 

BY KATHLEEN o'MEARA, AUTHOR OF " IZA'S STORY," " A SALON IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE EMPIRE," 

"ARE YOU MY WIFE?" ETC. 
CHAPTER XX. 

THE MEETING OF RAOUL AND LEON. 



PEARL read on to the end ; was it 
possible that, with that silent pres- 
ence so close, she could feel a thrill 
of joy run through her as she read? 
The sweet, warm breath of love 
that came to her from the paper 
was like a living breast that she 
might lay her aching head upon. 
She was so horribly alone, now 
that Mrs. Monteagle was gone ! If 
only Raoul had been there ! Plead 
his cause ? Yes, she would have 
pleaded it loving, indulgent friend, 
whose sympathy reached out to 
every sorrow, to every foolish young 
hope of her whom Raoul truly 
called her adopted child. 

Pearl read the letter again, her 
tears flowing afresh, but with less 
of bitterness in them. Then she 
rose, and was turning back into the 
room to look once more on the 
dear, dead face, to press a last kiss of 
thanks upon it ; but Parker, who had 
left her alone with the letter, came 
back just as she was at the door, 
and stopped her. 



"Miss Pearl, they are come, 
those horrid men; but you needn't 
see them. There's a doctor come, 
too the one from the mayor ; but 
Adolphe will go with them in there 
" pointing to the room ; " only, if 
you will send the telegram to Mr. 
Danvers, miss. You know his ad- 
dress, I suppose ?" 

" I know his club the Carlton," 
said Pearl, rousing herself with an 
effort to meet these material claims 
on her attention. " Give me a 
pen and I will write out the tele- 
gram." 

It was soon done, and then 
Parker entreated her to return to 
the Rue du Bac. 

"You can't do anything here, 
miss ; and if you were to fall ill only 
think how dreadful it would be ! 
Go home like a good child," she 
added, patting the young girl's 
shoulder. " The doctor will come 
and find you, and he'll be so angry ! 
You had much better go before he 
comes." 



Copyright : Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1879. 



Pearl. 



Pearl was too worn out to resist. 
Besides, Parker was right : there 
was nothing more for her to do, 
and the atmosphere of the house 
was suffocating her ; the large, blue 
salon with its closed windows op- 
pressed her like a tomb ; the tables 
with their books and knick-knacks, 
the pictures that stared at her like 
faces that she had known living 
and that were now dead, the chairs 
that held out their wooden arms to 
her they were all so many dumb 
creatures wailing round her for the 
lost one. 

Parker led her down-stairs and 
put her into the little open cab, 
and she drove away, crying piti- 
fully. But it was a lovely summer's 
morning, and she was young ; the 
balmy air stroked her hot cheeks 
with velvet kisses and revived her, 
and trfe blessed sunshine was com- 
forting it always helps us, if we 
only let it. If only there were 
some one within reach that she 
loved, and who loved her, and who 
had known and cared for Mrs. 
Monteagle ! If Raoul had been 
there! She felt for his letter in 
her pocket, and crushed it into her 
palm as if it were a live thing with 
some responsive instinct. How was 
she to answer him ? He must be 
wondering all these days not to 
have had a line from Mrs. Mont- 
eagle. Perhaps he would take her 
silence as a dismissal, and assume 
that she had asked Colonel Red- 
acre, and that he had rejected his 
proposal with contempt. If he 
thought this he would never try to 
see Pearl again ; he would go away 
and give her up in despair ; he 
said he would go to Africa, if she" 
wished it; the only thing he would 
not do was to cease to love her. 

" He knew very well I would not 
ask him to do that," thought Pearl, 
and a smile of love stole over her 



tear-stained face. Why did he 
not trust her and come to her? 
She had been pining for a sign 
from him all this time, but now she 
wanted to see himself; nothing less 
would satisfy her. Would it be 
very wrong to write and tell him 
what had happened? It was 
against French convenances, but 
what of that ? Were not all those 
poor fanciful barriers swept away 
by the coming of that awful level- 
ler, Death ? How puerile and small 
the prim proprieties looked in the 
presence of that dread reality ! 
Surely Raoul would not be so 
cruel as not to come to her if he 
knew of the sorrow that had fallen 
on her ; he would write, at any rate, 
and assure her of his sympathy. 
But he might not hear of it for a 
long time. Lon and he had quar- 
relled ; and, besides, Leon was not 
in town. There was not a human 
being in town, it seemed to Pearl, 
and yet the streets were crowded, 
people were coming and going in 
the sunshine, loungers were sitting 
in the shade, cabs were crawling 
along in the heat. The city was full 
of life and noise; but to Pearl it 
was as empty as a desert. She felt 
sick with a sense of loneliness, of 
misery. She must go home. She 
wanted to see her mother. Percy 
would come and fetch her. But 
first she would write to Raoul. 
There was no need to allude to the 
letter that she was crushing to a 
pulp in her hot, ungloved hand ; 
she would only send a few lines to 
tell him of her loss. There could 
be no harm in this ; but, whether 
there was or not, she could not help 
it. She was not going to leave 
France without a sign, as if he were 
Captain Leopold or any other hu- 
man being. He was Raoul Dar- 
vallon and she loved him. 

"Oh! yes, I do, I do," said 



Pearl. 






Pearl, as the cab stopped before 
the wide courtyard. ." I love him, 
and I won't lose him for all the 
proprieties of France and Navarre 
together." 

Captain Leopold had arrived 
from Gardanvalle by the mid-day 
train. He went first to his father's 
house to change his travelling dress 
for his uniform, and, after present- 
ing himself at the War Office, drove 
straight to the Rue du.Bac, Mme. 
Mere had given him a basket of 
fruit and flowers to take there, with 
a message to the effect that she 
would be in Paris in a day or two. 
Mme. Mere was playing a traitor's 
game with " le petit," for she was 
under the impression that Pearl 
had left the Rue du Bac and gone 
to Mrs. Monteagle's some days be- 
fore. She knew nothing about Mrs. 
Monteagle's illness ; the doctor had 
not mentioned it when he wrote a 
hasty line to report how Pearl was 
going on ; so when Leon left Gar- 
danvalle he had heard nothing that 
could prepare him for the final ca- 
tastrophe. 

Captain Leopold drove up to his 
grandmother's house in a state of 
pleasurable excitement. Blanche 
nad stood up for him woman fully, 
and Mme. Mere in her heart was 
on the side of the rebel, and Dar- 
vallon was out of the way. But 
what chance had Darvallon, even if 
he had been domiciled across the 
street and seeing Pearl every day ? 
He had not a penny but his pay, 
and he had no expectations and 
no name ; this last would have been 
an insuperable obstacle in Colonel 
Redacre's eyes, Leon concluded, 
even if the utter impecuniosity of 
both Raoul and Pearl had not 
made a marriage between them 
impossible. 

He had promised his mother not 



to see Pearl before he left Paris for 
Brest, and he had kept his word ; 
there had been no stipulation about 
his not seeing her afterwards. Of 
course this was miserable casuistry, 
worthy of a dozen casuists roll- 
ed into one. But Leon was no 
straitlaced Puritan to turn his back 
on a lucky opportunity. 

" Parbleu ! Quand on aime, on 
n'y regarde pas de si pres!" was 
his reflection, as he carried the 
little basket with its sweet-smelling 
contents up to the door and rang. 

Pierre flew to open it with an ex- 
clamation, which he checked on 
seeing who the visitor was. 

"Bon jour, Pierre! How is 
mademoiselle ? I have been charg- 
ed to convey this to her from Mme. 
Mere." And he walked on to- 
wards the drawing-room rapidly, 
as if he suspected Pierre meant to 
bar the passage. 

But Pierre's mind was busy on 
other thoughts. Where had made- 
moiselle gone to ! She had disap- 
peared, no one knew when or 
where ; they had only missed her a 
few minutes ago ; the concierge had 
not seen her cross the court, and 
declared Pearl could not have gone 
out without his knowing it. Mari- 
anne was in a frantic state of mind 
lest her charge should have given 
them all the slip and gone off to 
see Mrs. Monteagle, which would 
certainly kill her, for she would 
learn the truth without any pre- 
paration, the truth that she was 
dying for her death was not yet 
known at the Rue du Bac. 

" I will run off myself, and see if 
the petite is gone there," Marianne 
said when the fact of Pearl's hav- 
ing gone somewhere out of the 
precincts was made clear. She 
hurried away on her search, and 
came down the Rue St. Florentin 
just as Pearl was driving up the 



Pearl. 



Rue Royale ; the nearer street be- 
ing inaccessible to carriages owing 
to repairs that were going on. 

Pierre, hearing a cab stop and a 
loud peal follow quickly, thought 
it was Marianne bringing back the 
truant. 

" Mademoiselle is not at home," 
he said, making no attempt to 
stop hasty Leon. 

" Oh ! but you expect her in 
soon ? She has not gone far, I 
suppose ?" he said, looking back, 
disappointed. 

" I hope not, monsieur; I don't 
really know." 

"What does the idiot mean by 
staring in that stupid way?" 
thought Leon; and he passed into 
the salon, merely observing that he 
would wait. 

There was the Journal des Dt- 
batsQK. the table. He flung himself 
into a comfortable chair and be- 
gan to read ; but he had not got 
througn a dozen lines when the 
bell sounded again, and Pierre flew 
to the door with another exclama- 
tion. This was mademoiselle for a 
certainty ! 

The ring made L6on start to his 
feet and get into position. This 
must be Pearl. But why this long 
conference with Pierre ? That was 
not her voice ; it was a man's 
voice, metallic, strong. Leon knew 
the tones well. He opened the 
drawing-room door and stood face 
to face with Darvallon. 

Darvallon raised his hat, and the 
two men exchanged a formal bow. 
Pierre, who was now in mortal 
terror of seeing Pearl brought 
back on a stretcher, his nerves 
being completely upset by the 
shock of these two disappointing 
rings, began to mumble something 
unintelligible to Captain Darvallon, 
who gave a different interpretation 
to the man's confusion and dis- 



tress. He passed on haughtily, 
and looking Leon full in the face, 
" I wish to have a word with you," 
he said. 

" I am at your orders," said Leon, 
moving aside to let him pass, and 
then closing the door. 

"First let me inquire for your 
father. How is he ?" 

" Thank you, he is better." 

"All danger is past?" 

" If it were not so I should not 
have left him." 

" Naturally. I ought to have 
known that. I am glad to hear it." 

There was a pause. Darvallon 
was the first to break it. 

" Leopold, what does this mean ? 
Do we stand here as rivals, as 
enemies ?" 

" You know as well as I do." 

" If I did I should not ask you. 
I am not given to idle questions. 
What brings you here in the ab- 
sence of the mistress of the 
house ?" 

" What right have you to ask ? 
What business is that of yours ?" 

" That is no answer, and you 
know it. You know that, as a man 
of honor, you have no right to be 
here. Your presence is an outrage 
to one whom you are doubly bound 
to treat with respect. How come 
you to intrude yourself upon her 
presence ?" 

" Ma foi ! you take it with a 
high hand," said Leon, with an 
angry movement that made his 
regimentals ring; "but, for rea- 
sons that you will appreciate, I will 
so far humor you as to explain that 
I am here, in my grandmother's 
house, on an errand from her to a 
young lady who is under her pro- 
tection. There is my passport. 
Perhaps now you will show me 
yours." 

" You gave your word, as a man 
of honor, not to see her again. 



Pearl. 



5 



Did Mme. Leopold free you from 
that promise ?" 

" Are you my mother's confi- 
dant ? Has she appointed you as 
a spy over my actions ? Et alors, 
je vous en fais mon compliment ! 
I had no idea you occupied that 
post of honor in my family," said 
Leon in a tone of biting sarcasm. 

Darvallon's eye burned fiercely 
as it fixed on the dark, sneering 
face of the man whom he had 
loved with a tenderness passing the 
love of woman. 

" Leopold, have a heed what you 
say ! We two have been brothers. 
We have fought side by side. I 
would fain bear from you all that 
man may bear from man ; but there 
is a point beyond which I cannot 
go. Don't push me too far." 

" You forget that other people's 
forbearance has its limits, too," 
said Leon, involuntarily softened 
by the tender touch. "You attack 
me as if I had committed a crime, 
and that you had the right to judge 
me for it. I deny your right to 
meddle in any act of mine. I am 
my own master ; I decline to be 
called to account by any one. But, 
as you say, we had better not push 
this conversation too far. I invite 
you to withdraw before words es- 
cape either of us that we should 
both repent." 

" I refuse to leave this house at 
your bidding." 

" And on whose authority do you 
remain ? What are you doing 
here ?" 

" I am waiting to see a lady 
whose name we both hold in too 
great reverence to mention in a 
quarrel. If she desires me to 
leave I will do so at once." 

Leon felt the delicacy of the an- 
swer, but he was in no mood to do 
justice to it. He knew that Dar- 
vallon had all the chivalry of a 



crusader in his plebeian soul, and 
he hated him for it ; for did it not 
constitute his strongest claim on 
the admiration of such a woman as 
Pearl? What chance had he be- 
side this man, whose greatness made 
him feel so small this lover with 
the strong, pure heart, who had 
hoarded the vintage of his man- 
hood to pour it out at the feet of the 
only woman he had ever loved? 
The worst, because the smallest, 
passions of Leon's nature, jealousy 
and vanity, woke up and stung him 
beyond self-control. 

" You are waiting for Pearl Reda- 
cre," he said, moving a step nearer 
and hissing out the words savagely. 
" Is it by appointment ?" 

The blood rushed to Darvallon's 
face, swelling out the veins of his 
forehead like thick cords. There 
was one moment's hesitation, and 
then he lifted his hand and struck 
Leon on the cheek. 

As the blow fell a cry rang 
through the room a piercing cry 
in a woman's voice and Pearl 
rushed in between them. 

" See ! it is gone ! It is wash- 
ed out !" And with a wild impulse 
she flung back her veil and kissed 
the smitten cheek. 

When Darvallon raised his hand 
Leon had instinctively grasped his 
sword, and he stood, still clutch- 
ing the hilt, as if the touch of 
Pearl's lips had turned him into a 
statue. 

But Pearl was not looking at 
him ; she was looking at Raoul. It 
was to him she had appealed. He 
returned her gaze steadily for a 
moment, then bowed low and 
turned to walk away. 

" Raoul ! Raoul !" cried Pearl, 
putting her hand to her forehead 
with a moan of pain ; and she fell 
forward and was caught in his out- 
stretched arms. 



Pearl. 



Leon dropped his hilt and flew 
to the rescue. 

"Ring the bell ! Call for help ! 
Is there no woman in the house ?" 
said Darvallon, lifting Pearl tender- 
ly in his strong arms and bearing 
her to a sofa. 

Leon pulled the bell-rope violent- 
ly, and flung open the door and 
called to Pierre. 

"Tell the maid to come the 
cook any woman within call !" 

But before Pierre could call 
anybody there was another ring at 
the door, and he ran to open it. 

"M. leDocteur! What luck!" 

Leon was beginning to tell him 
what had happened, but the old 
man needed no explanations; he had 
come from Mrs. Monteagle's house 
and was prepared for it all. 

Marianne had just returned as 
Leon's loud peal sounded in the 
kitchen, and she flew to answer it. 

" Ah ! monsieur, I knew what 
would happen. But it was not my 
fault," she began, expecting that he 
was going to attack her as the 
cause of the disaster. 

" Yes, yes ; I know all about it," 
said the medical man, cutting her 
short. " It is most unlucky. The 
shock would have been severe at 
any time ; but in her present ner- 
vous, exhausted state there is no 
foreseeing Go, my good woman, 
and bring me some sal-volatile 
and some cold water. And you, 
messieurs, you had better retire ; 
you can be of no further use, and 
my patient must not find a crowd 
about her when she recovers. 
Open that window, please. Thank 
you. Now you may go." 

Darvallon was standing at the 
head of the couch, his eyes fixed 
anxiously on Pearl's pale face ; 
Leon at a little distance, anxious 
too, but menacing, his eyes full of 
dark suspicion. " What shock do 



you allude to, doctor?" he said, 
before he moved a step to obey the 
old man's order. The doctor had 
known him since he was a child. 

" You have not heard it ? Mrs. 
Monteagle is dead." 

" Dead !" repeated Leon, aghast ; 
and at the sound of that dread 
word his anger fell. Jealousy, bit- 
terness, revenge everything was 
swept away by a momentary thrill 
of awe. 

" Yes ; it has been sudden, and I 
fear I did wrong in keeping the 
danger so completely a secret from 
this poor child," observed the doc- 
tor, telling in a few words how it 
had all come about, while he ap- 
plied the cold water to Pearl's tem- 
ples. "And now the position is 
more embarrassing than ever," he 
continued. " She is quite alone 
here, it seems, without a friend of 
any sort who can come to her ; not 
a member of her family within 
call." 

" I will telegraph to Colonel 
Redacre," said Darvallon in a low 
voice, without taking his eyes from 
Pearl's face, while the doctor went 
on sponging it. 

Marianne brought the sal-volatile, 
and, while the doctor and she were 
exchanging some remarks, Leon 
took the opportunity to say to 
Darvallon : 

" You speak of telegraphing to 
Miss Redacre's father. Permit me 
to suggest that, as the friend of the 
family, it might be more fitting for 
me to communicate with him." 

" Just as you please. I don't for 
a moment contest your right to do 
so, but neither do I resign my 
own." 

" Your right ?" repeated L6on 
with an insolent note of interroga- 
tion. 

"The right of Miss Redacre's 
affianced husband." 



Pearl. 



"Ha! That is indeed an in- 
contestable one." 

And bowing stiffly, without cast- 
ing even a parting glance at Pearl, 
Leon walked out of the room. 
Darvallon turned back and took up 
his watch near Pearl again. What 
was this he had dared to say ? Her 
affianced husband ? Affianced in 
his own heart; but what higher 
sanction had he for the bold words ? 
He must have been mad. But in 
truth it was not he who had uttered 
them ; his soul had slipped from un- 
der his hand, and some force with- 
in him, an impulse stronger than 
his free-will, had spoken. Well, he 
had said it, and he could not unsay 
it ; he must look to the future to 
justify the inspiration. She had 
called him by his name Raoul ! 
Raoul ! How beautiful it had 
sounded on her lips! She had turn- 
ed an imploring look upon him when 
he was moving coldly away, and 
was there no lingering ray of con- 
sciousness in the movement with 
which her head dropped upon his 
breast when he held out his arms 
to catch her ? And what was it 
that goaded her to that wild im- 
pulse of kissing the rival whom he 
had insulted ? she, who was so 
proudly reserved in her bearing to all 
men ! Dropping on one knee be- 
side the couch, he bent over Pearl, 
as if seeking an answer on the 
sweet, placid features, still locked 
in the immobility of death. How 
he yearned to take her to his heart 
and keep her there for ever ! 

Marianne was lifting up her 
voice in a loud whisper of lamenta- 
tion when the doctor raised his 
finger. " Hush ! she is coming to," 
he said. 

There was a pause of expectation. 
Pearl's lids quivered ; she opened 
her eyes, and met Raoul's fixed on 
her with a gaze of ardent love that 



called the pink blush slowly up 
into her pale cheeks. 

Marianne, with an exclamation 
of relief, seized the eau-sucree that 
she had in readiness for this crisis. 

"Quel bonheur! I thought ma- 
demoiselle was never going to 
wake ! Mon Dieu ! what an emo- 
tion she has given us all !" And she 
held out the glass to Pearl, while 
the doctor helped her to sit up. 

" You have had a great shock, 
my poor young lady," said the old 
man kindly. " I thought we should 
have been able to break it to you 
gradually." 

" You could not know it was 
not your fault," she answered, 
drawing her hand across her fore- 
head, as if to put away a pain. " I 
can't believe it yet ; I feel as if I 
were waking from a bad dream. 
" Did you know ?" she said, looking 
up at Raoul. 

" I heard it an hour ago. I re- 
turned from Vienna this morning, 
and drove there at once. They 
told me you had just gone. What 
would you like me to do ? Shalt I 
telegraph to your mother? or to 
Lady Wynmere, and ask her to 
give the message ?" 

He sat down beside her and took 
her hand, and she let him keep it, 
not returning the warm clasp, but 
resting in it with a sense of protec- 
tion, of tender trust, that was very 
sweet and comforting. 

" I don't know," she said dream- 
ily ; and then, as if remember- 
ing : "Oh! no, don't telegraph; it 
would only frighten them. I have 
telegraphed to Percy Danvers ; he 
will be here to-morrow, and I can 
go back with him when when it 
is all over!" 

She burst into tears and hid her 
face in her hands. 

" That is well ! Weep freely ; it 
will relieve the nerves," said the 



8 



Pearl. 



doctor, taking a professional view 
of the solacing flood. 

But Darvallon had started on 
hearing Percy Danvers' name 
coupled with Pearl's announcement 
that she would go home with him. 

" Mme. de Kerbec is not in town, 
is she?" he inquired. 

"No; they are at Carlsbad, or 
somewhere. There is no one in 
town ; but it does not matter," said 
Pearl in a tone of weary despair. 
" Mr. Danvers will be here to-mor- 
row ; he will take me home." 

The doctor and Marianne step- 
ped aside into the deep embrasure 
of the window, and were holding a 
consultation concerning their pa- 
tient, too much absorbed in tonics 
and tisanes and other mysterious 
agencies to pay any heed to what 
was going on in the room behind 
them. .. 

" Tell me," said Raoul, lowering 
his voice, " why did you telegraph 
for Danvers ? Would not King- 
spring be a more suitable person to 
take you home, if your father can't 
come to fetch you ?" 

" Oh ! have you not heard ? Mr. 
Danvers is going to be my brother- 
in-law. He and Polly are engag- 
ed ! I thought you knew " 

"How should I know? Who 
was there to tell me ?" 

" Of course not. I forgot. I 
thought you might have heard it 
from" 

" From our poor friend ? She 
never wrote to me, although I wrote 
to her, and have been waiting for 
her answer as a man waits for a 
verdict of life or death." 

" It was not her fault ! Your let- 
ter came a day too late," said Pearl, 
thrown off her guard, and thinking 
only of acquitting Mrs. Monteagle. 
" Too late ! Then you know 
you saw that letter?" said Raoul 
eagerly. 



Pearl crimsoned to the roots of 
her hair, and tried to draw away 
her hand from his passionate pres- 
sure ; but he tightened his grasp 
of it, and, drawing closer to her, 
" Pearl," he whispered, " give me 
the answer now. One word, dear- 
est. May I write to your father ? 
Are you brave enough to trust my 
love to make you happy ? I will 
work for you with all the energies 
of my soul and body. I will love 
you as no woman was ever loved 
before. Pearl, answer me " 

But Pearl could not answer, only 
trembled and blushed, and turned 
away shrinkingly. 

" Then I may write ; I may ask 
you for my wife my own." 

Raoul forgot the doctor and 
Marianne, and all the world except 
themselves two. He stole his arm 
round Pearl ; she felt his breath 
upon her cheek. 

" Eh,bien, mam'selle, M. le Doc- 
teur dit," cried out Marianne, 
emerging from the window ; and the 
lovers started asunder as if they 
had received a slight electric 
shock. 

Captain Darvallon stood up and 
coolly advanced to meet the doc- 
tor, while Marianne finished her 
communication to mam'selle and 
then departed. 

" We had better be going now," 
said the medical man. " This 
naughty young lady has made me 
late for a consultation. I shall be 
severely scolded by three of my 
confreres." 

And with a friendly good-by to 
Pearl he hurried away, and Cap- 
tain Darvallon followed him. Just 
as they were on the stairs Raoul 
discovered that he had forgotten 
his gloves in the drawing-room, 
and he ran back to fetch them. 
Pearl was standing at the window, 
waiting to see him pass. 



Pearl. 



" Your gloves ?" And she turned 
to look for them. 

" Here they are!" he said. 
" Pearl, ma fianc6e, ma femme " 
He opened his arms and caught her 
to him, and held her in a close em- 
brace. "You kissed Leopold; give 
me back that kiss." 

Pearl hid her face in his breast ; 
but he forced it round and look- 
ed pitilessly down at the burning 
cheeks. 

" How dared you do it, up to my 
very face ! Weren't you afraid I 
should murder him on the spot ?" 

" I was afraid he would murder 
you," said Pearl; "but you won't 
fight now, will you ?" And, her shy- 
ness banished by a return of terror, 
she looked up at him, her eyes full 
of beseeching, terrified love. 

" I fear I must " 

" O Raoul ! " 

" I must indeed. It is my duty 
to kill him to get back that kiss, 
unless you give it to me." 

Whether they compromised it, 
or that Pearl surrendered, I cannot 
tell ; but he gave her his solemn 
promise that he would not kill 
Captain Leopold. 

No wonder Pearl was ill next 
day. Percy Danvers arrived to 
find her in bed, the doctor in alarm, 
no one near her, no one within 
reach whose presence in the sick- 
room would have been of any use 
or comfort. Mme. Mere was to 
have returned that day or the next, 
but the chances were she would de- 
lay a few days longer, and neither 
Marianne nor Pierre had thought 
of telegraphing. Percy had come 
straight to the Rue du Bac before 
going to the house of mourning, to 
which he had been summoned, and 
this was the news that met him. 

"You had better let her know 
that I am come, at any rate," he 



said to Marianne, who was loud in 
self-commiseration about the <?pou- 
vantable load of responsibility that 
had fallen upon her. " Her mind 
will be more at rest when she hears 
that I am come; but I will tele- 
graph to Mme. Leopold. Give me 
her address." 

He was in the act of writing 
the telegram when Darvallon came 
in. 

" I sent one this morning to 
Gardanvalle," said Raoul ; " you 
may be sure some one will be here 
to-day. I also telegraphed yester- 
day to Mme. de Kerbec. She is 
away in Germany ; but it is right 
that she should know, in case she 
wishes to come and can arrive in 
time." 

"And what about writing to 
them at the Hollow ?" said Percy. 
" I suppose her father ought to 
come over, ought he not ?" 

" Can he come ? I saw Leopold 
this morning, and he tells me the 
boys are ill with small-pox; if it 
were not for this we should of 
course send a despatch to the colo- 
nel immediately." 

Danvers corrected this version 
of events at the Hollow. Colonel 
Redacre could quite well come, as 
far as the boys were concerned ; 
but something had happened which 
called him back at the last mo- 
ment, just as he was starting to at- 
tend the funeral. No one as yet 
knew what this was; but nothing 
short of his wife's death or danger- 
ous illness need prevent his coming, 
if Pearl's condition made his pre- 
sence necessary. But would he be 
of any use ? It was the mother 
who was wanted ; and poor Mrs. 
Redacre had had so much fatigue 
and anxiety these last few weeks 
that it seemed cruel to make this 
fresh demand on her strength, if it 
could possibly be avoided. They 



IO 



Pearl 



agreed to wait till the doctor came, 
and to be guided by his advice. 

" Meantime I want to have a little 
conversation with you," said Raoul. 
" Shall we stay here, or take a turn 
in the garden ?" 

" We shall be freer out of doors," 
said Percy ; they had been talking 
in low tones, because of the proxi- 
mity of the sick-room. 

The two gentlemen took their 
hats and went down to the cool, 
untidy garden. 

Percy Danvers was about the 
last man to sympathize with such 
a love-story as Darvallon had to 
tell, with the violent breach of 
worldly law and wisdom that both 
parties concerned displayed in it ; 
but there were fine chords in his 
nature, and these were stirred by 
the nobleness which it revealed. 
Since they loved one another, and 
were mad enough to fly in the face 
of Heaven by marrying on an in- 
come barely fit to keep a gentle- 
man in cigars, by all means let 
them do it. It was one of those 
deeds of desperate daring which 
the gods are said to admire; and, if 
so, they would prosper it. Dar- 
vallon himself was a first-rate fel- 
low ; Percy could no^ resist the 
contagion of his chivalrous passion. 
His love was so pure, so manly, so 
grandly scornful of material impos- 
sibilities ; it swept away obstacles 
like dust ; it burned up every im- 
pediment as the fUme burns pa- 
per ; with that one glorious word, 
"nous nous aimons," he cast 
every mountain into the sea, and 
was absolutely unable to under- 
stand Percy's wonder at the feat. 

"I can't for the life of me see 
how you are going to make it 
square," said the man of the world, 
when Raoul had poured out his 
soul and unrolled the splendid 
programme of the future ; " but if I 



can be of any use in making her 
father see it you may trust me to 
do my best. She's a girl worth 
making a fight for. But, my dear 
fellow, just think a minute : do you 
know how much it takes to dress a 
woman nowadays ?" 

"How much?" 

" How should I know ! I am 
going to find it out one of these 
days; but I tell you what, I don't 
believe your pay would keep her in 
bonnets." 

" Not your wife's ; but mine ?" 

" By JoveJ How you do come 
Don Magnifico over a fellow ! I 
suppose your wife will wear petti- 
coats and bonnets like other peo- 
ple's ; they may not be so smart nor 
so many of them, but they will 
cost pots of money. And then it's 
all very fine to come swelling it 
over Polly in that way ; the two 
sisters have been brought up to- 
gether, they have the same tastes 
and habits, and one knows no 
more about patching and cheese- 
paring than the other. Some girls 
are brought up to wear cotton 
gowns, and that sort of thing ; but 
not these girls. I tell you Pearl 
won't know how to manage a bit ; 
poverty is all very well in poetry, but 
in practice its the most deucedly 
disagreeable thing under heaven. 
Fancy Pearl Redacre mending 
your socks and sewing buttons on 
your shirts!" 

" Man of little faith ! Je vous 
dis qu'elle m'aime !" said Raoul, 
laughing and shaking Danvers vio- 
lently by the shoulders. 

What was the use of talking to 
a lunatic who met every argument 
with the same unanswerable an- 
swer, " Je 1'aime ; elle m'aime ; nous 
nous aimons " ? who could do 
nothing but conjugate the verb 
aimer in all its moods and tenses ? 
Most hopeless ! 



Pearl. 



II 



"Go your way," said Percy ;"you 
are the most hopeless case I ever 
met in my life. And the worst of it 
is, the madness is catching, for 
here am I ready to aid and abet 
you in carrying it out to the bitter 
end. Halloo ! I hear a carriage. 
That will be the doctor." 

They walked quickly into the 
house to meet him. He was with 
Pearl by the time they reached the 
drawing-room. 

They had not long to wait be- 
fore he came out. 

"I would not telegraph," he 
said in answer to their inquiry. 
" I see no need to do that, espe- 
cially as her mother is not very 
strong; a telegram is always a 
shock. Write and tell her it is ad- 
visable that she should come over 
as soon as she can. Say we are 
taking every care of her daughter, 
but it is not' well for the poor child 
to be without some relative near 
her. It is badfor the morale" 

" Then you are not uneasy, doc- 
tor ?" said Darvallon. 

" No, I am not uneasy, but I want 
some one to come and look after 
the morale while I am doing my 
part. It is all on the nerves; there 
is nothing else the matter so far." 

So far. But there was no saying 
what might follow on this collapse 
of the nerves, coming on a frame 
already severely tried. 

The two young men sat in coun- 
cil after the doctor had taken his 
departure, and they decided to 
wait till the afternoon train should 
have arrived from Gardanvalle. If 
it brought Mme. Mere back there 
was no need to hurry Mrs. Redacre 
over. Raoul was to go to the sta- 
tion to meet the train, which was 
due at 3.30, and if there was no 
Mme. Mere he would write to the 
Hollow. Meantime he and Percy 
left the house together and drove 



on to the Faubourg St. Honore". 
There were many things to be done 
there which Percy understood 
nothing about, so Darvallon's help 
and interference were invaluable. 
He took all the trouble, all the 
painful details, off the Englishman's 
hands ; he wrote out the faire-part 
letters and saw that nothing was 
forgotten. The funeral ought to 
have taken place the following day, 
according to the French law ; but 
Darvallon applied to the authori- 
ties for a day's delay, so as to allow 
of absent friends arriving and 
everybody was absent just now, as 
Pearl said. Danvers had telegraph- 
ed to his aunt's lawyer before he 
left London, and he expected him 
to appear at any s moment. 

" Of course she made her will 
and left everything in order?" said 
Darvallon. 

" I hope so," replied Danvers ; 
" but really I should not be sur- 
prised if there turned out to be no 
will." 

" She was a most unlikely person 
to neglect making one," observed 
Darvallon. 

" People always do the most un- 
likely things about their will : either 
they make it and hide it away and 
lose it, or they don't sign it, or 
they leave their money to the wrong 
people to the people, that is, who- 
don't expect to get anything." 

" Your aunt was too just to let 
caprice actuate her in anything, 
especially in a matter of this 
kind." 

"Oh! as to that, we English 
have very independent notions 
about what we do with our money," 
said Percy. " And my aunt, as you 
know, was the very type of inde- 
pendence ; she did exactly what 
she liked all her life, and I dare say 
she has done what she liked with 
her money. And as far as I am 



12 



Pearl. 



concerned, whatever she did with 
it will be well done." 

" But you are her natural heir, 
and you were always good friends ?" 
said Darvallon, whose French mind 
was unable to contemplate the pos- 
sibility which Danvers alluded to 
so coolly. 

" Excellent friends ; but that 
would be no reason for her leaving 
me her money. I have enough of 
my own to live on though it will 
be a tight fit for two besides being 
heir to my uncle. I should not be 
surprised if my aunt hasn't left me 
a penny." 

" I should be greatly surprised, 
I confess." 

"What do you bet?" 

" Nothing," said Darvallon, rather 
shocked at such a proposal under 
the circumstances ; but Percy made 
it quite innocently, prompted by. 
the life-long, second-nature habit 
of referring a disputed point to this 
simple test of a bet. Darvallon 
drove off to the railway station at 
the appointed hour, and, to his 
great relief, the first head he saw 
protruded from a window was Mme. 
Mere's. She was thankful to have 
him to meet her, and, leaving the 
maid behind to see to the luggage, 
she drove straight off with him to 
the Rue du Bac. On the way he 
contrived to make her hear the 
story of his engagement, and noth- 
ing could exceed the dear old 
lady's satisfaction. She was fond 
of Pearl, and Darvallon was loved 
and respectedby them all ; but, over 
and above all this, their marriage 
made an end of the difficulty about 
Leon, and vindicated Mme. Mere's 
character for ' vigilance, sagacity, 



and all the virtues proper to a 
duenna, in the eyes of Mme. Leo- 
pold. 

" But, mon cher capitaine, what 
will you both live on ? Ce sera la 
faim e'pousant la soif," she observ- 
ed, when the first burst of femi- 
nine enthusiasm had subsided and 
the instinct of the Frenchwoman 
thrust the practical realities of life 
back upon her. 

" She does not mind," said Raoul, 
laughing ; " but it won't be as bad 
as that, chere madame. I am pro- 
mised an excellent appointment on 
the foreign military mission to 
go and drill the sultan's troops 
and that will make us as rich as 
Jews." 

"But it will only be for a few 
years ? What will you do when 
the time is out ?" 

" I shall get another appoint- 
ment. And by the time that is 
out well, they must make me mar- 
shal of France, I suppose." 

" Tete folle ! Who would ever 
have believed it ?" said the old 
lady, looking at him with wonder- 
ing but complacent incredulity. 

They reached the Rue du Bac, 
and Raoul went up with her to 
hear the latest news about Pearl. 
Marianne announced that she had 
fallen asleep, and this was an ex- 
cellent sign. 

After a consultation of all three 
it was settled that no letter should 
be written to Mrs. Redacre by that 
post ; they would wait and see how 
Pearl was after this long sleep. 
Raoul was to come back at seven 
to dine with Mme. Mere, and to 
bring Percy Danvers with him, if 
he was to be found in time. 



Pearl. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



TWO WILLS AND TWO WEDDINGS. 



THE funeral was over, and the 
few relations and friends who had 
come from a distance to attend it 
were assembled, in that blue draw- 
ing-room that we know, to hear the 
will read. Sir Archibald Danvers 
had been prevented by a violent 
attack of gout from paying the last 
tribute of respect to his sister ; so 
Percy, who had taken the lead as 
chief mourner, now represented 
him as head of the family. Mr. 
Kingspring had come over with 
Mr. Splint, the lawyer. Colonel 
Redacre, who was still in London, 
was on the point of starting with 
them when he received a despatch 
from his wife calling him home 
immediately. The cause of this 
sudden summons will be explained 
after the reading of Mrs. Mont- 
eagle's will. Raoul Darvallon was 
present to hear it, greatly against 
his inclination ; but Danvers had 
made such a point of his being 
there that it was impossible to 
refuse. 

*' You are as good as one of the 
family already. I shall feel it un- 
kind if you don't stay," Percy said 
when they were returning from the 
service, so Darvallon reluctantly 
yielded. 

The opening of a will is a dis- 
mal ceremony ; everything con- 
nected with it is mournful, depress- 
ing, the reverse of comic ; and yet 
there is no incident in human life 
which so often produces a chap- 
ter of high human comedy. The 
breaking of the seal of the dead 
man's last testament is often the 
breaking of the seals of all the 
hearts around him and the reveal- 
ing of the secrets thereof pitiable 
secrets: low, sordid motives -hid 



beneath a show of disinterested af- 
fection ; dead loves turned to vin- 
dictive hate ; jealous spites care- 
fully concealed under a mask of 
cringing sycophancy; mean, ran- 
corous grudgings patiently held in 
check with a view to this day's re- 
ward. And now the day has come, 
the seal is broken, the stone is 
rolled away from the whited sepul- 
chre, and all the ugly dead things 
come up and show themselves, to 
the great surprise of many. 

The group assembled in Mrs. 
Monteagle's drawing-room pre- 
sented only a mild edition of these 
painful and shameful comedies. 
There was a certain hungry ex- 
pectation amongst the few relatives 
present ; but none of them were 
near enough of kin to justify strong 
hopes, or grievous disappointment 
if the testatrix had overlooked 
them. Danvers, of course, did not 
count. He was the heir, and it 
was assumed that his aunt had left 
him the bulk of her fortune, as 
well as the plate and jewels, which 
were of considerable value. Percy 
had said that he did not expect 
anything of the kind, and when he 
said it he meant it. He had seen 
so many extraordinary surprises 
befall people who had been waiting 
for dead men's shoes that he had 
sworn never to let himself expect 
anything from anybody, except 
what the law ensured their leaving 
to him. And yet and yet, as 
the moment approached, he could 
not conceal from himself that he 
was growing nervous, that expec- 
tation was high within him, and 
that the suspense was becoming 
painful. 

" She hasn't left me a penny; I 



Pearl. 



bet you anything she hasn't, and I 
don't care a rap," he had said to 
Mr. Kingspring the evening before ; 
and he was mortified to find how 
much he did care, now that the 
sentence was about to be delivered. 
"Everybody is present?" said 
Mr. Splint, -looking up from the 
table ; and then he proceeded to 
read the contents of the will. 

There were pensions to her ser- 
vants and legacies to some few 
relations, bequests to several char- 
ities, the .largest being one thou- 
sand pounds to the Blind Hospital ; 
the jewels and plate, the pictures 
and furniture, she bequeathed to 
her nephew, Percy Danvers, to- 
gether with the bulk of her pro- 
perty, which amounted to the sum 
of fifteen thousand pounds when 
all the foregoing charges had been 
paid off. This will was dated 
three years back ; but there was 
a codicil which bore the date of 
June 20, not six weeks ago. By . 
this the testatrix bequeathed the 
sum of one thousand pounds to 
her old friend Mr. Kingspring, and 
to Miss Margaret Redacre the 
sum of twelve thousand pounds, 
thus leaving Percy a residue of 
two thousand. There was a gen- 
eral movement through the room, 
a murmur of surprise, and every 
eye turned to Percy. He was 
sitting with his back to the light, 
his hands between his knees, and 
still bent down in the attitude of 
quiet attention which he had main- 
tained while the will was being 
read. He changed color percepti- 
bly at the reading of the codicil, 
but made not the slightest sign of 
surprise or discontent. 

When the lawyer laid down the 
document, as a sign that the cere- 
mony was over, Percy stood up 
and said : 

" As my aunt thought fit to 



change her will, I am as satisfied 
with her disposal of the money as 
I could be, seeing it has not been 
left to myself. Kingspring, I am 
glad she thought of you ; she was 
always fond of you. I wonder she 
didn't think of leaving something 
to Colonel Redacre." 

-" She did enough in leaving 
twelve thousand pounds to his 
daughter," observed a cousin who 
had been left five hundred. 

" It is the most unjust, the most 
absurd will I ever heard in my 
life," said another, who had been 
left a thousand. " If I were you, 
Danvers, I should dispute it. It is 
clearly a case of undue influence. 
Your aunt could not have been of 
sound mind when she added that 
codicil. I should dispute it." 

"You will allow me to be judge 
in my own affairs," said Danvers 
stiffly, drawing up his handsome 
figure to its full height. " My aunt 
was of sound mind to the last day 
of her life. She had a great affec- 
tion for every member of Colonel 
Redacre's family, but particularly 
for his eldest daughter. I am 
quite satisfied to abide by her 
wishes. The will, moreover, is a 
perfectly valid instrument, and any 
attempt to dispute it would, I pre- 
sume, be perfectly useless ?" 

" Perfectly, I should say," replied 
the lawyer, to whom this last re- 
mark was addressed, not for in- 
formation, but with a view to si- 
lence the discontented parties and 
put an end to further discussion. 

Captain Darvallon was not- suf- 
ficiently fluent in English to follow 
the technical wording of the will, 
read out in the sing-song, profes- 
sional tone of the lawyer, but he 
had heard Pearl's name, and gath- 
ered that money had been left to 
her, and that the family were dis- 
pleased ; he understood, moreover, 






Pearl. 






by what Percy had just said, that 
there was an intention of going to 
law about it. 

" I want to speak to you," he said, 
touching Danvers on the shoulder. 

"Come in here," said Danvers; 
and they went into the dining- 
room. 

Darvallon asked for a clear ex- 
planation of what had happened. 

" What ! She has defrauded you 
of your lawful rights, and left three 
hundred thousand francs to Pearl? 
Is that what I am to understand ?" 
said Darvallon, whose first feeling 
was one of shocked surprise at an 
act of gross injustice to the family. 

" Don't use hard words about 
my aunt, or else I shall have to go to 
law with you," said Danvers, whose 
better instincts were once more in 
the ascendant, his passing vexation 
having been shamed away by the 
covetousness of his disappointed re- 
lations. " My aunt has defrauded no 
one ; she had a clear right to do what 
she chose with her property. Try 
and get that English dogma into 
your French head." 

" But it is a crying injustice ! 
Don't tell me any one has a right 
a moral right at any rate to 
leave their money out of their family. 
Justice is the same everywhere, 
though law may differ." 

" What are you driving at ? 
What do you want to prove ?" said 
Danvers . " That my aunt was an 
unprincipled woman, or that she 
was mad, as her grateful legatees 
would make out ?" 

" I want to prove nothing ; but 
as Pearl's affianced husband I have 
a right to an opinion in the matter. 
If Pearl were here, or in a state to 
learn what has happened, both you 
and I know what she would do. 
In her absence and in her name 
I may speak for her privately, of 
course to you, mon cher." 



I' Well?" said Danvers. 

" Well, you don't suppose she 
will accept this money? You don't 
suspect either of us of doing any- 
thing so unjust as to take advantage 
of the kindness of Mrs. Monteagle, 
of her her " 

" Her insanity ? That's what you 
want to say, is it not ? Don't say it. 
I'd rather any day lose the money 
than have it believed that my aunt 
died imbecile or mad. She has 
left a good bit of money to Pearl, 
and nobody deserved it better. 
Be thankful to your stars or to 
Providence, and let me hear no 
more nonsense about this." 

" Mon cher, it is impossible," 
persisted Raoul. " Pearl never 
would consent to take the money ; 
she is too honorable, too high-prin- 
cipled. I can't interfere further in 
the matter ; but I protest in her 
name against this legacy, and I am 
certain she will bear me out in re- 
fusing to accept it." 

" Darvallon," said Danvers, very 
coolly, " I found out yesterday that 
you were mad, both yourself and 
Pearl ; but if you persist in playing 
the fool in this fashion I'll call a 
conseil de famille (is that the 
word ?) and have you both locked 
up as a pair of dangerous lunatics ! 
Upon my soul I will !" 

" You mean her to take this enor- 
mous sum of money that she has 
no right to whatever ?" 

"She is theonlyperson alive who 
has any right to it. Why, man, what 
are you going to do with an English 
wife, if your French crotchets are 
so thick that you can't see right 
from wrong when you are amongst 
us? Don't be an ass; I can't 
stand a brother-in-law who is an 



ass. 



He was turning away with this 
complimentary remark when Raoul, 
yielding to the natural impulse of 



i6 



Pearl. 



a Frenchman under the circum- 
stances, took him by the hand and 
kissed him on both cheeks. 

They found everybody gone, ex- 
cept Mr. Kingspring and the law- 
yer, when they returned to the draw- 
ing-room. There were many de- 
tails yet to be settled, arrangements 
to be made about the house and its 
contents, and Darvallon and Mr. 
Kingspring were useful in advis- 
ing and directing the two uniniti- 
ated Englishmen. The servants, 
however, were trustworthy and in- 
telligent, and the practical carry- 
ing out of all that remained to be 
done might safely be left to them. 

"We had better go to Mme. 
Leopold's now," said Danvers, "and 
tell her about Pearl's inheritance. 
She will be glad to hear it." 

He and Darvallon went out to- 
gether and walked across the river 
to the Rue du Bac. Mr. King- 
spring and the lawyer returned to 
their hotels ; both were leaving by 
that night's mail. Mme. Mere was 
thrown into great excitement by 
the wonderful tidings. 

"Why, she will be a small heir- 
ess ! Mon cher capitaine, I con- 
gratulate you heartily !" cried the 
old lady. " What a pity the dear 
child cannot know of it at once ! 
It would help to console her for the 
loss of her kind friend, though, in 
one sense, it will deepen her regret. 
Who would have thought of it ? 
But we are making wonderful dis- 
coveries these times ; are we not, 
monsieur ?" she added to Percy, 
with a knowing little nod at Raoul. 
" Who would ever have suspected 
him of being such a tete folle, with 
his quiet airs of superiority and 
sense (" 

" Madame, there is a proverb in 
our country which says that smooth 
waters run deep," said Percy ; but 
it took a great deal of roaring in 



his doubtful French to convey the 
point to Mme. Mere. 

The doctor came in while they 
were talking, and reported so well 
of his patient that Danvers express- 
ed it as his private opinion that she 
was not ill at all, and only wanted 
change of air to be as strong as a 
young bird. 

" I cannot myself understand 
the turn the case has taken," re- 
marked the medical man, who be- 
gan to suspect there was some 
more potent agency at work than 
his drugs. " Considering the state 
mademoiselle was in when she re- 
ceived this sudden shock, I should 
at least have expected an attack of 
brain fever ; but the morale is sur- 
prisingly remonte 1 , and there are 
none of the feverish symptoms I 
looked for." 

" Doctor, I am sorry you should 
be disappointed," said Mme. Mere 
playfully ; ." but the morale, as you 
say, is a wonderful physician. It 
plays tricks sometimes that discon- 
cert the faculty; does it not?" 

The two young men were laugh- 
ing, and the doctor, naturally con- 
cluding that Mr. Danvers was the 
guilty person, looked at him with a 
countenance full of sly humor. 

" Monsieur," he said, " if you 
possess the secret of these tricks of 
which we poor practitioners are the 
victims, I congratulate you, and I 
extend to you my personal forgive- 
ness." 

u Monsieur leDocteur, I am deep- 
ly sensible of your generosity," re- 
plied Percy, bowing low with his 
hand upon his heart. 

And so, amidst the laughter and 
general content, the medical man 
took his leave. 

" You both dine with me, of 
course," said Mme. Mere ; " but 
don't lose your time here till then. 
You have probably something to 









Pearl. 



do, and it wants a couple of hours 
yet to dinner-time." 

Darvallon chose to stay ; but 
Percy went back to write some let- 
ters. He found several awaiting 
him at the hotel, amongst them 
one from Polly : 

" WYNMERE PARK. 

J< DEAREST PERCY: I have only just 
time to scribble one line to tell you what 
has happened. I am so excited about it 
all that I hardly know where to begin. 
But I must begin at the beginning, and 
tell you why mamma called papa home 
so suddenly when he was starting off 
with you to poor Mrs. Monteagle's fune- 
ral. I am so sorry about her ! Pearl 
was so fond of her, too, and she was so 
kind to Pearl ! Well, there has been a 
fire at the Hollow, and it is a miracle 
that the place was not burnt to the 
ground. It has been the luckiest thing 
that ever happened. I mean the fire. 
It broke out on the Wednesday night in 
the boys' room, which is over the dining- 
room. Fortunately the boys were here; 
Lady Wynmere had insisted on their 
coming over while the Hollow was being 
cleaned and fumigated. It was the 
fumigation that brought about the catas- 
trophe I mean the good luck. They 
had lighted a charcoal fire in a pan, and 
poured aromatic stuff over it, and left it 
in the room to smoke away all night it 
was Mrs. Mills' idea, bless her for it ! 
and about two in the morning the nurse 
one had remained to rest herself for a 
few days, and was sleeping in our room 
was awoke by a strong smell of burn- 
ing. She got up, and went out to look, 
and the boys' room was full of smoke ; 
and when she opened the door the 
flames burst out. Fortunately there was 
nothing to catch fire quickly except a 
sheet that Mrs. Mills laid on the floor 
under the pan, or else the whole house 
would have caught the flames and we 
should never have found it. She rushed 
out and rang the great bell, and called 
to Jacob Mills ; and soon the lodge peo- 
ple at the Park heard the noise and woke 
up the servants here, and they all flew to 
help, and we got up and hurried out. 
Jacob behaved like a fire-brigade so 
clever and energetic it was wonderful ! 
If it had not been for him I believe the 
dining-room would have been complete- 
VOL. XXX. 2 



ly burnt down, and we never should 
have found it." 

" What the deuce is she driving 
at ?" exclaimed Percy, out of pa- 
tience with the long puzzle; but 
there was nothing for it but to go 
on to the end and possess his soul 
in peace as well as he could. 

"There was so little to feed the flames 
in the boys' room, and the water being 
close at hand thanks to the dear old 
dean, who carried the pipes up-stairs 
and the people were so quick and help- 
ful, that the fire was got under before it 
spread beyond those two rooms. But 
now I have to tell you the wonderful 
thing that has come of the accident ! 
Dear Percy, you can fancy how happy 
we are, and what a blessing it will be to 
dear papa, and the boys, and all of us. 
You know the dining-room and drawing- 
room were] hung with crimson paper. 
It was a fancy of the good old dean's to 
have all the rooms he occupied hung 
like that ; they were done fresh only six 
months or so before his death, poor man ! 
Well, the fire heated the wall of the 
dining-room on the north side opposite 
the fire-place, you know so dreadfully 
that all the paper blistered and curled 
off, and, lo and behold ! underneath it 
we discovered a large cupboard ; it was 
locked, but we found a key that opened 
it, and what do you think we found in it ? 
The box in which the dean had put his 
will ! We telegraphed for papa, and 
papa telegraphed for Mr. Jervis, who 
came down at once and opened the will, 
and we found that the kind old dean 
had left us everything. You can fancy 
what a joy it was. Mamma nearly faint- 
ed. I can hardly believe yet that it is 
true. It seems too much happiness 
coming all together. I mean to be very 
good. I will write to Pearl to-day, if I 
can make time ; but you can't think how 
much I have to do, writing letters for 
mamma and looking after the boys, who 
are just well enough to be up to every 
sort of mischief and imprudence if they 
are not watched like babies. Dear, dar- 
ling Pearl ! Percy, if you don't love her 
and make a good brother to her I will 
bring you into the divorce court for 
cruelty and incompatibility of temper. 
I will tell you all about it some day, and 
you will see what an angel Pearl is. 



18 



Pearl 



Go at once and tell her the news, and 
give her a kiss from me. And bring her 
home the moment you can get away, and 
you may flirt with her as much as you 
can on the way. Come back quickly to 
" POLLY." 

Then came a postscript : 

" I forgot to tell you that the dean left 
thirty thousand pounds, all to papa for 
his life, and then to be divided equally 
between us, except five thousand pounds 
which he bequeathed to Pearl, to be 
handed over to her on her marriage or 
her twenty-first birthday. I am so glad 
about this !" 

" By Jove ! Darvallon is in luck," 
was Percy's exclamation ; and then 
he added to himself: "I don't 
grudge it to him ; fortune favors 
the brave, and he is not half a bad ' 
fellow." 

The news was received with 
hearty rejoicings by Mme. Mere 
and Raoul. Percy said nothing 
about the five thousand pounds to 
Pearl ; he left that for her to an- 
nounce herself. 

Mme. Leopold arrived from Gar- 
danvalle two days later, and chim- 
ed in with her congratulations on 
the turn of the wheel for her old 
friends at the Hollow. She was 
perfectly sincere in saying that she 
rejoiced at their good fortune, and 
that she knew no one who better 
deserved to be happy than they 
did, every one of them. But her 
tenderest sympathies were for 
Pearl. 

"You know, ma mere, I always 
loved and admired the dear child," 
she said, " and if other things 
had fitted in I should have opened 
my arms gladly to her as a daugh- 
ter ; but whatever my faults are, no 
one will ever accuse me of being a 
bad mother, of sacrificing the real 
interests of my children to my own 
feelings or to any other considera- 
tion. Pearl will bless me some day 



for having thwarted her wishes as 
regards Leon. And so will he, 
though he can't own that now." 

" Ma chere Sophie, if you will 
persist in that delusion I can't 
help it," said Mme. Mere. " But 
she never had any wishes concern- 
ing notre petit, except that he 
would leave her alone; she never 
would have married him under any 
circumstances ; she has been attach- 
ed to Raoul Darvallon almost from 
the first days of their acquain- 
tance." 

"We won't discuss that, ma 
mere," replied Sophie, with her 
bland smile. " lam very glad that 
she cares now for Darvallon, and I 
am sure he will make her an excel- 
lent husband; but don't try to 
persuade me that you believe, any 
more than I do, that la petite 
would have taken him if she could 
have got my son." 

"If! Why, Lon would marry 
her this minute, if she chose to take 
him ! He is crazed about her. 
I ought to know it; I have suffered 
enough with his despair and vexa- 
tion, pauvre petit ! But Pearl never 
liked him." 

" Ma mere ! You can't say that 
to me!" And Mme. Leopold held 
up her hand and shrugged her 
shoulders with a smile of fond in- 
credulity. 

" Then why on earth did she so 
positively refuse him?" demanded 
Mme. Mere, losing patience. 

" Ah ! mon Dieu, why ? She is a 
girl of spirit ; she felt that her posi- 
tion would have been too humiliat- 
ing, coming into the family without 
a penny. But things have righted 
themselves, so we need not discuss 
what might have happened if they had 
not. I had a letter from Blanche 
this morning; she is coming up to 
town to-morrow or next day. The 
old marquise is very ill." 



Pearl. 



" They say her son's marriage 
has been a great blow to her ; if 
she dies they will say it has killed 
her," observed Mme. Mere. 

" They may say what they please. 
She is a narrow-minded old bigote, 
who always tried to mar her son's 
prospects, putting her own preju- 
dices before his happiness. I have 
no sympathy with such egotism 
and stupidity. A mother's first 
duty is to sacrifice herself for her 
children." 

Mme. Mere made no comment 
on this remark of her daughter, 
but said good-morning and return- 
ed home to look after Pearl. 

Pearl had rallied so wonderfully 
during the last few days that the 
doctor thought she might under- 
take the journey to England by the 
end of the week. But Pearl her- 
self was in no hurry to go. The 
interval of rest was very soothing 
here in deserted Paris, with the hot 
young August sun beating down 
on the ragged garden and stream- 
ing in through every slit and crevice 
in the closed persiennes. Then 
there was the afternoon drive in 
the Bois, with Raoul sitting oppo- 
site, the sleepy horse snailing 
through the black shadows, the 
silver lake gliding on, the waterfall 
splashing and gurgling in the heat, 
wafting its cool breath to them in 
the shade, while they ate ices and 
listened to the murmurous hum 
of the boughs overhead. Was it 
real ? Were they floating down some 
river in Dreamland, with music 
echoing from beneath the water ? 
Was it real, this wonderful life of 
joy, so full of promise fulfilled, of 
richer promise telling of the day 
when soon, like blended rivers 
" that take in a broader heaven," 
her life and Raoul's would make one, 
with no more fear of separation, of 
mistrust, of possible misunderstand- 



ing ? She heard from Percy the 
story of the fire, pf the two wills 
that had turned her into an heiress, 
and it all sounded like the closing 
chapter of the fairy-tale she had 
been reading these last few days. 
The fairy herself was gone ; but this 
must needs have been, for there is no 
happiness on earth without a flaw. 

Mme. Mere was very kind, and 
put many obstacles in the way of 
her departure ; but the day had to 
be named at last. Mrs. Redacre 
was coming over to fetch the fairy's 
godchild home, and Percy and 
Raoul were going to attend upon 
them both a pair of loyal knights 
in the suite of their ladies. 

The morning before they left 
Blanche de Cholcourt walked in, 
trailing her cool silk skirts with 
the airy majesty of a grande dame 
as she was. 

" Ah ! ma chere," she exclaimed, 
opening wide her arms and folding 
Pearl in a sisterly embrace, " you 
have given me a cruel disappoint- 
ment. I made so sure we were 
going to be sisters ! But never 
mind. I forgive you, because you 
are happy. I should have been 
miserable if you had made a mar- 
iage de raison. But that you 
would never have- done. And 
now you and Polly will come and 
pay me a visit at Cholcourt ; will 
you not ? How nice it will be to 
meet, we three friends, with the 
husbands of our choice ! Ah ! 
chere amie, how one pities people 
who marry for anything but affec- 
tion." 

It was a joyous home-coming 
such a one as Pearl had never 
dreamed of. Cousin Bob, and the 
colonel, and the boys, and Fritz 
fresh from the tub, with a tail as 
big as three, were at the station to 
meet the travellers. 



20 



FearL 



It was a hot summer's day, but 
the country was as green as in 
spring-time, and the birds woke up 
and sang a welcome to them all as 
they wended up the hill, some on 
foot, some in Lady Wynmere's open 
carriage. 

Pearl gave a cry of delight when 
the Hollow came in view, nestling 
into the green pillow of the woods 
like a bird hiding itself from the 
white blaze of the sunshine. 

" How gay the masses of white 
roses look !" she cried. 

" Yes," said Polly. " Don't they 
look as if they were shaking with 
laughter?" 

And so they did, tossing and 
bobbing all over the veranda, and 
scattering their petals on the lawn 
as the breeze shook them in one 
of those tender peals with which 
mother Nature loves to celebrate 
her joys. 

" Mother," said Polly that night, 
when Mrs. Redacre went to give 
them a last kiss in their room, " I 
have had a secret on my heart ever 
since the dean died, and I want 



to tell it to you now. Mother, 
Pearl is an angel !" 

" My child, we found that secret 
out long ago," said the mother ten- 
derly. 

Pearl tried to silence Polly, but 
it was no use ; she had resolved to 
speak, and Pearl knew that it was 
best so. Through tears and bitter 
self-upbraidings, intermingled with 
words of passionate love for Pearl, 
she told her stofy the letter writ- 
ten in self-willed defiance of her 
sister's warning, and the terrible 
result which she believed it had 
led to ; her own remorse and Pearl V 
generous silence as to the cause of 
their ruin and misery. 

They all three wept together, 
and it was late when the mother 
left them and went to rest, happier 
than she had expected ever to be 
again in this world. 

Before the white roses had done 
laughing there were two weddings 
at the Hollow, and the silver-footed 
chimes rang out from the village 
church and drowned the silent 
laughter of the roses. 



THE END.'.. 



Maguelone. 



21 



MAGUELONE. 



A WALK of two leagues south of 
Montpellier across stagnant marsh- 
es that border a dull lagoon brings 
you to a desolate isle on the sea- 
coast connected with the mainland 
by a causeway. There is nothing 
here to bespeak the enchanting 
shores of the Mediterranean Sea as 
we, far away, imagine them, cover- 
ed with silvery olives and fragrant 
groves of the orange and citron. 
The coast here is anything but 
luxuriant or joyous. You could 
not imagine this barren isle ever 
enlivened by the song and the 
dance, and the softer pleasures of 
life. No one here ever sacrificed 
to the Graces. No Venus ever 
rose on this joyless shore, fresh and 
dewy, from the foaming sea. No 
laughing Winds would blow her to 
this flowerless island. If Pan ever 
piped among yonder tall reeds, 
only the wild waves danced to the 
music. The very Hours, in flitting 
by, must have always slackened 
their speed to a graver march. 
The inexorable Fates, or the stern- 
er Virtues, have always reigned 
here. Only those driven by re- 
morseless destiny, or who despise 
the softnesses of life, would dwell in 
such a place. The arid soil yields 
only a short, scanty herbage. Here 
and there are some tufts of sam- 
phire. And there are a few stunt- 
ed trees bent by the fierce Cers 
which the ancients sought to pro- 
pitiate by their altars. Landward 
the eye rests on nothing but pale 
sands, black pools, and reedy 
swamps, which, though not so stern 
and threatening as the rough coasts 
of the north, are inexpressibly 
dreary and monotonous. In the 



distance can be seen the mountains 
of Cevennes, sometimes whitened 
by the snow. At the south the 
sea, often wild with storms, is 
the only perspective. There is 
nothing to break the outline of 
the low, flat isle but the gray walls 
of what at first looks like a dis- 
mantled fortress, but in reality is 
a half- ruined church of the twelfth 
century, which only adds to the 
sadness of the landscape. It is as 
strange to come upon so imposing 
an edifice in this deserted isle as to 
find the melancholy church of St. 
Apollinare among the marshes of 
Ravenna. This is all that remains 
of the old Civitas Magalonensium 
the ecclesiastical city of Mague- 
lone once an episcopal see, and a 
port of considerable importance 
when Montpellier was only a ham- 
let, but is now remembered among 
the villes mortes the many extinct 
places on the shores of this storied 
sea. 

Who would think it ? Coming 
from fair Montpellier, throned on 
a gentle hill, surrounded by a smil- 
ing country covered with vines, 
olives, and wheat-fields, who would 
think that Maguelone, sitting wid- 
owed, desolate, and ruined on the 
sea-shore amid a few poor trees 
shrinking from the blast, with no- 
thing left of her glory but this old 
basilica beaten by the winds and 
waves of so many centuries, could 
be the foster-mother of so fair a 
child ? But so it is. Fifteen hun- 
dred years ago the island of Ma- 
guelone was peopled and fortified, 
and for ages enjoyed a considerable 
maritime role on the Gulf of Lyons. 
In its soil is mingled the dust of 



22 



M ague lone. 



Phocaeans, Greeks, Romans, Visi- 
goths, Saracens, and Gauls. Chris- 
tian bishops and canons, barons, 
knights, and serfs, all lie in this 
spot once blessed by the vicar of 
Christ as a burial-place of special 
sanctity and grace. For five hun- 
dred years it was occupied by men 
who gave themselves up to devo- 
tion, study, and the exercise of 
a charity only to be found in the 
annals of monasticism. Some sup- 
pose Maguelone to be the ancient 
Mesua spoken of by Pomponius 
Mela. How early it became a see 
is not positively known, but in a 
letter written by the bishops of the 
province to Pope Leo the Great in 
451 is the name of ^Ethefius Epis- 
copus Magalonensis, and there are 
some who go so far as to say the 
first bishop was commissioned by 
the very apostles, and that the 
name of Maguelone is derived 
from Mary of Magdala, whose le- 
gend is so dear to Provence^ At 
all events it was inhabited at an 
early age by refugees. When 
Gaul was overrun by the barbari- 
ans of the north it became dense- 
ly populated. The people of the 
interior fled to the sea-coast be- 
fore the Vandals and Huns, just 
as those on the shore escaped 
inland when the coast was in- 
vaded by the Saracens. As Ven- 
ice rose to be a place of safety 
among the lagoons of the Adriatic 
coast for those who fled before the 
fury of Attila, so Maguelone serv- 
ed as a refuge to the people of 
Narbonnese Gaul. Those who es- 
caped from the Arian Visigoths 
were of course fervent Catholics. 
Here on the coast they could hold 
free communication with Rome, 
and the see became of importance. 
Maguelone was already a city when 
Wamba, King of the Goths, came 
by sea to besiege it in the sixth 



century, but not strong enough to 
resist his attack. The episcopal 
chair was then occupied by Bishop 
Gumild, who is mentioned in histo- 
ry as joining Duke Paul in the re- 
volt against King Wamba. But a 
worse enemy was at hand. The 
Saracens, at. that time masters of 
Spain, were desirous of obtaining 
a foothold on this coast, and Ma- 
guelone was a convenient post from 
which communication could be 
held with Spain, Africa, and the 
Balearic Isles. They took the isl- 
and, enlarged the harbor for their 
fleets, made it a centre of trade 
on the Mediterranean and a place 
from which to ravage all Occitania. 
Hence it acquired the name of the 
Portus Sarracenorum, by which it 
was so long known. To escape 
slavery and death among the 
Moors the clergy and most of the 
people took refuge at Sextantio, or 
Substantion, on the Domitian Way, 
near the village of Montpellier. 
But vengeance awaited the Sara- 
cens. Charles Martel, determined 
to root them out of the land, not 
only swept them into the sea but 
razed Maguelone to the ground, 
that they might not re-occupy it. 
The cathedral alone was left stand- 
ing. For more than three hundred 
years the island remained a mere 
heap of ruins, and the church a 
shelter for corsairs and sea-birds. 

All this time the bishops of Ma- 
guelone and the attendant clergy 
remained at Substantion. The 
number of people who also took 
refuge in that vicinity gave the 
first start to Montpellier. New 
churches became necessary. One 
of them was built on the ruins of 
an ancient temple of Vesta to en- 
shrine a revered Madonna brought 
by the refugees, that afterwards be- 
came famous under the name of 
the Magestat antiqua de Nostra 



Maguelone. 



Dama de Taoulas, or Notre Dame 
des Tables, so called from the nu- 
merous tables set up by the bank- 
ers and money-changers in the vi- 
cinity of the church. The counts 
of Maguelone contributed largely 
to the construction of this edifice, 
and it was consecrated by Bishop 
Ricuin about the year 817. Notre 
Dame des Tables became, as we 
shall see, the most popular place of 
devotion in this region, and the 
Magestat antiqua is to this day one 
of the glories of Montpellier. 

Meanwhile the bishops of Ma- 
guelone did not wholly forget their 
deserted isle and the church bereft 
of its pastors, and abo\it the middle 
of the eleventh century Arnaud I., 
one of the greatest of them, resolv- 
ed to restore it and make it once 
more the episcopal residence. He 
obtained the sanction of Pope 
John XIX., who issued a bull of 
indulgences to all who would aid 
in rebuilding the place. The walls 
were restored and flanked with 
towers. An immense levee, divid- 
ed by a series of bridges, was built 
across the lagoon, connecting it 
with Villeneuve on the inland 
shore. The old grau* by which 
the Saracens entered the harbor 
was closed, and a new one opened 
that could be more easily defend- 
ed. A college of canons was at- 
tached to the cathedral after its 
restoration, and from that time the 
island remained under the exclu- 
sive control of the bishop and 
chapter. It was, in fact, under 
them that Maguelone played its 
chief role. Bishop Arnaud, after 
accomplishing his design, went on 
a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, 
and, dying at Villeneuve on his re- 
turn, was buried in the cathedral 
of Maguelone, of which he was 

* A road or passage from the sea to the lagoon 
derived from gradus. 



considered the second founder 
sedes^ pater et auctor, according to 
the inscription on his tomb. This 
restoration of the see took place in 
1037. 

The old counts of Maguelone, 
said to be descended on the female 
side from the Goths, likewise re- 
moved to Substantion. At least 
Count Aigulf, father of St. Bene- 
dict of Aniane, lived there, as well 
as his two successors. At a later 
period they took the name of 
Counts of Melgueil, from the castle 
in which they finally established 
themselves. They seemed to reign 
like independent sovereigns, coin- 
ing money, waging war, and ruling 
over their vassals. To this family 
belonged St. Fulcran, Bishop of 
Lodeve. It was his two sisters 
who gave the bishops of Maguelone 
the fiefs of Montpellier and Mont- 
pellieret, which contributed so 
much to the importance of these 
prelates. They ceded them after- 
wards to the Guillems of Montpel- 
lier, but reserved certain rights, 
especially over the churches. The 
counts of Melgueil were uniformly 
generous to the church. They not 
only gave up all their claims to 
Maguelone, but sold the lagoon to 
the bishop and canons for the fish- 
eries, so important to a religious 
community with numerous days of 
abstinence. Nor was this all. 
Count Peter de Melgueil made 
himself a vassal of the church by 
resigning the suzerainete of his do- 
mains to the Holy See, declaring 
that he and his successors would 
henceforth hold them as a fief by 
the annual payment of an onza of 
gold. This was not an uncommon 
thing in those days. About the 
same time Raymond Berenger II. 
of Barcelona made over his patri- 
monial estates, particularly the city 



2 4 



Magueione. 



of Tarragona, to the Holy See, 
promising to hold them as its vas- 
sal by the annual payment of twen- 
ty-five libras in silver. 

The memory of Count Peter de 
Melgueil was always held in great 
veneration by the church of Ma- 
guelone on account of his generosity, 
as well as this act of devotion to 
the Holy See, and he is believed 
to be the hero of the mediaeval 
romance of Pierre de Provence et la 
belle Maguelone, once so popular in 
Southern France, written by Ber- 
nard de Trevies, a canon of this 
cathedral in the twelfth century. 
"Who can deny the truth of the 
history of Peter of Provence and 
the fair Magalona," says Don Quix- 
ote, " since to this very day is to 
be seen in the king's armory the peg 
wherewith he steered the wooden 
horse upon which he rode through 
the air ?" * 

This romance is supposed to be 
typical of the count's love for the 
church of Maguelone. Petrarch is 
said to have retouched it in the 
flush of life, and perhaps made it 
more romantic than the old canon 
intended. The original disappear- 
ed in the fifteenth century, and it 
is only known now by a poor trans- 
lation ; but there is a strange satis- 
faction in reading it, such as it is, 
among the ruins of this deserted 
isle where Count Peter himself was 
buried, trying to imagine one's self 

"Sitting by the shores of old romance." 

One of Count Peter's sons, Pons, 
succeeded St. Hugo as abbot of 
Cluny. He was the god-son of 
Pope Pascal II., who placed him 



* It will be remembered that Don Quixote sup- 
posed himself on this very horse when he and San- 
cho Panza made their journey through the air to 
disenchant the Countess Trifaldi and her twelve 
afflicted duennas. This horse, Clavileno by name, 
was the workmanship of the sage Merlin, who lent 
it to the valiant Peter of Provence that he might 
carry off the Belle Maguelone. 



early in life under the care of 
St. Hugo. Count Peter's sister 
Judith, after the death of her hus- 
band, Robert II. of Auvergne, also 
consecrated herself to God in a 
monastery near Grenoble. 

Pope Urban II. came to visit his 
new domains in 1096, on his way 
from Toulouse, where he had been 
to consecrate the church of St. 
Sernin and bless the banners of the 
Crusaders. He arrived at Mague- 
lone the 28th of July, and had 
an interview with the Countess 
Almodis, sister of the powerful 
Raymond de Saint-Gilles (who had 
just taken the cross at Toulouse), 
and widow of Peter de Melgueil. 
The pope extolled the devotion of 
her husband, whom he styled 
" Bonce memories comes " the count 
of pious memory. The following 
day that of SS. Peter and Paul,, 
the patronal festival of the cathe- 
dral of Maguelone Pope Urban 
preached to an immense crowd with 
the archbishops of Pisa and Tarra- 
gona, and the bishops of Segni, 
Albano, Nimes, and Maguelone, 
around him. Among the nobility 
present were Raymond II., the 
young Count of Melgueil, and Guil- 
lem V., lord of Montpellier. The 
pope afterwards solemnly blessed 
the whole island, and accorded in- 
dulgences to all who should be 
buried hereon. 

Count Raymond II. of Melgueil, 
afterwards resuming some of the- 
rights his father had renounced in 
favor of the church of Maguelone, 
was excommunicated by Bishop 
Godefrid, who at once set out for 
Rome. Raymond hurried after 
him with an escort of knights to beg 
the pope to remove the sentence. 
The affair was tried before the 
pope, and the count, convicted of 
having violated his father's will (to 
which he had given consent), re- 



M ague lone. 



newed his homage to the Holy See, 
promising to desist henceforth 
from all illegitimate claims. He 
afterwards made a pilgrimage to 
Santiago, and then took the cross 
for the Holy Land with his cou- 
sin Bertrand, Count of Toulouse. 
Bishop Godefrid also went to the 
East and never returned to Mague- 
lone. He died at the castle of 
Mons Peregrine, which Count Ray- 
mond IV. of Toulouse and Guillem 
V. of Montpellier had recently built 
near Tripoli, in Syria. 

Pope Gelasius II. came to Mague- 
lone in 1118, and remained a fort- 
night, when, falling ill, he was 
transported to the castle of Mel- 
gueil till able to pursue his journey. 
He died two months after at Cluny. 
Abbot Suger thus alludes to the 
condition in which the pope found 
the island a valuable testimony in 
spite of its brevity : " He landed at 
a small island on the sea-shore, 
fortified on account of its being ex- 
posed to the- incursions of the Sara- 
cens, and solely under the control 
of the bishop and clergy a rare 
family of uncommon excellence, 
leading a retired life and despising 
the world." 

Bishop Galtier then occupied the 
see. By virtue of a bull from 
Urban II. he had been elected by 
the canons of Maguelone from their 
college. He is described in the 
old Maguelonaise Chronicle as : 

"Doctuset astutus, percomis, clarus, acutus, 
Magnus consilio, magnus et eloquio, 
Corpore sincerus, et religione severus, 
Impatiens sceleris, compatiens miseris." 

He repaired the cathedral, built 
the tower of the Holy Sepulchre, a 
refectory for the canons, and a 
dormitory with two rows of cells 
divided by a corridor. He more- 
over gave vestments and sacred 
vessels to the church. He used to 
sign himself Magalonensis Ecclesia 



servus et episcopus servant and bi- 
shop of the church of Maguelone 
but he was only a servant with re- 
spect to his subordinates. When 
Guillem V., lord of Montpellier, in 
order to raise money for his ex- 
pedition to the Holy Land, made 
some encroachments on the rights 
of his neighbors, particularly the 
bishop of Maguelone, his suzerain, 
Bishop Galtier defended the rights 
of the church with so much ability 
and tact as to secure Guillem's 
confidence and friendship. The 
bishop also reconciled him to Ber- 
nard IV. of Melgueil, and cemented 
the peace by marrying his daughter 
Guillemette to the count. The 
bride had seven thousand sols of 
Melgorian money for her dowry 
about two thousand dollars, but 
four or five times as much if we 
consider the relative commercial 
value of money in 1128. The acts 
relating to this marriage are in 
rhyme, and very curious. They 
begin thus : 

" Cum Dei sapientia 
Mundo daret primordia, 
Cosmique necessaria 
Jam perfecisset omnia, 
Virum creavit, omnibus 
Quern pretulit terrestribus, 
Et his donavit muneribus, 
Ut de coste visceribus 
Sociam suis usibus 
Mereretur ylaribus. 

" Proinde, dilectissima, 
Mihi amantissima, 

Ego Bernardus, Mergoj-iensium comes, 
Dono tibi, Guillelme, 
Alias uxori mee, 
In sponsalio tuo 
Castrum de Balasuco," etc. 

This Count Bernard IV. was the 
grandson of Peter de Melgueil, and 
had been brought up under the 
tutelage of the Countess Almodis, 
who was still alive. He had the 
sterling qualities of his ancestor. 
At one time, however, he assumed 
some rights over the lagoon, but 
afterwards renounced them, promis- 



26 



Maguelone. 



ing to defend them against all at- 
tacks, and, by way of reparation, to 
furnish the canons of Maguelone 
an excellent repast every year on 
the festival of the Assumption. 
He was a benefactor to the 
churches in his domains ; among 
others, to that of St. Jacques de 
Melgueil, one of whose former 
clergy was about to receive the 
tiara under the name of Adrian IV. 
When Count Bernard's end drew 
near, desirous of dying under the 
monastic vows not an uncommon 
thing in the ages of faith he re- 
ceived the religious habit from the 
prior of St. Chaffre in Velay, and 
ordered himself to be buried among 
his new brethren, to whom he be- 
queathed five thousand sols, be- 
sides an annual rent of one hun- 
dred and twenty more. 

In 1130 Pope Innocent II. came 
to Maguelone, where he was receiv- 
ed by Bishop Raymond I. and Guil- 
lem VI. of Montpellier, who escort- 
ed him to the abbey of Saint-Gilles. 
He afterwards recognized this at- 
tention by taking Guillem's fief 
under his protection and proclaim- 
ing him the special knight of St. 
Peter specialem B. Petri militem. 
Guillem was particularly devout to 
Our Lady, and built the votive 
chapel of Notre Dame du Palais 
adjoining his own castle, and had 
it consecrated by Bishop Raymond. 
Successive ' popes conferred great 
privileges on it. In 1162 Alexan- 
der III. exempted it from all inter- 
dict, so that the Holy Sacrifice qould 
always be celebrated therein. It 
had so great a number of relics 
that it became known as the Sainte 
Chapelle of Montpellier. Louis 
XII. gives it this name in a docu- 
ment of 1510. Don Jayme el Con- 
quistador established a college of 
canons there for the daily celebra- 
tion of the divine office. 



Guillem VI. first distinguished 
himself on the battle-fields of Pal- 
estine. Later in life he covered 
himself with new glory in the Span- 
ish crusade against the Moors. He 
became the guardian of Beatrix, 
the only child of Bernard IV. of 
Melgueil, whom he gave in mar- 
riage to B6renger Raymond of Pro- 
vence. Her daughter Ermessinde 
married Raymond VI. of Toulouse, 
which made him, as we shall see, 
afterwards claim the domains- of 
Melgueil. 

Guillem VI., at length feeling the 
emptiness of all human glory, em- 
braced the monastic life in the Cis- 
tercian abbey of Grand-Selve, near 
Toulouse, leaving his son an un- 
usual example of piety and valor. 

Raymond I., at this time bishop 
of Maguelone, did not neglect the 
improvement of the holy isle. He 
built a chapter-house, a tower for 
the kitchen, a large cistern for gen- 
eral use, a lavatory in the cloister, 
and a new high altar in the cathe- 
dral. Behind this altar was the 
episcopal chair, according to the 
custom of ancient times. He also 
gave books, vestments, and rich 
ornaments to the church, built a 
wall around the public cemetery, 
and erected the Domum Molendi, 
which contained lodgings for the 
lay brothers and stables for the 
horses of guests. 

In the year 1162 Pope Alexan- 
der III., constrained by the Empe- 
ror Frederick Barbarossa to leave 
Italy, landed at Maguelone on 
Wednesday of Holy Week, and 
while here consecrated the new 
high altar in honor of SS. Peter 
and Paul. Jean de Montlaur I., 
who was then bishop, accompanied 
him to Montpellier. The pope was 
clothed in pontifical robes and 
mounted on a white palfrey. Guil- 
lem VII., lord of Montpellier, came 



. 



Maguelone. 



27 



forth a mile to meet him with many 
barons and armed men, and served 
him as esquire. The pope remain- 
ed three months at Montpellier as 
his guest, and while there held a 
council. 

Guillem VII. was a chivalric 
knight and an able ruler. In ad- 
vance of his age, he renounced 
what were then considered the 
rights of shipwrecks on the coast. 
He distinguished himself against 
the Moors in Spain, and maintain- 
ed the rights of Pope Alexander 
III. in spite of the offers of Frede- 
rick Barbarossa to induce him to 
betray the pope into his hands when 
he re-embarked for Italy three 
years after. The pope did not for- 
get this, and not only granted him 
many religious privileges, but oblig- 
ed the Genoese to cease infesting 
his shores. It was at Maguelone 
Alexander embarked. The small 
vessel he sailed in was attacked by 
the Ghibellines of Pisa, and he was 
obliged to put back and await the 
arrival of the Sicilian galleys, 
which enabled him to regain his 
dominions. After his return to 
Rome he wrote a letter to the 
canons of Maguelone expressing 
his gratitude for their hospitality : 

" Alexander, bishop and servant 
of the servants of God, to our be- 
loved sons, the provost and canons 
of Maguelone, health and apostol- 
ic benediction. 

" The extraordinary devotion and 
generosity you have constantly 
manifested towards the Roman 
Church and to us from the begin- 
ning of our pontificate, and especial- 
ly after the misfortune that forced 
us to take shelter anew among you, 
is always present to our mind, as 
well as the recollection of your fer- 
vent lives and the purity of your 
faith. Therefore, cherishing you 
with the singular affection merited 



by all who are consecrated to God 
and devoted to us, we wish not only 
to express our sense of your merits, 
but to promote the prosperity of 
your church. 

" You are too interested in our 
success not to rejoice at the happy 
results wrought by divine grace 
through your prayers and the piety 
of the faithful everywhere. We ar- 
rived safely at port after many dan- 
gers, not only from the sea but the 
snares that had been laid for us, 
and entered Rome the ninth of the 
kalends of December, at the urgent 
prayer of the senators, nobles, 
clergy, and people. We doubt if 
any of our predecessors were ever 
received with more honor and re- 
spect, or more peacefully. After a 
welcome repose of seven days at 
the palace of the Lateran we sol- 
emnly proceeded with an immense 
procession to the church of St. 
Peter, where, thanks to divine 
grace, we were magnificently re- 
ceived. We have, therefore, every 
reason to hope that God will soon 
bestow on us and his church the 
desirable benefits of peace. 

" As for us personally, we cannot 
thank you too warmly for the libe- 
ral attentions lavished on us at a 
time they were so much needed. 
We earnestly desire to make you 
some return as soon as circumstan- 
ces permit, and will endeavor, ac- 
cording to the obligations of our 
state, to testify our gratitude by 
covering you and your church 
with our protection, as well as the 
rights with which you have been 
invested. 

" Given at the Lateran, the se- 
cond of the nones of December." 

Jean de Montlaur, at this time 
the bishop of Maguelone, belonged 
to a proud family distinguished for 
the valor of its knights. One of 
them accompanied Raymond de 



28 



Maguelone. 



Saint-Gilles in the first Crusade. 
There is something chivalric in the 
device the bishop himself assumed : 
" Lab or a sicut miles Christi" He 
kept up the state of a grand sei- 
gneur, and had his esquires, cou- 
riers, and a great train, for which 
he seems to have been reproved by 
Alexander III. He appears, how- 
ever, to have won the confidence 
of his flock. He made peace be- 
tween the Count of Melgueil and 
Guillem VII. of Montpellier, and 
the latter by his will left him guar- 
dian of the young Guillem VIII. 
and the administrator of his estates. 

Guillem VIII. proved to be one 
of the boldest barons of the south, 
and, faithful to the religious tradi- 
tions of his family, became the de- 
fender of the church against the 
Albigenses. But his daughter Ma- 
ria married Pedro II. of Aragon, 
who unfortunately allied himself 
with Raymond VI. of Toulouse and 
was killed in the glorious battle of 
Muret. 

These old lords of Montpellier 
had become powerful in proportion 
to the increase of their capital, and 
thejr piety equalled their valor. 
They placed Montpellier under the 
protection of Notre Dame des 
Tables, and the city arms bore her 
image with the legend : 

" Virgo Mater Deum ora, 
Ut nos juvet omni hora." 

It was under them that this 
ancient sanctuary acquired fresh 
celebrity. In times of public dan- 
ger the consuls came here to lay 
the keys of the city at the feet of 
Our Lady and confide its destinies 
to her care. They founded a daily 
Mass at her altar for its prosperity, 
with a special collect for the wel- 
fare of the inhabitants.* In the 

* Ut populum Montispessulanum sub Beatissimae 
Dei genetricis M arise tutela, quondam a suo domino 



time of a great plague they had a 
wax taper made, long enough to 
extend around the walls of the city, 
1 and, after it was blessed, rolled it 
on a cylinder and bore it to the 
church of Notre Dame des Tables, . 
where it burned night and day, and 
in proportion as it was consumed 
the plague was stayed. When the 
pestilence reappeared thirty years 
after they had a gigantic candle 
made, a finger in diameter, and 
thrice the circuit of the city in 
length, which was likewise burned 
at Our Lady's altar. A perpetual 
light called the Raisench was kept 
here from time immemorial, main- 
tained by the contributions of the 
faithful. A gentleman named Mi- 
chael Teinturier, in bequeathing a 
sum for this purpose in 1485, said 
the care of this sacred light had 
been in his family for two* hundred 
years, and he conjured his descen- 
dants to be always ready to make 
up any deficiency in the sum requi- 
site for its support, that it might 
continue to burn for ever. So great 
was the confidence of the public in 
the protection of Notre Dame des 
Tables that there were more than a 
hundred foundations for perpetual 
services in her church. The old 
knights came here to make their 
vigil and be armed. The faculties 
of theology, medicine, and civil law 
here received the doctor's cap and 
took their oaths. Nine popes visit- 
ed this church, and numerous kings 
and princes. Under its shadow 
the glorious St. Roch was born, in 
a house that almost touched it. 
Sir Louis de Sancerre,* one of the 
great marshals of France, founded 
herein the chapel of St. Sauveur 

temporal! commissum, ipsius Virginis meritis et pre- 
cibus, in sancta et concordi unitate custodias, in 
consiliis dirigas, et continua tuitione defendas. 

* This great knight was so devout to the Blessed 
Mother of God that, according to Sir John Frois- 
sart, his very battle-cry was : " Our Lady for San- 
cerre !" 



Maguelone. 



29 



out of gratitude for his recovery 
from an alarming illness. Here 
Don Jayme of Aragon was brought 
as soon as he was born, to be offer- 
ed to Our Lady, and all his life it 
was his favorite sanctuary. When 
he fell seriously ill at Montpellier 
he had himself transported to this 
church that he might pray, and, be- 
ing suddenly healed, he presented 
it with a votive picture to com- 
memorate the event. Jean de 
Montlaur II., Bishop of Maguelone, 
established the Fete des Miracles 
in thanksgiving for the numberless 
cures wrought here. It was cele- 
brated on the 3ist of August, and 
in connection with it was a solemn 
novena in which all the guilds of 
Montpellier took part. On the 
eve the vestibule of the church 
was illuminated, and the pttissiers, 
or fur-dealers, opened the festival 
with music and the singing of 
hymns till a late hour. This was 
called making the joyous vejolade, or 
vigil. The next day \.}\Q pebriers, or 
grocers, came in procession, and in 
another direction the consuls ap- 
peared with minstrels and a vast 
train. On the first of September 
all who had the keys and guardian- 
ship of the principal gates, towers, 
and fortresses of the city, those who 
presided over the interests of com- 
merce, and all the subordinates of 
the consulate, made a procession 
through the city with lights and 
music. The Magestat antiqua was 
devoutly borne under a canopy by 
a confraternity specially consecrat- 
ed to the service of Our Lady, and 
the streets through which they 
passed were brilliantly illuminated. 
There was a particular office .for 
this great festival, which the peo- 
ple all joined in singing. And 
the sail-makers, silk-workers, lin- 
en-drapers, cambiadours or money- 
changers, butchers, etc., all had 



their part in the novena. These 
guilds presented a magnificent rere- 
dos of pure silver for the altar of 
the Madonna, on which was repre- 
sented in bold relief the coronation 
of the Virgin surrounded by saints 
a work of immense value. 

The church of Notre Dame des 
Tables, founded by the ancient 
bishops of Maguelone, endowed by 
the counts of Melgueil, and favored 
by the lords of Montpellier, was 
ruined by the Huguenots of the 
sixteenth century, and again by the 
revolutionists of the eighteenth; 
but the antique Magestat was sav- 
ed, and no one should visit Mont- 
pellier without going to honor it in 
the ancient chapel of the Jesuits, 
where it is now preserved. 

But to return to the counts of 
Melgueil. The male line being 
extinct, Raymond VI. of Toulouse 
laid claim to their domains on the 
part of his wife, Ermessinde, grand- 
daughter of Count Bernard IV. 
In 1209 he thought it advisable to 
beg Pope Innocent III. to receive 
his homage as Count of Melgueil. 
This would be obtaining the papal 
sanction to his pretensions, though 
he thereby acknowledged himself a 
vassal of the Holy See and gave 
the pope a right to proceed against 
him in case of disloyalty. The 
pope did not see fit, however, to 
accept his homage. When Count 
Raymond received absolution at 
Saint-Gilles for his crimes, he con- 
sented, among other things, to re- 
nounce his rights to the Comte of 
Melgueil should he ever violate his 
oath of fidelity. Having broken it 
afterwards in the most flagrant 
manner, his vast estates were con- 
fiscated, and Pope Innocent, at the 
petition of the nobles and people, 
who formally declared themselves 
subjects of the Roman pontiff, took 
possession of Melgueil, and in 1215 



Maguelone. 



made it a fief of the bishops of 
Maguelone, who henceforth bore 
the title of the counts of Melgueil, 
or at least till the end of the eight- 
eenth century. But this was not 
without repeated attempts on the 
part of the French monarchy to 
dispossess them. The domains of 
the Count of Toulouse having re- 
verted to the crown, even Queen 
Blanche and Louis IX. were per- 
suaded they had a right to Mel- 
gueil. But such was St. Louis' 
faith in the justice of the Holy See 
that he took the pope himself as 
arbiter. Clement IV. then occu- 
pied the chair of St. Peter. He 
was noted for his knowledge of 
civil law. He was, moreover, a na- 
tive of Saint-Gilles, and had been 
archbishop of Narbonne. He 
therefore knew everything concern- 
ing the south of France and the 
affair in question. His reply is 
still extant, dated September 16, 
1266, and contains an outline of 
the whole case, showing that Mel- 
gueil lawfully belonged to the 
church of Maguelone. 

About the same time Clement 
IV. made a very curious and grave 
accusation against the bishop of 
Maguelone (Be"renger de Fredol). 
He reproaches him for " outraging 
the King of Glory " by coining 
money cum titulo Mahometi with 
the ensigns of the false prophet. 
" In vain can you entrench your- 
self behind custom as an excuse 
for your fault," says he to the 
bishop. " Instead of justifying 
yourself, you would only incrimi- 
nate your predecessors, for such a 
custom would be a proof of cor- 
ruption. If it is a love of gain that 
has given rise to it or perpetuates 
it, such speculation only serves to 
lessen the consideration due the 
episcopal dignity, and we would not 
tolerate it even in a mere cleric." 



The bishop of Agde was also re- 
proved by Pope Clement foi the 
same fault. St. Louis, too. re- 
proached Alphonse II., Count of 
Toulouse, about the same time, for 
allowing money to be struck in the 
territory of Venaissin with a legend 
giving Mohammed the title of 
" Prophet of God." Similar money 
was likewise struck by King Jayme 
I. of Aragon. 

This was the money called millarls 
a fraction of the silver bezant 
struck for commercial 'purposes, a 
trade being kept up all along the 
coast with the East, and even with 
the Moors, in spite of the wars in 
Spain. This money disappeared 
rapidly after it fell under the con- 
demnation of Clement IV. 

Philippe le Bel harassed the 
bishops of Maguelone in his time, 
hoping to induce them to renounce 
their hold on the domains of Mel- 
gueil ; but they appealed to the 
popes, who, after they took up their 
residence at Avignon, could more 
easily afford them protection. Boni- 
face VIII. and John XXII. both 
checked the royal pretensions. It 
was not till the religious wars of 
the sixteenth century gave the 
King of France authority over the 
whole country that the bishops 
were left with the mere title and a 
remnant of their fief. During those 
disastrous wars the ancient cas- 
tle of Melgueil, though of great 
strength, was destroyed. The pre- 
sent chateau is of the seventeenth 
century, with a remnant of the old 
walls encrusted here and there. 

Nothing concerning the island 
of Maguelone is more interesting 
than the glimpse of ecclesiastical 
life here during the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries as revealed by 
the Statutes of the collegiate corps, 
a copy of which on parchment, dated 



Maguelone. 



August 26, 1333, is still preserv- 
ed in the archives of the depart- 
ment of Herault. They are full of 
details concerning the habits of 
the canons, and are well worth 
studying as a picture of mediaeval 
times, but we can only glance at 
them here and there. 

The religious community of 
Maguelone constituted a little re- 
public, the bishop being chosen by 
vote from its members primus 
inter pares a privilege accorded 
by Pope Urban II. It was com- 
posed of the regular canons who 
follow, the rule of St. Augustine. 
There were over sixty who had a 
voice in the elections. Besides 
these there were many lay brothers, 
and also donati, or laymen who 
gave themselves, and sometimes 
their property, to the community, 
that they might participate in the 
religious privileges of the house a 
kind of devotion perpetuated in 
the diocese as late as the eighteenth 
century. They occupied a group 
of buildings surrounded by forti- 
fied walls that were pierced by 
several gateways defended by rave- 
lins the principal one by a draw-' 
bridge. These could only be en- 
tered at stated times, and the 
canons who were detained from 
home till a late hour were obliged 
to remain in an outer house till 
morning. Besides the residence of 
the bishop and canons, the walls 
enclosed the cathedral and adjoin- 
ing cloister. This group of build- 
ings constituted a regular fortress 
with every means of defence. There 
was a tower in front of the church, 
on which sentinels kept watch day 
and night, and announced the 
hours with a trumpet. Their lodg- 
ings were also on the top, which 
was reached by a ladder, and there 
was a cord with a basket at the 
end for the purpose of sending up 



their rations. The cathedral itself 
was one of the best-fortified church- 
es on the coast. The walls were 
of enormous thickness, in order to 
support the roof, which was flat 
and paved with stones so that en- 
gines of war could be set up for 
the defence of the island. This 
roof was surrounded by battlements, 
and between the immense buttress- 
es were machicolations. The win- 
dows were deep, narrow, and few 
in number. Everything was stern, 
massive, and military, as if in honor 
of the God of Battles. The choir 
of the canons was an upper gallery 
at the west end of the church, 
where they could see everything, 
and yet not be seen themselves. 
The Blessed Sacrament, or, as it 
was called in the Statutes, "the 
Body of Christ," was suspended 
for safety above the high altar. It 
was the custom in ancient times 
to preserve the sacred species in 
this way in a gold or silver vessel 
in the form of a dove or tower, or 
in a shrine-like coffer artistically 
wrought. Incense of a superior 
quality was burned in a silver 
censer at the altars of Our Lady 
and St. Peter, and on the latter 
were kept chasse-mouches of pea- 
cocks' feathers, likewise an ancient 
custom, and doubly necessary here 
on account of the numerous flies. 
The pavement in winter was cov- 
ered with straw. At Christmas 
time it was strewn with myrtle and 
rosemary. At Easter the walls 
were decorated with laurel, and the 
pavement was strewn with laurel 
and reeds. The latter alone were 
used on St. Pancras' day. There 
was a great affluence here on cer-, 
tain festivals, particularly the Par- 
don of SS. Peter and Paul. Four 
canons were annually chosen to 
receive the guests on this great oc- 
casion and supply their wants. 



Maguelone. 



Outside the enclosure were the 
dwellings of the dependants and 
the church of St. Blaise. The 
latter was appropriated to what 
was called "the family" that is, 
those in the employ of the canons, 
such 'as the boatmen, fishermen, 
masons, shoemakers, tailors, bakers, 
cooks, scullions, etc. This church 
was always to be kept suitably or- 
namented. A lamp was to burn 
there- day and night, and it was 
provided with torches for the ele- 
vation of the Body of Christ at the 
daily Mass of the chaplain. Here 
the dead were deposited if brought 
too late to be carried into the 
cathedral. No excommunicated 
person was employed on the island, 
and every one was obliged to ob- 
serve rigorously the fasts of the 
church. There were four men at 
the bakery, where all the bread 
consumed on the island was pre- 
pared, and there were mills to 
grind the wheat. Three gardeners 
were employed in summer and two 
in winter. The tailor and shoe- 
maker had each an assistant. A 
barber was in attendance to shave 
and bleed, another man to bind 
and repair books, and a scribe to 
copy. The number of men em- 
ployed by the canons must have 
been very great, for the island was 
the ecclesiastical centre of the dio- 
cese, vast numbers were brought 
here for burial, a crowd of poor 
people came daily to solicit alms, 
and the transportation of provi- 
sions, and the neighboring harbor, 
all caused a constant flux and re- 
flux that required numberless ser- 
vants. 

The bridge connecting Mague- 
lone with Villeneuve was the ob- 
ject of constant supervision, as it 
was the only way of communicat- 
ing with the interior except by 
water. Sometimes, however, the 



winds were so violent as to make 
crossing the bridge perilous, and 
there were barks on the island to 
convey provisions and take people 
across at such times, and bring the 
dead to be buried. 

The canons owned nearly all the 
shore as far as Cette, besides nu- 
merous lands and livings in the in- 
terior. These were, in part, re- 
mains of the ancient fiefs given by 
the sisters of St. Fulcran, and 
partly acquired by inheritance. 
Pope Gregory IX. enumerates them 
in a brief from Perugia in July, 
1288. They consisted of the isles 
of Isclion and Fleix, towers and 
mills on the Lez and Mosson, the 
hills of Montseau and St. Bausille, 
the forest of Aresquier (where the 
canons obtained their wood), the 
castles of Lattes, Maureillan, and 
La Moisson, lands, vineyards, pas- 
tures, and meadows around Ville- 
neuve, the villas of Lauret, St. 
Bres, and St. Sauveur, the Mas of 
Londres with its Baume or cave, 
and about thirty churches in the 
diocese (including Notre Dame des 
Tables), with many glebes and 
other dependencies from which the 
canons received tithes. 

The major canons had generally 
some office apart from the service 
of the choir. The chanoine ouvrier 
attended to the repairs of the 
buildings. The pontanier superin- 
tended the bridges. And there 
were the infirrnarian, librarian, and 
aumtinicr then literally the alms- 
giver. The provost was at the 
head of temporal affairs and exer- 
cised the duties of a magistrate. 
They had a magnificent library for 
those days. In it Alban Thorer, 
or Torinus, discovered the treatise 
of Apicius, De Re culinaria, in the 
sixteenth century; but this by no 
means proves the canons to have 
been epicures, though they seem to 






Maguelone. 



33 



have had all the comforts of life, were several Misericordes. The*e 
The Statutes say their bread was were, strictly speaking, services for 
always to be of pure wheat well the dead for which funds had been 
bolted and sifted, without any mix- left, providing, moreover, a repast 
ture of barley or other substance for the celebrants; and the term in 
to affect the color and savor. This a secondary sense was given to the 

unusual supplies at the table. On 
St. Agnes' day there was a Miseri- 
corde for the soul of Guillaume 
Gaucelm, on which occasion the 
cook was provided with six sheep, 
six goats, and two hams. (We 
must not forget the immense num- 

In the refectory there were ber of retainers to consume them.) 

In the month of March there were 
two Misericordes, one of which 
was for the soul of Dame Ermes- 
sinde, who had given the canons the 
castle of Puechabon, on which oc- 
casion a similar supply of " funeral 



bread, however, was not only given 
to the canons but to the servants 
and all who received hospitality, 
whether Jew or Saracen. The 
cellerier was forbidden to open a 
new cask of wine for the household 
except in presence of the claustral 
prior 

benches or stools around the tables, 
a pulpit with a cushion for the 
clerk who read during meals, a 
brasier in the centre, chandeliers 
of wrought iron, shelves for dishes, 
a mortar to pound salt and spices, 



towels on the walls, a lead pipe to baked meats ""was furnished 'forth, 



carry off slops, and fans to drive 
away flies, so numerous on this 
coast. When the bishop ate in the 
refectory a lighted candle was set 
before him. 

At Christmas there was high 
cheer. At dinner there was good 
wine,/tf/ de Misericorde of Lammas 
wheat, salt meat, beef with sauce 
piquante, rabbits, pancakes with 
sugar (five for each person, and 
more if he wished), cheese, wafers 
with nectar, all in abundance for 
the guests as well as the canons. 
At supper they had ham, cheese, 
and fruit that is, each one had an 
apple, half a pear, two dates, be- 
sides figs, nuts, filberts, with nectar 
and wafers. 

There were also generous re- 
pasts at Easter, Whitsunday, St. 
Augustine's day, and the feast of 
the provost. On the Sundays and 
Fridays of Advent and Lent twen- 
ty figs apiece were given to the 
canons, served on a large brass 
platter, and on other days 
and filberts. 

In the course of the year there 
VOL. xxx. 3 



but not coldly. 

The personal habits of the canons, 
who for the most part belonged to 
the noblesse, is indicated by the 
numerous lavatories, the injunc- 
tions as to cleanliness, and the 
order to keep the herbage that 
grew in the pathways and cemetery 
always cut, that their robes might 
not be soiled when they walked 
out. Their outer garment was 
always to be long. They could 
wear no robes or shoes that were 
green or red. They must have no 
gilded spurs or bridles ; no hawks 
or falcons for hunting or to carry 
on their wrists. They were not to 
lend money at usury. Each canon 
had a bedstead of polished wood, 
with three mattresses, two feather 
pillows, two good coverlets, and 
the necessary linen. And there 
was a mattress in the choir for the 
little canons to sleep on, if they 
were overpowered during the noc- 
turnal offices an almost maternal 
nuts provision for those of tender years 
consecrated to a religious life after 
the manner of the times. Lanterns 



34 



Maguelone. 



made of parchment, or skin, were 
also furnished them. 

The canons of Maguelone have 
not escaped the accusation of be- 
coming relaxed in their discipline, 
but only one grave charge has 
been brought against them, and of 
this, we believe, there is nothing 
more than circumstantial evidence. 
It would be surprising, however, if 
in the course of five or six cen- 
turies nothing occurred to be de- 
plored in this little sacerdotal 
world. However this may be, it is 
no small glory to have so long 
maintained a house of prayer on 
this coast infested by corsairs 
everywhere else pillaging and mur- 
dering, and to have kept a Chris- 
tian hostelry in the largest sense of 
the word, where the* poor, the in- 
firm, and the leper were welcomed 
and fed with the most delicate 
charity. 

The brother who served the 
guests was to be modest, discreet, 
and cordial, able to discriminate 
character and condition, in order 
to meet the requirements of all. 
He was to be affable in manner and 
language, and eager to render ser- 
vice, so as to give satisfaction to 
the guests by his attention and 
charity, and afford them no cause to 
complain of the servants of God or 
spread abroad any report of which 
they would be ashamed ; show- 
ing more kindness and thought- 
fulness toward pilgrims and stran- 
gers than to the friends and rela- 
tives of the canons, for it is they 
who particularly represent Jesus 
Christ, and in view of whom he 
said : " I was a stranger, and ye 
took me in." The guests' hall was 
to be furnished with napkins, 
towels, plates, glasses, etc., which 
were to be kept clean. There was 
to be a sufficient supply of fresh 
bread and wine always on hand, 



especially at night. Another ser- 
vant prepared the chambers and 
kept them clean. Thirty beds were 
to be kept always ready for poor 
clerics, and the anmonier was to 
see they were well treated. How- 
ever numerous they might be, sup- 
per was always given them, and a 
dinner the next day, but they 
could not return under a week. 
At Christmas, Easter, and Whit- 
suntide they could remain two 
days. 

The aumonier distributed alms 
every day after Vespers to all the 
poor who came to Maguelone, and 
a supply of bread was laid by 
every night after supper for any 
poor person who might arrive hun- 
gry after dark. And when the 
winds rendered it unsafe to traverse 
the bridge the aumonier used to 
send provisions to the poor at the 
other end, where a porch -was built 
to shelter them. If any one died 
on the island, cleric or layman, 
without means to pay for his burial, 
the aumonier was obliged to furnish, 
everything necessary. 

Lepers were not allowed to come 
further than the gate of the Orme. 
There they received half a loaf 
apiece and a measure of wine, but 
no one could return under eight 
days. 

The very animals of the guests 
were not forgotten. They were 
furnished with hay, oats, or fresh 
grass, according to the season. 

The canons daily performed the 
pious ceremony of washing one an- 
other's feet, according to the injunc- 
tion of our Saviour to the disciples. 
They likewise washed the feet of 
the poor at stated times. Warm 
water was always kept ready for 
this purpose, and shoes were given 
to each one, with a portion of food 
equal to that of a canon. On Holy 
Thursday, in particular, there was 






Maguelone. 



35 



a Man datum for the poor, who, 
after their feet were washed, were 
taken into the refectory, where the 
bishop, or whoever the officiant 
might be, kissed each one's hands, 
gave him a dernier (about ten cents), 
and after dinner a loaf of bread and 
some wine. There were six of these 
poor men for the bishop, four for the 
provost, and one for each canon. 

When one of the canons died all 
the bells on the island were tolled, 
and alms given to the poor for the 
solace of his soul. If he died at 
Montpellier, where the patients 
were often sent for. medical advice, 
the bells of three churches there 
were tolled, and his body was taken 
to Notre Dame des Tables, where it 
was covered with cloth of gold and 
surrounded by six burning torches. 
When it was transported to Ma- 
guelone all the church bells along 
the way were tolled, and the canons 
went out to meet it with torches at 
the gate of the Orme, and carried it 
to the cathedral, where candles 
were placed around the bier, and 
incense was burned to neutralize 
any offensive odor. 

A great number of laymen were 
also brought to Maguelone to be 
buried. Barons and knights were 
borne hither with banner, armor, 
and steed. The banners were sus- 
pended in the church, and the 
bucklers in the cloister. The 
horses were given to the provost. 
All the members of the cortege, 
were they even a thousand in num- 
ber, were furnished with bread and 
wine and the same portion as the 
canons, but they took their food 
standing. Those who served in 
the kitchen, bakery, infirmary, or 
almonry were not allowed to aid in 
burying the dead. This duty de- 
volved on the boatmen, fishermen, 
herdsmen, and those employed at 
the laundry. 



The highest prosperity of Mague- 
lone was in the time of the Cru- 
sades, when Southern France na- 
turally had maritime supremacy. 
But when navigation made pro- 
gress, and harbors were required 
corresponding to the greater size 
of vessels and the increased com- 
mercial activity, the insufficiency 
of this small port became apparent. 
Besides, the place was unhealthy, 
its population decreasing, and the 
situation too isolated for the resi- 
dence of a bishop. Accordingly 
Pope Paul III. authorized Bishop 
Pelissier* to transfer the see to 
Montpellier in 1536. 

The Huguenots took possession 
of the island in 1562 and repaired 
the fortifications, and again in 1572. 
It was hazardous to leave the place 
to be occupied by domestic or for- 
eign enemies, and Louis XIII. had 
it dismantled and all the buildings 
destroyed but the cathedral and 
one or two houses. The ruins be- 
came a quarry for builders. The 
canal connecting the lagoons along 
the coast from Aiguesmortes to 
Cette was built in a great measure 
from the ruins of Maguelone. 
Even the old tombstones were car- 
ried off. But the cathedral walls 
seemed to defy the hand of man as 
well as the elements, and what the 
Huguenots spared might well be 
respected. This church is inte- 
resting to study on account of its 
military character, and there is a 
sombre majesty about it that is im- 
pressive. It is of the style that 
marks the transition from the 
round arch to the pointed, and is 
cruciform in shape. SS. Peter and 
Paul still stand at the western por- 
tal with key and sword, where they 
have stood seven hundred years 

* Bishop Pelissier's learning was proverbial, and 
he was so devoted to the study of antiquities that 
he scarcely took time to eat or sleep. 



Ireland a Hundred Years Ago. 



faithful to their trust. The main 
altar is to the east. At the right 
of it is the chapel of the Holy Se- 
pulchre, which, after the tomb of 
Cardinal de Canillac was erected 
here, took his name. Several 
tombstones of the Canillac family 
are still to be seen. It is here that 
popular tradition, more poetic than 
true, points out the tomb of the 
Belle Maguelone, the heroine of 
Bernard de Trevies. It is of Py- 
renean marble. Its sides are cov- 
ered with arabesques, but not in 
the highest style of art. It was 
Bernard de Trevies who in 1178 
composed the Latin inscription in 
leonine verse to be seen as you 
enter the church : 



" Ad portvm vite sitientes qviqve venite. 
Has intrando fores, vestros componite mores. 
Hinc intrans ora, tva semper crimina plora. 
Qviqvid peccatvr lacrimarvm fonte lavatvr." 



For seven centuries these lines have 
been read and pondered a perma- 
nent sermon in stone, a memorial 
of the faith of the olden time which 



must always touch the heart that 
feels a thirst for the higher life 
feels the need of expiation ! 

The pavement of the church is 
covered with sepulchral inscrip- 
tions, spread out like a vast scroll, 
on which are graven the names or 
emblems of those who will rise 
from beneath when the island gives 
up its long-buried dead. 

There are several figures of 
bishops in pontifical robes, with 
mutilated faces, and high up on the 
wall is the epitaph of Gaucelm de 
Deaux, Bishop of Maguelone from 
1367 to 13/3. Everywhere are 
scars and marks of the shameful 
orgies of the Huguenots. 

The cathedral and adjoining 
house were occupied by Mehemet 
Effendi, ambassador of Sultan Ach- 
met III., while in quarantine during 
the plague at Marseilles. Strange 
destiny ! The place that had been 
destroyed by Charles Martel for 
harboring the Moors now became 
an asylum for the Turks in the 
reign of Louis XV. 



IRELAND A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 



IN 1788 there was published in 

London a work entitled The Com- 

j$eat Irish Traveller. The writer 

preferred to remain anonymous, but 

his remarks on the people of the 

green isle, their manners and their 

customs, are couched in so fair a 

spirit, and exhibit such a striking 

contrast to those of many other 

English writers of his own and 

later periods, that one can hardly 

help regretting his resolution. He 

'visited Ireland imbued with many 

'prejudices and prepared to find a 

i people displaying characteristics 



very different to those which he 
really found. He tells us in his 
introduction that " the inhabitants, 
in general, are very far from being, 
what they have too often and un- 
justly been represented by those of 
our country [i.e., England] who 
never saw them, a nation of wild 
Irish ; since I have been in Ire- 
land I have traversed from north 
to south and from west to east, 
but more particularly through the 
provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and 
Munster, and generally found them 
civil and obliging, even amongst 



Ireland a Hundred Years Ago. 



37 



the lowest class of the natives. 
Miserable and oppressed as by far 
too many of them are, an English- 
man will find as much civility, in 
general, as amongst the same class 
in his own country ; and for a 
small pecuniary consideration they 
will exert themselves to please you 
as much as any people, perhaps, in 
the king's dominion. Poverty and 
oppression will naturally make 
mankind sour, rude, and unsocia- 
ble, and eradicate, or at least sup- 
press, all the more amiable prin- 
ciples and passions of humanity. 
But it should seem unfair and un- 
generous to judge of, ~or decide 
against, the natural disposition of 
a man reduced by indigence and 
oppression almost to desperation. 
Let commerce, agriculture, and 
arts but call forth the dormant ac- 
tivity of their genius, and rouse the 
native spirit of enterprise which 
now lies torpid within them; let 
liberal laws unfetter their minds 
and plenty cheer their tables, they 
will soon show themselves deserv- 
ing to rank with the most respecta- 
ble societies in Europe." 

As a matter of course the first 
portion of the country described 
by our traveller was Dublin and its 
vicinity. The metropolis appears 
to have fully satisfied his anticipa- 
tions and to have impressed him 
favorably. He justly remarks that 
"to expect many works of the fine 
arts in a country but just recover- 
ing from an almost uninterrupted 
warfare of near six hundred years 
would be to look for the ripe fruits 
of autumn in the lap of spring." 
He visited Trinity College, where 
in the museum they showed him 
the skeleton of a so-called u ossi- 
fied man," and that of an unhappy 
boy whose stature the notorious 
Bishop Berkeley claimed to have in- 
creased to seven feet high at the 



age of sixteen by the adoption of 
certain treatment; "but so dispro- 
portioned were his organs that he 
contracted an universal imbecil- 
ity both of body and mind, and 
died of old age at twenty." 

The visitor found hackney car- 
riages much used in Dublin, owing 
chiefly, in his opinion, to the bad- 
ness of the streets, and " sedan- 
chairs everywhere as common as 
about St. James'." He had heard 
much of the drinking habits of the 
Irish, but was " happily disappoint- 
ed ; the bottle is circulated freely, 
but not to that excess we have 
heard it was, and I, of course, 
dreaded to find." He experienced 
the wonted hospitality and was re- 
ceived with the renowned geniality 
of the Irish people. The mist of 
his prejudices fled, as have those of 
many other strangers, before the 
sunshine of the nameless charm 
which, spite of wrong and misrule, 
pervades Irish social and family 
life. He never found, he tells us, 
in his intercourse with the mer- 
chants of Dublin, " a stinted din- 
ner at two o'clock, with a glass of 
port after it ; but you find a table 
not only plentifully but luxurious- 
ly spread, with choice of wines 
both at dinner and after it; and 
which gives the highest zest to the 
entertainment, your host receives 
you with such an appearance of 
liberality, and indeed urbanity, as 
is very pleasing. Here they betray 
no attention to the counter, dis- 
cover no sombrous gloom of com- 
putation, but display an open frank- 
ness and social vivacity of spirit." 

The first provincial journey 
made by our traveller was one 
through the southeastern portion 
of the island, during which he saw 
and duly described the far-famed 
beauties of the County Wicklow ; 
passed through Wexford, Tagh- 



Ireland a Hundred Years Ago. 



mon, and other towns to Water- 
ford a city which made a favor- 
able impression on his recollec- 
tion. From Waterford he returned 
to Dublin via Carlow, anent the 
county of which name and its in- 
habitants he notes that "the soil of 
this part does not promise much ; 
but the hospitable tables of the in- 
habitants are furnished with the 
utmost plenty and elegance. Their 
principal joy consists in entertain- 
ing those who visit them. As soon 
as any company come to their 
houses word is sent to most of 
their relations, who join and make 
the sweetest concord in the world. 
After two or three days spent in 
innocent pleasure you are all in- 
vited to another gentleman's, with 
the same agreeable round of mirth ; 
and so on till you have gone 
through the whole race. The day 
of parting is the only day of grief 
or discontent." He visited Mount 
Leinster and the " round church 
called Drimesen, much esteemed by 
the Roman Catholics. . . . When- 
ever any of that race expire they 
leave it in their wills that they 
shall be buried in Drimesen church- 
yard ; and some corps have been 
brought seventy miles to be inter- 
red here." 

After our traveller had returned 
to the capital and " reposed for a 
few days," he started upon a tour 
through the south and southwestern 
counties, and en route visited Kil- 
dare, where he inspected the ruins 
of the cathedral and those of St. 
Brigid's Convent. From Kildarehe 
proceeded to Kilcullen Bridge, and 
on his way thither " visited the 

seat of Eustace, Esq., which is 

a fine, large building, with a noble 
court before it, that bore the face 
of antiquity ; but yet no decay ap- 
peared in any part. The situation 
is on the summit of a hill, and the 



front looks down from a high emi- 
nence into the river Liffey ; but 
what charmed us beyond imagina- 
tion was a vast body of water in 
an artificial bed of a large extent, 
where we saw a ship completely 
furnished, as if ready to make a long 
voyage by sea : her sails spread, 
her colours flying, anchors weighed, 
guns firing, and the sailors neatly 
dressed, every ore at their proper 
function, with their usual sea- 
terms." The visitor was conduct- 
ed on board this "ship," and there 
he found realism carried so far that 
part of the repast placed before him 
by the " worthy owner " consisted 
of " sea provisions and biscuits." 
At Kelly's Town he saw " a large 
ruined church dedicated to St. 
Patrick, and, as we were informed, 
built by that saint ; if true, the 
foundation must be near fourteen 
hundred years old. It formerly 
belonged to the ancient family of 
the Cummins, a name still surviv- 
ing, and numerous in this country. 
There are several of that name in- 
terred in the church, whose vaults 
are still remaining; yet we could 
find but one whose inscription was 
intelligible, as follows : 

HOC JACET SUB LAPIDE HUGO MAC CUM- 
MINS, 1603. 

I only mention this to let you 
know that Protestant and Papist 
mingle together in the grave here." 
Near this church he was shown a 
well dedicated to St. Patrick, sur- 
rounded by a stone wall and shad- 
ed by large trees. His guide related 
to him the following legend : " A 
prophane wretch, who wanted wood 
for firing, repaired to this well to 
cut down one of these sacred trees. 
The first stroke he gave he imagin- 
ed he saw his cabin in flames, and 
ran with the utmost speed to 
quench the fire ; but when he came 



Ireland a Hundred Years Ago. 



there he found everything as he 
left them. He returned to his 
work again, and, giving another 
stroke, saw the flames rise higher 
than before, which obliged him to 
repair home a second time, when, 
finding all things safe as at first, he 
returned to the tree, and by his 
repeated strokes brought it down 
to the ground ; but before he could 
drag it home he found his cabin 
and furniture entirely consumed to 
ashes. We were shewn the very 
spot where the cabin stood, and no 
one will venture to errect another 
in the same place, nor contradict 
the truth of this tradition." 

The traveller visited Kilkenny, 
its castles and notable places, its 
marble-quarries, etc., and speaks in 
commendation of it generally. He 
tell us that "Kilkenny values itself 
upon its superior gentility and 
urbanity. It is much frequented 
by the neighbouring gentry as a 
country residence, has a stand of 
nine sedan-chairs, and is not with- 
out the appearance of an agreeable 
place. I went last night to their 
weekly assembly and was soon 
given to understand by one of my 
partners that Kilkenny has always 
been esteemed the most polite and 
well-bred part of the kingdom." 
He adds that " this was the seat of 
the old Ormond family. Here the 
last duke kept a court, as several 
of his predecessors had done, in a 
stile much more magnificent than 
any of the modern viceroys. The 
people imbibed the court manners; 
and manners remain long after their 
causes are removed. At present 
the inheritor of the castle and some 
of the appendant manors, a Roman 
Catholic gentleman, affects the 
state of his ancestors ; his wife re- 
ceives company as, I am told, the 
old Ormond ladies used to do ; she 
never returns visits; and people 



39 

yield her this 



seem disposed to 
pre-eminence." 

The personal appearance of the 
people of the county won the wri- 
ter's admiration, for he adds : " I 
am not singular in remarking that 
the peasants of this county are a 
most comely breed of men. They 
are generally middle-sized, and 
have almost universally dark-brown 
hair and eyes of the same colour. 
Their complexions are clear, their 
countenance grave, and their faces 
of that oval character which the 
Italian painters so much admire." 
He found the counties of Kilken- 
ny, Waterford, Wexford, and Car- 
low " overrun with lawless ruf- 
fians called Whiteboys "; and al- 
though occasionally some of them 
were taken prisoners and execut- 
ed, and though, as he tells us, " ex- 
communications are likewise read 
against them by their priests from 
the pulpit, yet they are so numer- 
ous it is not likely they will be 
soon extirpated." 

Passing through the Golden Vale, 
he found the people of gallant 
Tipperary worthy his commenda- 
tions, for he met with none " of 
that simplicity attributed by poets 
to the shepherd state; nothing like 
that surly awkwardness of our 
English clowns, who have one gen- 
eral answer, ' I don't know,' to al- 
most every question a stranger 
asks." Arriving at Cork, he was 
agreeably disappointed, for he tells 
us he found it " a city large and 
extensive beyond my expectation. 
I had been taught to think worse 
of it, in all respects, than it de- 
serves." "The inhabitants are 
hospitable and generous; they are 
rich and deal largely in provisions." 
" Before the Reformation there 
were no less than fifteen convents 
of religious belonging to this city." 
" It must, too, be observed that, 



Ireland a Hundred Years Ago. 



though the monasteries are de- 
stroyed, the monks remain to this 
day, and have rsgular service in 
their distinct houses as in the par- 
ish Mass-houses; in all of which 
they have a succession of services, 
on Sundays and holydays, from 
early in the morning till late at 
night, for the accommodation of 
their numerous votaries." After 
leaving Cork he proceeded to Kin- 
sale, and thence to Bandon, whose 
people he found as stanch oppo- 
nents of Catholicity as in the days 
when, according to tradition, they 
inscribed over their portals : 



" Turk, Jew, or Atheist, 
All may enter here, 
But not a Papist," 



for he records that " the inhabi- 
tants are such staunch Protestants 
that they will not let a Papist 
dwell among them, which proceeds 
from the ill-usage they have for- 
merly received from them. They 
will not suffer a bag-piper to play 
in their hearing, or let one of the 
Popish religion, if known, though 
a traveller, lodge there one night." 
After visiting some other places 
the tourist proceeded to Dublin, 
whence, after a short sojourn, he 
started upon a third journey. Vis- 
iting Leixlip, he viewed " Castle- 
town, the seat of Mr. Connolly, the 
greatest commoner in the kingdom, 
whose house is fitted up in the 
most elegant modern taste, and 
whose mode of living is in the high- 
est style of hospitality. He has a 
public news or coffee-room for the 
common resort of his guests in 
boots, where he who goes away 
early may breakfast, or who comes 
in late may dine, or he who would 
chuse to go to bed may sup before 
the rest of the family. This is 
almost princely." On this trip the 
writer, again entering Tipperary, 



visited Cashel, gazed with admira- 
tion at its famous Rock with the 
memorials of its former greatness 
and of the homage of its rulers to 
the Great Ruler of all. He writes : 
"You would be amazed, consider- 
ing how thinly the country is in- 
habited, at the number of Roman- 
ists I saw on Sunday assembled to- 
gether. Round the altar were sev- 
eral pictures, which being at the 
distance of a very long nave of an 
old monastery, I went round to the 
door of one of the transepts, in 
order to see them more distinct- 
ly." From Cashel he proceeded 
to the town of Tipperary, where 
he learned that "in this neighbour- 
hood lives the descendant of him 
who gave the last and fatal stroke 
to the unhappy Charles. He had 
been a common dragoon in Crom- 
well's army, and for this service the 
usurper rewarded him with a cap- 
tain's double debenture." On this 
journey also he visited Kanturk 
and saw the famous castle of the 
olden lords of Ealla, or Duhallow 
the MacDonoghs. This castle was 
represented to "the virgin queen " 
as being such a formidable fortress 
that instructions were sent to the 
lord-deputy to prevent its comple- 
tion. On this journey, too, he visit- 
ed the old abbey of Kilcrea, and 
saw the bog of the same name, " for- 
merly very incommodious and un- 
profitable, the middle of it being 
woody, bushy, and very deep, quite 
inaccessible, and edged on the east 
and west with red bogs, and, till 
about thirty year* ago, frequented 
by wolves, to the great annoyance 
of the adjacent inhabitants." Pass- 
ing on through Kerry, the traveller 
visited Ventry, and, stopping at 
Smerewick, viewed theremainsof the 
fortification erected by the Span- 
iards in 1579 and called Fort del 
Ore. " The country people say that 



The Major s Manceuvre. 



the Spaniards buried the pope's con- 
secrated banner somewhere near this 
place, with a considerable quantity 
of treasure. It is certain that a 
few years ago several croslets of 
pure gold were discovered on the 
lands near a small chapel which 
the Spaniards had erected about a 
mile from the fort." Calling at 
Castle Island, he found " a decent 
parish church, a good parsonage- 
house, a foot barrack, a session 
and market house, with a handsome 
assembly-room for dancing " ; he 
adds : " There are, too, some tolera- 



41 

ble inns here." From Castle Island 
he proceeded to Tulligarron, near 
which place Saunders, the Papal 
Nuncio, " died miserably of an ague 
and flux, brought on him by want 
and famine, in the wood Clonlish, 
in 1582." 

The tourist describes one more 
journey, made through the northern 
counties, but the reader will proba- 
bly consider that the extracts al- 
ready made are sufficient to give a 
fair idea of the social and natural 
state of Ireland when the Compleat 
Irish Traveller* was published. 



THE MAJOR'S MANOEUVRE. 



in. 



THERE was a silence, during which 
Mr. Stonleigh was enabled to dis- 
cover that his story failed to con- 
vey the slightest clue to that which 
he was desirous of uttering; and 
yet Miss Bridgebanke gazed at him 
in a strangely earnest way, as 
though she would read the inner- 
most chapter of his thoughts. 
Could she have struck his meaning ? 
Pshaw ! Impossible ! Would it not 
be better to deal openly, and, in- 
stead of beating about the bush, 
come straight to the point ? He 
would. Fred Stonleigh grew very 
red in the face as he blurted : 

" Miss Bridgebanke, may I 
that is my cousin I mean the 
story " 

At this particular moment Mrs. 
Bridgebanke appeared at one of 
the glass window-doors, leaning 
upon the arm of Major Bagshawe ; 
and as the worthy lady entered the 
apartment she observed in an 
angry whisper, directed to the gal- 



lant warrior's left "mutton-chop" 
whisker : 

" Upon my voracity, major, I've 
done with your nephew. He shall 
not trifle with the feelings of my 
child. She may have a liking for 
him, but she's not completely 
enamelled, I can tell you, sir." 

An awkward silence ensued. 
Marguerite was silent, puzzled by 
Stonleigh's manner. Mrs. Bridge- 
banke was silent, her feelings of in- 
dignation surmounting and stifling 
her utterance. The major was 
silent as he furtively glanced from 
his nephew to the winsome girl, 
whose distant manner bespoke an 
earnest pre-occupation. And Fred 

* The full title-page of this work runs as follows : 
The Coinpleat Irish Traveller, containing a general 
Description of the most Noted Cities, Towns, Seats, 
Buildings, Loughs, etc., in the Kingdom of Ireland, 
Interspersed with Observations on the Manners, 
Customs, Antiquities, Curiosities, and Natural His- 
tory of that Country. Illustrated with Elegant Cop- 
per Plates. London : Printed for the Proprietors and 
Sold by the Booksellers, price 14^. bound, 1788. The 
frontispiece represents "The Proprietors of Ae 
Irish Traveller presenting a Copy of that Work 
into the hand of Futurity to be preserved from the 
devastation of Time." 



The Major s Manoeuvre. 



was silent, chagrined that his 
chance had slipped from him. 

Luckily, Mr. Bridgebanke ap- 
peared upon the lawn, attired in a 
piscatorial costume that would have 
caused old Izaak Walton to rub his 
eyes for very wonder. His hat 
was a veritable hornet's nest, bris- 
tling with flies, and hooks, and 
spores, and artificial minnows. His 
body was encased in a wicker-work 
frame composed of fishing-baskets. 
His legs were thrust into india-rub- 
ber boots that reached up to his 
hips, while in his hands he carried 
a couple of fishing-rods, a landing- 
net, and a gaff that would have 
stranded a shark. 

Immediately following him was 
a little man attired in a tattered 
overcoat ten sizes too large for 
him, the tails reaching to his heels. 
A well-browned caubeen sat jaun- 
tily upon his flaming red hair. His 
frayed shirt-collar stood boldly 
and defiantly out from his neck a 
sort of linen chevaux de frise. He 
wore the remains of a once costly 
flowered-silk vest, while corduroy 
small-clothes, gray stockings, and 
brogues completed his bizarre cos- 
tume. His eye was cradled in 
drollery, and as he glanced at the 
ex-tea-merchant's " get up " he 
shook his " gory locks," muttering : 
"It's frightenin' the crows he 
ought for to be, insted av payin' 
Larry Fogarty two shillins a day 
for bawlin' himself hoarse." 

Mr. Bridgebanke, thrusting as 
much of his person as his basket- 
armor would permit into the room, 
and addressing Fred, exclaimed : 
" Now, then, I'm ready, my young 
friend. I think we'll get a rise, at 
all events. The trout is generally 
sulky about this 'ere hour, and 
keeps in the weeds; but we'll, ha ! 
ha! weed him, sir, we'll weed him. 
Mr. Stonleigh, this is Barney Hig- 



gins, my fisherman. A regular cha- 
racter, sir, but a fine fisher. He 
lives in a little lodge that I had 
erected for him near the pond, for 
fear poachers might come and try 
the nets for that trout. Come here, 
Barney !" 

" Arrah, what's delayin' ye ?"was 
Barney's retort as he lounged over 
to the window. " I'm roasted in 
the sun here like a herrin', an' I'm 
dhrier nor a roach," adding upon 
perceiving the ladies : " I ax yer 
pardin, ma'am ; I didn't know the 
quollity was in it." 

" Did you see the trout to-day, 
Barney?" asked Marguerite, rising 
and approaching the window. 

" Seen him ? Troth, thin, I did, 
miss, lukkin' rosy an' well." 

"Was he feeding?" demanded 
Mr. Bridgebanke anxiously. 

" Dickins a feed. It's just divar- 
tin' himself he wor, the thief! an' 
the minit he seen me he giv wan 
luk wud his gimlet eye, as much 
as for to say, * Don't ye wish ye 
may ketch me, Barney Higgins ?' 
an' he was gone like a dhrink." 

Mr. Bridgebanke rubbed his 
hands in ecstasy. 

" I'm delighted he was in such 
good spirits, Barney. This ought 
to be a good day." 

Barney looked up at the sky, 
glanced all round, ere he replied : 

"We'll take a hait out av him, 
anyhow." 

" He ought to be easily caught," 
observed the major. 

" Aisy ketched !" retorted Bar- 
ney with a disgusted air. " Wisha! 
but you wtidn't ketch him, nor all 
the fusiliers and bombardiers in the 
British army wouldn't ketch him, 
nor th' ould boy himself wudn't 
ketch him. He's as 'cute as a pet 
fox, or the whale that swallied 
Juno." 

A roar of laughter followed this 






The Major s Manoeuvre* 



43 



irate expression of Barney Hig- 
gins' feeling with reference to the 
feasibility of capturing the famous 
trout, in which Barney joined by 
an explosive grin. 

" Trout are easily deceived," 
observed the discomfited major. 

" That depends upon the bait," 
said Barney authoritatively. " Av 
yer bait 's infayriour yer bet up at 
wan st." 

"What do you consider the best 
bait, Barney ?" asked Fred, intensely 
amused. 

"Whatsoart?" Then,afteraslight 
pause : " Worms is choice afther a 
flood, dough is shupayriour whin 
the fishes is leppin' lively, but av 
all the baits that iver consaled a 
hook there's none to aiquil corbait ; 
it's the gayest decoy goin' now. A 
throut wud make a grab at a cor- 
bait av the rattles was in his throat 
an' a fourteen-pound pike grippin' 
him be the tail." 

u I thought that flies " began 
the major. 

" Aisy, now, aisy, sir!" interposed 
Barney. " Flies is good enough 
whin ye know how for to tie thim 
yerself whin ye can ketch a dad- 
dy-longlegs an' spit him like a lark, 
or a moth, or the tail-feather av a 
thrush, or the short wing-feather av 
a gray wran ; but a fly isn't worth a 
rush on a pond like the masther's 
here." 

; ' This is a character," said the 
major aside to Mrs. Bridgebanke. 

" Isn't he, major ? A genuine Hi- 
bernium." 

" I'll draw him out again. Ahem ! 
Where do you come from, Barney?" 

" Faix, thin, it's not where 1 cum 
from that's thrubblin' me, sir, but 
it's where I'm goin' to." 

" You're a Connaught-man, Bar- 
ney, aren't you?" laughed Margue- 
rite. 

" Yis, miss, thrue for ye." 



"What part of it?" demanded 
the major. 

" Och, it's contagious to the At- 
lantic Ocean." 

" Poor quarters, eh ?" 

" It's a bad billet, there's no de- 
nyin' it." 
'"Moist, eh?" 

" Moist ! Wisha, it's always un- 
der wather ; the very snipes has the 
new-ral-gy. Sorra a Christian man 
cud live in it, barrin 1 he was a say- 
gull or an ouild army vetheran an' 
they'll live where another man wud 
starve," with a glance of malicious 
drollery at the major. 

" We'd better be moving to the 
pond," exclaimed Mr. Bridgebanke 
hastily. "Lead the way, Barney; 
and here, take an additional rod. 
You'll find one in my study." 

" Peter," said Mrs. Bridgebanke, 
"I wish to commune with you." 

;; My dear, I couldn't speak to 
anybody just now," responded her 
husband, rapidly retreating. 

" But it is of the highest irrele- 
vance." 

" It must keep. Come along, Mr. 
Stonleigh ; every minute lost while 
this breeze lasts is worth a Jew's 
eye." 

IV. 

Mr. Fred Stonleigh, on his return 
to Dublin, sought his kinsman, and, 
still under the impression that Mar- 
guerite was the daughter of the 
house, resolved upon giving the 
weak minded young officer a piece of 
stern counsel akin to ordeal by court- 
martial. Missing Jimmy Byecroft 
at the United Service Club, he took 
an outside-car and drove straight 
to the Richmond Barracks, where 
he found his man engaged in the 
act of dressing for mess. 

" Halloo, Fred ! What's up ?" de- 
manded the youthful warrior, while 
he completed the knotting of a 



44 



The Major s Jtfanoeuvre. 



white tie, and glancing at his cou- 
sin through the medium of the mir- 
ror. 

" I want you to give me ten " 

" Pounds ? I haven't a blessed 
bloomer ; I " 

" Pshaw ! listen to me. I want 
to talk to you " 

" Like a father," laughed the en- 
sign. 

" I must ask of you to be serious," 
said Stonleigh in a severe tone, as 
he flung himself into a camp-chair. 
" Sit down, Jimmy. What I have 
to say to you is of the gravest im- 
portance." 

" A mitrailleuse of grave impor- 
tance opened on me and I can't get 
out of range," observed the other, 
hustling on his red - jacket and 
seating himself on the edge of his 
iron bedstead. " By Jingo ! Fred, 
now that I look at you, you seem 
as well stuffed with grave impor- 
tance as a queen's counsel's bag." 

" It is your habit, mon ami, to 
fling aside any thought that does 
not suit your humor. You will 
permit no shadow to cross your 
mind, no color but conleur de rose." 

" Shadows become fixtures, if you 
let 'em rest, Fred," retorted the 
other. " But come, what's up ? 
Let me hear the boom of the first 
gun." 

"The Bridgebankes " 

" Oh ! sets the wind in that 
quarter ?" cried the ensign, flushing 
to the roots of his carefully-parted 
hair, and fiddling uneasily with the 
quilt with both hands. " Cherchez 
la femme, eh ?" 

" Yes, I come to speak to you of 
Miss Bridgebanke," said Stonleigh, 
his eyes riveted upon his kinsman. 

"What have you got to say?" 
asked the other in a tone one half 
curious, one half hauteur. 

<; This : Your conduct in re- 
maining away from their house 



under a shallow and shabby pretext 
has compelled me as your kinsman 
to act, and to snatch you from er- 
ror, if not from dishonor." 

" I I don't mix myself up in your 
affairs, Fred," observed the ensign, 
clutching the brass foot-rail of his 
bed, "and, by Jove! I can't see 
that you have any right to busy 
yourself with mine." 

"You have won the affections of 
a young and lovely girl, and you 
know it" said Stonleigh with em- 
phasis. 

"Well!" 

"A victory of which you should 
be greatly proud ; and yet I find 
you you, calling yourself a gentle- 
man " 

"You are carrying this " 

"About to commit an act worthy 
of a trickster, a cheat, and a cow- 
ard." 

Byecroft sprang to his feet, crim- 
son with anger and shame. 

"Fred Stonleigh," he palpitated, 
" no man shall dare apply that word 
to me with impunity." 

" Then why court it?" 

"I do not court it, sir." 

" Jimmy," said the other in a 
softer tone, " your heart is sound, 
I know it, and a little reflection 
will bring you face to face with your- 
self, old fellow ; a little reflection 
will tell you that you would treat as 
a toy that which you should revere 
as a relic ; that you would wantonly 
pluck a beautiful flo\ver to let it 
wither and die. You are about 
to fling aside a fair young girl, and 
leave to her but the bitter mockery 
of the memory of a blighted past." 

Byecroft made no reply, but 
plunging his hands deep into the 
pockets of his trousers, and bend- 
ing his head till his chin almost 
rested upon his chest, proceeded 
to pace the room with hasty and 
uneven strides. 






The Major s Manoeuvre. 



45 



" Should you yield," continued 
Stonleigh, every word cold, clear, 
and distinct, " your life will be 
clouded with the shadow of a re- 
morse that will never fade, and you 
will hate, with a bitter hatred, the 
girl whom you cheated into a hol- 
low marriage ; whilst the fond re- 
membrance of 'the old love willcling 
guiltily to you like the fragrance of 
a delicious but deadly perfume." 

Byecroft still paced the room, 
Stonleigh following him alike with 
his gaze and with his words. 

"You are playing for the highest 
stake that can be risked upon the 
board of life ; lose it, and you lose 
all." 

Byecroft suddenly ceased strid- 
ing up and down the apartment, 
and, stopping opposite Stonleigh, 
flung out his hand. 

"Forgive me, Fred," he said. 
"You are right, old boy; you are 
straight, old fellow straight as Sir 
Galahad. There 's a screw loose in 
my nature, Fred, and I can't say 
where it is. I'm awfully ' unfit to 
say no.' I'm not a bad lot. I'm 
not an ungrateful beggar. I 
shouldn't have acted as I did if the 
major " 

" Do you mean to tell me, 
Jimmy," interposed the other, " that 
you are a piece of wax for the 
major to mould at will ?" 

" No ; but, you see, he said that 
love was putty, and that women's 
affections were as unreliable as 
shilling gloves, and that Miss 
Bridgebanke was caught by the 
glare of my red coat ; and that if I 
married her I would be called 
' Congou,' in allusion to the tea 
business, and that the mess would 
declare I was suited to a ' T.' 
You wouldn't care to be called 
Congou, would you ?" naively de- 
manded the ensign. 

" Pshaw !" t was the other's reply, 



accompanied by a contemptuous 
shrug of the shoulders. 

" Besides, Fred, I wasn't quite 
game for marrying, and however, I 
acted like a cad, and I would like 
to do the correct thing, old fellow; 
but, per Bacco! you must help me. 
It will be an awful business to have 
to face the family, to run the 
gauntlet of the whole lot, and turn 
'em round as if I was dancing Sir 
Roger de Coverley or a Virginia 
reel." 

And the expression of dismay on 
Mr. Byecroft's face as he uttered 
his imaginings was ludicrous to be- 
hold. 

"See what's before me, Fred," 
he continued after a pause. " First 
of all comes the old man. Unless 
he has caught that trout he'll stick 
a harpoon in me. Secondly ah ! I 
say, Fred, there's another staggerer 
in the business. I allude, and of 
course in the most respectful way, 
to the old lady. Isn't she a very 
remarkable specimen ?" 

" Well, she's" 

" For one woman isn't she a re- 
markable woman ?" 

" I cannot " 

" Isn't she a caution ? I ask 
you as a man and a brother, isn't 
she a caution ?" persisted the en- 
sign. 

" She's good-natured arid hospi- 
table, and from what I have seen of 
her I like her," said Fred stoutly. 

" Would you like her for a moth- 
er-in-law ?" 

" You are not marrying Mrs. 
Bridgebanke." 

" Won't she astonish some of 
our swell female acquaintances ? 
Would it be a proper thing to' 
spread a report that in early life 
an irate schoolmistress had rapped 
her on the head with a Johnson's 
dictionary, and that this rap has 
since set her words a little astray?" 



4 6 



The Major s Manoeuvre. 



After some further conversation 
of a more serious nature Jimmy 
Byecroft absolutely pledged him- 
self to shake off the evil counsel of 
the major, to act as a gentleman 
by asking forgiveness at Assam 
House, but on the condition that 
his cousin should prepare the pre- 
liminaries of peace with Miss 
Bridgebanke. 

" I don't want to have any cry- 
ing, Fred. If she cries I'll cry by 
Jove ! I will. I could not help my- 
self ; and then she'll treat me as a 
fool for the rest of my life. Say 
what you like to her ; you can make 
my peace in a few of your bang-up 
words. It would take me an hour's 
stammering before I could say 
* Forgive me.' " ^ 

Fred Stonleigh, having pledged 
himself to see Miss Bridgebanke 
and to make his cousin's peace, re- 
solved upon swallowing the bitter 
cup with all possible haste ; and the 
next morning found him en rodte 
to Assam House, accompanied by 
the quavering warrior. 

Stonleigh knew full well the in- 
fluence the major possessed over 
his weak-minded kinsman, and that 
delay meant danger. And it was a 
dreary task which he had under- 
taken to perform to plead an- 
other's cause when he would have 
pleaded his own ; to utter words 
for another when whole passion- 
laden sentences were leaping from 
his heart to his lips. 

Love seldom parleys, never rea- 
sons. Love had descended upon 
him in a rose-colored cloud, and 
he could no more resist its influ- 
ence than that of the air which he 
breathed. He had seen this girl 
but twice, yet he felt as if he had 
known her for ever. She was a 
stranger to him, yet his life seemed 
welded to hers. Her loveliness 
was with him sleeping or waking, 



and her sweet, low voice sounding 
like music in his ears. 

And yet she was not for him. 
His life should be led apart from 
hers. Her heart had gone from 
her to another, and the impossible 
sternly confronted hope at the very 
outset. His the grim, narrow path 
of duty ; and yet could he have 
won her had she been free ? Some- 
thing in her earnest eyes, something 
in her dulcet voice, something in 
her shy reserve beckoned to him in 
an unreal, dreamy way ; but he 
never allowed these thoughts, rap- 
turous though they might be, an 
instant's vantage-ground ; he push- 
ed them sternly aside as though 
with a mailed hand. 

What a change can come over a 
man in a few hours ! How the 
spirit of his life-dream alters ! 
Fred Stonleigh, who had led that 
lazy, good-for-nothing life which 
ever whispers " Go with the tide " ; 
who cared not for the morrow, 
since it was sure to bring its allot- 
ted measure of pleasure ; who never 
permitted his mind to agitate itself 
save on such questions as pilling a 
man at the club, a bet at Punches- 
town, or the health of a horse or 
dog as the hunting and shooting 
season approached, suddenly awoke 
to find his existence dull, dreary, 
unbearable, giving nothing save 
gray ash, bearing nothing but Dead- 
sea fruit. 

With the resolve to aid his cousin 
came the resolve to aid himself 
to do something that would kill the 
gnawing that had already commenc- 
ed at his heart. Work ! But what 
work? Travel! Yes, he would 
seek in change of scene to efface 
all memories of Marguerite Bridge- 
banke. This is the resolve of many 
a love-sick swain, and it has cured 
many a man ere now. 

Up the ribbon-bordered carriage- 



The Major s Manoeuvre. 



47 



way that led to Assam House Fred 
grimly stalked, followed by his 
cousin, who kept the stalwart per- 
son of his kinsman well between 
him and the house. A turn in the 
avenue revealed Marguerite Bridge- 
banke to Fred, who, turning to the 
ensign, briefly whispered, " She is 
here." 

Marguerite sat upon a garden- 
chair, reading^ her back to the two 
men. 

" You go on, Fred," urged the 
ensign in a low, nervous tone. 
"Give me a few moments here to 
pull myself together. Say. that it 
was all a mistake, and that I'm 
howling with shame. You can call 
me when the ice is strong enough 
to skate upon." 

" Why can't you be a man and " 

" It's all very well, Fred, but I'd 
rather lead a forlorn hope than face 
a girl with tears in her eyes. Re- 
member your promise stand by 
me." 

With a contemptuous and angry 
gesture Stonleigh strode forward, 
and, stalking across the velvet grass, 
came up to where Marguerite was 
seated, and exclaimed with a forced 
laugh : 

" A penny for your thoughts, 
Miss Bridgebanke. " 

The girl started, crimsoning vio- 
lently as she exclaimed, " Mr. Ston- 
leigh !" 

" Pardon my abruptness. It was 
awfully stupid of me," said Fred, 
as he bent over her gracefully-ex- 
tended hand. 

" Your voice startled me, Mr. 
Stonleigh ; for, by a strange co- 
incidence, I was actually think- 
ing of you at that particular mo- 
ment." 

"Thinking of ;<?, Miss Bridge- 
banke ? What a chance for so poor 
a wayfarer !" 

" I was wondering if you would 



think it worth your while to visit 
us again." 

" Worth my while !" he exclaim- 
ed. " This is too bad ; it's shabby. 
If I were remaining in Ireland you 
would see a great deal too much 
of me." 

He fancied she paled a little as 
she asked : 

"Are you going away ?" 

11 Yes, going away," he laughed. 
" Luckily my coming or going af- 
fects no one upon earth. It is 
' Good-by, Fred ; I suppose you'll 
look us up when you come back?' 
or ' Halloo, Fred ! when did you 
turn up?' Stay, I am wrong," he 
added. " I have a dog, a veritable 
cur, that whines when I leave as 
if his heart would burst a cur that 
is voted an intolerable nuisance by 
everybody within ear-shot of him." 

" Poor fellow!" exclaimed Mar- 
guerite compassionately. " Who 
takes care of him whilst you are 
away ?" 

" He is left to the tender mercies 
of an elderly female who lives, 
moves, and has her being in the 
barley-bree." 

"Do give him to we" urged 
Marguerite; then, ashamed .of her 
own earnestness, she added : " I 
mean that is, the people here are 
so fond of dogs that he will be 
treated right royally so long as it 
may please you to leave him with 
us." 

" He is a cur with no redeeming 
point save that he loves his master, 
not wisely but too well," laughed 
Stonleigh, seating himself beside 
Miss Bridgebanke. 

" And is not that a sufficient 
recommendation ? Consider his 
passport vise, Mr. Stonleigh/' mer- 
rily retorted the girl. 

" I fear he is not for gentle treat- 
ment, Miss Bridgebanke ; luxuries 
do not lie in his way. I shall be- 



The Major s Manoeuvre. 



stow him upon an old pensioner of 
mine, and bid him a long farewell, 
as the chances are that when I 
return he will have repaired to 
the happy hunting-grounds of his 
race." 

" You speak as though you medi- 
tated a prolonged absence," observ- 
ed Marguerite, nervously crumpling 
the leaves of her book. 

" ; It may be for years, and it may 
be for ever,' " he gaily exclaimed, 
digging his heel into the grass. 
"Seriously, Miss Bridgebanke, I 
am weary of an existence which is 
utterly aimless, of a career without 
anoteworthy incident, save, perhaps, 
one. I must endeavor to create 
new interests, new impulses, new 
hopes. At present there is no light 
in the east for me ; I am dry ash, 
a withered leaf, with every symp- 
tom of becoming an old fogy be- 
fore my time, and of making my 
stand-point in life the centre win- 
dow of the Stephen's Green Club. 
It won't make any difference if 
I drop out of the ranks. Smith 
or Jones steps into my place, and 
the march of life goes on uninter- 
ruptedly." Then he stopped, to ex- 
claim with startling suddenness : " I 
am really ashamed of speaking so 
much of the miserable ego. What 
a gossiping imbecile to speak so 
much about , myself, and forgetful, 
too, of my mission to your serene 
highness !" the undercurrent of 
suppressed excitement being so 
strong as to cause Stonleigh's man- 
ner to appear jocose, if not flippant. 

Marguerite crushed down the 
leaves of her book as she slowly 
exclaimed, her thoughts travelling 
in another groove : 

" A mission to me, Mr. Stone- 
leigh?" 

" I earnestly trust that you are 
in the most gracious of all moods ; 
for a forlorn knight is hieing hither 



to throw himself at your feet and 
cry for grace." 

"A knight at my feet! Is this 
another fairy-story, Mr. Stonleigh ?" 
exclaimed the astonished girl. " I 
know of no knight willing to break 
a lance in my behalf, and I know 
of no knight authorized to wear 
my token in his helmet." 

4< He wears your favor, fair ladye, 
and is faithful and tr^ie." 

Marguerite gazed at Stonleigh 
in considerable surprise. What did 
all this metaphor mean ? 

" Miss Bridgebanke," exclaimed 
Fred desperately, " the fact is 
that my cousin, in a moment of I 
mean my uncle you see my uncle 
does not believe that such a thing 
as true love exists, and, for a half- 
second only, persuaded Jimmy that 
his affection was only a passing 
sensation which would fade away 
like the ' snow-drift on the river.' 
Jimmy has discovered to his bitter 
cost that the major's theory is false, 
and has implored of me to see 
you." 

''To see me? Mr. Byecroft and 
I have very little in common, I 
assure you." 

" Coldly contemptuous," thought 
Stonleigh, adding aloud : " Do not 
be too severe upon him." 

"/offer no opinion on his con- 
duct. There are others to whom 
explanations are not only due, but 
imperatively due." 

Could Asmodeus have lifted the 
mansard-roof off Assam - House at 
that particular moment he would 
have beheld Louisa Bridgebanke 
gazing, through eyelids inflamed 
from weeping, at the photograph of 
a British officer in full uniform, 
which she would ever and anon 
press passionately to her lips. 
Moth-like she had been caught by 
the glare of the red coat, and the 
silly, stupid, wavering Jimmy Bye- 



The Major s Manoeuvre. 



croft was as great a hero in her eyes 
as was Wellington to the Fighting 
Fiftieth or Napoleon to the Old 
Guard. 

For a second Stonleigh won- 
dered what Marguerite meant by 
"others"; but still mistaking her 
for the daughter of the house, and 
the Comedy of Errors playing with 
uncommon smoothness, he set these 
" others " down as her parents, and 
exclaimed : " If he wins the sun- 
shine of your favor he can easily 
hope for forgiveness from the 
others. You are the only person 
to be considered after all." 

Marguerite was about to put a 
question to Stonleigh that would 
have led directly to a denouement ; 
but it was not to be. Mr. Bridge- 
banke, followed by Barney Higgins, 
turned out of the house, and upon 
perceiving Fred he uttered a shout 
of recognition and welcome, hurry- 
ing across the lawn as rapidly as his 
entourage of fishing-gear permitted. 

" Why, it is indeed a treat to see 
you, Mr. Stonleigh," he exclaim- 
ed. " You have come to help me 
to square accounts with this pla- 
guey trout. I've been watching 
him all the morning." 

" An' he's been watchin' you," 
observed Barney Higgins, who had 
joined the party, with a grin ; add- 
ing under his breath, as he glanc- 
ed from Stonleigh to Marguerite : 
"Faix,wecome in at the wrong time, 
as the peelers sed to the coiners. 
It's billin' an' cooin' they wor, good 
luck to thim !" 

"You can go to the pond, Bar- 
ney ; I'll follow you in a few min- 
utes. Keep well under the shadow 
of thelaurestinas," said Mr. Bridge- 
banke. 

" Troth, thin, av ye'll be sed be 
me, ye'll come at wanst," with a 
sly glance at Stonleigh. " This sky 
won't hould long." 
VOL. xxx. 4 



49 

" I'll be there as soon as you, 
Barney." 

"There's some ould min mighty 
conthrairy, anyhow," growled Bar- 
ney in an undertone, without mov- 
ing; " an' here's wan that was red- 
dy for to knock sawdust out av me 
a few minits ago whin I demanded 
av him for to wait till the cool av 
the evenin'." And seeing that Mr. 
Bridgebanke was engaged in speak- 
ing to Marguerite, Barney crept 
close to Fred, and exclaimed in a 
confidential whisper right into his 
ear : " Long life to ye, sir ! She's 
a rale beauty. It's not me that's 
keepin' the masther. It's not me 
that's spilin' sport. Now's yer 
time, sir, an' don't reneague it. 
Sorra a betther chance ye'll ever 
get, for they seldom lets her out av 
their sight." 

"What is this fellow driving at?" 
thought Stonleigh. 

"Would you mind taking a turn 
at the trout now, Mr. Stonleigh?" 
demanded Bridgebanke anxiously. 

" Arrah, can't ye lave the gintle- 
man quiet an' aisy ?" interposed 
Barney. 

"Go to the pond at once, sir," 
said Bridgebanke majestically. 

'"Oh ! sartinly,sartinly, avcoorse," 
adding as he moved away : " I'll 
brain that fish wud a lick av a 
stone as shure as me name 's Bar- 
ney Higgins." 

v. 

Mr. Byecroft, growing weary of 
waiting, resolved upon facing the 
enemy. Anything was better than 
this hoping and fearing. As he 
approached he was infinitely dis- 
gusted and disappointed to find 
that it was Marguerite and not 
Louisa Bridgebanke with whom 
Fred had been in conversation all 
this time, and wondered why his 



The Major s Manoeuvre. 



kinsman had so signally failed in 
the fulfilment of his promise. 

Mr. Bridgebanke's reception was 
cold in the extreme. 

"This visit is unexpected, sir," he 
said; "and as I conclude it is to 
me, I shall return with you to the 
house in a moment." 

As for Marguerite, she merely 
responded to his salutation by an 
icy salute, Stonleigh watching her 
every movement with eager eyes. 

" Nice weather, Miss Bridge- 
banke," spurted the miserable war- 
rior, pulling a disengaged glove 
into rags. 
" Very." 

" Warm, Miss Bridgebanke." 
<l Very." 

"In ah fact, sultry." 
"Very." 

u I hope Lou your cousin is all 
right." 

" My cousin is extremely well." 
" So glad ! Awfully glad ! I- 
the fact is," casting piteous glances 
at Fred, whose gaze was riveted 
on Marguerite "you see I've not 
been able to get here for some 
days, and but you see I am here 
now. I have an explanation to 
make that " 

" I would suggest your making 
no explanations to we, Mr. Bye- 
croft," interposed Marguerite gla- 
cially. 

" Quite so. I shall see Mrs. 
B.," gasped the discomfited offi- 
cer, flinging a look of pent-up ire 
upon his cousin, who now rose to 
take his leave. 

"As I have particular business to 
get rid of this afternoon, I I shall 
say good-by, Miss Bridgebanke," 
said Fred, taking her hand, which 
was cold as ice, " and with it to 
wish you " And then he stopped 
short, a whirlpool of misery eddy- 
ing round his throbbing heart. 
" Au revoir" said Marguerite 



coldly, albeit her lips quivered as 
the words left them, and her cheeks 
were pale, and her eyes full of an 
ill-suppressed sadness. 

" You must come round by the 
pond and have a look at the trout," 
exclaimed Mr. Bridgebanke, taking 
Fred's arm as he spoke ; then, turn- 
ing to Byecroft : " Be good enough 
not to leave until I have seen you, 
sir." And the pair swept out of 
sight. 

As soon as they had disappear- 
ed Marguerite, burying her face in 
her pocket-handkerchief, moaned 
under her breath : " He has gone, 
gone ! I shall never, never see him 
again." 

When Mr. Byecroft reached the 
house he asked to see Mrs. Bridge- 
banke. 

" I'm to do all the fighting single- 
handed," he growled. " Fred has 
led me into an ambuscade, and I 
must cut my way through as best I 
can." 

He flung himself into a scarlet 
satin easy-chair and awaited the 
onset of the enemy. 

In a few minutes Mrs. Bridge- 
banke, very red in the face and an 
angry cloud upon her brow, swept 
into the room, fanning herself so 
violently as to bring the ribs of her 
ponderous Seville fan into dis- 
agreeable contact with her some- 
what bulbous and prominent nasal 
organ. 

"Mr. Byecroft, I believe," she 
coldly observed, raising a gold- 
rimmed glass to her left eye, and 
surveying the ensign from his var- 
nished boots to the centre parting 
of his hair. 

Considerably awed by this sin- 
gular mode of reception, Mr. Bye- 
croft could only muster two words, 
and these words were, " Mrs. 
Bridgebanke." 



The Major's Manoeuvre. 



That she is mopping like an owl, 
and fading like the base fabric of 
a vision?" And Mrs. Bridgebanke 
fanned herself red-hot. 

" Please, *m," said a pert English 
maid, flinging open the door as if 
she was desirous of sending it into 
the middle of the room, " Major 
Bags h awe wishes to see you." 

" Show him in here. Stubbs. 
Stay ; show him into the pink draw- 
ing-room, and say I'm coming." 

" Yes, 'm." And the young lady 
disappeared with the same violent 
rapidity with which she came upon 
the scene. 

Byecroft saw that he must con- 
ciliate the old lady now or never. 
Once again in the major's clutches, 
and adios to his chances of doing 
the "correct thing." As a mat- 
ter of fact, the worthless youth was 
not a little enamored of Louisa 
Bridgebanke. His vanity was 
tickled by the conquest, and he 
was one of those persons who so 
thoroughly believe in themselves 
that homage, however slender, ren- 
ders them slaves. Louisa was 
what novelists like to term madly 
in love. She was as yet but eigh- 
teen ; and while in the teens Love 
is horribly imperious. A little 
later on we can parley with the 
urchin, if not reason with him, but 
at eighteen he rules absolutely. 

The ensign, quitting \\\t fautcuil, 
advanced to where Mrs. Bridge- 
banke was seated, and, flinging him- 
self on a chair beside her, blurted : 

" Mrs. Bridgebanke, I have only 
one request to make, and that is 
that you will permit me to see 
Louisa and ask her forgiveness. 
If I am lucky enough to succeed, 
will you let by-gones be by-gones 
and give me another chance? 
Every fellow ought to have two 
chances, you know one for him- 
self, the other for luck." 



The Major s Manoeuvre. 



The worthy lady was silent for a 
moment, the fanning gradually be- 
coming less violent. Then, sud- 
denly extending her hand, which 
the young officer clasped in both 
his own, she exclaimed : 

"I'll bury the 'atchet and smoke 
the calumny of peace. This is for 
Louisa's sake, who has shut herself 
up like a penniwinke in its shell, 
and rejects all confluence with the 
outer world." 

" Hoityrtoity ! what's this?" cried 
Miss Patty, who had entered unper- 
ceived. " You here?" this to 
Byecroft. 

" I am glad to say that I am, Miss 
Patty." 

The angry lady, raising her hand 
and directing her forefinger to the 
portal, exclaimed : 

" Do you see that door ? On the 
other side of it rs the hall, the hall 
leads to the avenue, the avenue to 
the gate, the gate to the highroad 
Go!" And Miss Patty snorted again 
in the paroxysm of her anger. 

" Tut-tut, Patty," interposed Mrs. 
Bridgebanke ; "he has cajoled his 
offence." 

" I have no patience with you," 
/igorously retorted Miss Patty. 
** After allowing this idiotic creature 
to snub your daughter and the 
whole lot of us, you forgive him for 
merely holding up his little finger. 
It's monstrous ! He ought to be 
ducked in the canal," casting an 
annihilating glance upon the abash- 
ed officer. 

" The gentleman has made a co- 
pious apology, Patty, and has acted 
in the highest decorum. Mr. Bye- 
croft, you may go and look for 
Louisa. You'll find her in the 
garden, I dare say like Niagara, 
all tears. If she's not there Stubbs 
will find her." 

Byecroft, but too glad to escape, 
hastily thanked Mrs. Bridgebanke 



and bounded through the open 
window. 

" 'Pon my word," snorted Miss 
Patty, " if you had the spirit of " 

" Ah ! I have come to the arca- 
dian bower the grotto inhabited 
by the goddess," exclaimed Major 
Bagshawe, popping his head into 
the room. " The spider-brusher 
told me that you were here, and I 
have come with the devotion of a 
pilgrim wending his way to 

*' Moco," suggested Mrs. Bridge- 
banke, anxious to display her eru- 
dition. 

" Precisely, madam," said the ob- 
sequious major. 

" What rubbish !" exclaimed Miss 
Patty. "It's Mecca; and you!' 
turning to Bagshawe, "know this 
right well." 

In an unhappy moment the ma- 
jor endeavored to cough away the 
embarrassment occasioned by this 
contretemps; but the counterfeit 
cough was instantly assailed by a 
genuine one, and the gallant son 
of Mars, in his efforts to subdue 
both, became purple in the face. 

"A glass of water!" cried Mrs. 
Bridgebanke in alarm. 

" Hut-tut ! leave him to me," ex- 
claimed her sister-in-law, seizing 
Bagshawe by the coat-collar and 
slapping him violently on the back. 

" Thanks ! tha-a-a-nks !" gasped 
the major, retreating with consider- 
able nimbleness behind a buhl-ta- 
ble, while he muttered, " Her hands 
are as hard as Connemara marble. 
I'm in luck if my back teeth are not 
all loosened. To cough here is as 
much as a man's life is worth." 

"Your nephew is here, major," 
said Mrs. Bridgebanke with a pre- 
paratory cough. 

The major started. What did this 
mean ? 

" Fred Stonleigh, ma'am ?" 

" No." 



The Major's Manoeuvre. 



53 



" N-not Jimmy ?" 

"Yes, Mr. James." 

u What the I beg pardon. Jim- 
my here .?" And the major's eye- 
glasses went up on his forehead, 
while his jaw fell back for support 
on his year-one scarf. 

" Mr. James has expressed an 
oleagenous desire to conciliate 
Louisa, and I hadn't the heart to 
refuse him. I was young once my- 
self, major, and it's not so easy to 
quench the vital spark of senility," 
playfully tapping the back of Bag- 
shawe's hand with her fan. 

Here was a revelation. What 
did it portend? How was it brought 
about? Byecroft had never acted 
thus on his own volition. Whose 
doing was it ? The girl's ? No. Ah ! 
he had it. It must be Fred Ston- 
leigh's work ; and the major ground 
his teeth in impotent rage. But he 
was not going to be foiled to have 
his plans set aside, his cherished 
hopes blasted. Jimm> Byecroft 
should marry Miss Flint, and there 
was an end of it, and the Bridge- 
bankes might go to Hong Kong. As 
these thoughts flashed through his 
mind he suddenly perceived Fred 
Stonleigh crossing the lawn. 

" Excuse me a moment," cried 
the major, bounding to his feet ; and 
ere Mrs. Bridgebanke could inter- 
pose by so much as an ejaculation 
he had darted through the open 
window. 

" So, sir, this is your doing," he 
panted as lie came up with Ston- 
leigh. 

" What is the matter, major ?" 
asked the other in a provokingly 
cool tone. 

" Matter, sir ! What business 
have you to meddle in my affairs, 
sir my affairs ?" said the major, 
crimson with rage and puffing like 
a grampus. 

" Your affairs, major?" 



" Yes, sir, my affairs Jimmy's af- 
fairs." 

"Oh!" 

" You needn't look like an owl, 
sir," panted the other. " What do 
you mean by bringing your cousin 
to this house, sir ? Answer me 
that." 

" Simply because his stopping 
away was the act of a scoundrel, 
a coward, and a poltroon." 

" I tell you, sir, that you'll have to 
undo what you have just done. I'm 
not going to see a hundred thousand 
pounds go out of the family with- 
out striking a blow for it. Jimmy 
shall marry Miss Flint, and you 
may take this young tea- plant, if 
you have a mind to, since you are 
so chivalrously inclined." 

"Thanks," said Fred in a low, 
harsh, grating way. 

They had reached the turn lead- 
ing to the gardens, and right in 
the pathway stood Jimmy Byecroft 
with Louisa Bridgebanke leaning 
lovingly on his arm, her face wear- 
ing an expression of radiant happi- 
ness. 

" Step this way," hurriedly whis- 
pered the major. " I don't want to 
meet the girl." 

But Jimmy had espied his uncle 
and cousin, and came smilingly for- 
ward. The major, however, stiffly 
lifting his hat, turned upon his 
heel, while Fred stood staring at 
Louisa. 

" He's awfully disgusted that 
I've spoiled his manoeuvre, Fred. 
But I say, have you nothing to say 
to Miss Bridgebanke? By Jove! I 
believe you never met." 

"Miss Bridgebanke!" stammer- 
ed Stonleigh, becoming very pale. 
" This Miss Bridgebanke ?" 

" Why, who else would she be? " 

Fred clutched his cousin almost 
fiercely by the wrist as he asked : 

" Who, then, is Marguerite ?" 



54 " Tantum Ergo." 

" She is my cousin," said Louisa, thousand pounds. The major did 

replying for her fiance. not attend nor was he missed. 

Report says he is about to marry 

The little town of Bray was en Miss Flint. Mr. Bridgebanke still 

f&te on the occasion of the dou- fishes for the famous trout, and 

ble wedding, and Miss Patty pre- Mrs. Bridgebanke still piques her- 

sented Marguerite with not only self upon " a nice derangement of 

her trousseau but a sum of five her epitaphs." 



" TANTUM ERGO/' 

'Tis now the Vesper hour; glad sunlight streams 
In golden radiance through the casements high, 

Staining the marbles with broad opal gleams 
Brighter than drifted flushes of the sky. 

Upon the altar starry tapers shine 

With happy radiance, while the lilies slight 

Hang brimming o'er with slumberous golden wine 
Poured by the sunbeams in each chalice white. 

Slowly the circling mists of incense rise, 
Fading serenely 'mid the lapses dim ; 

Far through the jasper gates of Paradise 
Float chords ^olian of seraphic hymn. 

Adown dim aisles the long, gray shadows creep, 
The organ sigheth on the languorous air, 

Till one by one the sweet tones fall asleep, 
And silence hovers o'er us like a prayer. 

The tabernacle portals open wide, 

The kneeling priest awaits his kingly Guest, 

Who cometh in the purple eventide 

Just as the day drifts down the beauteous west. 

Hark ! hark ! Divinest music breathes around, 
And every head bows lowly at the cry ; 

Earth's guardian spirits echo back the sound : 
" Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus passes by." 

A silence falls like dew ; the kneeling throngs 
Cast down the heart's palm branches at his feet ; 

Voices celestial chant triumphant songs, 
And angel harps rain silvery echoes sweet. 



The Ruins of Minerve. 

We know the King hath gone upon his way. 

Lo ! as we lift our dazzled eyes in prayer, 
A dreamy glory gilds the shadows gray ; 

A something tells us that he hath been there. 

Now gently fade, O thou divinest light ! 

Veil thy rose gleamings 'neath a starry pall, 
Still thro' the solemn lapses of the night 

Our hearts shall feel God's benedictions fall. 



55 



THE RUINS OF MINERVE. 



WHENCE have ruins their strange 
attraction, their mysterious charm, 
whether their past be chronicled in 
history and depicted in poetic le- 
gends, or whether their story were 
forgotten centuries ago ? Is it not 
because their silence, telling of a 
world of energy, life, and action 
now no more, touches one of the 
deepest chords of the human heart ? 
a silence eloquent of times whose 
grave the ages, as they pass with 
measured tread, have ceased to 
name. Yet pitying and beneficent 
nature decks these gaunt tomb- 
stones of an ancient population 
with all the tender transformations 
wrought by her gold and silver 
lichens, her velvet bosses of thick 
moss, her nestling ferns or closely- 
clasping ivy, climbing to throw its 
garlands round the topmost towers, 
while the wandering bee is wooed 
by odorous wall-flowers springing 
from the crevices of hoary, weath- 
er-beaten stones, and many a timid 
creature and wild bird find in 
base or battlement an undisturbed 
abode. 

If it be fitting that the grave of 
the past, though sombre, should be 
fair, we nevertheless find it some- 
times under a sterner aspect. 

Among the most imposing ruins 



that we know are those of Minerve, 
the ancient capital of the Miner- 
vois, occupying the centre of the 
immense valley extending from 
Castres to Narbonne. These gloomy 
remains appear in the distance like 
a cemetery of forgotten tombs 
abandoned centuries ago. The ar- 
chaeologist finds there but little 
scope for anything but conjecture, 
since the mutilations effected by 
the hand of man as well as that of 
time have effaced every trace of 
architectural ornamentation. The 
painter and historian will, however, 
find abundant material to work 
upon ; the former in the reproduc- 
tion of their desolate grandeur, and 
the latter in the dramatic elements 
and varied reflections furnished by 
his subject. 

To this pile of ruin is attached 
one of the most terrible memories 
of the middle ages. Its history is 
one of those pages which one 
would fain efface from the book of 
humanity, and which appears to 
darken the more the further we 
remove from it, who, amid the ideas 
of modern times, are less able to 
appreciate the intensity as well as 
the supreme importance of the 
struggle in which the event it re- 
cords took place. 



The Ruins of Minerve. 



This is the tomb of the Albi- 
genses a tomb befitting those for- 
midable heretics, many of whom 
fearlessly met destruction by plung- 
ing into the very jaws of death. 
When we visited this ruined city, on 
whose doom Heaven seems to have 
set the seal of perpetuity, it was 
beneath a sky charged with dark 
and stormy clouds, amid whose 
masses gleams of red lightning 
flashed at intervals, while the roll 
of distant thunder heralded the 
coming storm. From the extremity 
of the bare, inhospitable plain by 
which it is approached the old de- 
capitated capital (if we may be 
pardoned the expression) stands 
out in gloomy desolation on the 
rocky heights towering above its 
encircling fosse, and brings forci- 
bly to mind the fulfilment of an- 
cient prophecies against rebellious 
cities of old times: "We have 
heard of the pride of Moab : . . . his 
pride and hisarrogancy, and his in- 
dignation is more than his strength. 
. . . The lords of the nations have 
destroyed the vineyard of Sabama." 
" Thy proud walls, O Moab, shall 
be cast down : thorns and nettles 
shall cover thy palaces, and bram- 
bles shall grow in thy strongholds. 
... I have made thee a desola- 
tion." 

All these houses, mostly roofless, 
pierced at rare intervals with win- 
dows, where no human face is seen, 
appear as if soldered together, form- 
ing one mass with the vast rock 
which forms their base, and whose 
granite plunges below the bed of 
the Cisse a torrent whose furious 
and unequal course has hollowed a 
subterranean archway forming a 
natural bridge. On the sides of 
the ravine, which cleaves the rock 
into strange and varied forms, is a 
deep grotto, in which have been 
discovered numerous skeletons of 



bears exceeding in dimension any 
living specimens. Judging from a 
tooth of one of these animals which 
we found in the soil, it would be 
easy, without being a Cuvier, to re- 
construct a bear of from five to six 
feet high. 

The impression left on the mind 
by this subterranean cavern still 
further disposes it for a visit to the 
ruins, themselves the skeletons of 
an extinct state of society. On is- 
suing from the grotto we soon find 
ourselves facing the city, though 
separated from it by the chasm 
which surrounds it, giving it some 
resemblance to the antique Cirta, 
now Constantine, and which also 
bears the traces of more than one 
siege. 

An imposing stronghold, as well 
as a singularly favorable position, 
is indicated by these sloping bat- 
tlements, these ascending and de- 
scending parapets, these hollowed 
passages and covered ways from 
which we can imagine the besieged 
watching the movements of the 
enemy, these blackened ramparts 
engirdling the city like a belt of 
iron, their portcullises disjoined or 
fallen; plainly great strength has 
here been dominant. But now 
here is a fragment of wall which 
seems to hold to nothing ; there the 
colossal angle of a dismantled don- 
jon, still rising to a majestic height ; 
while, amid heaps of ruin at its 
base, wild figs and vines climb 
through the windows and luxuriate 
on the ruined threshold. Every- 
thing seems to retain the mark of 
a terrible chastisement, as if the 
breath of the divine displeasure 
had passed over the city. 

This donjon formed part of the 
citadel of Minerve, occupying the 
southern portion of the rocky 
peninsula (so to call it), and con- 
necting the defensive works with 



TJie Ruins of Miner ve. 



57 



the apex of a gigantic angle. By 
crowning the tower with its strong 
battlements, and raising the vast 
length of wall now thrown down, 
we should have the front of the 
fortress. We can picture to our- 
selves the lowered portcullis, the 
drawbridge raised, the armed mul- 
titude thronging the ramparts, pen- 
nons and weapons gleaming in the 
sun, while from the topmost turret 
floated the emblazoned banner of 
Guirand de Minerve, the command- 
er of the garrison. 

Before describing the taking of 
Minerve, that great defeat which 
might be called the Waterloo of 
the Albigenses, it will be well to 
say a few words on besiegers and 
besieged, and why they were there, 
each burning to exterminate the 
other. And, firstly, what were the 
Albigenses? If it be answered 
that they were sectaries separated 
from the Catholic Church by cer- 
tain differences of faith, the an- 
swer, though a true one, is insuffi- 
cient. In a state of society orga- 
nized on this faith, which formed 
its basis, and in a country like 
France, " made by its bishops as a 
honeycomb is made by its bees," 
errors of faith were also social 
errors. Waldo, who gave his name 
to the Vaudois and his spirit to 
the Albigenses, began by allowing 
everybody, men and women, the 
right to preach and teach ; hence 
arose those fanciful doctrines of 
which the imagination of these peo- 
ple produced so plentiful a crop, 
and which had for their basis in- 
dependence of authority and con- 
tempt of property that is, of the 
property of other people. 

The leaders of this sect affected 
an austere life, that they might with 
a better grace hold forth against 
the splendor of churches and the 
lands and endowments of monas- 



teries. Their denunciations, wheth- 
er explicitly or otherwise, were an 
incitement to pillage; and pillage, 
therefore, they practised whenever 
they found a safe opportunity, and 
opportunities were never wanting. 
Their theological doctrines were a 
mixture of Arianism with the errors 
of the Manicheans. They taught 
that the eldest son of God was Lu- 
cifer, who, with his angels, had 
produced the visible world ; but 
that God, seeing in it nothing but 
disorder, engendered another Son 
to restore order to the world; and 
that the mission of these sectaries 
was to work in concert with God 
for the attainment of this end. 
Thus, as always the word reform 
has been the pretext, the catch-word 
to win success, and hence the ap- 
pellation, modestly appropriated by 
these sectaries, of the " Good Men," 
the "Humble," and the " Perfect." 
One of their most popular lead- 
ers was a certain Henri, who, after 
beginning as a mendicant friar, 
turned preacher against the church, 
which he designated as the "con- 
gregation of hell" He was follow- 
ed by crowds who hoped for a 
share in the spoils of the convents 
a booty which he did not fail to 
promise them. In an account given 
by St. Bernard to Pope Eugenius 
III. the saint describes this Henri 
as a man who, " when he can ex- 
tort money from the simple, spends 
it in gaming with women of evil 
life," But these circumstances did 
not hinder the man from pretend- 
ing to extraordinary rigor in the 
way of virtue, knowing that, in 
order to attract the multitude, an 
outward austerity is useful, how- 
ever loose and accommodating the 
code of morals may be which it is 
designed to cover. It was Machia- 
vel who said that " the appearance 
of virtue leads to success, but that 



The Ruins of Miner ve. 



virtue itself is an obstacle in its 
way." 

Honest men called these self- 
called teachers " the false coiners 
of the Gospel " ; this Gospel, which 
refused to have either pope or 
church, was preached, as we have 
said, by men and women, but the 
women appear to have been in the 
majority, whether as preachers or 
hearers of the new doctrines. 

We have already mentioned the 
illustrious founder of Citeaux. 
Long before the time of which we 
are speaking his zeal and elo- 
quence had done their utmost to 
lead back the Albigenses to reli- 
gious unity and show them that to 
rise against the faith of a nation 
was to rise against that nation it- 
self, its existence and security, and 
so to provoke the use of all means 
of lawful self-defence. 

Many had yielded to the argu- 
ments and entreaties, full of truth 
and charity, of the saint, and had 
abjured their errors ; and yet we 
find them not long afterwards 
unmindful of all their promises 
and penitence alike. A council 
was therefore held, at which they 
were again declared to be heretics, 
and Pope Paul III. sent missiona- 
ries among them, besides solemnly 
admonishing them himself. Books 
and treatises were written for their 
benefit ; they were entreated, they 
were threatened, but almost wholly 
in vain. Some were influenced by 
persuasion, and still more by fear ; 
but as soon as the occasion of their 
alarm was withdrawn they quickly 
returned to the discourses of their 
seducers, or, as men said, " to the 
sweet speeches of the presidents 
of the devil's mercy." 

The heresy began to take vast 
proportions, and was spreading in 
all directions ; bands were organ- 
ized for pillage, and Christendom 



took alarm in presence of the ac- 
tual and impending evils. Inno- 
cent III., intent on saving France, 
sent commissioners into the south- 
ern provinces, with orders to the 
bishops and nobles of the localities 
they visited to aid them by all the 
means in their power. The dan- 
ger was imminent, and, where 
needful, must be averted even by 
excommunication and confiscation ; 
and this for two all-important rea- 
sons to save souls from eternal 
perdition, and society from threat- 
ened destruction. It was in those 
days held to be a worse crime to 
kill the soul than the body, and 
heretics were regarded as the worst 
kind of assassins, whom conse- 
quently it was necessary to sepa- 
rate from the society which they 
endangered, and for this reason to 
seek them out and obtain informa- 
tion respecting their lives, acts, 
and tenets ; this was the duty of 
the commissioners, and this duty, 
this function, was the Inquisition. 

This formidable word is in fact 
more formidable than the thing 
itself, which, reduced to its verit- 
able function, corresponds to the 
office fulfilled at the present time 
by the Juges d' Instruction in 
France, and in England by the 
lawyers in the new Court of Judi- 
cature, presided over by Lord Pen- 
zance, aided by (pseudo) episco- 
pal assessors, for the judgment of 
ecclesiastical causes. For care 
must be taken not to fall into the 
very common error of confound- 
ing this with the Spanish Inqui- 
sition, the political creation of 
Philip II. 

The task to be fulfilled by this 
commission was of the greatest 
difficulty and importance, requir- 
ing not only that they should re- 
concile the penitent, after ascer- 
taining who were such in truth and 






TJie Ruins of Miner ve. 



59 



not in pretence, but also requiring 
them to punish the irreconcilable, 
to anathematize the persistent per- 
verters of the people, and, besides 
allaying a wide-spread revolt, to 
restore tranquillity to the storm- 
tossed minds of men. 

The pope, in his quality of guar- 
dian of the faith, was bound to use 
the powers recognized to be his 
by the whole Christian world. His 
envoys, whether missionaries or 
commissioners, had at first satis- 
fied themselves by questioning, ad- 
monishing, and instructing, and it 
was only when these means were 
of no avail that they resorted to 
threatening, then to separation 
from communion, and lastly to 
confiscation of property. This last 
proceeding more than any other 
irritated the sectaries and pro- 
duced loud complaints. 

We meet at this time with an- 
other great name that of St. 
Dominic, who is accused of being 
the promoter of this inquisition. 
This accusation is erroneous. The 
founder of the Preaching Friars 
had accompanied the bishop of 
Osma, who had come from Spain 
into France on a mission from his 
sovereign, Alfonso IX. Another 
mission attracted him on his way 
that of winning back by gentle 
means those who were sought out 
for punishment. He persuaded 
the legates to lay aside their pomp 
as the papal ambassadors, to leave 
their horses and train of followers, 
and make themselves poor and 
humble like the apostles. They 
consented, for they were men of 
God ; and this preaching by ex- 
ample (they walked barefoot and 
girt with ropes) had great suc- 
cess so great that the most emi- 
nent leader of the heretics, Ar- 
naud de Campranhan, acknowledg- 
ed his errors and made his abjura- 



tion to the bishop of Osma. This 
took place at Pamiers, the inhabi- 
tants of which followed the exam- 
ple of their chief. Thus St. Do- 
minic was in no sense an inquisi- 
tor ; the promoters of this too 
much caluminated inquisition were 
the brothers Guy and Raynier a 
fact which should not be forgotten. 

But though in some places good 
was accomplished, in others the 
evil increased. One of the pope's 
legates having been assassinated, 
Innocent III. required those princes 
who remained faithful to the church 
not to let his death go unaveng- 
ed, and engaged Philip Augustus 
himself to undertake a crusade in 
defence of religion, threatened in 
so large a portion of his dominions. 
The monarch willingly consented, 
and sent an army of 15,000 men. 
It was high time. The counts of 
Toulouse, Foix, Comminges, and 
Beam were pillaging the churches 
and monasteries in every direction, 
driving from their homes the cler- 
gy and religious, and shedding the 
blood of the Catholic laity. Cas- 
tles were taken, and burnt or 
razed to the ground, and villages 
devastated. The pope promised 
indulgences to whomsoever should 
take the cross in this cause, the 
cause of God and of order, and 
soon 300,000 warriors, the cross on 
their shoulder, came surging from 
all parts of the realm, headed by 
the bishops of Autun, Clermont, 
Nevers, Lisieux, and Chartres. 

We can form but a very imper- 
fect idea of those battalions, com- 
manded by mitred and crosiered 
generals. Raymond, Count of 
Toulouse, the chief of the Albigen- 
ses the most deeply compromised 
in the revolt, and consequently the 
most alarmed came to meet the 
army, whose commander-in-chief 
was an abbot of Citeaux, only to 



6o 



The Ruins of Miner ve. 



simulate the most profound sub- 
mission and to offer abundant apo- 
logies and promises, which latter 
he would not fail to break on the 
first opportunity. This man had 
to consult the caprices of four wo- 
men whom he had, more or less, 
married, and the abbot of Citeaux, 
who judged of a man's sincerity by 
his morals, and his words by his 
deeds, remained deaf to his ad- 
vances and professions of conver- 
sion. 

Simon de Montfort, who was the 
personal enemy of the Count of 
Toulouse, would not willingly have 
lost this opportunity of attacking 
him. De Montfort had at his dis- 
posal an imposing force from the 
number of troops which had joined 
his own, and before which the reb- 
els (to call them by their right 
name) were already giving way, 
though not without violent strug- 
gles on both sides. St. Dominic 
did not spare his admonitions to 
any, but went from one camp to 
the other, speaking plain truths to 
Catholics and heretics alike ; for 
both sides were guilty of acts of 
the greatest barbarity, the fruit 
of " ces haines vigoureuses " that 
" vigorous hate " regretted by the 
Alceste of Moliere. Thus, a cer- 
tain Seigneur de Pepieux, to whom 
Simon de Montfort had sent am- 
bassadors, sent them back to him 
without their lips, ears, and noses. 
De Montfort, by way of reprisal, 
taking prisoners a hundred of De 
Pepieux's men, sent them back to 
their leader blinded, and led by 
one of their number, to whom he 
had left one eye. 

The Albigenses, being eventually 
dispersed before the army of the 
Count de Montfort, assembled in 
the Minerva is, and there, fortify- 
ing themselves in the citadel of its 
capital, which was held to be im- 



pregnable, prepared to sell their 
lives dearly. 

Let us glance into the camp of 
the besieging army, animated by 
the imposing presence of its leader. 
De Montfort was the greatest cap- 
tain of his time, and the one who 
was served with the most devoted 
affection. He had gained several 
victories over Don Pedro of Ara- 
gon, over the counts of Foix, Com- 
minges, and Toulouse, and also 
over the English and the Germans. 
The Catholics called him the Chris- 
tian Machabeus, for, together with 
the qualities which make the ora- 
tor and the soldier, he had also 
those which make a man beloved. 
"No man," said St. Louis, "could 
have a livelier faith than his." It . 
may be partly owing to this that he 
earned the reproaches of histori- 
ans for " treating the Albigenses 
with great rigor," because, in his 
eyes, " heretics were bad and dan- 
gerous citizens." Opinions change 
with the times. One may nowa- 
days be a good citizen and at the 
same time an unbeliever in any- 
thing, so it is said. 

It would be less difficult to re- 
construct a mediceval citadel out of 
its own ruins than to picture to 
one's self as they really appeared 
those two armies of besiegers and 
defenders those without the walls 
and those within. There was not 
then among them that discipline 
which assigns to every one his 
place and ranges every soldier in 
the rank he is to occupy ; in which 
the combatants are but so many 
figures of addition grouped to- 
gether, making certain numbers to 
be opposed to certain other num- 
bers; a mathematical calculation 
which deals with human lives, a 
geometry which deals with cubes 
of flesh and blood; the whole made 
out beforehand and set down on 



The Ruins of Miner ve. 



61 



paper like an architect's plan, nei- 
ther less nor more. There, on the 
contrary, every personality play- 
ed its part with perfect liberty of 
initiative and individual impulse. 
What variety of aspect and what 
apparent disorder were presented 
by the movements of those troops, 
levied from day to day! men who 
had come to fight for the space of 
forty days, and then return to their 
harvests and vintage ; for the pope 
had only asked of them this term 
of service for the chastisement of 
the seditious. Moreover, it is just 
to add that, before calling upon 
Montfort to interfere with an arm- 
ed force, the Holy Father had sent 
at different times no less \\\axi four- 
teen legates to bring the sectaries 
to reason by gentle means, but 
without success. It must also be 
remembered that the promised In- 
dulgence was the only payment of 
the crusaders a fact which of it- 
self impresses an honorable char- 
acter on their expedition. 

Each noble, as well as every 
man-at-arms, had his own particu- 
lar costume, varied according to 
circumstances of place and condi- 
tion. Women were also admitted 
into those checkered ranks, biv- 
ouacking like soldiers, or marching, 
and even fighting, at their husband's 
side. 

But those ladies could not go to 
battle like their lords ; they must 
have pages and varlets, women at- 
tendants and falconers; their tents 
were so arranged as to form a suite 
of apartments, with boudoir and 
chapel complete ; and all these 
things accompanied them from 
place to place throughout the cam- 
paign. 

Of these portable palaces, which 
the Crusades had brought into 
fashion, we may form some idea 
from the description left us by 



Maimbourg of the famous tent 
presented by the Sultan Saladin 
to the Emperor Frederick Barbaros- 
sa, which at the same time gives 
some idea of the industrial arts as 
practised at that period. 

" There was," says Maimbourg, 
" in the covering of this admirable 
pavilion the sky so perfectly re- 
presented that one there saw the 
spheres of the sun and moon, turn- 
ing, as of themselves, all around it, 
and by a learned artifice observing 
accurately the same measure in 
their regular movements as that 
prescribed by nature in two di- 
verse manners to these two heaven- 
ly bodies which, by this same well- 
regulated diversity in their course, 
make all the harmony of the world ; 
in such sort that all the hours of 
the day and night were marked in 
this tent by the artificial course of 
these globes." The rest of the or- 
namental arrangements seem to 
have corresponded to this scientific 
decoration. 

To the varied effect of the mili- 
tary habiliments was added that 
produced by the garb of the eccle- 
siastical dignitaries the resplend- 
ent vestrrfents which have retained 
that antique character so suitable 
to the dignity of worship. Every 
morning the tumult of arms was 
preceded by the offering of the 
Most Holy Sacrifice, and the pray- 
er of bishop and priest invoking 
the benediction of the " Lord of 
Hosts " on the arms of the faith- 
ful. 

From time to time long proces- 
sions passed round the camp, 
chanting litanies or the psalms of 
the prophet king of Israel to en- 
courage the ardor of some and 
temper that of others. 

During the intervals of repose 
Alix de Montmorency might be 
seen riding through the camp with 



62 



The Ruins of Miner ve. 



her husband, Count Simon de 
Montfort, on her right, and on her 
left the legate, Arnaud, Abbot of 
Citeaux. " The countess," say the 
chronicles of the time, " was beau- 
tiful both in body and mind, and 
her lord noble in countenance 
and stature, with long hair, affa- 
ble, courteous, eloquent, and also 
full of piety." Their young son, 
Amaury, followed them among 
his young comrades-in-arms those 
who were one day to be witnesses 
of his valor and misfortunes on the 
plains of Gaza. 

In seeing thus united beauty, 
courage, and virtue (De Montfort 
had just signalized himself in Pales- 
tine, and was soon to gain fresh 
laurels by the victory of Muret) 
a contemporary chronicler asks : 
"Who would not have ranged him- 
self beneath their banner without 
regard to its color ?" Indeed, if 
we were to judge the two causes 
by their respective chiefs, the right 
would assuredly be awarded to the 
side of honor and morality virtues 
which were notoriously lacking to 
the Count of Toulouse. Nor is he 
by any means in this an exception 
to his class; when we examine the 
accounts of the unfrocked monk, 
or the heretical and sectarian 
leader, we almost invariably find 
that their fall is traceable to, or at 
least connected closely with, wo- 
man. 

It is true that another historian 
charges Simon de Montfort with 
being often " unjust and cruel to 
the Albigenses " ; but the following 
passage may contain no incon- 
siderable matter for his justifica- 
tion: 

" The Narbonnese," writes Dom 
Vaissette, " had already for a long 
time past complained of the inroads 
and ravages made on their lands 
by the people of Minerve, compos- 



ed chiefly of Albigenses who had 
fled before the arms of De Mont- 
fort. Many of these, having been 
driven from their part of the coun- 
try and deprived of their goods, 
joined the roadsmen (rentiers), or 
bandits who lived by plunder, and 
took refuge in this stronghold, 
which was considered impregna- 
ble and from which they ravaged 
the surrounding country, pillaging 
monasteries and churches, burning 
homesteads and villages, carrying 
off flocks and forage, and devastat- 
ing what they could not take away." 
The Vicomte Aymery de Narbonne 
joined his urgent entreaties with 
those of the Narbonnese in seek- 
ing the powerful aid of De Mont- 
fort to rid them once for all of 
their intolerable neighbors. 

De Montfort, already invited by 
the pope, did not hesitate to hasten 
before the walls of the fortress 
whose strength made the Minervois 
and Albigenses so arrogant. He 
was accompanied by the knights 
Robert de Mauvoisin, Pierre de 
Richebourg, Guy de Luce, Jehan 
de Monteil, Perrin d'Issy, Guy de 
Levis, Ancel de Caetivi, etc., and 
was joined there by the bishop of 
Riez, the papal delegate, and the 
abbot of Vaux-Cernay, whose fer- 
vent eloquence had been success- 
ful in reconciling many of the dis- 
affected. 

- All that chanty could do had 
first been done ; nothing now re- 
mained but to satisfy justice the 
justice of those times, as impassion- 
ed as their faith. 

Formidable engines of war were 
raised against the citadel of Minerve, 
one of which was a mangonneau 
constructed by the Gascons. This 
gigantic apparatus was a species of 
Trojan horse, by means of which 
armed men were concealed until 
introduced within the walls, when 



The Ruins of Minerve. 



they suddenly dispersed themselves 
in the city and surprised the 
besieged. A terrible carnage fol- 
lowed on both sides. When two 
foes meet their one idea is to 
annihilate each other ; they are no 
longer men, out wild beasts athirst 
for blood. Warriors who, on the 
point of hacking one another in 
pieces, feel the wish to make an 
harangue, are not to be found out 
of the Iliad. 

Of this there was proof at the 
siege of Beziers, exactly a year 
before (1210), when the famous 
words are said to have been utter- 
ed : " Kill all ! God will know his 
own " words which, we will ob- 
serve, are related by a single con- 
temporary only, though since re- 
peated to satiety by the enemies 
of the Christian name. Everything 
may be explained, we do not say 
justified, in these moments of 
fever. An expression equivalent 
in nai've ferocity is attributed to 
Robert de Mauvoisin. In the 
midst of the raging combat the 
Minervois cried out for quarter, 
and it was not denied them; they 
implored the clemency of the con- 
queror, who proved that he was 
not inexorable by granting them 
their lives on condition that he 
should remain master of the city. 
It was then that Robert, at the 
head of his knights, exclaimed that 
he was come " to exterminate the 
rebels, and not to show them 
grace !" The terms, however, be- 
ing accepted, the besieging army, 
preceded by the cross, and follow- 
ed by the banners of De Montfort, 
entered Minerve in order with 
shouts of triumph. The church 
was "reconciled," and on one side 
of its spire was fixed the crucifix 
and on the other the arms of the 
conqueror. 

The " Perfect Men " would, how- 



ever, have belied their appellation 
had they accepted the granted 
grace. It is for the guilty to re- 
ceive pardons, but to those who 
claim perfection a pardon is an in- 
sult. These fierce logicians, there- 
fore, fortified themselves in two 
separate houses, the men in one and 
the women in the other ; for they 
lived apart, on account of the hor- 
ror in which they professed to hold 
marriage. 

The abbot of Vaux-Cernay at- 
tempted, but in vain, to reason 
with them, exhorting them to re- 
turn to the unity of the church 
under the paternal authority of the 
pope ; they refused to hear him, 
exclaiming that they would rather 
die than own any authority but 
that of God. In vain it w;is an- 
swered that the pope was his eaith- 
ly representative ; in vain the con- 
queror himself entreated them to 
submit; they would listen to no- 
thing, and this in spite of or it 
may have been because of the pile 
of wood and faggots set alight to 
receive them if they persisted in 
their heresy and rebellion. There 
was no need to lead them to the 
stake ; no less than a hundred and 
eighty threw themselves into the 
flames, and perished with a courage 
worthy of a better cause. 

An eye-witness relates that three 
of these voluntary victims were 
dragged, half-stifled, out of the 
flames by a Catholic woman, who 
hid them in her House, and by 
her ceaseless and intelligent care 
obtained their recovery. During 
their convalescence, which was 
slow, these persons were led by the 
humble devotedness and holy ex- 
ample of their deliverer to ex- 
change their imaginary " perfec- 
tion " for the faith of Christ. 

One grand result of the Crusades 
was their obtaining the freedom of 



The Religion of Nature. 



the serfs, since in taking the cross 
they gained their liberty, even if it 
were against the will of their lord ; 
the laws of the church, in this and 
many similar cases, taking prece- 
dence of the civil law. We would 
further observe that what we dis- 
dainfully call " the fanaticism of 
the religious wars " might be some- 
thing more worthy than the wars 



of modern times, which have for 
their object mere territorial in- 
terests, since it is more noble to 
fight in defence of one's religious 
faith than in order to obtain a 
parcel of earth, if, as even Cicero 
declared, it be true that " Man 
is man, as distinguished from the 
brute creation, only by the religious 
sense." 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 



IT would seem as if in our day 
the horror of anything positive and 
unelastic, of anything that might 
suggest rules and trammels to the 
imagination, were so great that it 
concentrated in itself all the 
strength of that worldly opposition 
which of old warred only against 
certain given dogmas. It is no 
longer from one sect or the other 
that the church expects to see. her 
enemies proceed; it is from the 
loose mass of floating infidelity re- 
solving itself into seemingly beauti- 
ful and utterly false axioms. 

Of these none, perhaps, is so at- 
tractive to an aesthetic mind as the 
fallacy known as the " religion of 
nature." It is a religion without a 
moral code, which yet enables its 
votary to speak in exalted lan- 
guage of the duty we owe to the 
Infinite Being; it is a deification 
of self which cloaks itself under 
the appearance of a most reveren- 
tial and exclusive consciousness of 
the nothingness of man ; it is a 
form of pride wearing the garb of 
self-abasement, and is specially 
adapted to allure those souls who 
long after the emotional experi- 
ences of religion unaccompanied 
by its inconvenient discipline. The 



beauty of the outer world is indeed 
a religion, but not to beings of a 
higher order whose faculties can 
control and bring change on this 
very beauty ; yet the idea that it 
is so is not only fascinating but 
flattering, and lifts human dignity 
to delusively god-like heights. In 
such a system a man walks the 
earth a conscious king, feeling a 
wondrous kinship with all things 
beautiful and good, feeling as 
though all that was fair in wood 
and prairie, in star-sown sky and 
phosphorescent water, had in it a 
part of his soul, and cried out in 
the accents of his own voice. That 
all things should be within the God 
of his imagination, and that outside 
of that one Essence should be 
naught but soundless void, seems 
so entirely to dignify all things 
that he feels any other philosophy 
to be a slight on the beauty and 
perfection of creation. He would 
have all creatures god-like, and to 
have their organization separate 
from the Creator's would seem to 
debase them to the rank of menials. 
That a God should exist, as it were 
alone, because creatures are not 
other than himself, seems a theory so 
royal and befitting a God's omnipo- 



The Religion of Nature. 



tence that the idea of a Creator 
surrounded by servants appears, by 
contrast, like a lowering of that all- 
sufficient Godhead. Can he want 
anything? Can anyone outside of 
himself do him a service? Can 
any one beyond himself glorify 
him? The thought seems profana- 
tion, seems the limiting of the 
Boundless, seems the doubting of 
the All-Powerful. 

What wonder, then, that that man 
should turn to Nature, and, thinking 
to exalt God, proudly exalt her and 
himself? The more we think, and 
frame suppositions, and paint pic- 
tures to our own mind concerning 
this beautiful fallacy, the more do 
we understand how noble hearts 
are led astray by it and mistake 
this Aurora Borealis for the true 
light of day. 

They long to have and hold the 
true belief; they look round the 
world, and see the reigning formulas 
of faith scattered abroad, breeding 
unknown growths of angry disputa- 
tions, leading to estrangements be- 
tween brethren, secession among 
churches, abuses among the minis- 
try. They see the human handi- 
work that ruins what it touches, 
and they turn away in shuddering 
horror, refusing to seek any further 
aid from human co-operation, un- 
willing to believe in any more abid- 
ing vitality or God-given though 
man-obscured truth. Impulsively 
they pass by the Rock of Salvation, 
perchance because they have tried 
other strongholds that called them- 
selves rocks, and were only banks 
of treacherous weeds, floating isl- 
ands more dangerous than the fa- 
bled mermaid's hair that drew the 
mariners down in its slender mesh- 
es by the whirlpools of Scylla and 
Charybdis. 

Wearied with the conflicting roar 
of religions veiled in human weak- 
VOL. xxx. 5 



nesses, they look to nature for a 
new religion, and aspire to worship 
nature's God in temples " not made 
with hands." So, unknowingly, 
they add one more to the mass of 
human faiths, and clothe it, even 
as the others are clothed, with their 
special human weakness. It may 
seem a more pardonable one, a 
fairer one, but it is truth we should 
seek for; and could it be that 
truth were not also and in itself 
necessarily beauty, yet -should \ve 
be bound to embrace it and take 
our stand by it, despite all the 
beauty that might be beckoning us 
away. And now, if we look at the 
faith of Jesus Christ, the faith of 
the Bible and the church, the faith 
of nineteen centuries of acknow- 
ledged Christianity, and of twenty 
centuries .of preparation and pro- 
mise before it, we shall see that we 
are taught a religion of nature and 
a Christian pantheism far more 
beautiful, far more dignified, far 
more comprehensive than any the 
dreamiest poet has ever imagined. 
When Christians cast their eyes on 
the manifold beauties of creation, 
they see every creature in its own 
order, in its distinct and separate 
existence, following the particular 
path traced for it by God, and ful- 
filling his will and praising his 
greatness in its own way. The 
language of nature is a hymn of 
everlasting praise to God ; no poet- 
mind can fail to hear its chords 
swelling up to heaven on the voice 
of the wind and the waterfall. 
But, grand as it is, is the tongue of 
inanimate creation meant for the 
use of man ? How can we help 
knowing that ours is another or- 
ganization from that of the wild 
fawn, the branching oak, the spark- 
ling mineral ? And another or- 
ganization must suppose another 
tongue. When have we ever heard 



66 



The Religion of Nature. 



the thrush sing the song of the 
lark, or seen the palm-tree bear the 
leaves of the maple? More than 
that, and more conclusive, when 
has man, with all his ingenuity, 
ever succeeded in rivalling the 
song of the birds and the murmur 
of the brook? We cannot pray or 
chant in the tongue of our inferior 
fellow-creatures, for God has given 
us another speech and taught us 
himself in another language. He, 
like ourselves, would have us God- 
like, but not in our human way, 
not according to our human pride. 
To make us God-like he came down 
from heaven and made himself 
man. He deified and glorified our 
life in all its sinless relations, and 
exalted our speech, among our 
other attributes, in a way we dared 
not have thought possible. 

Not only did he use it as the ve- 
hicle of his teaching, but he even 
prayed to his Father in it, and 
taught us a prayer that embrac- 
ed in its beautiful comprehensive- 
ness every petition that ever could 
and ever would rise from the deso- 
late earth to heaven. We might 
have thought that in his moments 
of extremest agony he would have 
spoken to his Father in a tongue 
unknown of angels and of men. 
But no ; in every instance his pray- 
ers were to be lessons to us ; in 
every circumstance were they to 
be a guide and a model; in no 
place and at no time was he to 
utter one syllable that had not a 
special reference to the human na- 
ture he had assumed in order to 
save. 

Christ knelt in a temple " made 
by hands"; he was offered there 
according to the imperfect rites of 
the old dispensation ; he taught 
there because it was the sacred 
place which gave authority to all 
sanctioned teaching. The Jewish 



faith was encrusted with supersti- 
tion and marred by bigotry ; the 
priesthood had fallen away, the 
curse was nigh, the downfall of Je- 
rusalem at hand, and yet in all 
things Christ "fulfilled the law," 
Many times he said that he came 
not to destroy, but to fulfil. 

It is difficult for a refined and 
intellectual mind to refuse belief 
in the Godhead of the Saviour. 
The dogma is too beautiful, the 
mystery too tender, for such a 
mind to disbelieve. The heart 
most inclined to the vague tenets 
of the so-called 4< religion of na- 
ture " would be just the one most 
open to receive the impression of 
this truth. But even were it other- 
wise, no mind of this stamp could 
at least refuse to admit how immea- 
surably superior to any other man 
that ever lived was this historical 
personage of whom such strange 
and holy wonders are recorded and 
proved. Thus, upon either show- 
ing, Jesus of Nazareth, God-man 
or wondrous prophet, is a guide to 
all generations and a teacher to 
all schools. If he conformed to 
the waning system of Jewish belief, 
if he prayed in human speech to 
the invisible God, if he bent his 
knee and bowed his head to the 
Creator and made himself lowly 
before men, so that he was taken 
and condemned to death in silence, 
and yet drew men to him in his 
very abasement and speechlessness, 
how can we justify ourselves in 
going apart and having an altar of 
our own, standing erect before our 
Maker, and refusing him the prayer 
of our human lips ? 

We cannot join the concert of 
nature, if we would ; our voice 
would be a discord; we can be lis- 
teners only, not partakers. Our 
way is as plainly traced as the way 
of the brute creation, and we cannot 



The Religion of Nature. 



swerve from it, unless we choose to 
go aside into the region of defiance 
and self-support. To choose to 
worship God our own way is as 
much rebellion as to refuse him wor- 
ship altogether. 

It may be objected that, as we 
have free-will, we are at liberty 
to choose. But to allow that we 
have free-will is to allow that there 
is a difference between us and 
other orders of God's creatures; 
and, if a difference of reason, does 
it not follow that there should be 
also a difference of worship ? To 
pay adequate and fitting homage 
to God we must employ the most 
perfect means we know ; the lan- 
guage of a less perfect nature than 
ours is therefore clearly not the 
right one to use. We have free- 
will to choose the vehicle of our 
homage, true; but to choose the 
most imperfect means at our com- 
mand, when the more perfect is 
also the more natural, would be an 
irrational act more calculated to 
reflect a doubt on our reason than 
to throw credit on our judgment. 

Besides this moral obstacle in 
our way of joining the worship of 
nature, there is also the physical 
impossibility of any such thing 
which, by the bye, is hardly suffi- 
ciently considered by our own for- 
ward-striding civilization in the 
notorious case of the so-called 
"woman's rights" and of female 
equality with man. This serious 
bar, which we forget, simply makes 
the " religion of nature" a sham, 
so far as man's part in it is con- 
cerned, and it seems strange in- 
deed that we should insist upon a 
participation against which Nature 
herself mutely protests. 

But, on the other hand, when we 
turn to the Christian faith and to 
the Book of books, what do we see 
but a true natural religion, a har- 



monious whole of which man is the 
crown and glory; a continuous 
hymn of praise in which all tongues 
blend and all organizations have a 
voice; a canticle in winch "The 
heavens show forth the glory of 
God, and the firmament declareth 
the work of his hands. 

" Day to day uttereth speech, 
and night to night showeth know- 
ledge. 

" There are no speeches nor lan- 
guages, where their voices are not 
heard. 

" Their sound hath gone forth in- 
to all the earth : and their words 
unto the ends of the world. 

" He hath set his tabernacle in 
the sun : and he as a bridegroom 
coming out of his bride-cham- 
ber, 

" Hath rejoiced as a giant to run 
the way : 

" His going out is from the end 
of heaven, 

" And his circuit even to the end 
thereof: and there is no one that 
can hide himself from his heat " 
(Psalm xviii. 1-7). 

Here is the true joining of the 
voices of the reasoning and unrea- 
soning creatures of God; here the 
reality of which the vague senti- 
mentality of the pantheists is but 
a colorless, shadow. And not only 
are the strains of nature blended 
with the cry of our prayers when a 
Christian roams through the ver- 
dant cathedrals of forest and ra- 
vine, but also in our petrified for- 
ests of vaulted trees, with their car- 
ven leaves and fruit and sculptur- 
ed birds, where on the altar flow- 
ers and shrubs and blossoming 
plants are placed as the very in- 
cense-cups of angels. The imper- 
fect and inferior worship of these 
lovely creations supplements, with- 
out daring to replace, our own; and 
we feel that, when we have poured 



68 



The Religion of Nature. 



out our prayers, we could willingly 
offer to God the unconscious fra- 
grance of our flowers. But to dream 
that he could be satisfied with any 
save our "reasonable service" 
(Rom. xii. i) would be like the 
doubtful hospitality of a steward 
who should content himself with 
allowing his servants to wait alone 
upon the guest who is also his lord. 
Beyond the intense conscious- 
ness of beauty which is everywhere 
the mark of the church we also find 
the real pantheism, if we may so 
call it, underlying all her doctrinal 
teaching. We have not to look to 
dreaming philosophers for a theory 
sufficiently exalting to the Creator; 
we do not need to merge all in- 
dividuality in One to make that One 
sufficiently supreme. We esteem 
the Divinity too perfect to be com- 
municable, too awful to be shared 
by mortal man. But everything 
that tends to exalt one of God's 
creatures necessarily reflects ten- 
fold glory on the Creator. So 
much is God the greater the more 
each of his creations is proved to 
be absolutely perfect in its way. 
Everything " lives, and moves, and 
has its being " in God, and " with- 
out him was made nothing that 
was made. In him was life, and 
the life was the light of men ; and 
the light shineth in darkness, and 

* the darkness did not comprehend 

at." 

Here we have the clue to all 
human wanderings from the truth. 
The life that was in God shone 
and shines now upon man ; but the 
darkness of man's heart shrinks 
from the light, or rather does not 
comprehend it, and so either turns 
away and strikes a lesser and un- 
certain light according to its own 
standard, or else takes the light he 

. could not understand, and distorts 

'it into moulds and shapes entirely 



foreign to it. The light that de- 
clares all life and being to be an 
integral portion of the Deity itself, 
thereby practically denies the fact 
of creation, if it does not border on 
the negation of the creative power; 
for to have drawn all things from 
his Essence would imply that to 
have drawn them from nothing 
would have been a more difficult, 
even if not an utterly impossible, 
task. The glory of God's omnipo- 
tence would thus be shorn, even if 
the creative faculty were conced- 
ed, as these beings to whom God 
has given life would be not created 
but evolved, not made but develop- 
ed. Again, if all being were a 
part of God, all things, being God, 
would be necessarily existent ; God 
would have done an act, in evolv- 
ing all things from his Essence, 
which he could not help but do ; 
between these visible and material 
forms of himself and his own per- 
sonal existence there would be no 
duties, no relations of any sort; the 
earth and her children would have 
had an eternal right to be, the ne- 
cessity of worship would not exist, 
the idea of it would even be irra- 
tional and absurd. 

Again, if the universe were but 
a form of God, the Deity would' be 
a passible being, subject to im- 
provement, transformation, decay. 
A passible is an imperfect existence ; 
therefore there would be no abso- 
lute perfection anywhere in or be- 
yond creation. Thus we see that 
a philosophy which professes to 
exalt the Supreme Being, and thinks 
the channel of Christian faith too 
narrow for the majesty of the God- 
head to flow through in trying to 
enlarge the field of God's omnipo- 
tence, simply swamps his immuta- 
ble and infinite Perfection, the very 
archetype of all visible creation. 
But when we return to the revealed 



The Religion of Nature. 



69 



faith of the Man-God we find in 
manifold ways the mysterious union 
between nature especially human 
nature and God strongly insisted 
upon and explained, as far as it 
may be, by the most beautiful com- 
parisons imaginable. Conscious of 
man's tendency to deify the beauti- 
ful in whatever shape it presents 
itself, the church has made all 
beauty emblematic of truth, all na- 
ture one symbolical mirror of 
heaven. She has knit close ties 
between the fruits of the earth and 
the virtues of man ; she has called 
in husbandry to testify to the soul's 
immortality; she lias ingeniously 
made use of opposite arguments, 
drawn from the relation of man to 
the lower creation, to demonstrate 
the varying aspects of an unchang- 
ing truth. She says to man : " See, 
thou art lord of the elements, thou 
canst control the brutes of the field 
and the forest, thou canst count 
and classify the inaccessible stars ; 
and why ? Because to thee alone 
is given reason, which lifts thee 
above these thy slaves ; and if to 
thee alone is reason vouchsafed, 
remember that from thee alone will 
an account be demanded and re- 
sponsible action expected." Thus, 
having lured his pride as the ac- 
knowledged king of the creation, 
she then uses his fears as the most 
helpless weakling on the face of the 
earth. She says : " But see what 
thou art before the use of reason 
comes or after it has left thee ; see 
how puny and how fearsome thou 
art; thou canst not herd with the 
moose nor live among the lions ; 
thou canst not share the nature of 
the evergreen, that laughs at the 
useless burden of snow its unstain- 
ed leaves fling off again ; thou canst 
not stand in unmoved majesty, with 
limbs bare and unprotected, as 
stands the forest oak through the 



white waste of winter; useless as 
man, thou hast no power, and as 
man only canst thou reign. A',1 
things else are below thee ; God 
alone is above thee. If thou wilt 
not bow to God as vassal thou 
shalt be more miserable than his 
irresponsible creatures that are be- 
neath thee." 

This is the true pantheism. Not 
all in God, but all with God ; not 
nothing possible outside of him, but 
all things impossible without him. 
How much more dignity is there 
in this belief, which makes every- 
thing dependent upon his slightest 
breath, than in the faith which 
would make everything a necessary 
and independent part of God, a 
sovereign aspect of his own majesty 
which he would be powerless to 
alter or destroy ! 

We cannot find one human as- 
piration that is not fully satisfied 
by the revealed religion of Christ, 
nor one that is not perverted and 
strained to absurdity by the hand- 
ling of alien and anti-Christian 
philosophies. The " religion of 
nature " was the religion of Eden, 
but it was identical with revela- 
tion. After the fall it retained its 
beauty, though it wore a saddened 
and clouded loveliness; but still 
revelation claimed it for her own, 
and through all ages it has remain- 
ed true to the church which cloth- 
ed it with such dignity as to make 
it actually a messenger of truth, a 
minister at the right hand of the 
altar of God. But its name has 
been taken in vain, a deceitful like- 
ness of it has been erected into an 
idol, and weak-minded men have 
been drawn to its standard by its 
pretended sympathy with then- 
vague cravings. It, or rather its 
false image, has thus become the 
peculiar refuge of feeble, pruriently 
sentimental intelligences, who seek 



TJie Religion of Nature. 



after the consolations while they 
would fain elude the duties of re- 
ligion, and whose so-called aes- 
thetic aspirations are neither more 
nor less than manifestations of a 
moral sybaritism. 

But in its original form the " re- 
ligion of nature " is the most 
cherished child of the church, and 
is only a name for the divine in- 
spiration which during long cen- 
turies has run like an heirloom 
through countless generations of 
Christian artists. Need we reca- 
pitulate the well-known roll of holy 
names, each one a watchword of 
poetry or art, whose bearers show- 
ed their deep appreciation of the 
beauties of the material creation? 
Need we point to those who in our 
own day are lovers of nature and 
natural symbolism ? Need we say 
how a feeling which this century 
has marvellously developed is 
everywhere fostered and turned to 
precious account by the church ? 
If natural wonders are the lure 
most adapted to this our latest 
phase of civilization, and if the un- 
godly expositors of science will 
ingeniously torture this innocent 
lure into a sinful snare, is it not 
the church's duty to remind us of 
the consecration first bestowed by 
her upon natural beauties, and to 
point out how her inspired prophets 
have been the first to anticipate 
and satisfy this latent yearning of 
our hearts ? 

Yes, it is true that mountains 
seem as altars, and oceans as floors 
-of crystal; "that forests are cathe- 
drals, and the blue dome of night 
is like to a vast and vaulted tem- 
ple ; true the stars and meteors and 
lightnings flash as torches in the 
midst, and that avalanche and 
cataract and mountain echo fur- 
nish forth the minstrelsy of the 
God-made tabernacle. But when 



all these things had been created 
in the beginning, and God " saw 
that it was good," he made yet an- 
other creature, and made him " to 
his own likeness," and gave him 
" dominion over the fishes of the 
sea, and the fowls of the air, and 
the beasts, and the whole earth, 
and every creeping creature that 
moveth upon the earth " (Gen. i. 
26). 

And why? Because he wished 
to give him a commandment and 
impose a duty upon him ; because 
he wished to treat this last creation 
of his in an entirely different manner 
to the irresponsible recipients of 
his former favors. Not only so, 
but, to mark the immeasurable dis- 
tance between the reasonable man 
and all other beings, he said of him : 
" It is not good for man to be alone ; 
let us make him a help like unto 
himself," thus implying that not- 
withstanding the presence of the 
lower creation, beautiful though it 
might be, man was utterly separat- 
ed from it, and could find in it no 
companionship nor sympathy. 

Material and natural beauties 
were soon shown, however, in their 
proper relation to man's worship 
of God ; for we read that Cain and 
Abel offered sacrifice to the Lord 
of .the " fruits of the earth " and 
" the firstlings of the flock." So it 
has ever been since those first days 
even unto our own, when nature, 
in every aspect, has been sanctified 
and consecrated by religion. 

But to break away from this 
blessed harmony of the created 
universe at the feet of its immuta- 
ble Creator, and pretend to recon- 
struct from its broken fragments a 
system more gratifying to over- 
weening human pride what is this 
but to lift our weak voice against 
the changeless decrees of eternity, 
to hurl our feeble protest against 



Gounod's Gallia. ^ 

the demonstrations of four thou- incompetence to use the gift of rea- 
sand years of proven history, and son so gratuitously bestowed upon 
to prove nothing after all save our us by God ? 



GOUNOD'S GALLIA* 



RELIGION has ever been the 
source from which artists have 
drawn their noblest aspirations. 
The mind rises upward to contem- 
plate God, faith glows with enthu- 
siasm, and thus the artist is en- 
abled to produce with less un- 
worthiness some glimpses of the 
Eternal Beauty. What are not even 
the transports of Pindar when, 
above the commonplace victor in 
the Olympic Games, he seems to 
behold the radiant form of Apollo, 
invisible to eyes profane ! What is 
not the enthusiasm of Phidias 
when, with Homer, he perceives 
the terrible glance and lightning- 
gleaming brow of the ruler of the 
gods! It was from Jehovah him- 
self that the prophets of the Old 
Testament learned the sublime lan- 
guage which, through a long course 
of centuries, has come down to us. 
It was the enthusiasm of faith which 
in the middle ages inspired 
monks, for the most part unknown, 
with the bold conceptions of those 
magnificent cathedrals which are 
the living images of the heaven 
into which their purified vision was 
permitted to gaze during their 
hours of ecstasy. Later on, when 
painting was freed from the tram- 
mels of ignorance, the Christian 
faith carried the ideal of art to 

* This is the translation of a criticism by M. Ar- 
thur Coquard, of Paris, to whose pen THK CATHO- 
LIC WORLD has been indebted for other musical 
critiques. 



heights hitherto unknown, and in- 
spired the most wondrous master- 
pieces. The Immaculate Virgin 
Mother of God became the type of 
grace, benignity, and purity ; her 
Divine Son the type of power and 
love; faith encircled the brows of 
the saints with the mysterious and 
touching aureole, expressive of the 
glow of divine love which en- 
kindled their souls. And, further, 
even in those schools which make 
the reproduction of carnal and ma- 
terial beauty and coloring their 
principal study as, for instance, 
those of Venice, Germany, and Hol- 
land the true chefs-d'oeuvre are still 
to be found in the paintings of re- 
ligious subjects, such as Rubens' 
" Descent from the Cross," the 
"Assumption" of Titian, and the 
" Virgins " of Holbein and Al- 
brecht Diirer. 

What, then, does not music, the 
most ideal of the arts, owe to 
religious feeling ? The childlike, 
simple faith of Palestrina, Carissimi, 
and Vittoria becomes religious en- 
thusiasm in Marcello, Bach, and 
Handel. Haydn, the sweet sym- 
phonist, attains a wondrous power 
when he sings of the greatness of 
the Eternal (first finale of the 
Creation). Mozart, amid the blas- 
phemies of the most irreligious and 
dissolute of centuries, preserved 
the glow of faith, and his Requiem 
seems to us perhaps the most po\v- 



Gounod's G 'a Ilia. 



erful work ever inspired by Chris- 
tian feeling as expressed by musi- 
cal genius. 

In our own times, which are a 
prey to incessant political and 
moral convulsions, artists have 
turned their thoughts by prefer- 
ence to unrestful subjects; and 
the expression of philosophic doubt 
has taken the place of the Christian 
Credo. With the exception of some 
few really fine works amongst 
which we would give the first place 
to Mendelssohn's Elijah and St. 
Paul, L'Enfance dit Christ of Ber- 
lioz, the Requiem of M. Brahms, and 
Ruth, by M. Franck sacred music 
has of late years produced nothing 
which can bear comparison with 
the chefs-d'oeuvre of secular music. 

The terrible disasters which re- 
cently fell upon France have been 
attended by a revival of religious 
feeling in many hearts, and more 
than one composer has sent up to 
God a song of faith, and penitence, 
and love. 

M. Gounod has the signal honor 
of having been the first to take the 
lead in this concert of supplications, 
and it was fitting that it should be 
so. No musician in France enjoys 
so general an esteem or has creat- 
ed for himself so solid a reputation. 
The friends of religious art felt a 
thrill of deep emotion when they 
learned that M. Gounod was com- 
posing his Hymn of Expiation, and 
from the first day of its existence 
the name of Gallia stirred the 
heart of the true sons of France. 

One day, when Paris was a prey 
to the flames and her burning 
palaces were crashing to the ground, 
M. Goun-jd opened the Bible at 
the Book of the Lamentations of 
Jeremias, and read the words : 
* Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena 
populo." By a coincidence at the 
same time terrible and consoling 



Jeremias appeared to be addressing 
France and her capital in these 
moving and prophetic words : " O 
Jerusalem, thou that wert hereto- 
fore the queen of cities, how art 
thou overcome and condemned to 
pay tribute ! They who called 
themselves thy friends now hate 
and despise thee." And further 
on the solemn warning, "Jerusa- 
lem is desolate because her chil- 
dren have forgotten the law of her 
God. . . . What sorrow is like 
unto my sorrow, wherewith the 
Lord hath afflicted me in the day 
of his anger ? Behold, O Lord, 
and look upon my humiliation, and 
the pride of mine enemy." And 
when Jeremias has described the 
woes of Sion he cries out with 
strong entreaty : " Jerusalem, Jeru- 
salem, return to the Lord thy God !" 

How sublime is the lament! 
And M. Gounod's idea of applying 
to the misfortunes of France the 
sacred words addressed to Jerusa- 
lem was worthy of a great artist. 
But this is not all we have to con- 
sider. It remains to be seen 
whether the inspiration of the mu- 
sician has been equal to the great- 
ness of the subject. 

The talent of M. Gounod is not 
easy to analyze. An impression- 
able composer, he writes according 
to his mood ; and, according to the 
state of his mind at the moment, he 
is by turns poetic, tender, sensuous, 
meditative, mystical, religious. He 
has written in all these styles. 
One day he sings his love-song; the 
next, rivalling Haydn, he celebrates 
the different seasons. Then, again, 
moralizing with La. Fontaine, he 
reposes his wearied Muse with the 
grand and tranquil words of the 
immortal fabulist : 

" Ni Por ni I'argent nous rendent heureux."* 

* It seems probable that the idea of setting these 
words to music may have occurred to M. Gounod 



I 



Gounod's Gallia. 



73 



At another time we find him, in 
The Valley, a meditative philoso- 
pher. He then undertakes re- 
ligious music, and just after a 
serenade sings an Ave Maria; a 
Jesus of Nazareth after a gallant 
sixteenth century chanson; and 
between two acts of Sappho he 
composes a Mass. 

Such is the artist. But what 
are we to say about Gallia ? Alas ! 
we would fain be silent. It is so 
cruel to criticise a work from 
which anticipation led us to ex- 
pect so much ! Why, then, blame 
that which critics have admired, 
and which the multitude, moved 
by deep emotion, acclaimed with 
transport ? Why ? Because we 
firmly believe that the public has 
been mistaken, as also M. Gounod 
himself, and that the success of 
Gallia is attributable to other 
causes than the intrinsic beauty of 
the work. We will explain our 
meaning. 

Imagine a magnificent festival. 
On the ruins of one of their palaces 
five hundred voices are singing 
Gallia. The auditory is immense : 
a whole people is listening in ab- 
sorbed silence. Well, this audience 
may be divided into two classes, 
which will be moved more or less 
profoundly, and which, for differ- 
ent reasons, will not be in a state 
to appreciate the real value of the 
music. In the first place, there 
will be those who love the arts 
without discernment, and whose 
enthusiasm has no solid basis; and 
this class, unfortunately, is a very 
large one, thanks to the musical 
ignorance of the great proportion 
of the most intelligent audience. 
Others, again, will be won by the 
subject itself; this title of Gallia, the 



under the influence of one of the checks unjustly 
inflicted on him by the public at the commence- 
ment of his glorious career. 



thought of their suffering country, 
has already prepared their minds 
for emotion. The first chords from 
the orchestra, were they of the 
feeblest and the poorest, give them 
the thrill felt 'by true musicians at 
the first murmurs of a symphony of 
Beethoven. From the first words, 
given in a low voice by the chorus, 
"La voila seule, vide, la cite, reine 
des cites," their reason is no longer 
under command; emotion has con- 
quered them beforehand, and, unless 
evidently ridiculous in its treatment, 
the patriotic composition must ap- 
pear to them sublime. In vain may 
they be told that the opening is 
not well chosen, that its harmonies 
are very careless, that the whole of 
the introduction is valueless except 
on account of a rhythm borrowed 
from Mozart. They do not hear 
you. What do I say ? They have 
not heard a note of Gallia ! They 
have seen on the ruins of Jerusalem 
I know not what prophetic shade ; 
they have heard I know not what 
accents of desolation, and they ex- 
claim, with the best faith in the 
world, that Gallia is a chcf-cT&urre. 
Such we believe to be the veritable 
cause of the success obtained by 
Gallia. Ontheoneside ignorance, 
on the other the religious senti- 
ment, has saved the music. 

Before dealing with the details 
of this composition we will make 
a few observations relative to the 
work as a whole. Gallia includes 
four parts, which, though somewhat 
short in themselves, are perfectly 
independent. These four parts are 
in the same movement an J ante 
maestoso. This, most probably, is 
not the effect of chance. M. Gou- 
nod has doubtless wished to pre- 
serve the same movement from 
beginning to end, because the ex- 
pression of grief continued the 
same, and because the supplicate 



74 



Gounod's Gallia. 



ing appeal, " Jerusalem, Jerusalem," 
which closes this lamentation 
ought still to retain the solemnity 
of sorrow. If this be the idea of 
M. Gounod, we have nothing to 
say; but in this case, instead of 
throwing off, one after the other, 
these four short portions between 
which there is no connection beyond 
the identity of the movement, 
would it not have been better to 
build up one grand composition, 
and, instead of these four construc- 
tions, without strength and without 
elevation, to have raised a fair 
cathedral, marvellous in its unity 
and inspiration ? We leave it to 
artists to answer. 

Let us now examine each one of 
these portions in detail. The first 
is very vague in character, and we 
should not think of complaining 
of this had M. Gounod faithfully 
observed artistic proprieties. The 
opening of the Heroic Symphony, 
the first page of the Symphony with 
Chorus, are both assuredly very un- 
certain in feeling ; the strophes of 
Sappho, now become celebrated un- 
der a new name, as well as Evening, 
have the same want of character. 
Why, then, in spite of this vague- 
ness, if not because of it, do we like 
the opening of the Heroic Symphony 
and Evening, by M. Gounod? It 
is because, if the sentiment is 
vague, the forms are clearly marked 
out ; it is also because the richness 
of the harmonies or the depth of 
the melodic phrase in some sense 
completes the thought of the mas- 
ter. In short, it is necessary that 
the vagueness should be luminous: 
we want the radiant vagueness of 
the Infinite and not the gloomy 
fogs of the Thames or Seine. And, 
unfortunately, in this first morceau 
of Gallia all is vague, except the 
sentiment, which is simply col- 
orless. All is vague, or, rather, 



poor in ideas and poor in form. 
We wait long for the light, and 
light does not appear. 

For a moment we begin to hope. 
The outburst in " Reine, flambeau 
du monde," is striking, and there 
is a charm in the phrase which 
follows, on the words, " Plorans 
ploravit in nocte." M. Gounod 
seems to have become himself 
again, moved at last by the sublime 
words of the prophet and the story 
of the woes of Sion.i Alas! no. 
Inspiration abandons him, and he 
falls back into the languishing tone 
and the negligent style which we 
have, with much regret, already 
noticed. Only towards the end, 
,when the voices repeat for the last 
time, " Omnes amici ejus spreverunt 
earn," we hear a truly heartrending 
cry ; but after four bars we fall 
again into emptiness. Patience! 
The first part is ended. 

Next comes a cantilena. The 
word is not particularly suitable, 
but let that pass. The soprano solo 
sings, therefore, a couplet of a 
hymn. Perhaps we might find it 
pretty in a collection of popular 
cantiques, such as those of St. Sul- 
pice and the Pere Lambilotte; but 
this phrase appears to us misplaced 
in a work of such importance as 
Gallia. A more pleasing and ori- 
ginal movement, and at the same 
time not less simple, might easily 
have been found. To the soprano 
solo the chorus answers, repeating 
the same phrase with an orchestral 
accompaniment of a some w hut un- 
meaning character. The cantilena 
is ended by the soprano solo alone, 
and we listen with pleasure to some 
really moving accents. The melo- 
dy becomes deeper and the har- 
monies richer on the words, " Vir- 
gines ejus squalidae, et ipsa oppressa 
amaritudine." Here at last we re- 
cogmze M. Gounod, and learn that 



Gounod's Gallia. 



75 



the artist who has known how to 
express the sobs of Marguerite 
and Juliet's despair can rise to 
nobler subjects ; but still how far it 
is from hence to the sublime beau- 
ties of the great masters ! To be 
convinced of this it is enough after 
this cantilena to read the air in 
Iphigenia in Tauris : " O n\alheu- 
reuse Iphigenie, tapatrie est anean- 
tie !" The situation is the same ; 
the one and the other mourn over 
the afflictions of their country amid 
their faithful companions ; but what 
a difference between Gluck and M. 
Gounod! The woe of Iphigenia 
has grandeur in it ; powerful feel- 
ing inspires the anguish of her 
voice, and imparts to the musi- 
cal phrase a marvellous amplitude. 
The mourning Israelite has not this 
power; a couplet of twelve bars is 
made to suffice for the expression 
of the prophet's grief. The differ- 
ence is no less considerable in the 
part given respectively by the two 
composers to the chorus. That in 
Iphigenia is only heard for a mo- 
ment namely, when her sorrow 
reaches its climax and then it 
litters the cry : " Melons nos cris 
plaintifs a ses gemissements " (Oh! 
let us mingle with her sighs our 
tears). After this outburst of grief 
it is silent, and the priestess finishes 
her plaint alone one of the most 
sublime, perhaps, to be found in the 
music of the drama. In Gallia, on 
the contrary, the chorus repeats the 
twelve bars previously 'sung by the 
soprano solo ; this is a more simple 
but not a more probable, and espe- 
cially not a more artistic, proceeding. 
And we should carefully note 
the words, "ilchante." In Iphi- 
genia it is a strong cry ; in Gallia 
it is a singing phrase which has 
about it nothing majestic except 
the movement indicated by the 
author andante maestoso. 



Now that we arrive at the third 
part our pain redoubles; for we 
shall have to point out examples 
of feebleness and negligence inex- 
plicable on the part of so eminent 
a composer. The commencement, 
however, is expressive : 

"O mesfr&res. qui passez sur la route." * 

These opening chords are cha- 
racterized by an antique sadness. 
We should have nothing but praises 
to bestow on these first pages, and 
would forget even that the cry, 
" O mes freres," which breaks the 
march of the chorus recalls, with- 
out equalling, the sublime cry of 
Gluck's Orpheus, " Eurydice, Eury- 
dice!" in a word, we should enjoy 
these three pages without reserve, 
if we did not know M. Gounod's 
opera of Romeo and Juliet. Unfor- 
tunately, all the most pleasing por- 
tions of these first pages of the 
third part are borrowed from Ro- 
meo. The phrase, "Voyez mes 
larmes," and the passage, " Quelles 
larmes peuvent egaler mes larmes," 
are almost exactly copied from 
that opera. For some years past 
M. Gounod has had the habit 
of reproducing himself. Certain 
of his musical forms have been 
repeated until they have become 
formulae; the splendid prelude to 
Romeo and Juliet has already un- 
dergone two or three regrettable 
metamorphoses. M. Gounod must 
be on his guard, or people will fin- 
ish by saying that he is come to 
the end of his ideas; and we, who 
do not believe this, shall have some 
trouble in proving the contrary. 
But if the merit is small for the au- 
thor of Gallia, and is due in great 
part to the author of Romeo, at 
least the charm remains, and what 
follows makes us regret that M. 
Gounod, poorly inspired, has not 

* All ye who pass by. 



7 6 



Gounod's Gallia. 



continued to have recourse to M. 
Gounod in his moments of higher 
inspiration. 

We start with a crescendo which 
might suitably find its place in the 
most carelessly-written Italian ope- 
ra, to end in a fortissimo, very so- 
norous, but at the same time very 
empty : " Grace, Dieu vengeur, 
pour tes enfants sans armes ! . . . 
Contre 1'insolent vainqueur, arme 
ton bras !" * The musician who, 
for the benefit of youthful artists, 
shall give a complete course of in- 
struction on musical criticism will 
not fail to devote a chapter to the 
study of the grandiose style. Well, 
we predict that, after quoting one of 
the powerful pages, full of simple 
grandeur, which are met with at every 
step in the works of Handel, he will 
assuredly point out as an example 
of the bombastic style the deplor- 
able fanfarronade of which we are 
speaking; just as, in a course of 
lectures on literature, after quota- 
tions from the energetic verses of 
Corneille, certain examples of high- 
flown, meagre lines are given by 
way of contrast for instance : 

" Ah ! voila le poignard, qui du sang de son 

maitre. 
S'est moiiiHe* lachement ; . . . il en rougit, le 

traitre ! " t 

We trust that M. Gounod will 
pardon us for speaking the truth 
without disguise. It is only much 
to be regretted that such a com- 
poser as he should lay himself 
open to such criticism. 

The phrase of the finale has a 
certain grandeur, but is absolutely 
wanting in depth; and in a work 
with M. Gounod's signature we 
cannot resign ourselves to admire 

*O God of vengeance! spare thy defenceless 
children. . . . Against the insolent conqueror 
stretch forth thine arm. 

tAh! behold the dagger which, like a coward, 
has imbrued itself in its master's blood ! It blushes 
the traitor ! 



beauties so doubtful. And then 
what a close ! The great compo- 
sers have accustomed us to power- 
ful developments. From Mozart 
and Beethoven, Weber and Mehul, 
to Meyerbeer and Rossini (in his 
best days), to Berlioz and Wag- 
ner, the very word finale brings 
with it the idea of the completion 
of a noble edifice; it was, In the 
hands of those masters, like the 
lofty vaulted roof closing in a 
Gothic cathedral. M. Gounod 
himself, though power is not the 
distinctive character of his genius, 
was magnificently inspired in the 
finale of his Sappho. Elsewhere 
also, in the " Choral des Epees " 
(Faust] and in the finale of the 
Bleeding Nun, he has attained an 
amplitude, in some small degree, 
it must be allowed, imitated from 
Handel, but which still we should 
be very glad to find again in the 
finale of Gallia. 

But M. Gounod refuses us this 
time any musical development. 
The soprano solo sings simply a 
phrase of sixteen bars, which the 
chorus repeats very loudly, with- 
out adding to it anything but a 
conclusion, in twelve bars, of ir- 
reproachable insipidity. And there 
the work ends ! This sublime ode, 
this profoundly moving lamenta- 
tion, which should stir our souls 
and lead them back to God, after 
being born in vagueness, dies and 
is buried in mediocrity. 

Let us now ask what it is that 
has misled the author of Gallia. 
We should never for one moment 
dare to suppose that an artist so 
eminent and so conscientious 
could do otherwise than treat his 
subject seriously, or that, like a 
certain Italian composer, he could 
have intended to " laugh at the 
worthy public." It would be a 
calumny against M. Gounod to im- 






Gounod's Gallia. 



77 



agine him capable of sentiments so 
vulgar. He belongs to a class of 
composers who may very well be 
mistaken at times, but who would 
never dream of treating their art 
with contempt, or of suffering it to 
pander to a public eager for unwor- 
thy sensations. 

What, then > is it which has led 
him astray? Let us frankly say it, 
that, depending on great choral 
and instrumental masses, he has 
thought too much of effect. To 
obtain a more sonorous fulness he 
lias -wished to be simple at any 
cost. But inspired simplicity is by 
no means common; and M. Gou- 
nod has failed this time to find it. 
His thought is mediocre and its ex- 
pression slip-shod. We have, in 
Bach and Handel, choruses of a 
noble simplicity, to which doubt- 
less a mass of five hundred voices 
adds prodigious effect, but which, 
despoiled of all extraneous ele- 
ments, are still admirable in them- 
selves. In Gallia the fulness of 
the choral mass is indispensable, 
and if you have but fifty voices 
the work betrays its meagreness. 
Read Gallia at the piano ; this trial, 
under which true musical beauties 
are proof, is fatal to M. Gounod, 
and the poverty of the composition 
becomes painfully evident. 

Have we been severe ? No ; we 
conscientiously believe that we 
have only been sincere ; and we are, 
moreover, inclined to think that, 
should these pages ever have the 
signal honor of meeting the eyes of 
M. Gounod, that eminent master, 
after a first moment of surprise, 
may acknowledge to himself that 
we are not entirely wrong in re- 
fusing to find in Gallia a work 
worthy of the author of Mireille. 

The sublime ideal of which we 
spoke at the beginning of this 
notice, and which M. Gounod, in 



spite of his immense talent, has not 
been able to approach, another 
artist, unknown a few years ago, 
but whose fame increases daily 
M. Franck, the author of Ruth~\\^ 
pursued almost simultaneously, and 
we venture to say that he has at- 
tained it, so far as it is given to 
human power to reach towards the 
infinite. 

Struck with the truth that 
France, like Jerusalem, owes all 
her misfortunes to *forgetfulness of 
God, and that she can only be 
saved by returning to him, a poet, 
M. Blot,* has written a poem i 



in 

two parts, of which the principal 
idea is identical with that of Gal- 
lia. The scene is laid at the man- 
ger of the Divine Infant at Bethle- 
hem ; the personages are men ard 
angels men, who complain of 
the miseries and crimes of the 
earth ; and angels, who answer that 
the Eternal Son, who lies a feeble 
Babe before them, is come below 
to save them and teach them the 
way of virtue and happiness. 

It is not our intention now to 
speak fully of Noel,\ which merits 
careful study. We only observe 
that Ruth is now surpassed. After 
the cruel disappointment given us 
by M. Gounod it is no small com- 
pensation to find in Noel the mas- 
terpiece so ardently desired, the 
worthy expression of patriotism and 
of religious enthusiasm, which will 
live as long as the memory of the 
sorrows and the hopes of France. 
And since we have been compelled 
to speak with apparent severity of 
one illustrious musician, it is a con- 
solation to render to another, who 

* His libretto on the "Cup of the King of 
Thule " was " crowned " by the Academic Fran- 

t This work is not analogous to the Noel of Adam, 
or to M. Gounod's Jesus of Nazareth.^ It is a sort 
of oratorio in two parts, or rather a series of sacred 
scenes. If we had to give a name to this work we 
should call it Redemption. 



78 Rosary Beads. 

is assuredly no less so, a just tri- the angels; none more than he has 

bute of admiration. In fact, that enabled us to listen to those notes 

which stamps Noel as a work in of purity and sublimity which de- 

the highest degree original and in- scend from above upon suffering 

spired is its expression of the ce- humanity like dew upon the thirsty 

lestial accents which reach us like ground. We do not hesitate to 

an echo of the songs of heaven, say that, could Mozart return 

No one has ever learned, like M. among us, he would find no purer 

Franck, to reproduce the voices of songs nor voices more divine. 



ROSARY BEADS. 



FROM loving fingers drop the Ave beads 
White as the lilies Gabriel doth bear 
Greeting the angels' Queen whose maiden prayer 
Pleads with Jehovah her loved Israel's needs : 
White as the snow that lieth Christmas morn, 
Unbroken yet by footstep falling o'er : 
White as the doves the humble Mother bore 
Unto the Temple with her pure first-born : 
White as her soul to whom we trustful call, 
Mindful of life that sudden perisheth, 
" Ave Maria," hold us dear in death, 
Loosen with thy pure touch from earthly thrall 
Our struggling prayers so poor and faint of breath 
So each white bead grow perfect act of faith. 

n. 

Drop one by one the beads of malachite 

By martyr-pontiff blessed " Cross of the Cross," 
Brave hope uplifted in night's hour of loss, 

Strong light unfailing in wrong's night of might. 

Thoughts steeped in tears fall with each rounded gem- 
The bitter chalice of Gethsemani, 
The rabble's choice of Caesar's sovereignty 

Rome seeming shadow of Jerusalem, 

Saint-trodden city still more blessed grown 

Through gentle presence of a wounded Heart 
Of Heavenly Model earthly counterpart 

Bearing the Cross 'mid mockery from its own. 

Blest Cross, that shineth in tear-clouded eyes, 

E'er budding hope of opening Paradise. 



Winchester School and Scholars. 



79 



And, last, from lingering fingers fall the prayers 
Of triumph, on blood-red carnelian told, 
Of love, that doth its heavenly glow unfold 
To light the Cross the Lamb redeeming bears 
The shadow of the prisoned souls to break ; 
Each prayer enkindled by the touch of love 
The Fire Divine descended from above 
True life to give, pale embers to awake ; 
Each bead a blossom of that marvellous bloom 
That filled its Mistress' barren place of rest ; 
The stony petals, with her dear name blest, 
Breathing sweet charity's most rich perfume, 
Burning with love of tender soul bent down 
To kiss Christ's Cross his Mother's roses crown. 



WINCHESTER SCHOOL AND SCHOLARS.* 



WINCHESTER School, or St. Mary 
Winton College, as its official title 
runs, founded in 1373, f is the 
oldest of the great public endowed 
schools at present peculiar to Eng- 
land. It supplied the model on 
which Eton and Westminster schools 
were founded, as well as others of 
no less interest, though on a smaller 
scale, such as Ipswich, founded by 
Wolsey, and Merchant Taylors', by 
Sir Thomas White. It is famous 
for its scholars, for its discipline, 
for its conservatism. Under all 
the changes which years have 
wrought, the greater or more sud- 
den change which the Reformation 
brought about, and the subtler 
changes which each decade of the 
present century carries to a tem- 
porary development, to be displac- 
ed by its immature successor, one 
type of human character has alone 

* This term is used in its common, not its aca- 
demical, acceptation. 

t The first agreement was signed that year ; the 
charter of foundation dates from 1382, and the fiifet 
stone of the building was laid in 1387. 



been prominent and permanent at 
Winchester and other English 
schools. Common speech terms 
this the John Bull type. The 
qualities that make an explorer 
perfect a scholar; the energy that 
wins a battle is the same ingredient 
which masters the difficulties of 
study. According to the present 
standard of education, the English 
public schools are deficient. Eng- 
lish conservatism is slow to add 
to a school curriculum, much more 
to substitute " new-fangled " stu- 
dies for those appointed by our 
"pastors and masters " four centu- 
ries ago ; innovation has yet to 
receive a social sanction, and de- 
corum of form is still more thought 
of than the quality of the sub- 
stance ; in a word, English educa- 
tion on the whole, and speaking 
technically, is backward and un- 
satisfactory. 

It is in vain to instance the le- 
gion of well-known scholars, and 
the larger number of obscure 



So 



Winchester School and Scholars. 



scholars, in England as a refutation 
of this assertion ; one must judge 
by the average lather than by the 
literary cream of the nation. Again, 
the men who represent English 
intellectual influence in this half 
of our century are for the most 
part not college men ; or, if they 
are, the kind of knowledge which has 
gained them their influence has not 
been imparted by the academic por- 
tion of their career. Englishmen 
look upon public schools as some- 
thing besides institutions for the 
teaching of Greek, Latin, mathe- 
matics, geography, and history ; to 
thjem they are miniature worlds 
where, according to the favorite 
phrase, boys " find their own level. " 
They are social, and even political, 
training-schools, intensely demo- 
cratic in essence, even when, as 
usual, hedged in by time-honored 
customs based on social differences ; 
for boys scorn to do what men 
are often persuaded into in later 
life. A boy stands on his own 
merits : in a few months he will 
overcome any prejudice conse- 
quent on his father's position, pro- 
vided his own personality is frank, 
manly, and independent, and his 
instincts those of a gentleman ; 
while a " sneak," if he happen to 
be the son of a peer, will never get 
over the stigma of his character 
during all the years of his school- 
life. Beyond personal discrimina- 
tion, however, the boys' political 
economy does not pretend to go ; 
it does not teach them to make 
allowances for the influence of 
lower associations, or to excuse 
present failings on the score of 
defective hereditary traditions. A 
boy's standard is not scientific but 
natural, or rather aboriginal, and 
his judgment deals only with visi- 
ble effects. Morally speaking, the 
schools, in this respect, are ahead 



of the universities. In the middle 
ages mere children went to Oxford 
and Cambridge ; at present youths 
seldom go before they are eigh- 
teen, and already the shadow of a 
precocious manhood gives them a 
touchy and ludicrous sense of dig- 
nity, with which are mingled many 
germs of the temptations of grown 
men. There is far more toadyism 
in the universities than in the 
schools; more unhealthy aping of 
elders, leading to dissipation and 
disease ; more fashionable Mase-ism, 
leading to a sickly infidelity and 
cynicism. If the ruder instincts of 
the Anglo-Saxon did not provide 
a balance to all this in the shape 
of a fanatic devotion to athletic 
sports, in favor of which even so- 
briety and self-restraint are willing- 
ly practised, the love of learning 
or the measure of knowledge as 
meted out at the universities would 
scarcely counteract this baneful 
influence. It needs all the boy's 
traditions, and a heavy weight of 
the man's after-responsibilities as 
father, master, landlord, to stran- 
gle the evil which the youth's ca- 
reer often brings to an alarmingly 
sudden development. 

In Wykeham's age, and in each 
successive one, as the injunctions, 
prohibitions, and records of visita- 
tions at Winchester School and 
New College, Oxford, show, men 
were certainly more decorous, 
pious, and perfect than they are 
now, though the average English- 
man was much the same, with 
the same temptations, the same 
needs, the same mischievous yet 
not ill-natured tendencies. Un- 
seemly practical jokes, rude as- 
saults, insubordination, insolence 
that was sometimes witty but too 
often ribald, are mentioned in the 
history of these foundations of the 
bishop of Winchester. The quaint 



Winchester School and Scholars. 



81 



phrases that are still in use in the 
school, dating, with part of the 
dress, from the fourteenth century, 
and often derived from customs 
that ten centuries ago were already 
long disused, do not conceal the 
little-changing boy-nature of the 
scholar. Only one important change 
is marked, and that, in spite of the 
ecclesiastical forms still prevalent 
everywhere in English schools, ca- 
thedrals, and universities, is a fun-r 
damental one. Even independent- 
ly of the Reformation this change 
would have occurred, as it has in 
Catholic European countries i.e., 
the preponderance of the lay ele- 
ment over the clerical in public 
and political life. Wykeham es- 
tablished his two colleges rather 
as seminaries for priests (the 
" black death " which raged in his 
time having thinned the ranks of 
the clergy to such a degree as to 
cause abuses in the too hasty and 
indiscriminating ways taken to fill 
the vacant places) than as schools 
for laymen, as was natural in an 
age when the clergy had the mo- 
nopoly of learning. Priests and 
bishops were statesmen, ambas- 
sadors, lawyers, builders, artists, 
poets, county members and magis- 
trates, teachers, professors, authors, 
while laymen of high birth, as a 
rule, were only soldiers, and the 
commonalty unskilled mechanics. 
Wykeham 's earliest title to the favor 
of Edward III. was his skill as an 
architect and engineer. He was 
entrusted with the main pan of the 
building of Windsor Castle, where 
there is still a tower called by his 
name, and where the cloister of 
St. George's Chapel is wholly his 
work; and he built the fortified 
castle of Queenborough, which took 
six years to complete. Besides be- 
ing for many years " surveyor of 
the king's works," he was at va- 

VOL. XXX. 6 



nous times ranger and forester, 
having the care of the royal parks 
and chases, herds of deer and packs 
of hounds. Later on he was chan- 
cellor, as so many great English 
churchmen before Wolsey, and 
several times mediator or arbiter 
in internal and foreign disputes, 
civil and ecclesiastical. His life 
in this respect is a fair specimen 
of the customs of the age; also 
with regard to the holding of seve- 
ral benefices at the same time, and 
the frequent exchange of one bene- 
fice for another. In 1365, when 
Pope Urban V. issued a bull 
against pluralities, and a papal visi- 
tation was held in England by the 
legate Cabrespino to set a limit 
to this abuse, Wykeham resigned 
all the cures that were incompat- 
ible with the archdeaconship of 
Lincoln a post necessitating occa- 
sional residence and periodical visi- 
tations in the diocese. It was na- 
tural that, under the circumstances, 
schools and colleges should be al- 
most wholly ecclesiastical, and the 
inmates bound to enter priests' or- 
ders after having attained a proper 
age and spent a certain time in 
study. Boys were to enter Wyke- 
ham's colleges between the ages of 
eight and twelve, though the rule, 
was not always observed, even in 
the earliest times of the founda- 
tion. By the time they were six- 
teen they were required to receive 
the first tonsure. As commoners, 
however />., students taught at 
their own expense laymen availed 
themselves, in small numbers, of 
academical advantages even in the 
fifteenth century, when we find 
King Henry V. studying at New 
College under Cardinal Beaufort, 
Wykeham's successor in the see 
of Winchester. The last historian of 
the foundations, Walcott, does not 
mention when lay students became 



82 



Winchester School and Scholars. 






.the majority among those support- 
-ed by the Wykehamist endowments. 
The famous royalist, Viscount 
Falkland, and the great physician, 
:Sir Thomas Browne, the author of 
'Religio Medici and so many other 
works that he figures largely in the 
^history of English literature, are 
mentioned among distinguished 
.lay Wykehamists in the seven- 
teenth century, but they were 
commoners. Medicine, indeed, oc- 
cupied a large place in the after- 
-studies of several scholars of Win- 
chester -during that century, but 
these studies were mostly complet- 
ed abroad. Wykeham may be 
called the founder of the public- 
. school system that still prevails in 
England, but has been perverted 
by the Reformation, as well as of 
the particular colleges that bear his 
name. 

Walcott says in his Wykeham 
and his Colleges that the annexa- 
tion of a college in the university to 
.a dependent school ; the institution 
of college disputations (in Oxford), 
.external to the public exercises of 
the university, in the presence of 
deans and moderators ; the con- 
temporaneous erection of a private 
chapel ; the appropriation of fellow- 
ships for the encouragement of 
students in neglected branches of 
learning, were among the more 
prominent signs of that which must 
be viewed more as the creation of 
a new system than as the revival 
of literature in its decline. The 
plague had reduced the thirty 
thousand students of Oxford to 
six thousand, and the field was 
open for a new kind of college life, 
less disputatious and random, more 
decorous and profitable to students 
themselves. Walcott goes on to 
say: 

" Halls, mere houses for the reception 
UDf students, abounded in the university. 



Walter dc Merton had sketched the dim 
outline of a larger prospect, but it re- 
mained for the master-hand of Wykeham 
... to exhibit students living under the 
immediate control and discipline of 
tutors, and lodged in the chambers of 
a single college. Wykeham confirmed 
and established the collegiate system. 
. . . His predominant idea was to furnish 
a perpetual patronage of poor scholars, 
whereby they might overcome the bar- 
riers set up by fortune or low estate. . . . 
This he determined to do by way of as- 
sistance, but not, it appears, by the pro- 
vision of a complete maintenance inde- 
pendent of the aid of their friends for 
their support." 

His archdiaconal visitations had 
taught him how often the will of 
the founders of institutions was 
neglected and their intentions ill 
carried out, and this suggested the 
idea of not only founding but of 
personally superintending his own 
colleges duringJrfs lifetime ; still, 
he had been >fshop of Winchester 
twenty years before he found time 
and opportunity to carry out his 
plans, and the building of the 
school in his episcopal city occu- 
pied seven years more. The col- 
lege of the same name in Oxford, 
commonly called New College, was 
founded earlier, but took nearly as 
many years to be completed. The 
number of inmates in each was 
almost the same, and is thought by 
writers of the sixteenth century 
(Harpsfield, himself a Winchester 
scholar, being the first to say so) 
to have been symbolical, the war- 
den and ten fellows of Winchester 
School representing the apostles 
exclusive of Judas ; the two masters 
(Informator and Ostiarius) * and 
the seventy scholars the disciples ; 
the three chaplains and three 
clerks the six faithful deacons, and 
the sixteen choristers the four 
greater and twelve lesser prophets. 
At Oxford the college was to con- 

* Sometimes spelt Hostiarius. 



Winchester School and Scholars. 



sist of a warden and seventy fel- 
lows, fifty of whom to be students 
in arts or philosophy and divinity, 
though two might study medicine 
and two astronomy, and the re- 
maining twenty to be learned in 
the law, ten as civilians and ten as 
canonists, all to be in priests' or- 
ders within a fixed period, except 
in cases of lawful impediment ; ten 
chaplains, three clerks of the cha- 
pel, and sixteen choristers. One 
of the chaplains was required to 
learn grammar and be able to 
write, that he might help the 
treasurers in transcribing Latin evi- 
dences. Winchester School the 
founder called " the cradle and 
source of our college in Oxford, 
or the well-watered garden, the 
budding vine, whose fruits, trans- 
planted to our college in Oxford, 
bring forth abundant sweetness in 
the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts." 
He instituted the school as a place 
where " grammar, the foundation 
of arts and liberal sciences, the 
door unto, and fountain of, all other 
arts and sciences," should be pri- 
marily taught, and the " true know- 
ledge of the mysteries of Scrip- 
ture " should be imparted. Cha- 
rity and mutual forbearance he call- 
ed the golden rule of the school. 

The buildings, as at first distri- 
buted, were beautiful and orderly ; 
only the great quadrangle remains 
at present intact, but the scenery 
around the school has hardly chang- 
ed. The valley in which the old 
city stands supplies the " meads " 
so often mentioned in the school 
chronicles; the heights known as 
St. Giles' and St. Catherine's are 
the " evening hills " which, in the 
old-school parlance still in com- 
mon use, is the term corresponding 
to the modern recreation ; the 
Itchen River runs by the school 
boundaries, luring the boys with 



promises of trout. The nucleus 
of the building was a grammar- 
school of the time of Alfred, long 
decayed, but known as marking 
the spot of the Roman temple of 
Apollo, and the land belonged 
mainly to the priory of St. Swithin, 
whose chapter was the electing 
body of the see of Winchester, 
and one of whose shrines, dedicat- 
ed to Our Lady, had -been the first 
place where Wykeham as a child 
had knelt at Mass.* Besides gifts 
of vestments, church plate, books, 
etc., the founder settled on the 
college the revenues of various 
manors, priories, farms, tenements, 
and " cells " (dependent houses of 
clerics or monks belonging to 
foreign abbeys, chiefly in the 
French possessions of the kings of 
England) ; and the king, Richard 
II., as well as other benefactors, gave 
similar grants and charters, besides 
spiritual immunities and privileges 
raising the college to the rank of 
an abbey or deanery. There was 
also a warden's hostel, in Little 
Trinity Lane, Queenhithe, for the 
use of the members of the college 
when they had business in London ; 
at another earlier period the col- 
lege rented a house for this pur- 
pose, and the account-books have 
entries of carpet-bags bought for 
the wardens when they went up to 
Parliament or Convocation. 

Strype says that the course of 
studies was so arranged that after 
the scholars " be once perfect in the 
rules of grammar and versifying, 
and well entered in the principles 
of the Greek tongue and of rhetoric, 
[they] are sent to the universities." 
The addition of ten commoners 
to the numbers of the school had 
been provided for ; sons of noble- 
men and gentlemen in good cir- 
cumstances, especially patrons of 

* MS. History of Wykeham. 



8 4 



Winchester School and Scholars. 



the college, were to be allowed to 
join at their own expense in the 
studies of the scholars. The num- 
ber was soon increased. The com- 
moners lived at first in the old col- 
lege of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 
which was pulled down in 1547. 
The latest building known as Old 
Commoners' was a picturesque 
Jacobean house, demolished in 
1839-41. The dress of the col- 
lege in Wykeham's time was a 
gown of cloth or serge, generally 
russet, with a plain hood or cowl, 
and was issued at Christmas. The 
fellows, masters, and chaplains 
wore fur trimming, the width vary- 
ing according to their respective 
rank, and the dress was not to be 
sold till five years after its issue. 
The present gown is of black cloth, 
buttoned at the neck in front, and 
has a full sleeve looped up at the 
elbow; the waistcoat is single- 
breasted. The prefects (senior 
boys) have on their gown a broad 
facing of black velvet. Until late- 
ly (the beginning of this century) 
the meals were at ten, at a quarter 
to one, and at six ; the first consist- 
ing of bread and butter, the second 
of beef, bread, and cheese, and the 
third of mutton and bread and 
cheese, and beer at each meal. (In 
most English schools tea or coffee is 
at present the common beverage 
at breakfast and supper.) The 
plates were wooden trenchers. 
The hall is a magnificent room, 
wainscoted and tapestried, with 
windows of stained glass, and an 
open roof of carved oak lately 
restored. The " tub," a massive 
iron-bound chest, stands between 
the doorways, and into it are cast 
the fragments after dinner, to be 
given to the poor ; fixed benches 
and tables are ranged along the 
sides, and at the upp.er end is the 
dais, or high table, raised two steps 



above the floor level. Every day 
before and after dinner the long 
and beautiful grace, dating from 
the earliest year of the foundation, 
is still chanted by the choristers. 
On the six last Saturdays of the 
"long half," just before " evening 
hills," the peculiar Winchester 
Domum is sung in memory of a 
scholar who, having been left to 
spend his holidays at school, pined 
away and died of homesickness. 
The incident is said to have hap- 
pened nearly four centuries ago, 
and was also commemorated by 
the words " Duke Domum " (sweet 
home), carved by the forsaken boy 
on a tree now replaced by a young 
sapling, the third of its race stand- 
ing on the same spot. The Do- 
mum used to be sung, till 1773, 
at the Domum Wharf on Black- 
bridge a bridge over the river 
Itchen, replacing a former one of 
black timber and at the college 
gates. Another old custom still 
kept up is the singing of the hymn, 
" Jam lucis orto sidere," in proces- 
sion round " the Sands " on the 
morning of " breaking up," both in 
winter and summer, after chapel. 
The " circum," or daily procession 
through the college before vespers, 
one of the original customs, has 
been discontinued, but only with- 
in a century. Selections from the 
Psalms were sung during the pro- 
cession. 

In the sixteenth century the boys 
rose at five, and swept out their 
chambers and made their beds 
(from which service in the next 
century they were exempted), and 
Matins were said at six. Seven 
Masses some for the dead were 
said every day in chapel, and the 
Canonical Hours were sung by the 
fellows, chaplains, clerks, and cho- 
risters. In hall the Scriptures or 
the Lives of the Saints were read, 



Winchester School and Scholars. 



and the former continued to be day the episcopal functions accord- 
read long after the Reformation, ing to the Use of Sarum, excepting, 
At present the only remnant of the however, the mysteries of the Holy 
custom is the reading, by the senior Mass. The account-books of the 
scholar, of the Gospel for the pre- college in 1421 mention the pur- 
ceding and coming Sunday, during chase of a gilt copper crosier for 
dinner, between the courses, on the the feast of the boy-bishop. 



two first days of election- week, 
one on either day. The " prefect 
of tub " in the early sixteenth cen- 
tury served the " prefect of hall " 
with " dispars " of beef (portions 
so called from an old custom of 
leaving the food in shares on the 
hall tables, when the strongest boys 
would take more than their share, 
and leave the weaker a " dispar," 
or unequal part ; and so with the 
breakfast and supper portions, still 
called " sines," because the weaker 
boys had to " go sine " without ) 
and then walked up and down be- 
tween the tables and saw that the 
dishes were properly issued to each 
mess of four boys, and the " jacks," 
or leathern vessels for beer, set on. 
The choristers and servants took 
their dinner after. The boys often 
acted Latin and Greek plays (the 
custom survives only at Westmin- 
ster School, where a Greek play is 
acted once a year), and the cere- 
mony of enthroning the boy-bishop 
on the 6th of December, St. Nicho- 
las' day, was observed, the day it- 
self being one of the " gaudy," or 
"Pie Gawdy,"* days mentioned in 
the statutes. The origin of the 
ceremony, already too much for- 
gotten in Wykeham's time, was the 
desire to encourage diligence in 
learning and progress in virtue, 
whereof the mitre was generally 
the reward; but the practice itself 
was a mere buffoonery, the boy- 
bishop, like the mock king of 
Twelfth Day, aping throughout the 



* From Latin gaudium^ joy. There were five of 
these days, Christmas, Twelfth Day, and Easter 
being the three " great gaudies." 



The boys' amusements in remote 
times were much the same as at 
present : they went to shows and 
hunts and had picnics ; Christmas 
"waits " and minstrels came to the 
college to sing tales of chivalry 
and Arabian legends; and one en- 
try notes that one of the "king's 
servants brought a lion to show " 
and was given twenty pence. Over 
the windows and in the walls of the 
quadrangle are carved symbols re- 
ferring to the use of certain cham- 
bers or merely encouraging schol- 
ars to proficiency in certain call- 
ings ; a psaltery and a pipe adorn 
the refectory door; the master and 
the scholar, the iron-bound chest, 
the soldier and the clerk, fill places 
in the walls. Three canopied niches 
in the quadrangle represent the An- 
nunciation, and the founder kneel- 
ing in prayer ; and almost the same 
grouping is reproduced in three 
niches over the gateway of New 
College, Oxford. In the old audit- 
chamber are Flemish tiles and 
tapestry with Tudor devices ; at 
the entrance of the kitchen is the 
famous wall-picture of the "Trusty 
Servant," with the episcopal arms 
of Winchester and the motto of 
the college," Manners makyth Man " 
in the corner and a landscape in 
the background, while the principal 
figure has a pig's head with a pad- 
lock through the lips, and deer's 
feet. He wears a blue and red 
livery, and has several domestic 
utensils in one hand. An inscrip- 
tion in Latin verse explains that he 
is not dainty in his food, he is si- 
lent as to his master's concerns, 



86 



Winchester School and Scholars. 



swift to do his bidding, and ready 
to turn his hand to anything. 

The chapel, now spoilt by wain- 
scoting which, though rich, is incon- 
gruous, was originally adorned with 
artistic lavishness; an ambulatory 
or passage led to it, and a rood- 
screen, on which stood the organ, 
divided it. Curtains of red velvet 
hung on each side of the altar, and 
a stone carved reredos towered 
above it, while the stalls were pe- 
culiarly rich in detail. Both stalls 
and reredos have disappeared, but 
the vaulted roof of Irish oak with 
fan tracery, the invention of Wyke- 
ham, and afterwards imitated in 
stone at King's College Chapel, 
Cambridge, still remains. There 
were two altars west of the rood- 
screen, one, doubtless, the Lady 
altar, though it is not known posi- 
tively what its dedication was. 
Thurburn's oratory or chantry * was 
once part of the chapel, and on its 
roof are carved, according to the 
taste of the times (1480), the rebuss- 
es of benefactors a thurible for 
Thurburn, a capital C with tapers 
in a row for Chandler, three sugar- 
loaves for Hugh Sugar, and a bea- 
con and tun for Beckington. Fro- 
mond's chantry, a small chapel with 
richly groined roof, stands in the 
cloister enclosure ; a modern floor 
has spoilt its proportions. The 
school-room, which is only two hun- 
dred years old, is the finest speci- 
men of the kind in England ; over 
the doorway stands a bronze statue 
of Wykeham, the gift and handi- 
work of Gibber, the father of the 
actor, Colley Gibber, whose younger 
brother found it his passport into 
the school. Within the wainscot- 
ing rises as high as an ordinary 
room, and meets the foot of the 



* Mortuary chapel with endowment providing 
for the support of a priest who should say Mass 
daily for the repose of the soul of the founder. 



deep windows. Fixed forms in 
rising tiers for the boys, and seats 
for the masters occupy some part 
of the walls, but the scholars dur- 
ing study sit in the centre of the 
room at the " scobs " (box spelt 
backwards) which serve as desks 
and receptacles for books, and are 
fixed on four parallel ranges of oak 
benches. The walls are adorned 
with memorials which no Wyke- 
hamist can think of without raising 
associations almost as dear as those 
of home : the "Ant discc" n tablet 
on which are painted a mitre and 
crosier, the rewards of learning; a 
pen and inkhorn and a sword, sym- 
bols of the military and the civil 
professions; and a Winton rod, the 
famous quadruple birch invented 
by Warden Baker in 1438. Under 
each symbol is a device, " Aut disce, 
aut discede, manet sors tertia, ccedi" 
(Either learn or go a third 
choice remains; the birch). And 
under this is the flogging-place; 
the tablet bearing the school rules 
in Latin a version not unlike 
Wykeham's original instructions in 
the statutes (the directions for be- 
havior in the bed-rooms include a 
prohibition to throw anything out 
of the window or stare at any one 
in the court beneath); the "nail," 
or middle sconce for candles in the 
west wall, under which grave of- 
fenders are placed; Old Common- 
ers' table, where practical jokes 
were generally originated or some 
such challenge agreed upon as oc- 
curred late in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, when a dozen of the best 
boxers in the school started surrep- 
titiously "off Hills" to fight the 
boys of Hyde Abbey, a famous pri- 
vate school in Winchester. Often, 
too, a barring-out was settled in 
excited whispers at this table, as 
when, on an order forbidding the 
boys to go to the cathedral close to 



Winchester School and Scholars. 



87; 



hear the military band play, and 
one b'oy being found there, the 
whole school was punished, a really 
formidable rebellion broke out, and 
the aid of the military had to be 
invoked by the warden. This was 
in 1773. 

The other room most memorable 
to scholars is the election-chamber, 
oak-panelled to the roof, where, ac- 
cording to the founder's instruc- 
tions in the statutes, the warden 
and two fellows of New College 
called posers, and the warden, sub- 
warden, and head-master of Win- 
chester School, elect scholars once 
a year to what vacancies there may 
be. The Oxford electors are receiv- 
ed on a Tuesday with three Latin 
orations, and then sit on any case 
reserved for their decision. The 
next morning they examine the list 
of candidates for admission to the 
school, and then of a certain num- 
ber of senior boys as candidates 
for scholarships at New College. 
On Thursday evening the rolls are 
made up ; two of the " founder's 
kin "* are set at the head, and are 
not " superannuated "until twenty- 
five years of age, and, if elected to 
New College, are at once actual 
fellows; the rest of the candidates 
follow in order of merit, and, though 
superannuated at eighteen, may suc- 
ceed to New College if a vacan- 
cy falls in during the following 
year, and remain scholars two years 
after their admission. The num- 
ber of vacancies is, on an average, 
nine in two years. For admission 
to the school two of the " founder's 
kin " are first elected by a majority 
of votes ; the rest are nominated 
in order. Nearly eight thousand 
scholars have been elected since 
the beginning of the school. The 



*Colley Gibber was of Wykeham descent, 
through his mother, but did not find the recom- 
mendation sufficient for admission. 



number of boys has never exceed-! 
ed two hundred at any given time., 
Wykeham's conditions for election 
(they have been modified in detail, 
and singing is, for instance, no lon- 
ger a sine qud noil) were poverty, 
good behavior, modesty in speech, 
eagerness for study, and a sufficient 
(competenter] acquaintance with 
reading, plain chant, and the Latin 
grammar. 

A very curious list of the books; 
of the school gives an idea of ait 
average mediaeval library. The 
missals, ordinals, psalters, anti*. 
phonaries, graduals, etc., we should 
in our day ascribe to the sacristy; 
but in the list given by Walcott 
they are classed with the rest of the 
books, all of which have the special 
interest of being direct gifts of the 
founder, or bought with his money, 
left for the purpose, within one 
century (1474) after the foundat 
tion. St. Augustine is the most pro- 
minent of the Fathers, and besides 
the two full-text Bibles (New Col* 
lege, Oxford, had five) there wera 
a versified paraphrase of the Bible 
and a dictionary of Bible terms, 
with several commentaries, patris- 
tic and contemporary, of portions 
of the Gospels, prophets, Psalms, 
and the Apocalypse, and a treatise 
on " the accents and the doubtfiH 
or unexplained words in the Bible." 
Some of the quainter entries run 
thus: "A book containing Hugh 
of St. Victor's De Sacramentis, with 
a treatise on the Nature of Ani- 
mals, and the Chronicle of Merlin " 
(these incongruous neighbors be- 
ing several manuscripts bound to- 
gether); "A book containing In- 
nocent on the Misery of Human 
Nature, with the Numeral of 
Master William of the Hill, and the 
Chronicle of Merlin, the Trojan 
War, The Clergy's Itinerary, by 
Gerald of Cambridge, a treatise on 



88 



Winchester School and Scholars. 



things to be admired in England 
and Wales, a treatise on the pun- 
ishment of Pilate and Judas Isca- 
riot, with a treatise in praise of 
Origen " ; " The Morals of St. Gre- 
gory, with most accurate chronicles 
of the Kings of England, and with 
moralizations [fables ?] of birds 
and. beasts, called Bestiarorum " ; 
" Tales of the Blessed Virgin 
and others; tales of her Mother; 
treatise on Vices and Virtues, and 
one on the game of Chess " ; "''Pars 
Oculi" and " Pupilla Oculi" (whe- 
ther these were really works on 
the eye, and its structure and dis- 
eases, or only fantastic titles of 
philosophical works, the list gives 
no hint). The catalogue of New 
College library was altogether of 
theological books, including the 
'** Sybil's Prophecies," and notes 
one hundred and thirty-six works, 
besides nearly fifty for chapel use. 
A still more interesting list is that 
of the school expenses, the homely 
details bringing before one the 
common life of early days with the 
same vividness as our own. The 
catching of swans in nets is an un- 
usual item, but most of the entries 
are such as are familiar to house- 
keepers and school-teachers of the 
present day, even to the item of 
" two men riding after runaway 
scholars." Another time the mas- 
ter, Booles, and warden, Chandler, 
rode to court with two servants to 
arrange some thorny matters con- 
cerning the complaints of scholars. 
Bell-ringers on occasions of nation- 
al rejoicing, gardeners with their 
tools, masons, farm-hands, arrow- 
makers, figure as receiving wages ; 
*' twelve thousand short boards" 
during the plague suggest coffins; 
beer and wine occur plentifully in 
the lists, and school furniture and 
cloihing furnish many entries, 
though till the seventeenth century 



the only " beds " were straw bun- 
dles with feather pillows in ticks. 

New College, when first built, re- 
sembled a fortress, and, including 
(as it does to this day) a part of 
the east and north walls of the 
town, through which two posterns 
were made to facilitate a munici- 
pal inspection by the mayor and 
bailiffs once in every three years, 
might truly be called one. The 
domestic arrangements were in al- 
most all respects similar to those at 
Winchester, and the statutes, pro- 
hibitions, etc., nearly identical. 
The sleeping-rooms all bore special 
names we have heard\\\%\. the prac- 
tice has been adopted sometimes 
in our own day by private individu- 
als much pressed with business, 
and that, for instance, the study 
was called Brooklyn, the bed-room 
Philadelphia, the parlor Chicago, 
etc,, so that intrusive visitors were 
disingenuously got rid of by being 
told Mr. So-and-so was in Brook- 
lyn, etc. though whether the 
rooms bore any device relating to 
the name is not told. There were 
the Star, the Vine, the Baptist's 
Head, the Conduit, the Crane's 
Dart, the Vale, the Cock, the Chris- 
topher, the Serpent's Head, the 
Green Post, and the Rose, while 
two were simply called the Chap- 
lains' and the Chamber of Three. 
One of the public rooms below was 
called u the Chequer," and in the 
bursary's room was a rebus a small 
bird, the peewit, meaning " pay it," 
with the motto in Latin, " Pay what 
thoii owest." The arrangements 
for meals were the same as at Win- 
chester, the quality of the food and 
its quantity very satisfactory, es- 
pecially during the seventeenth 
century; "warden-pies" appear 
now and then, and remind one of 
the story told of a fellow imprison- 
ed during the Commonwealth, by 



Winchester School and Scholars. 



89 



one of the wardens, in the bell- 
tower of the college, who, having 
lost his appetite for all else, desired 
a warden-pie * with only two war- 
dens baked in it, those of New 
College and Winchester School, as 
"such a warden-pie might do me 
and the church good, whereas 
other wardens of the tree can do 
me no good at all." The scholars 
and fellows were forbidden by the 
founder to keep hounds, hawks, or 
ferrets, to use arms or play at 
games of chance, or even ball, and 
especially to abstain from the "hor- 
rible and contemptible game of 
shaving beards, common on the 
eve of the installation of a Master 
of Arts." Foppishness in dress 
was forbidden in detail, and red 
and green were both proscribed 
colors, being then " the rage " 
among dandies. Some of the cus- 
toms of monastic life long survived 
in the college ; for instance, the por- 
ter knocked on the lower door of 
every staircase at first and second 
peal in the morning (seven o'clock 
and half-past) to summon the fel- 
lows to college meetings, and at 
dinner and supper two choristers 
went along the quadrangle from the 
chapel door to the garden gate, cry- 
ing, " Temp us est voccindi ; mangez 
tons, seigneurs" (It is time to call ; 
my lords, eat). Until the Com- 
monwealth the fellows, says Pe- 
shall in his Oxford, used to walk 
on Ascension day f to St. Bartho- 
lomew's chapel, which was "decked 
and adorned with the seasonable 
fruits of the year," and a selection 
from the Psalms was read, after 
which the fellows sang a hymn or 
anthem, and soon alternately three 
times. "Then they went up to the 
altar, where stood a vessel decked 

* The warden, or poire du gnrde, was a fine 
large pear fit for baking. Shakspere alludes to it 
in his Winter^s Tale. 

+ Evidently a reminiscence of Rogation days. 



with tuttyes (nosegays), and there- 
in offered a piece of silver to be 
divided among the poor men." 
Then they walked in procession to 
a well in a grove adjoining (the 
path used to be strewn with 
flowers), and there sang part-songs, 
whatever was most in fashion at 
the period. The ceremony was 
gradually shortened until, after the 
civil wars of Cromwell, it was dis- 
used. Greek was a favorite study 
during the sixteenth century, and 
at the same time that Greek lec- 
tures were first established Leyton, 
the royal commissioner, says : " We 
fownde all the gret quadrant court 
full of the leiffes of Dunce [Duns 
Scotus, whose works the visitors 
had proscribed], the wynde blowyng 
them into evere corner. And ther 
we fownde one Mr. Grenfelde 
gatheryng lip part of the saide 
bowke leiffes (as he said), ther- 
with to make hym sewells or blawn- 
sherres [scarecrows] to kepe the 
dere within the woode, therby to 
make the better cry with his 
howndes." 

To go through the roll of distin- 
guished or famous Wykehamists of 
either foundation is to peruse Eng- 
lish history for the last five centu- 
ries. Waynflete, the first head-mas- 
ter of Eton and bishop of Winches- 
ter, is as grand a figure as Wykeham 
himself. He was chancellor to 
King Henry VI., and a faithful 
ally of Margaret of Anjou in her 
efforts to stanch the civil ft-uds 
of the kingdom. Like Wyke- 
ham, he consoled himself for the 
disappointments of public life by 
founding a college at Oxford 
St. Mary Magdalen, still one of 
the most beautiful in the universi- 
ty. Chichely and Dene are less fa- 
mous names, but borne by arch- 
bishops of Canterbury, the latter 
a chancellor in 1500. Chichely 



Winchester School and Scholars. 



was a statesman and ambassador, 
but, better still, " the golden can- 
dlestick of the English church, the 
darling of the people, and the good 
father of his clergy," as the Univer- 
sity of Oxford wrote word to Pope 
Martin V., and " the example of 
every public and private virtue," 
as the archbishop of York declar- 
ed. He was the sole founder of 
All Souls' College, Oxford. Dene 
was primate only three years, but 
had before enjoyed many ecclesias- 
tical and civil positions of trust in 
Wales and Ireland as well as Eng- 
land, though he died so poor that 
he had no "trental" (Masses for 
the dead for thirty consecutive 
days). Wolsey and Gardiner were 
his chaplains. Warham, also pri- 
mate and chancellor, was Wolsey 's 
immediate predecessor in the chan- 
cellorship; Erasmus, his friend, 
calls him the Maecenas, of scholars, 
and the judgment of his time was 
that his impartiality, penetration, 
and legal learning had never been 
surpassed. White, Bishop of Win- 
chester, suffered imprisonment in 
the Tower under Elizabeth, osten- 
sibly on a charge of treason, his 
personal attachment to Mary Tu- 
dor and his part on the Catholic 
side in the theological disputations 
at Westminster being, however, his 
real offences. His brother, Alder- 
man Sir Thomas .White, was the 
co-founder of Merchant Taylors' 
School. 

Besides prelates and statesmen 
of mediaeval days, Winchester and 
its sister institution gave England 
some of her best scholars in every 
century, from Thomas Arnold, the 
head-master of Rugby, Dr. Words- 
worth, head-master of Harrow, 
and Sir Roundell Palmer, a famous 
English lawyer, in our own time, to 
Anthony a Wood, the historian of 
Oxford, in the seventeenth centu- 



ry, and Grocyn in the fifteenth, the 
tutor of Erasmus, and acknowledg- 
ed the best Greek scholar of his 
day. The eighteenth century was 
marked for the Wykehamist col- 
leges by Joseph Warton, the poet, 
head-master of Winchester School, 
the friend of Johnson and Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, and one of the 
most voluminous authors in the 
English language, of whom a recent 
review says, " No men contributed 
so much as the Wartons to the 
reformation of English poetry " ; 
Sydney Smith, of Holland House 
renown; Lempriere, the author 
of the dictionary; Dibdin, whose 
writings are all less known than 
his famous sea-songs; Whitehead, 
the poet-laureate, the baker's son, 
the best type of a poor, upright, 
and unflinchingly persevering scho- 
lar, who ended his life as secretary 
of the Order of the Bath, and died 
full of honors as of riches; and 
Stuart, a grandson of the famous 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 
The seventeenth century gave Win- 
chester and New College Lord 
Ashley ; Lord Falkland ; Young, the 
friend of Pope and author of the 
Night Thoughts ; Manningham, 
chaplain to Queen Anne, who, 
when requested to read pray- 
ers in an outer chamber while 
the queen was at her toilet, re- 
plied that he would not " whistle 
devotions through a key-hole"; 
Bishop Ken, one of the famous 
seven whom James II. and William 
III. alike quarreled with ; Sir Tho- 
mas Browne the physician, and 
Wood the historian. The same 
names reappear from generation to 
generation, and some note of rela- 
tionship is often appended to the 
name of some obscure scholar, con- 
necting him with an uncle or cou- 
sin of better-known acquirements. 
During the last century the Wyke- 



Winchester School and Scholars. 



9* 



hamists were strongly represented Bonner; he avoided both notoriety 
in the army and navy, especially and danger by resigning his college 

+ 1 1 & T^ Aatmneftil'ii* "\A7ov T> , , * . _ _i i i 



during the Peninsular War. But 
perhaps to a Catholic the most in- 
teresting century in the history of 
Wykeham's foundations is the six- 
teenth, when the Reformation di- 
vided their scholars into two camps. 
During the respective reigns of 
Mary and Elizabeth those who 
took the side opposite to the sove- 
reign's belief were alternately eject- 



and clerical positions after Eliza- 
beth's accession, and living for 
twenty years in retirement ; Saun- 
ders, a very able but intemperate 
controversialist, professor of theo- 
logy at Louvain, theologian to 
Cardinal Hosius at the Council of 
Trent, and writer of several trea- 
tises on disputed points of doc- 
trine ; Fenne, an elegant Italian 



ed, deprived, and, in a few instan- scholar, who on his deprivation re- 
tired to Italy and wrote a Latin 
history of the English martyrs; 
Stapleton, called " the most learned 
Jesuit of his age," who taught at 
Douai and Louvain, wrote many 
learned treatises, portions of which 
Pope Clement VIII. used to have 
daily read to him while he sat at 
dinner, and was called by Cardinal 
Perron the best controversialist of 
Ins party; his greatest work was 
an English translation of Bede's 
Ecclesiastical History af England ; 
Astlowe, a famous physician of his 
time, who suffered imprisonment 
for designing means for the escape 
of Mary, Queen of Scots ; Fowler, 
who became a printer at Louvain, 
where he wrote and published seve- 
ral works, among them a Psalter 
for Catholics, and died at Krain- 
burg, in Germany ; Whyte, who 
taught theology at Padua and Douai, 
and wrote a history of England, 



ces, executed. The best known 
among the Catholics was Father 
Garnet, of Winchester School, but 
scores of other names occur in the 
rolls Owen, of New College, who 
became chancellor of Milan and 
bishop of Cassano in Italy, and lies 
buried in the chapel of the English 
College at Rome ; Dr. Borde, a 
Winchester commoner, who to his 
rare skill in medicine added a sin- 
gular austerity, wearing a hair-shirt 
and hanging his shroud at night on 
the foot of his bed, and who died 
in Fleet prison ; the two cousins 
Harpsfield, the first of whom was 
chaplain to Bonner and high in ec- 
clesiastical rank, besides being a 
poet of some merit, and the second 
a renowned canonist, and in later 
years controversialist, who was im- 
prisoned for twenty years and spent 
the time in literary labors (both 
these men spoke in the public dis- 



putations on religion at Westmin- quoted by Selden (he was created 
ster Abbey) ; the friends Harding 
and Dorman, the first a good He- 
brew scholar (he was professor of 
Hebrew at Oxford in 1541), best 
known as Bishop Jewell's opponent ; 
the second who retired with him to 
Louvain and helped him in his fa- 
mous controversy; Martyn, who sat 



Count Palatine of the Holy Roman 
Empire) ; Rainolds, who from a vio- 
lent Puritan became a Catholic, 
and naturally a vehement contro- 
versialist, but under the name of 
William Rosse (he was professor 
of Hebrew at Rheims, and is buried 
in the choir of the Beguin.ige at 



in the commission that condemned Antwerp); Father Garnet, too well 



Cranmer; Nelle, an eminent Greek 
and Hebrew scholar, a friend of 



known to require description, but 
whose fate was the same as that of 



Cardinal Pole and a chaplain of the obscurer martyrs Mundyn and 



9 2 



Our Lady of Ostra Brama. 



Body, two priests first ejected from 
their fellowships and subsequently 
executed witli several others, the 
one in 1582, the other in 1583; 
Pitts, a friend of the learned Sta- 
pleton, and himself a rarely accom- 
plished man, who travelled much 
and studied in various foreign uni- 
versities, taught Greek and rhe- 
toric in the English College at 
Rome, and, while confessor to the 
Princess of Cleves, occupied his 
time writing a biographical history 
of English scholars and ecclesiastics, 
in which occur interesting details 
of the life at Winchester School 
during his boyhood. In the next 
century Winchester settled into a 
quiet and willing appendage to the 
Anglican Church, as it has remain- 
ed ever since; but now and then 
some convert would leave his pre- 
ferment and join the English Catho- 
lic exiles on the Continent. One 



of these was a New College man, 
Gawen, the friend of Milton, and a 
canon of Winchester Cathedral, a 
deep scholar, but a man inclined to 
peaceful pursuits, and who saw the 
danger of the Puritan school in the 
Anglican Church becoming, as it 
did under Cromwell, politically 
dominant. A royalist, he lost his 
benefices during the Common- 
wealth, but regained them at the 
Restoration. His foreign travels, 
however, had inclined him to the 
old faith, so lately that of his native 
country, and he gave up his prefer- 
ments and became a Catholic and a 
servant in the household of the 
queen-dowager, Henrietta Maria. 
He wrote in English a Brief Ex- 
pla nation of the Ceremonial of the 
Mass, some Meditations before and 
after Communion and other works 
of devotion. 



OUR LADY OF OSTRA BRAMA. 



IT was in 1708. The soldiers of 
Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, 
were quartered at Wilna, to the no 
small distress of the unfortunate 
Lithuanians, who suffered greatly 
from the harshness and exactions 
of their unwelcome guests. None 
of the vexatious annoyances which 
the towns-people had to endure were 
so painful to them as the coarse 
mockery in which the Russian sol- 
diers indulged with regard to their 
religious practices. The character 
of the Lithuanians is, for the most 
part, gentle and confiding. The 
grand and touching ceremonial of 
the Catholic Church has a great 
charm for their meditative turn of 



mind, and their sufferings lead them 
earnestly to seek support from Him 
who alone has the will as well as 
the power to sustain them. 

The difficulties of their existence 
are due in great part to the situa- 
tion and also the nature of their 
country. Lithuania abounds in 
woods, marshes, and sterile tracts 
of sand ; it is consequently so poor 
that its inhabitants can only with 
difficulty obtain the necessaries of 
life. Besides this, it is surround- 
ed by Russian provinces, and, as 
a natural consequence, differences 
arise between the Catholics and 
schismatics, in which the latter 
have always the advantage. 



Our Lady of Ostra Bra via. 



93 



Wilna, the capital, is placed in a 
special manner under the protec- 
tion of the ever-blessed Virgin, to 
whom the inhabitants have a great 
devotion. This city possesses a 
miraculous picture of Our Lady, 
which takes its name from one of 
the gates, Ostra Brama, or the 
Pointed Gate, and over which is 
the chapel containing the picture. 
This painting is on oak, about two 
metres high by one broad. The 
face, of a beautiful oval, is remark- 
able for its sweetness. The head 
leans slightly towards the left, and 
the hands are crossed upon the 
breast. The whole figure has in it 
an expression of maternal tender- 
ness and sympathy. The origin of 
the painting is unknown. No docu- 
ment has been discovered from 
which it can be gathered for how 
many centuries it has existed. All 
that is certain on the subject is 
that, long before the year 1626, it 
was held in veneration. The pic- 
ture then occupied a wooden alcove 
or niche hollowed out of the gate 
itself, above which is now the 
chapel. 

In 1626, after the foundation of 
the Carmelite convent, Father 
Charles, one of the monks, a very 
pious and celebrated preacher, con- 
sidering that, the place it occupied 
was not adorned in a manner 
worthy of it, placed it temporarily 
in the church, while with the of- 
ferings of the faithful he caused 
the construction of a handsome cha- 
pel in wood on the Ostra Brama. 
There the holy picture was placed 
with great pomp in 1671, in pre- 
sence of the bishop, Alexander Sa- 
pieka, all the civil and ecclesiasti- 
cal dignitaries, and a multitude of 
people. 

Numerous and signal favors had 
been obtained by praying to Our 
Lady before the picture of Ostra 



Brama, but an event which took 
place in 1706 greatly contributed 
to increase its celebrity. 

On the 1 8th of May in that year 
all the portion of the city in the 
vicinity of the Ostra Brama was on 
fire. The con vent and other build- 
ings contiguous to the church were 
already burning. The monks, see- 
ing the conflagration approaching 
the wooden chapel, hastened to. 
secure the sacred picture, which 
was still uninjured, and which they 
transferred to the church. At the 
same moment the flames sank down 
on all sides, and the conflagration 
was speedily extinguished. From 
this day the aid of Our Lady of 
Ostra Brama was confidently invok- 
ed in case of fire. 

These details are necessary to 
our narrative, to which we now 
return. 

Not far from the Ostra Brama 
stood a small house in which lived 
a poor widow and her granddaugh- 
ter, Vanda, a girl of eighteen years 
of age. 

One day Vanda, who had been 
to fetch water from a neighboring 
fountain, returned to the house in 
tears. Her grandmother anxiously 
asked what had happened. 

"I fear," said the young girl, 
" that some misfortune is likely to 
happen to Our Lady of Ostra 
Brama." 

"Child!" answered the old wo- 
man with some severity, " do 
you not know that your fear is 
want of faith ? Our Lady, believe 
me, will know very well how to 
guard that which she has taken 
under her protection. But what 
have you heard? Some fresli in- 
sult against her ?" 

" No," answered Vanda ; " but I 
know now the true reason of the 
mocking railleries at which we have 
so often wondered, since the Rus- 



94 



Our Lady of Ostra Brama. 



sians, who profess a great venera- 
tion for their holy icons, ought not 
to consider our practice in this re- 
spect as anything extraordinary." 

" My child, I do not compre- 
hend. What is this reason ?" 

" You will soon see, grandmother. 
On my way from the fountain, as I 
passed by the gate, two of the sen- 
tinels were so absorbed in what 
they were talking about that they 
did not even see me. They were 
not this time railing at our Ma- 
donna, but speaking of the riches 
in her chapel, of the crowns of pre- 
cious stones, and of the robes of 
gold and silver which are fastened 
on the painting on festivals; and I 
heard one of them say that it was 
a shame that all these treasures 
should be wasted on a Catholic 
Madonna. This one, who seemed 
intoxicated, went on to say that 'any 
man who could get hold of the sil- 
ver robe or the crown of diamonds 
alone would be rich for the rest of 
his life!' 'Yes,' said the other, 
'but who would venture? Holy 
things bring misfortune when they 
are touched with a bad intention, 
and the thief might die before he 
had time to enjoy his theft !' 

" ' Bah ! It is only a Catholic 
Theotokos,' answered the first 
speaker. * The icons of the Ca- 
tholics are not like ours; they say 
themselves that they venerate but 
do not worship them. If you will 
do the thing with me we will go 
shares in the profit.' 

"And then, grandmother," con- 
tinued Vanda with animation, "I 
could not restrain myself. I went 
up to the men, and told them that 
the Blessed Virgin herself protects 
the picture of Ostra Brama, and 
that whoever should dare to com- 

^mit such a crime would assuredly 
tne i j , 
, punished. 

Gracious Heaven !" cried the 



old woman, " and you ventured to 
speak to them ? And how did 
they take it ?" 

" I did not wait to see. I hur- 
ried away before they had recov- 
ered from their surprise." 

Her grandmother suggested that 
the monks who served the chapel 
should be informed of what she 
had heard, that they might avoid 
exposing the precious objects to 
the cupidity of the soldiers ; but it 
was already too late in the day for 
Vanda to see the fathers and she 
was obliged to postpone her com- 
munication. 

The sentinels, as she said, had 
been taken by surprise at her sud- 
den appearance, and especially at 
her addressing them, contrary to 
the custom of the Lithuanians, who 
as much as possible avoided speak- 
ing to the Russians. But no soon- 
er had she disappeared than Ivan 
began to laugh, as he mockingly 
repeated Vanda's words. 

" She is right," said his compan- 
ion. " Strange things are told 
about this picture. I am no cow- 
ard, but I would not venture to 
steal anything from the chapel." 

" Bravo, Semenek !" shouted Ivan 
with a coarse laugh. "You are no 
coward ; you are only afraid, that's 
all." 

"Get to sleep, then!" replied 
Semenek. "You have drunk more 
brandy than your head can stand, 
and don't know what you are say- 
ing!" 

Ivan growled, and, staggering to- 
wards a small chamber which serv- 
ed as a guard-room, stretched him- 
self by the stove, and was soon 
sleeping heavily. 

The thoughts of Semenek, left to 
himself, turned anxiously to his 
mother and his betrothed, whom 
he had left in his native village in 
the north of Russia. News had 



Our Lady of Ostra Brama. 



reached him that many small towns 
and villages in the part of the 
country where they lived had been 
destroyed by fire, and he asked 
himself sorrowfully whether he 
should ever again see his aged mo- 
ther and the dark-eyed Olga, who 
had promised to marry him when 
he should return. 

Fire is one of the scourges of 
Russia. Most of the towns and 
villages are built of wood, and it 
is observed that every little town 
is almost wholly rebuilt in the 
course of five years ; all the houses 
having, in this short space of time, 
become a prey to the flames, kin- 
dled either by negligence or with 
a criminal intention, and new ones 
rising upon their ruins, to await 
their turn for destruction. 

Semenek was a type of the bet- 
ter class of Russian peasant. Intel- 
ligent and resolute, his open coun- 
tenance inspired confidence and 
sympathy. Although not more en- 
lightened than his comrades, he 
had good sense, and a certain deli- 
cacy of feeling which often pre- 
served him from the vices to 
which the others were addicted, 
and even (wonderful as it may 
seem in a Russian soldier) rarely 
drank to excess. In this fact lay, 
perhaps, the secret of his superiori- 
ty over the rest of his companions, 
brutalized as they were by the ha- 
bitual and immoderate use of bran- 
dy, which, by deadening their mo- 
ral faculties, left them complete- 
ly under the domination of their 
material instincts. 

Notwithstanding the difference 
of religion between themselves and 
the Lithuanians, the Russians, ac- 
customed to venerate the sacred 
icons, could not help feeling a sort 
of respect, not unmingled with fear, 
towards the picture of Our Lady of 
Ostra Brama, and this feeling alone 



95 

can explain how it was that, in 
spite of the cupidity excited by the 
riches contained in the chapel, no 
robbery had as yet been attempted 
there. 

Semenek, who was an honest man, 
would have received with indignant 
disdain the guilty suggestion of Ivan, 
even if the theft had ftdt also been 
a sacrilege. To this suggestion he 
attached, however, no importance, 
regarding it merely as the passing 
fancy of a drunken man, and one 
which he would sleep off, together 
with the effects of his potations. 
As for himself, his anxiety for his 
mother and Olga inclined him to 
seek aid for them from her whose 
intercession is so poweiful with 
our Lord. 

He rose, and went almost me- 
chanically to the door of a gallery 
constructed on the left side of the 
chapel, and by which women were 
allowed to enter, as they could not 
be admitted through the principal 
entrance, which opened from the 
cloister. 

When in the chapel he remained 
motionless at a little distance from 
the door, gazing on the heavenly 
face of the Madonna, and so would 
probably have remained for some 
time had he not been suddenly 
aroused by a half-suppressed ex- 
clamation of terror. 

He turned quickly and saw the 
young girl who had so fearlessly 
spoken to Ivan. Vanda had that 
moment entered the chapel, and, 
recognizing one of the soldiers 
whose conversation she had inter- 
rupted, supposed that he was 
watching for an opportunity to 
commit the sacrilege she had heard 
suggested. 

" Fear nothing," said Semenek, 
smiling at her alarm. "Do you 
think I would harm you ?" 

" You would rob Our Blessed 



Our Lady of Ostra Brama. 



Lady!" said Vanda, made fearless 
by her generous indignation. 

" I would ? By Heaven, what do 
you take me for ? God knows that 
never have I had this thought!" 
And he crossed himself repeatedly 
in token of his horror at the idea. 

" And yet," resumed Vanda, half 
convinced by the man's expression 
of sincerity, " I heard you and 
your companion " 

" Not me, indeed !" he said 
eagerly. " You heard Ivan, who, 
as usual, had been drinking too 
freely, and who therefore uttered 
senseless words which he did not 
mean. I can, however, assure you 
that he would no more think of 
stealing any of the precious things 
surrounding the holy icon than I 
would myself!" 

" No matter," said Vanda. " I 
am going, in any case, to put before 
the altar this candle which I have 
brought, and beg Our Lady not to 
let her chapel be profaned." 

Semenek watched her while she 
lighted her taper and placed it by 
the side of several others which 
were burning there. 

" You have great confidence, 
then, in Our Lady of Ostra Brama. 
Is it true that some Swedes insult- 
ed her about six years ago and 
were terribly punished ?" he asked. 

" Nothing is more true. I was 
twelve years old at the time, but I 
remember, as if it were yesterday, 
the terror and emotion caused by 
the miracle. King Charles XII., 
who had just taken Wilna, had 
placed sentinels at all the gates. 
The four Lutheran soldiers set to 
guard the Ostra Brama did not for- 
get to scoff at miracles and holy 
things in general, and, while smok- 
ing and drinking, roared frantically 
the most revolting songs, lavishing 
their jests and insulting mockery 
on the sacred picture, and even on 



the most Holy Mother of God her- 
self. When their orgy was at its 
height a. dull, heavy sound like 
thunder made the ground tremble 
beneath them. The men, sudden^ 
ly silenced, staggered to their feet, 
muttering imprecations, while they 
sought their arms ; but before they 
had seized them the massive iron 
gates, wrenched by some unseen 
power from their hinges, fell upon 
the scoffers, two of. whom thus met 
with instant death, whilst the two 
others were so severely crushed 
that, after a few hours of frightful 
suffering, they died in the hospital 
to which they had been carried." 

As Vanda turned to leave the 
chapel Semenek said hesitatingly: 

" One word more : You are cer- 
tain that a fervent prayer addressed 
to Our Lady of Ostra Brama would 
be granted?" 

" I am certain. I have already 
said so several times." 

" Yes, I know it. But I, who 
am not a Catholic ? If I call on 
Our Lady under this invocation 
may be she would not listen to me ? 
And yet I wish to ask her to watch 
over my mother and Olga, my be- 
trothed, whose homes, as far as I 
know, may be burning at this very 
moment !" 

"And why should you not pray 
to her?" Vanda asked with ani- 
mation " you who, like ourselves, 
venerate her. Pray with confi- 
dence, and you will assuredly be 
heard. Shall I fetch a taper for 
you also to put before the altar ?" 

Semenek gratefully acceded to 
this proposal. 

"If," he added, "you would 
also pray for my mother and Olga, 
perhaps Our Lady of Ostra Brama 
would the more readily listen to 
me ?" 

" Willingly !" she answered ; " and 
yon, on your part, must pray that 



Our Lady of Ostra Drama. 



97, 



no sacrilege may be committed in 
this chapel." 

"I promise!" said Semenek sol- 
emnly. 

Both knelt and prayed fervent- 
ly for some moments. Vanda re- 
turned, radiant, to her grandmo- 
ther. Her fears of the morning 
were entirely dispelled. The old 
woman shared her joy, but with 
more reserve. The aged are less 
hopeful than the young, who have 
not, by the disappointments of a 
lifetime, learned to mistrust appear- 
ances, however promising. 

Semenek, for his part, felt a 
weight taken from his heart. Firm- 
ly believing that Our Lady would 
not fail to protect those whom he 
loved, he was able, as soon as his 
watch was over, to enjoy a peace- 
ful sleep a refreshment to which he 
had for some time been a stranger. 

The two tapers were burning 
slowly in the sanctuary. Vanda, 
in the simplicity of her faith, be- 
lieving that as long as they were 
burning her fervent prayers were 
in some way continued, had been 
careful to choose them toll and 
thick enough to keep alight all 
night. The smaller ones around 
them had burned out, one by one, 
and these two alone still added 
their light to that of the lamp of 
the sanctuary, when the door lead- 
ing from the cloister into the cha- 
pel stealthily opened, and the figure 
of a man appeared. 

It was not one of the Carme- 
lite fathers, but a Russian soldier, 
whose countenance, expressing at 
the same time ferocity and fear, 
sufficiently betrayed some evil pur- 
pose, while his torn garments and 
bleeding hands showed the diffi- 
culties he had met with in scaling 
the convent walls before penetrat- 
ing into the cloister. His evident 
alarm, although arising partly from 
VOL. xxx. 7 



the fear of discovery, was chiefly 
caused by the thought of the pro- 
fanation he was about to commit 
in the sanctuary of Our Lady. He 
looked cautiously around, starting 
when a breath of air made the 
flame of the two tapers flicker and 
the shadows move mysteriously 
among the pillars supporting the 
roof. 

" Now for it !" he muttered. " I 
have not come here to make a fool 
of myself and take all this trouble 
for nothing." 

He hurried into the sanctuary 
and climbed upon the altar; then, 
with a trembling hand, attempted 
to unfasten the silver robe attached, 
to the picture, and succeeded in dis- 
engaging one side, which slid, with 
a silvery sound, down by the can- 
delabra, while he proceeded to 
loosen the second fastening. But 
no sooner had he touched it than 
he was struck down at the foot of 
the altar. The soft light of the ta- 
pers fell on the corpse of the rob- 
ber, on whom the divine vengeance 
had fallen before he had had time 
to complete his sacrilege. 

On awaking next morning Vanda 
observed an unusual concourse and 
movement near the chapel. She 
was going to inquire the cause 
when her grandmother, who had 
been aroused still earlier by the 
noise, re-entered the house and 
said to Vanda: "You will know, 
child, in future how to trust the 
Russians ! The fellow who was 
praying so well yesterday in the 
chapel has been trying to rob Our 
Blessed Lady, and is found dead at 
the foot of the altar !" 

" Impossible !" exclaimed Vanda. 
" He cannot be the same." And 
she hurried out, hoping to pene- 
trate the crowd and ascertain who 
was the guilty person. 

The monks, on entering the cha- 



Our Lady of Ostra Brama. 



pel early, had been amazed to find 
there the dead body of a Russian 
sentinel; but the silver robe, which 
hung, half unfastened, from the sa- 
cred picture, showed at once the 
intended robbery and its immediate 
chastisement. 

It is impossible to give any idea 
of the impression produced on the 
Russian troops by this miracle. 
All the men wished to see their 
dead comrade. They knelt by 
him, making innumerable signs of 
the cross after the Russian man- 
ner. Vanda vainly endeavored to 
approach. The crowd was so 
dense that she relinquished the at- 
tempt. As she slowly went away, 
repeating to herself for the twen- 
tieth time that it could not be 
Semenek, she turned and saw him 
hastening after her. 

"Ah!" she exclaimed, "I knew 
that it could not be you, who " 

" What ! did you accuse me ? 
Why should you judge me so hard- 
ly ? My only fault was that I made 
light of the words of Ivan; for he 
,it was who committed the crime 
for which he has been so promptly 
punished. Our Lady of Ostra 
Brama has heard your prayer !" 

" Yes, truly ; but it is terrible," 
said Vanda, clasping her hands. 
" I knew that she would hear me ; 



but I hoped that your comrade 
would give up his wicked purpose." 
" God has judged," said Seme- 
nek gravely, " and his judgment 
is just. But," he added, suddenly 
changing his tone, while his face 
brightened, " I came to tell you 
that my prayer is also granted !" 
" Already ?" 

" Yes, already ! A messenger 
who has arrived with despatches 
passed through my part of the 
country, and one of his suite brings 
news of my mother and Olga. 
They were not even in danger 
while the town was burning, for the 
wind blew the flames away from 
the house." 

Vanda, crossing herself devout- 
ly, fell on her knees to thank Our 
Lady of Ostra Brama. 

Semenek did not fail to relate to 
his comrades all that had happened 
to him. This double proof of Our 
Lady's power and protection made 
a deep impression on the Mus- 
covite soldiers, who from this time 
forth held in great honor and 
veneration Our Lady of Wilna. 
Vanda, profoundly impressed by 
the catastrophe which had followed 
her prayer, resolved to consecrate 
herself to God in the religious life, 
and on the death of her grand- 
mother retired to a monastery. 



The Need of a new Dunciad. 



99 



THE NEED OF A NEW DUNCIAD. 



DISRAELI'S sneer, that the critics 
are those who have failed in litera- 
ture and art, has been suffered to 
have too much weight with a class 
of litterateurs who should have the 
courage to exercise the censorship 
without which letters and art can- 
not advance. No one knows more 
clearly than the true critic the un- 
graciousness of his task. Sainte- 
Beuve, at the height of his critical 
fame, when a line from him made 
or marred a book, suddenly ceased 
noticing contemporaneous litera- 
ture. His publisher remonstrated. 
For reply the great critic threw 
him a letter from an author, in 
which was the line : " You have 
damned my book. It was the 
only barrier between me and star- 
vation." 

" How can I write with this sha- 
dow before me?" asked Sainte- 
Beuve. The story is very Frenchy, 
but it is not improbable. 

Thackeray said of the Dunciad 
that it tore the heart out of the 
writers of Queen Anne's day. It 
took decades for poetasters to re- 
cover from that fearful blow. 
Then we have Keats " killed by 
an article " ; Chatterton perishing 
in his pride ; Gerald Griffin saved 
from despair only by his divine 
faith; and Wordsworth fretting 
his serene soul over the Edinburgh's 
pompous dictum, " This will never 
do." What a sad story is the 
painter Haydon's, and no doubt 
that of many other artists who 
winced only in private ! 

But, on the other hand, how 
much benefit has the critic confer- 
red upon the public, and upon wri- 
ters and artists themselves ! Not 



every critic has the satisfaction 
felt by the one who received a 
good ham with the following note: 
DEAR SIR : I cannot sufficiently 
thank you for having cut to pieces 
a poem of mine called ' The Music 
of Tears.' Upon reading your 
criticism I destroyed the rest of 
my poetry and entered the pork 
business." Readers have no idea 
of the amount of positive disgust 
and tedium which a true critic 
saves them. He stands all the 
boring. It is his task to explain 
to Matilda that she must study the 
"unities"; though he may have a 
quiet feeling of gratification at the 
search Matilda must make through 
the dictionaries to find out what 
the unities are. 

The writer is acquainted with a 
gentleman of fine critical acumen 
who would no more read and re- 
vise manuscript articles than he 
would touch a cobra. " Give me 
a job as a proof-reader, or let me 
write myself," he would say, "but 
don't ask me to ' look over' these 
MSS. The very appearance of 
some manuscripts is disheartening. 
Poetesses affect pale blue ink; wri- 
ters on political economy and kin- 
dred heavy subjects make a dis- 
play of a bold, reckless hand; and, 
indeed, there is a baseless and an- 
noying idea prevalent among ave- 
rage writers that little accuracies 
of grammar, spelling, and punctua- 
tion are unworthy of a great mind. 
They have seen somewhere that 
authors in general are bad pen- 
men. They do not reflect that the 
person practically interested is the 
printer, and that his wages may 
materially depend upon the legi- 



ICO 



The Need of a new Dunciad. 



bility of 'copy.'' Another dis- 
agreeable experience of a critic is 
that, if he ventures to change a 
word, reconstruct a sentence, or 
suppress a passage, he is likely to 
make an enemy. The changed 
word and the lost paragraph were 
gems ; and there must be truth in 
the opinion that all critics are jeal- 
ous. This will be said even in 
cases where a critic's wise reflection 
has been known to keep many a 
man from making a fool of himself 
in print. 

Literary criticism demands a 
finer taste and broader judgment 
than any other kind. By broader 
judgment we mean the faculty of 
discriminating thoroughly between 
the matter and the form, to use an 
old scholastic phrase which exactly 
fixes our meaning. For example, 
a theologian, a philosopher, or a 
publicist has special expertness, 
and his judgment may be sound on 
the technical merits or defects of a 
book, yet wholly inconclusive upon 
its essential power. One book may 
defy all the canons of special criti- 
cism, and yet have a vital force. 
Another is of classical perfection, 
and yet it fails to impress any rea- 
der. When particular criticism is 
perplexed or unreasonably posi- 
tive, literary criticism calmly pro- 
nounces. And this is the criticism 
which is the final judge. Nothing 
in letters is deserving of deeper at- 
tention, as we shall proceed to il- 
lustrate. 

The special expert comes to a 
book with certain defined princi- 
ples and conclusions. These he ap- 
plies with a degree of positiveness 
.proportioned to their strength and 
clearness to his individual mind. He 
has no eye for any thing beyond them. 
There may be an exquisite descrip- 
tion of Jerusalem in a book which 
denies the Divinity of Christ. It 



is looked upon by the theologian 
as an additional evil. But it may 
be that very description which 
keeps the book alive. The philo- 
sopher demolishes the speculations 
of Hegel, and regards his Chris- 
tianizing as a sick dream, though 
it is this dream that sustains the 
Hegelian system. Historical critics 
discover countless inaccuracies in 
Gibbon, and count as naught the 
skill which rivals Livy's in the de- 
lineation of character. Now, the 
literary critic has nothing to do 
with the conclusions of a writer. 
He studies not the major or the 
minor premise, but only the illus- 
trations and examples. 

His method of work is synthetic. 
He reads a book backward. The 
first thing to find out is what the 
writer claims to have shown, prov- 
ed, illustrated. If a book is strong- 
er at its close than at its beginning 
it is worth reading. This is an 
evidence of power which is always 
deserving of study, if only for the 
beauty which is inherent in all 
power. Judged by this simple law, 
countless books fall out of notice. 
A weak writer puts forth all his 
might in the beginning by an in- 
evitable necessity. No art can con- 
ceal this weakness. He may make 
a " spurt " at the end, but it is 
only a spurt. John Henry New- 
man is as fresh, clear, and buoyant 
at the goal as at the start. The 
author of Ecce Homo flags in the 
second chapter and limps after the 
third. Nothing but quotation drags 
him to the end. The three last 
books of the ^Eneid are incompara- 
bly the finest. We hardly know 
the Virgil of the opening verses. 
His sweetest tones and fullest har- 
mony, his tenderest sensibility and 
the very sport of his poetic power, 
scarcely show before the sixtli 
book. Garrick's transcendent dra- 



The Need of a new Dunciad. IOI 

matic power was not seen until in with it than with its exhibition in 

the farce which followed his Lear, more ponderous forms. Take, for 

although his personation of the de- example, most of the essays in' the 

mented king sent his hearers weep- average monthly. The title gives 

ing to their beds. If you wish to you no clue. This is a trick to 

know the worth of a book study which even such a man as Lowell 



well its end. Finis coronal opus 

Though art may do much to con- 
ceal and, in fact, to make up for 



descended in My Study Windows. 
We find such a title as " Flume " or 
Jamb," or some other word which 



mental deficiency, it lies perforce may or may not have any meaning, 
upon the groundwork of nature. A page is devoted to describing 
How shall we gauge a writer's the sensations of the writer dis- 
purely mental power? The obso- mat day; ink won't run; pussy is 
lete criticism of Blair and Lord crying for cream ; a big, hulking 
Kames advised the study of the mule is looking at writer; wonder 
author's u beauties." This is ridi- if a mule's soul is in his heels and 
culous. Just as a good reader or then a farrago of the most weari- 
elocutionist is known by his read- some drivel, leaving on the mind 
ing of an advertisement, so a pow- 
erful writer appears well in a foot- 
note. If you find a writer who, at 
regular intervals, presents a show- 
piece, lay his book aside. It will 
not repay perusal. Open a book 
anywhere, even in the middle of a 
sentence, and read on. Skip from 
place to place on the same page, 
and you will find if he has conti- 
nuity of thought, or only a jerky, 
haphazard way of jotting down not (Fig. 4), that persistently avoid the 
thoughts but ideas. You will be simple trap of a rail-fence (Fig. 
surprised to see how many books 5)," etc. 

will drop out of any worthy notice If so large a portion of so-called 
by this law. It is most certain and 
proved. A book that can stand 



no feeling but that of pity or con- 
tempt. 

We pity the writer who has to 
break up his article to enable a 
distinguished engraver to show his 
skill in delineating a buzzard or a 
rail fence. We suppose it is done 
in this manner : " The placid flow 
of the Muskakitkatawatch River 
through the lordly pines (Fig. 3) 
is often disturbed by the buzzards 



this test will stand any, no mat- 



literature must fail under the plain- 
est laws of criticism, what are we 
to say of the pretentious class of 



ter if it appears to you to be^rong books which critics, in sheer de- 



on certain points. A writer who 
has strength of mind to carry him 
through a long course of reason- 



spair, have allowed to pass ? Harsh 
as it seems, the spirit of the Dun- 
ciad should be revived, if we care 



ing is not likely to go very far aught for the deepest needs of Eng- 
out of the road. 

Examined by this law of criti- 
cism, the majority of essayists must 
fail. This form of writing is very 
popular in our magazine literature, 



lish literature. 

There are three errors at present, 
in English literature which have 
been brought about by a misccm- 



and it is rather ungracious to ani- ception of the genius of the lan- 



madvert upon it. 



Still, it happily 
v 



guage. They are the supremacy of 



illustrates our meaning, and very style as such, the disregard of the 
probably readers are more familiar classical languages, and the exag- 



IO2 



The Need of a new Dunciad. 



gerated importance of the Anglo- 
Saxon element. 

Style is essentially the written 
expression of thought. Rhetori- 
cians have introduced a variety to 
which they have attached a number 
of unmeaning terms, such as beau- 
tiful, terse, brilliant, etc. The only 
style worthy of the name is the 
expressive. This is its supreme 
beauty, just as expression is the 
charm and power of the human 
countenance. Any style that lias 
meaning and sense is good. De- 
ceived by the rhetoricians, critics 
pronounce a style pedantic, or tur- 
gid, or inelegant simply because 
it does not observe the cast-iron 
rules of mere rhetoric and gram- 
mar. Now, the English language 
has no grammar, in the strict tech- 
nical sense. Grammar belongs only 
to inflectional languages. The La- 
tin, and, in a more perfect way, 
the Greek, language has an admira- 
ble inflectional power. Its parti- 
cles are grammatical. Not so the 
English. Kvpov BaffikfooZ and 
Ccesare intperante are phrases which 
have an inflectional precision wholly 
lacking to the English equivalents: 
u ln the reign of Cyrus of Caesar," 
or '* Under Cyrus," or " Cyrus 
being king." Technically speak- 
ing, the English does not admit of 
style, because it does not admit of 
grammar. Subjected to the slight- 
est scrutiny, the most famous pas- 
sages in many of our best writers 
are obscure. This cannot happen 
in the classic languages, nor in 
those directly derived from them, 
as the Italian, the French, or the 
Spanish. You can trace a partici- 
ple through a wilderness of words. 
You cannot lose the nominative. 
Such critics as Richard Grant 
White mistake the genius of the 
language when they find fault with 
the unavoidable obscurity of the 



English sentence, or the necessity 
which forces us to employ the same 
word in many meanings. The 
English language cannot manage 
its own particles. We have an un- 
couth '* s " as the sign of the geni- 
tive case, and in writing we must 
express it by the apostrophe ('). 
Our dative and ablative depend up- 
on a confused multitude of parti- 
cles that have not even the preci- 
sion of the article in the languages 
of Southern Europe. The chief 
beauty, then, of English writing 
must be its clearness and expres- 
siveness. This is the only style 
meagrely vouchsafed by the genius 
of the tongue. 

Now, critics speak of a certain 
style as " brilliant/' The proper 
English word for this is odd. The 
language does not admit of bril- 
liancy, not even in its poetry. But 
there is a set of writers, more nu- 
merous here than in England, who 
are infected with the spirit of mod- 
ern French poetry or romance, no- 
tably that of Baudelaire and Alfred 
de Musset. It is a pity that such a 
genuine poet as William Morris 
should be under this miserable 
spell. A poor imitation of it ap- 
pears in the short poems and sonnets 
that fill a large space in the Ame- 
rican and the English magazine. 
It would take too long, and it is not 
worthihe trouble, to explain that 
the French language, by the per- 
fection of its grammatical form, 
never permits a writer, no matter 
how really dull and foolish he is, to 
become grammatically unintelligi- 
ble. To some minds this is the 
great charm of French poetry, as it 
is undoubtedly of its prose. But 
an English poet must take great 
pains to make his meaning clear 
even in prose; and the exalted 
merit of our great poets is that, 
despite such a linguistic medium/ 



The Neea of a new Dunciad. 



they liave triumphed over this dif- 
ficulty. Still, there are passages 
in Milton that almost require ge- 
nius to parse. 

The great masters of English 
style, in its rhetorical acceptation, 
are the Celtic writers of the lan- 
guage. Scotland and Ireland have 
given to the tongue a noble ex- 
pression of the perfervidum ingeni- 
um which the Latin historian as- 
cribes to the Celt. The graces of 
rhetoric, the enthusiasm of oratory, 
the divine afflatus of English po- 
etry belong to Erin and to Cale- 
donia. The Anglo-Saxon intellect 
is slow, cautious, and prosaic. Its 
style is a heavy and labored at- 
tempt to make its meaning clear, 
and its metaphors are clumsy. The 
Celt is master of the figurative 
style because of his naturally fer- 
vid and poetic temperament. All 
the blunders in the use of figures 
cited in the school-books were 
made by Anglo-Saxons. Shak- 
spere himself is not free from 
this. He has many false and ab- 
surd metaphors such as Addison's 
bridling his launching muse. The 
philosophical writings most worth 
reading in English are those of the 
Scotch metaphysicians ; while the 
most charming social and literary 
essays, vers de socitte, and the choic- 
est belles-lettres in our unmanage- 
able tongue are the productions of 
Irishmen. 

The proposed setting aside of 
the study of Greek and of Latin in 
colleges, or the option given to 
students of substituting the study 
of botany or of mechanics in their 
stead, is fraught with fatal conse- 
quences to literature. Sometimes 
we read that the French or the 
German language may be selected ; 
as if any one ever knew French 
well without a knowledge of Lat- 
in, or the philological structure of 



German without a knowledge of 
Greek! Philology has establish- 
ed the comparative homogeneity of 
languages, and Latin and Greek 
have sent their roots into the very 
depths of the linguistic soil. We 
believe that in many colleges there 
is a new-fangled way of teaching 
the languages. Perfection is gua- 
ranteed in a few lessons, and, what 
is strikingly absurd in the matter 
of an inflectional language, the 
preparatory grammar is ignored. 
Pupils begin with sentences, and 
are trained in conversations, be- 
fore they have even a glance into 
the essential grammatical structure. 
It is no wonder that students 
quickly weary of parroting. 

Whatever power, beauty, or 
strength the English language has 
it owes in the main to the Latin 
element, as modified through the 
Norman-French. The Anglo-Sax- 
on was not the language of civiliz- 
ed man, and the Venerable Bede 
complains of its unbendingness to 
receive the fruitful grafts of the 
Latin. Those who are for ever 
clamoring for the Anglo-Saxon 
element in the language suppose 
that it means monosyllables or 
short words. Now, the most cur- 
sory knowledge of Anglo-Saxon ; 
shows that its words, printed in 
Roman letters, are the longest, 
toughest, and most unpronounce- 
able in the language. Most of our 
small words, outside the particles, 
are of Norman-French extraction. 
Many a student is led astray by 
this constant and ignorant prating 
about Anglo-Saxon, and we have 
known several who spent precious 
years in the study of the barbarous 
dialect. 

These are but the first principles 
of a sound and common-sense lite- 
rary criticism which must take the 
place of the present vagueness, if 



Catholic Emancipation and its Results. 



we are to have any literature at all. of modern English letters, outside 

The reader will be so kind as to the noble contributions of the 

notice that we have touched upon church, is enough to make any 

these topics in a merely literary man give up reading anything but 

way; for the ethical examination his prayer-book. 



CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION AND ITS RESULTS. 



A GENERATION has been born 
and has passed away since the era 
of the great Daniel O'Connell, the 
liberator of Ireland and the de- 
fender of the church, but his name 
is still a household word through- 
out Europe, and his deeds will be 
handed down to posterity as de- 
serving of the highest praise. The 
greater part of the benefits which 
the Catholics of Ireland and Eng- 
land now enjoy, though still short of 
all to which they are entitled, is the 
result of his indefatigable labors and 
incessant toil. 

It is somewhat difficult, in this 
'nineteenth century of boasted free- 
dom, to realize the position that the 
Irish Catholics have held since the 
Reformation, and the trials to which 
they and their brethren in England 
were formerly exposed. O'Connell 
was the first person to teach them 
their power, to encourage them to 
dispute the ascendency of their 
Protestant neighbors, and to lead 
them in the path of victory. Just- 
ly may they be proud of him, for he 
filled a greater space in the eyes 
pf Europe than any man of modern 
days, with the exception of the 
great Napoleon, to whom he has 
been frequently compared. He 
was a man who had no fear or 
hesitation in the path he had 
chosen. At the bar he was un- 
rivalled, and he was ever foremost 
in matters requiring the exercise 



of public spirit, intelligence, and 
activity. His courage in propos- 
ing himself to the electors of Clare 
at a time when Catholics were ex- 
cluded from Parliament is one of 
the strongest proofs of his daring ; 
he was a man who had no pow- 
erful family influence or wealthy 
connections to back him in a strug- 
gle against a hostile government, a 
hostile press, and an envious aris- 
tocracy. Alone and unaided, save 
by the love and adoration of the 
peasantry of his native country, he 
came, he saw, he conquered. He 
saw the deadly oppression exercised 
against his co-religionists, and he 
never rested till, theoretically at 
least, he had placed them on a 
level with their persecutors. Sure- 
ly no more brilliant victory was 
ever achieved than that of Catho- 
lic emancipation. The grandest 
battles in which Great Britain has 
been victorious pale before it. 
Blenheim, Trafalgar, and even Wa- 
terloo are as nothing in compari- 
son to the victory of emancipation, 
against which the powers of the 
world and the gates of hell were 
leagued. 

Up to the year 1774 the laws of 
the land did not presume a Papist 
to exist in Ireland, nor could they 
breathe without the consent of the 
government. They were hewers 
of wood and drawers of water, the 
slaves of Protestant landlords, mere 



Catholic Emancipation and its Resttlts. 



helots. The British government, 
fully aware that they had and 
could have no hold on the affec- 
tions or gratitude of the Irish peo- 
ple, nevertheless at length deemed 
it prudent to recognize the Irish 



105 

terests of religion ; but it has always 
been considered questionable to 
permit a Protestant sovereign to 
have any influence whatever in 
the spiritual organization of Catho- 
licism. Time has shown how wise 



Catholics as subjects, and for this was the action of O'Connell in op- 
posing the veto claimed by govern- 
ment on the appointment of Ca- 
tholic prelates, and how such a 

Had it not been for the defeat of claim would have paralyzed much 



purpose, about the time of the war 
with America, permitted them to 
swear allegiance to the 



crown. 



Great Britain by America it is 

probable that justice would have 

still been refused to the sons of 

Ireland. The celebrated John Ke- 

ogh, in the year 1806, thus speaks 

of Catholics : " A period when they 

would scarcely dare to look a Pro- 
testant in the face, and when they 

had not courage to walk upright 

and erect as other men, and were 

marked by the caution and timidity 

of their gait and demeanor, and 

when the meanest Protestant that 

crawled in the streets considered 

himself a divinity compared with a 
Catholic." In the year 1808 the 
hierarchy of Ireland, ably supported 
by the masses of the people led on 
by O'Connell, successfully resisted 
the pressure put upon them by the 
British government regarding the 
question of the veto. The Catho- 
lic aristocracy, partly from jealousy 
of the popular leader, and partly 
from an anxiety to become magis- 
trates and to partake in the civil 
government of their country, were 
willing to support the veto and to 
risk the dangers to which religion 
would thereby be exposed. In 
Catholic countries the popes have 
at various times and for various 
reasons permitted, from motives of noble might appoint to benefices, 



of the energy that the church has 
since then displayed. The whole 
question of a veto is difficult. 
There is, doubtless, much to be 
said on both sides, and in the 
early ages of faith, when kings and 
persons in high authority bowed to 
the teaching of the church, it might 
have worked well ; but in the pre- 
sent era of laxity and irreligion 
the Sovereign Pontiffs have wisely 
abstained from allowing this and 
similar claims. The security and 
purity of religious faith depend 
upon the pastors who are appoint- 
ed to teach ; and this appointment 
of pastors was confided by Christ 
to his apostles and their successors, 
and especially to Peter, the Prince 
of the Apostles, to whom was given 
supreme authority. 

Any interference, therefore, with 
these appointments on the part of 
a sovereign or any other individual, 
unless specially authorized by the 
pontiff, is an infringement of the 
divine ordinance and must inevi- 
tably be productive of harm to re- 
ligion. We have evidence of this 
in the state of the church in the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
when any drunken or illiterate 



policy, the governments of these 
countries to have some share of con- 
trol in the appointment of bishops, 
under the feeling that such control, 
exercised by a Catholic monarch, 



and the lives of many of the clergy 
and bishops were a scandal to the 
faithful. Matters were so bad that 
the whole fabric of Christianity was 
in danger till the rise of Hildebrand, 



would not injure the spiritual in- who, by his power and energy, de- 



io6 



Catliolic Emancipation and its Results. 



strpyed the accumulated abuses 
and saved religion from anarchy 
and desolation. In later days the 
kingdom of Prussia exercised' the 
most base and continuous treachery, 
in spite of concordats, towards the 
Catholics in Germany, and even- 
tually deprived them of all their 
possessions which had been solemn- 
ly guaranteed to them. In Hol- 
land the connection of the Catholic 
Church with a Protestant state be- 
came intolerable and contributed 
largely to the revolution of 1830. 
The king oppressed the clergy and 
kept the sees vacant, and in every 
possible way showed his wish to 
dictate to the church and superin- 
tend its details in the manner he 
was accustomed to act towards the 
Calvinist communion. State con- 
nection between Protestant govern- 
ments and the Catholic Church must 
always be dangerous, for the simple 
reason that such governments are 
unable to realize that there are cer- 
tain questions which do not belong 
to Caesar, and that a body commis- 
sioned to teach must be in no way 
fettered in the work it has to ac- 
complish. 

The leading desire on the part of 
the government in urging the ques- 
tion of the veto was to wean the 
clergy from the Holy See. The 
intention was to undermine the 
loyalty of the Irish to the pontiff, 
and to try and secure devotion to 
English interests as a substitution 
for devotion to the chair of Peter. 
It was a clever move on the part 
of Great Britain, and one that, had 
it been carried, might have been 
productive of great national mis- 
fortune. Through the instrumen- 
tality of O'Connell the union of 
Irish priests with the party of politi- 
cal agitation was first effected a 
union that would probably never 
have been so thoroughly consum- 



mated but for England's perversity 
in withholding Catholic emancipa- 
tion. In this \vay England raised 
up in one day against herself a 
powerful combination which she is 
everlastingly deploring, and will 
continue to deplore for many a 
year, in which every element of 
national sentiment and national or- 
ganization is permanently centred. 
The year 1823 will be long memor- 
able as the date of the foundation 
of the Catholic Association, which 
was the direct precursor of emanci- 
pation. It was at this period that 
O'Connell made the statement that 
"the Catholic cause received per- 
manent injury from the silence and 
neglect of Catholics themselves." 
We of the present day, who meet 
together and form societies and 
associations for everything we de- 
sire, can scarcely conceive how 
such a statement could have been 
true ; and yet it was nothing ex- 
traordinary at thit time. Cen- 
turies of tyranny and oppression 
tend to make the objects of op- 
pression and tyranny diffident and 
servile, whilst impartiality and 
liberty are calculated to bring to 
the surface all the better qualities 
with which man is endowed. Jus- 
tice, right, the law of God as well 
as the law of man, and even the 
national interests of Great Britain, 
were all on the side of emancipa- 
tion ; but long years of self-indul- 
gence and gratification on the part 
of those in power in Ireland had 
taught them to dread a measure 
which, though common justice to 
the majority of their fellow-coun- 
trymen, would necessarily deprive 
them of much that they enjoyed. 
Freedom of worship and freedom 
of conscience, though theoretically 
the glory and birthright of Pro- 
testantism, were practically tram- 
pled in the dust by those very per- 



Catholic Emancipation and its Results. 



107 






sons who justified their position on 
the grounds of the intolerance of 
the Church of Rome. The real 
decline of Protestant ascendency 
and religious bigotry dates from the 
time that O'Connell organized the 
masses and taught them their power. 
In England the Catholics, who 
have always been in a minority 
since the days of the Reformation, 
though loyal even to slavishness, 
would have received no recognition 
from Protestant rulers had they not 
been aided and supported by the 
large body of Irishmen. In Ire- 
land the Catholics, who have always 
been in a majority, would have 
received no toleration or official 
recognition but for fear of rebel- 
lion. (See the speech of the Duke of 
Wellington in the House of Lords 
shortly before the passing of eman- 
cipation.) It is a remarkable fact 
that England has never hitherto 
done an act of justice towards Ire- 
land, unless it was at a time when 
she was in difficulties with other 
nations ; hence it is scarcely matter 
for wonder that the feeling of gra- 
titude towards her should not be 
very strong. The Irish are essen- 
tially a religious people ; they love 
the faith for which their fathers 
were persecuted, and they loved 
the men who struggled for their 
freedom. It will probably be many 
centuries before another man will 
arise who will combine so many 
qualifications within himself as 
Daniel O'Connell, and be able to 
occupy the proud position that he 
enjoyed. His resistance to the 
veto was one of the noblest acts of 
a long career of usefulness, since, 
as far as he was individually con- 
cerned, it was to his interest to have 
obtained emancipation on any terms. 
One of the principal effects of the 
passing of the measure was to place 
the north of Ireland in a state of in- 



surrection. The Orange faction were 
driven to madness by the legislation 
which placed the majority of their 
fellow-countrymen on a constitu- 
tional equality with themselves. The 
Orange press in both countries 
poured forth floods of envenomed 
vituperation against the Catholic 
faith, and against a government that 
had ventured to protect it and did 
everything in their power to miti- 
gate what they considered a na- 
tional disaster. To this day, true 
to their traditional policy, they jeal- 
ously keep up every landmark of 
ascendency; they celebrate as spe- 
cial holidays events in history 
which mark the date of Protestant 
victories and tyrannical edicts 
against the masses of Irishmen. 
To this day the months of July and 
August are dedicated to riot and 
bloodshed throughout the north of 
Ireland because the Orangemen of 
Ulster cannot and will not forgive 
the ruling powers for having placed 
their Catholic brethren on a level 
with themselves. 

The Protestants who thus wan- 
tonly attack their neighbors are 
wont to make great boast of their 
loyalty to the crown. But men do 
not forget that one of their tenets 
is to display devotion to the crown 
only as long as they consider the 
Protestant succession is upheld. 
This vaunted boast was therefore 
of no avail after the passing of 
emancipation, and again after the 
passing of the act which disestab- 
lished the Protestant Episcopal 
communion ; for, when found fault 
with for the language they made 
use of on those occasions as de- 
rogatory to the crown of England, 
they justified themselves on the 
plea that the measures that had 
been approved of and ratified by 
the government were detrimental 
to the interests of Protestantism. 



io8 



Catholic Emancipation and its Results. 



One of the chief difficulties con- 
nected with the government of Ire- 
land undoubtedly lies in the fact 
that a large number of Irishmen, in 
addition to the vast majority in 
Great Britain, even amongst the 
educated classes, who are supposed 
to legislate for her welfare, are less 
acquainted with the history of Ire- 
land than that of many continental 
countries ; and one of the great re- 
sults of this ignorance is an inabil- 
ity to appreciate a character like 
O'Connell. Mr. Lecky, for instance, 
an able writer of great liberality, 
actually considers it an open ques- 
tion whether the life of O'Connell 
was a blessing or a curse for Ire- 
land, and many who profess liberal 
opinions consider it an unmitigated 
curse. Few persons would now 
hesitate, however, to admit that 
emancipation was a pure act of 
justice, and, if so, that the measures 
taken by O'Connell to secure the 
passing of the act were necessary 
and justifiable. 

The Catholics of Ireland, once 
taught their strength by O'Connell, 
would not suffer their claims to be 
neglected, but by frequent petitions, 
speeches, meetings, compelled the 
support of their friends, and at 
length, in 1829, forced upon the Bri- 
tish Parliament the Bill of Emanci- 
pation. Lord Greville, in the House 
of Lords, made use of the follow- 
ing remarkable words in connec- 
tion with the Catholic petitions so 
frequently laid before the house : 
" We shall finally yield, no one 
doubts. Let us not, then, delay a 
concession until it can neither be 
graced by spontaneous kindness 
nor limited by deliberative wis- 
dom. We know how precipitately 
necessity extorts what power has 
pertinaciously refused." 

Mr. Lecky, in his Leaders of 
Public Opinion in Ireland, thus 



speaks of the final passing of the 
measure : " If concession had not 
been made almost every Catholic 
county would have followed the 
example of Clare; and the minis- 
ters, feeling further resistance to 
be hopeless, brought in the Eman- 
cipation Bill, confessedly because 
to withhold it would be to kindle 
a rebellion that would extend over 
the length and breadth of the land. 
. . . The great victory was won by 
the genius of a single man, who had 
entered on the contest without any 
advantage of rank or wealth or in- 
fluence, who had maintained it 
from no prouder eminence than 
the platform of the demagogue, 
and who terminated it without the 
effusion of a single drop of blood. 
All the eloquence of Grattan and 
of Plunket, all the influence of Pitt 
and Canning, had proved ineffectu- 
al, ... yet every obstacle succumb- 
ed before the energy of this unti- 
tled lawyer. . . . O'Connell devis- 
ed the organization that gave such 
weight to public opinion ; he creat- 
ed the enthusiasm that inspired it. 
. . . He gained the victory, not by 
stimulating the courage or increas- 
ing the number of the advocates of 
the measure in Parliament, but by 
creating another system of govern- 
ment in Ireland which overawed 
all his opponents. He gained it 
at a time when his bitterest ene- 
mies held the reins of power, and 
when they were guided by the 
most successful statesman of his 
generation, and by one of the most 
stubborn wills that ever directed 
the affairs of the nation. If he 
had never arisen emancipation 
would doubtless have been at 
length conceded, but it would have 
been conceded as a boon granted 
by a superior to an inferior class, 
and it would have been accompa- 
nied and qualified by the veto." 



Catholic Emancipation and its Results. 



Sir T. Erskine May, in his Con- 
stitutional History of England, 
writes as follows : "At length this 
great measure of toleration and 
justice was accomplished. But 
the concession came too late. Ac- 
companied by one measure of re- 
pression and another of disfran- 
chisement, it was wrung by violence 
from reluctant and unfriendly ru- 
lers. . . . Irish Catholics had over- 
come their rulers, and, owing them 
no gratitude, were ripe for disor- 
ders." 

Because the Irish do not go into 
ecstasies of gratitude at every tar- 
dy act of justice on the part of 
England, many persons are apt to 
regard them as ungrateful. If they 
are still dissatisfied it is not be- 
cause one act of justice which was 
done to them was granted, but be- 
cause other acts of justice that 
ought to have been done have 
been systematically refused. 

The guiding principle hitherto 
appears to have been to concede 
nothing until external circumstan- 
ces and convenience made the con- 
cession necessary for England's 
safety. 

Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, in his life 
of Lord Palmerston, says : " Al- 
though the Catholic disabilities 
were removed in 1829, the spirit 
which had established them on the 
one side and rescinded them on 
the other still remained, and there 
seems even to this day to be a 
difficulty in persuading those most 
interested in its welfare that, if Ire- 
land is to be properly governed, it 
must not be governed in a secta- 
rian spirit, nor must any question 
be debated with the idea of alone 
dealing with it as a religious ques- 
tion." 

In the year 1830, when an elec- 
tion was held in Belgium to nomi- 
nate a sovereign for that newly- 



constituted kingdom, O'Connell re- 
ceived three votes a fact that of 
itself shows how widely his fame 
had spread. France, in the midst 
of her revolutionary agitation, ques- 
tioned him in order to learn from 
him how social revolutions could 
be brought about without blood- 
shed. 

When he was imprisoned he re- 
ceived addresses from all parts of 
the world, including one signed by 
nine of the leading English Catho- 
lic families, who had always been 
inclined to stand aloof from him; 
and when his appeal was heard in 
the House of Lords, Lord Wharn- 
cliffe begged the members of the 
house, who were O'Connell's bitter- 
est foes, not to permit their personal 
or political feelings to influence a 
judicial sentence, the consequence 
of which was that he was acquitted. 
O'Connell was pre-eminently a 
practical Catholic, and proved his 
fidelity to the church not only by 
words but by deeds. When he was 
attacked he generally managed to 
leave his opponent the doubtful 
triumph of a name which clung to 
him for life. 

To O'Connell English Catholics 
owe much ; to him Ireland owes 
everything that she possesses. The 
humblest peasant has had his so- 
cial position wonderfully amelio- 
rated and his religious position 
raised to a height that he could 
scarcely have ventured to hope for 
at the beginning of the century. 
Churches, convents, monasteries, 
chapels, and schools have sprung 
up in such quick succession within 
the last forty years that the whole 
face of Ireland is changed. In 
place of ugly thatched cabins built 
at the cross-roads, void of any 
species of decoration, and fitted up 
with huge galleries, we now find 
dotted over the country neat build- 



IIO 



Catholic Emancipation and its Results. 



ings of brick and stone, enclosed 
within a neat churchyard, and 
frequently showing signs of care 
and taste. In place of the old 
chapels in towns, that were neces- 
sarily erected so as not to have 
externally the appearance of a Ca- 
tholic place of worship, and inter- 
nally to hold the largest number of 
persons in the smallest: possible, 
space, we now find magnificent 
and spacious churches with pillars 
of marble and seats of carved oak, 
numerous altars and side-chapels. 
Some of these modern churches 
are on a scale of great magnificence, 
and are considered well able to 
compete with those originally erect- 
ed by our Catholic forefathers. 
Amongst the most notable cathe- 
drals we might mention Armagh, 
which is perhaps the finest cathe- 
dral in Ireland (Catholic or Protes- 
tant), Sligo, and Killarney. Mona- 
ghan and Queenstown are in course 
of completion, but, when finished, 



may be added to the above; whilst 
the churches are too numerous to 
mention. The disestablishment of 
the Protestant Episcopal Commu- 
nion doubtless effected much in 
the way of clearing the path for 
the genuine church of the country, 
but it is to Catholic emancipation 
we must trace the dawn of better 
days for Ireland. From that date 
the bishops were able to assume a 
more definite position, the clergy 
were unfettered, and the laity were 
able to aspire to places of honor in 
every profession till Ireland saw 
one of her faithful sons nominated 
to the post of lord chancellor. At 
the present moment but one post 
that of lord lieutenant is still closed 
against Catholics ; but the day may 
not be far distant when it will also 
be laid open, and then the final knell 
of Protestant ascendency will be 
rung, and Ireland, after a battle of 
three hundred years, will have won 
the day. 



The Popes Encyclical. 



Hi 






THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL. 

THE recent Encyclical Letter of our Holy Father Leo XII I on 
the subject of philosophical studies is given below, with a translation 
No words of ours are needed .to call attention to it. It speaks for and 
explains itself. It relates to one of the most important subjects that 
could possibly engage the Catholic mind, and treats it with a thorough, 
ness, learning, and completeness that seem peculiarly characteristic of 
the venerable author and Pontiff. 



SANCTISSIMI DOMINI NOSTRI 

LEONIS 

DIVINA PROVIDENTIA 

PAP^E XIII. 
EPISTpLA ENCYCLICA 

Ad Patriarchas, Primates, Aichiipiscopos 

et Episcopos Uniz'frsos Catholici Orbis 

Gratiam et Comtminionem ciim 

Apostolica Sede habentes. 

Venerabilibus Fratribus Patriarchis, Pri- 
matilms, Archiepiscopis et Episcopis Uni- 
versis Catholici Orbis Gratiam et Com- 
mtmionem cum Apostolica Sede haben- 
tibus, 

LEO PP. XIII. 

Venerabilcs Fratres, Silutem et Apostoli- 
cam Be-iedictionem : 

^Eterni Patris Unigenitus Filius, qui 
in terris apparuit, ut humano generi 
salutem et divinae sapientiae lucem affer- 
ret, magnum plane ac mirabile mundo 
contulit beneficium, cum caelos iterum 
ascensurus, Apostolis praccepit, ut euntes 
docerent omnes gentes ; 1 Ecclesiamque a 
se conditam communem et supremam 
populorum magistram reliquit. Ho- 
mines enim, quos veritas liberayerat, 
veritate erant conservandi : neque diu 
permansissent caelestium doctrinarum 
fructus, per quos est homini parta salus, 
nisi Christus Dominus erudiendis ad 
fidem mentibus perenne magisterium 
constituisset. Ecclesia vero divini Auc- 
toris sui cum erecta promissis, turn imi- 
tata caritatem, sic' iussa perfecit, ut hoc 
semper spectarit, hoc maxime voluerit, 
de religione praecipere et cum erroribus 
perpetuo dimicare. Hue sane pertinent 
singulorum Episcoporum vigilati la- 
bores; hue Conciliorum perlatae leges 
ac decreta, ct maxime Romanorum Pon- 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF OUR HOLY PATH 

LEO XIII., 

BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE POPE, 

To all the Patriarchs, Primates, Arch- 
bishops, and Bishops of the Catholic 
world, in grace and communicn 
with the Apostolic See, 



To our Venerable Brethren all the Patri- 
archs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bi- 
shops of the Catholic world, in grace 
and communion with the Aposto.ic See, 

LEO XIII. 

Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic 
Benediction : 

The only-begotten Son of the Eterna 
Father, who came on earth to bring sal- 
vation and the light of divine wisdom to 
men, conferred a great and wonderful 
blessing on the world when, about to 
ascend again into heaven, he command- 
ed the apostles to go and teach all na- 
tions, 1 and left the church which he had 
founded to be the common and supreme 
teacher of the peoples. For men, whom 
the truth had set free, were to be pre- 
served by the truth ; nor would the 
fruits of heavenly doctrines, by which 
salvation comes to men, have long re- 
mained, had not the Lord Christ ap- 
pointed an unfailing authority for the 
instruction of the faithful. And the 
church built upon the promises of its 
own divine Author, whose charity it imi- 
tated, so faithfully followed out his com- 
mands that its constant aim and chief 
wish was this : to teach true religion and 
contend for ever against errors. To 
this end assuredly have tended the in- 



Matt, xxviii. 19. 



The Popes Encyclical. 



tificum sollicitudo quotidiana, penes 
quos, beati Petri Apostolorum Principis 
in primatu successores, et ius et officium 
est docendi et confirmandi fratres in 
fide. Quoniam vero, Apostolo monente, 
per philosophiam et inanem fallaciam a 
Christi fidelium mentes decipi solent, et 
fidei sinceritas in hominibus corrumpi, 
idcirco supremi Ecclesiae Pastores mu- 
neris sui perpetuo esse duxerunt etiam 
veri nominis scientiam totis viribus pro- 
vehere, simulque singulari vigilantia 
providere, ut ad fidei catholicae normam 
ubique traderentur humanae disciplinae 
oinnes, praesertim vero philosophia, a qua 
nimirum magna ex parte pendet cetera- 
rum scientiarum recta ratio. Id ipsum 
et Nos inter cetera breviter monuimus, 
Venerabiles Fratres, cum primum Vos 
omnes per Litteras Encyclicas allocuti 
sumus ; sed modo rei gravitate et tem- 
porum conditione compellimur rursus 
Vobiscum agere de ineunda philosophi- 
corum studiorum ratione, quae et bono 
fidei apte respondeat, et ipsi humanarum 
scientiarum dignitati sit consentanea. 



Si quis in acerbitatem nostrorum tem- 
porum animum intendat, earumque 
rerum rationem, quae publice et priva- 
tim geruntur, cogitatione complectatur, 
is profecto comperiet, fecundam malo- 
rum causam, cum eorum quae premunt, 
turn eorum quae pertimescimus, in eo 
consistere, quod prava de divinis hu- 
manisque rebus scita, e scholis philoso- 
phorum iampridem profecta, in omnes 
civitatis ordines irrepserint, communi 
plurimorum suffragio recepta. Cum 
enim insitum homini natura sit, ut in 
agendo rationem ducem sequatur, si 
quid intelligentia peccat, in id et volun- 
tas facile labitur : atque ita contingit, ut 
pravitas opinionum, quarum est in intel- 
ligentia sedes, in humanas actiones in- 
fluat, easque pervertat. Ex adverse, si 
sana mens hominum fuerit, et solidis 
verisque principiis firmiter insistat, turn 
vero in publicum privatumque commo- 
dum plurimabeneficia progignet. Equi- 
dem non tantam humanae philosophiae 
vim et auctoritatem tribuimus, ut cunc- 
tis omnino erroribus propulsandis vel 



cessant labors of individual bishops ; 
to this end also the published iaws and 
decrees of councils, and especially the 
constant watchfulness of the Roman 
Pontiffs, to whom, as successors of the 
blessed Peter in the primacy of the 
apostles, belongs the right and office of 
teaching and confirming their brethren 
in the faith. Since, then, according to 
the warning of the apostle, the minds of 
Christ's faithful are apt to be deceived 
and the integrity of the faith to be corrupt- 
ed among men by philosophy and vain 
deceit, 2 the supreme pastors of the 
church have always thought it their duty 
to advance, by every means in their 
power, science truly so called, and at the 
same time to provide with special care 
that all studies should accord with the 
Catholic faith, especially philosophy, on 
which a right apprehension of the other 
sciences in great part depends. Indeed, 
venerable brethren, on this very subject, 
among others, we briefly admonished 
you in our first encyclical letter ; but 
now, both by reason of the gravity of the 
subject and the condition of the lime, we 
are again compelled to speak to you on 
the mode of taking up the study of phi- 
losophy which shall respond most fitly 
to the true faith, and at the same time 
be most consonant with the dignity of 
human knowledge. 

Whoso turns his attention to the bitter 
strifes of these days, and seeks a reason 
for the troubles that vex public and 
private life, must come to the conclu- 
sion that a fruitful cause of the evils 
which now afflict, as well as of those 
which threaten, us lies in this: that false 
conclusions concerning divine and hu- 
man things, which originated in the 
schools of philosophy, have crept into 
all the orders of the state, and have been 
accepted by the common consent of the 
masses. For since it is in the very na- 
ture of man to follow the guide of rea- 
son in his actions, if his intellect sins at 
all his will soon follows ; and thus it 
happens that looseness of intellectual 
opinion influences human actions and 
perverts them. Whereas, on the other 
hand, if men be of sound mind and 
take their stand on true and solid prin- 
ciples, there will result a vast amount 
of benefits for the public and private 
good. We do not, indeed, attribute such 
force and authority to philosophy as to 
esteem it equal to the task of combating 



-Co'oss. ii. 



The Popes Encyclical. 



evellendis parem esse iudicemus : sicut 
enim,cum primum est religio Christiana 
constituta, per admirabile fidei lumen, 
non persitasibilibus Jiumana; sapi entice ver~ 
/>is diffusum, s< d in ostensione spiritus et 
virtulis? orbi terrarum contigit ut pri- 
mrcvae dignit.iti restitueretur ; ita etiam 
in prsesens ab omnipotenti potissimum 
virtute et auxilio Dei expectandum est, 
ut mortalium mentes, sublatis errorum 
tenebris, resipiscant. Sed neque sper- 
nenda neu posthabenda sunt naturalia 
adiumenta, qux divinae sapientiae bene- 
ficio, fortiter suaviterque omnia dispo- 
nentis, hominum generi suppetunt ; qui- 
bus in adiumentis rectum philosophise 
usum constat esse prsecipuum. Non 
enim frustta rationis lumen humanae 
menti Deus inseruit ; et tanlum abest, 
ut superaddita fidei lux intelligentiae 
virtutem extinguat aut imminuat, ut po- 
tius perhciat, auctisque viribus, habilem 
ad maiora reddat. Igitur postulat ip- 
sius divinre Providentise ratio, ut in re- 
vocandis ad fidem et ad salutem populis 
etiam ab huinana scientia praesidium 
quasratur ; quam industriam, probabilem 
ac sapientem, in more positam fuisse 
pneclari?simorum Ecclesire Patrum, an- 
tiquitatis monumenta testantur. Illi 
scilicet neque paucas, neque tenues ra- 
tioni partes dare consueverunt, quas 
omnes perbreviter complexus est mag- 
mts Augustinus, Iniic scientue tribuens 
. . . ill nd (]2io fides sahtberrima . . . gig- 
nitur j nnti itii*-, defendititr, roboratur* 



Ac prime quidem philosophia, si rite 
a sapientibus usurpetur, iter ad veram 
fidem quodammodo sternere et munire 
valet, suorumque alumnorum anirnas ad 
revelationem suscipiendam convenien- 
ter pmeparare ; quamobrem a veteribus 
modo/'Wc'/<7 ad cJiristianam fidem instilii- 
tio* modo Christianistni pr&ludium el aux- 
iliiun* modo ad Evangclium padigogus" 1 
non immerito appellata est. 

Et sane benignissimus Deus, in eo 
quod pertinet ad res divinas, non eas 
tantum veritates lumine fidei patefecit, 
quibus attingendis impar humana intel- 
ligentia est, sed nonnullas etiam raani- 
festavit, rationi non omnino impervias, 
ut scilicet, accedente Dei auctoritate, 

3 i Cor. ii. 4. 

"Clem. Alex., Strom., lib. i. c. 16 ; 1. vii. c. 3. 

7 Clem. Alex., Strom., i. c. 5. 

VOL. XXX. 8 



and rooting out all errors ; for, when 
the Christian religion was first consti- 
tuted, it came upon earth to restore it to 
its primeval dignity by the admirable 
light of faith, diffused not by persuasive 
words of human wisdom, but in the 
manifestation of spirit and of power ; 3 so 
also at the present time we look above 
all things to the powerful help of Al- 
mighty God to bring back to a right 
understanding the minds of men and 
dispel the darkness of error. But the 
natural helps with which the grace cf the 
divine wisdom, strongly and sweetly 
disposing all things, has supplied the 
human race are neither to be despised 
nor neglected, chief among which is 
evidently the right use of philosophy. 
For not in vain did God set the light of 
reason in the human mind ; and so far 
is the superadded light of faith from 
extinguishing or lessening the power 
of the intelligence (hat it completes it 
rather, and by adding to its strength 
renders it capable of greater things. 

Therefore divine Providence itself re- 
quires that in calling back the peoples 
to the paths of faith and salvation ad- 
vantage should be taken of human 
science also an approved and wise 
practice which history testifies was ob- 
served by the most illustrious Fathers of 
the church. They, indeed, were went 
neither to belittle nor undervalue the 
part that reason had to pl3y, as is sum- 
med up by the great Augustine when he 
attributes to this science " that by which 
the most wholesome faith is begotten, 
... is nourished, defended, and made 
strong." 4 

In the first place, philosophy, if rightly 
made use of by the wise, in a certain 
way tends to smooth and fortify the road 
to true faith, and to prepare the souls of 
its disciples for the fit reception of reve- 
lation ; for which reason it is well called 
by ancient writers sometimes a stepping- 
stone to the Christian faith, 5 sometimes 
the prelude and help of Christianity, 6 
sometimes the Gospel teacher. 7 And 
assuredly the God of all goodness, in all 
that pertains to divine things, has not 
only manifested by the light of faith those 
truths which human intelligence could 
not attain of itself, but others also not 
altogether unattainable by reason, that 
by the help of divine authority they may 

*De Trin., lib. xiv. c. i. 
e Orig. ad Greg. Thaum. 



The Pope s Encyclical. 



statim, et sine aliqua erroris admixtione 
omnibus innotescerent. Ex quo factum 
est, ut quaedam vcra, quae vel divinitus 
ad credendum proponuntur, vel cum 
doctrina fidei arctis quibusdam vinculis 
colligantur, ipsi ethnicorum sapientes, 
naturali tantum ratione praelucente, cog- 
noverint, aptisque argumentis demon- 
straverint ac vindicaverint. Invisibilia 
enim Ipsius, ut apostolus inquit, a crea- 
tura mtindi per ea, qua facia stint, intel- 
lecta, ccnspiciuntur, sempitenia qu^que eizts 
virtus el divini.'as ;* et gentes qua legem 
non habent . . . ostendunt nihilominus 
opus legis scriptum in cordilms suis* 
Hacc autem vera, vel ips ; s ethnicorum 
sapientibus explorata, vehementer est 
opportunum in revelatse doctrinae com- 
modum utilitatemque convertere, ut re 
ipsa ostendatur, humanam quoque sa- 
pientiam, atque ipsum adversariorum 
testimonium fidei christianae suffragari. 
Quam agendi rationem non recens in- 
troductam sed veterem esse constat, et 
sanctis Ecclesiae Patribus saepe usitatam. 
Quin etiam venerabiles isti religiosarum 
traditionum testes et custodes formam 
quamdam eius rei et prope figuram ag- 
noscunt in Hebraeorum facto, qui ^gyp- 
to excessuri, deferre secum iussi sunt 
argentea atque aurea ^Egyptiorum vasa 
cum vestibus pretiosis, ut scilicet, mu- 
tato repente usu, religioni veri Numi- 
nis ea supellex dedicaretur, quae prius 
ignominiosis ritibus et superstitioni in- 
servierat. Gregorius Neocaesariensis 10 
laudat Origenem hoc nomine, quod 
plura ex ethnicorum placitis ingeniose 
decerpta, quasi erepta hostibus tela : in 
patrocinium Christianas sapientias et per- 
nicem superstitionis singular! dexteri- 
tate retorserit. Et parem disputandi 
morem cum Gregorius Nazianzenus, 11 
turn Gregorius Nyssenus ia in Basilic 
Magno et laudant et probant ; Hiero- 
nymus vero magnopere commendat in 
Quadrato Apostolorum discipulo, in 
Aristide, in lustino, in Irenaco, aliisque 
permultis. 13 Augustinus autem, Nonne 
aspicimus, inquit, qttanto auro et argento et 
veste suffarcinatus exierit de AZgypto Cyp- 
rianits, doctor suavissimus et martyr beatis- 
simus? quanta Lactantius? quanta Victo- 
rinus, Optattis, Hilarius ? ut de vivis ta- 
ceam, quanta inr.umerabiles Greed? 
Quod si vero naturalis ratio opimam 
hanc doctdnse segetem prius fudit, quam 



8 Rom. i. 20. 
11 Vit. Moys. 
i 3 Epist. ad Magn. 



Ib. ii. 14, 



be made known to all at once and with- 
out any admixture of error. Hence it is 
that certain truths which were either 
divinely proposed for belief, or were 
bound by the closest chains to a doc- 
trine of faith, were discovered by pagan 
sages with nothing but their natural 
reason to guide them, were demonstrat- 
ed and proved by becoming arguments. 
For, as the apostle says, the invisible 
things of Him, from the creation of the 
world, are clearly seen, being understood 
by the things that are made : his eter- 
nal power also and divinity ; 8 and the 
Gentiles who have not the law show, 
nevertheless, the work of the law written 
in their hearts. But it is most fitting to 
turn these truths, which have been dis- 
covered by the pagan sages even, to the 
use and purposes of revealed doctrine, 
in order to show that both human wis- 
dom and the very testimony of our ad- 
versaries serve to support the Christian 
faith a method which is not of recent 
introduction, but of established use, and 
has often been adopted by the holy 
Fathers of the church. For instance, 
those venerable men, the witnesses and 
guardians of religious traditions, recog- 
nize a certain form and figure of this in 
the action of the Hebrews, who, when 
about to depart out of Egypt, were com- 
manded to take with them the gold and 
silver vessels and precious robes of the 
Egyptians, that by a change of use the 
things might be dedicated to the service 
of the true God which had formerly been 
the instruments of ignoble and supersti- 
tious rites. Gregory of Neocaesarea 10 
praises Origen expressly because, with 
singular dexterity, as one snatches wea- 
pons from the enemy, he turned to the 
defence of Christian wisdom and to the 
destruction of superstition many argu- 
ments drawn from the writings of the 
pagans. And both Gregory of Nazian- 
zen n and Gregory of Nyssa 12 praise and 
commend a like mode of disputation in 
Basil the Great ; while Jerome especial- 
ly commends it in Quadratus, a disci- 
ple of the apostles, in Aristides, Justin, 
Irenaeus, and very many others. 13 Augus- 
tine says : *' Do we not see Cyprian, 
that mildest of doctors and most blessed 
of martyrs, going out of Eg)^pt laden with 
gold and silver and vestments ? And 
Lactantius also and Victorinus, Optatus 

10 Orat paneg. ad Origen. 

12 Carm. i. Iamb. 3. 

14 De Doctr. christ., 1. ii. c. 40. 



The Popes Encyclical. 



Christ! virtute fecundaretur, multo ube- 
riorem certe progignet, posteaquam Sal- 
vatoris gratia nativas humanae mentis 
facultates instauravit et auxit. Ecquis 
autem non videat, iter planum et facile 
per huiusmodi philosophandi genus ad 
fidem aperiri ? 



Non his tamen limitibus utilitas cir- 
cumscribitur, quae ex illo philosophandi 
institute dimanat. Et revera divin<esa- 
pientiae eloquiis graviter reprehenditur 
eorum hominum stuttitia, qui de his, qua 
videntitr bona, non potuerunt intelligere 
Eum qui est ; neque iperibus attendenles 
agnoverunt, quis e.set artifcx. Igitur 
primo loco magnus hie et prseclarus ex 
humana ratione fructus capitur, quod 
ilia Deum esse demonstret : a magnitu- 
dine enim speciei et creatures cognoscibililer 
potcrit Creator hoium videri. 1 * Deinde 
Deum ostendit omnium perfectionum 
cumulo singulariter excellere, infinita in 
primis sapientia, quam nulla usquam res 
latere, et summa iustitia, quam pravus 
nunquam vincere possit affectus, ideo- 
que Deum non solum veracem esse, sed 
ipsam etiam ventatem falli et fallere 
nesciam. Ex quo consequi perspicuum 
est, ut humana ratio plenissimam verbo 
Dei fidem atque auctoritatem conciliet. 
Simili modo ratio declarat, evangelicam 
doctrinam mirabilibus quibusdam sig- 
nis, tamquam certis certae veritatis argu- 
mentis, vel ab ipsa origine emicuisse : 
atque ideo omnes, qui Evangelic fidem 
adiungunt, non temere adiungere, tam- 
quam doctas fabulas secutos, 1 '' sed ra- 
tionabili prorsus obsequio intelligentiam 
et iudicium suum divinae subiicere auc- 
toritati. Illud autem non minoris pretii 
esse intelligitur, quod ratio in perspicuo 
ponat.Ecclesiam a Christo institutam (ut 
statuit Vaticana Synodus) ob suani adtni- 
rabilem piopagationc/n, eximiam sanctita- 
iem et inexhaustam in omnibus l^cis fccun- 
ditatem, ob catholicam nnitatem, invictam- 
qucstabilitatem, magnum quoddam et perpe- 
tuujn esse motivum credibilitatis, et divine? 
stitc Icgationis testlmoniuin irrcfragabile. 



Sap. xiii. i. 16 Sap. xiii. 5. 



17 2 Petr. i. 16. 



and Hilary? And, not to speak of the 
living, how many Greeks have done like- 
wise ? " But if natural reason first sow- 
ed this rich field of doctrine before it was 
rendered fruitful by the power of Christ, 
it must assuredly become more prolific 
after the grace of the Saviour has renew- 
ed and added to the native faculties of 
the human mind. And who does not 
see that a plain and easy road is opened 
up to faith by such a method of philos-- 
phic study? 

But the advantage to be derived from 
such a school of philosophy is not to be 
confined within these limits. The fool- 
ishness of those men is gravely reprov- 
ed in the words of divine wisdom who 
by these good things that are seen could 
not understand Him that is, neither by 
attending to the works could have ac- 
knowledged who was the workman. 15 In 
the first place, then, this great and noble 
fruit is gathered from human reason, that 
it demonstrates that God is ; for by the 
greatness of the beauty and of the 
creature the Creator of them may be 
seen so as to be known thereby. 1 " Again, 
it shows God to excel in the height of 
all perfections, in infinite wisdom before 
which nothing lies hidden, and in abso- 
lute justice which no depraved affection 
could possibly shake ; and that God, 
therefore, is not only true but truth itself, 
which can neither deceive nor be de- 
ceived. Whence it clearly follows that 
human reason finds the fullest faith and 
authority united in the word of God. In 
like manner reason declares that the 
doctrine of the Gospel has even from 
its very beginning been made manifest 
by certain wonderful signs, the estab- 
lished proofs, as it were, of unshaken 
truth ; and that all, therefore, who set 
faith in the Gospel do not believe rashly 
as though following cunningly-devised 
fables, 17 but, by a most reasonable con- 
sent, subject their intelligence and judg- 
ment to an authority which is divine. 
And of no less importance is it that 
reason most clearly sets forth that the 
church instituted by Christ (as laid down 
in the Vatican Synod), on account of 
its wonderful spread, its marvellous 
sanctity, and its inexhaustible fecundity 
in all places, as well as of its Catholic 
unity and unshaken stability, is in itself 
a great and perpetual motive of belief 
and an irrefragable testimony ol its ow:v 
divine mission. 18 

18 Const, dogm. de Fid. Cath., cap. 3. 



The Popes Encyclical. 



Solidissimis ita positis fundamentis, 
perpetuus et multiplex adhuc requiritur 
philosophise usus, sacra theologia na- 
turam, habitum, ingeniumque verse sci- 
entiie suscipiat atque induat. In hac 
enim nobilissima disciplinarum magno- 
pere necesse est, ut multae ac diversse 
cselestium doctrinarum partes in unum 
veluti corpus colligantur, ut suis quae- 
que locis convenienter dispositse, et ex 
propriis principiis derivatae, apto inter 
se nexu cohaereant ; demum ut omnes 
et singulae suis iisque invictis argu men- 
tis confirmentur. Nee silentio pnetere- 
unda, aut minimi facienda est accuratior 
ilia atque uberior rerum, quae creduntur, 
cognitio, et ipsorum fidei mysteriorum, 
quoad fieri potest, aliquanto lucidior in- 
telligentia, quam Augustinus aliique Pa- 
tres et laudarunt et assequi studuerunt, 
quamque ipsa Vaticana Synodus 19 fruc- 
tuosissimam esse decrevit. Earn siqui- 
dem cognitionem et intelligentiam plen- 
ius et facilius certe illi consequuntur, qui 
Cum integritate vitse fideique studio in- 
genium coniungunt philosophicis disci- 
plinis expolitum, prsesertim cum eadem 
Synodus Vaticana doceat, eiusmodi sa- 
crorum dogmata m intelligentiam turn ex 
Coritin, qutznatuialitercpgnosciintur, analo- 
gia ; turn e mysteriorum ipsorum nexu inter 
se ft cum fixe hominis ultimo peti opor- 
tere. 20 



Postremo hoc quoque ad disciplinas 
philosophicas pertinet, veritates divinitus 
.traditas religiose tueri et iis qui oppugnare 
audeantresistere. Quam ad rem.magna 
est philosophise laus, quod fidei propug- 
.naculum ac veluti firmum religionis mu- 
nimentum habeatur. Est quidtm, sicut 
Clemens Alexandrinus teslatur, per se 
per feet a et nullius indi^a Salvatoris doc- 
trina, cum sit Dd virtus et sapientia. Ac- 
cedens autem grceca philosophia veritatem 
won facit potcntiorem ; sed cum debiles effi- 
: ciat sophistarum advetsus earn argumenta- 
Hones, et propulset dolosas adversus verita- 
1e.m insidias, dicta est vin<ce apta sepes el 
. vallus?^ Piofecto sicut inimici catholici 
nominis, adversus religionem pugnaturi, 
<bellicos apparatus plerumque a philoso 
phica ratione mutuantur, ita divinarum 
i sciential urn defensores plura e philoso- 
phise penu depromunt, quibus revelata 
dogmata valeant propugnare. Neque 
mediocriter in eo triumphare fides chris- 
19 Const, cit. cap. 4. 20 Ibid. 



Its solid foundations having been thus 
laid, a perpetual and varied service is 
further required of philosophy, in order 
that sacred theology may receive and 
assume the nature, form, and genius of 
a true science. For in this, the most 
noble of studies, it is of the greatest ne- 
cessity to bind together, as it were, in one 
body the many and various parts of the 
heavenly doctrines, that, each being al- 
lotted to its own proper place and de- 
rived from its own proper principles, the 
whole may join together in a complete 
union ; in order, in fine, that all and each 
part may be strengthened by its own and 
the others' invincible arguments. Nor is 
that more accurate or fuller knowledge 
of the things that are believed, and 
somewhat more lucid understanding, as 
far as it can go, of the very mysteries of 
faith which Augustine and the other 
Fathers commended and strove to reach, 
and which the Vatican Synod itself 19 
declared to be most fruitful, to be passed 
over in silence or belittled. Those will 
certainly more fully and more easily at- 
tain that knowledge and understanding 
who to integrity of life and love of faith 
join a mind rounded and finished by 
philosophic studies, as the same Vatican 
Synod teaches that the knowledge of 
such sacred dogmas ought to be sought 
as well from analogy of the things that 
are naturally known as from the con- 
nection of those mysteries one with an- 
other and with the final end of man. 20 

Lastly, the duty of religiously defend- 
ing the truths divinely delivered, and of 
resisting those who dare oppose them, 
pertains to philosophic pursuits. Where- 
fore it is the glory of philosophy to be 
esteemed as the bulwark of faith and the 
strong defence of religion. As Clement 
of Alexandria testifies, the doctrine of 
the Saviour is indeed perfect in itself 
and wanteth naught, since it is the pow- 
er and wisdom of God. And the as- 
sistance of the Greek philosophy maketh 
not the truth more powerful ; but inas- 
much as it weakens the contrary argu- 
ments of the sophists and repels the 
veiled attacks against the truth, it has 
been fitly called the hedge and fence of 
the vine. 21 For as the enemies of the Ca- 
tholic name, when about to attack reli- 
gion, are in the habit of borrowing their 
weapons from the arguments of philoso- 
phers, so the defenders of sacred science 
draw many arguments from the store of 
21 Strom., lib. i. c. 20. 



The Popes Encyclic 



117 



tiana censenda est, quod adversariorum 
anna, humanae rationis artibus ad no- 
cendum cornparata, humana ipsa ratio 
potenter expediteque repellat. Quam 
speciem religiosi certaminis ab ipso gen- 
tium Apostolo usurpatam commemorat 
S. Hieronymus scribens ad Magnum : 
Ductor christiani exeicitus Paulus et ora- 
tor invictus, fro Chris to caiisam agent, 
etiam inscriptionem fortuitam arte torquet 
in argninzntum fidei ; didicerat enim a 
ve>o David cxtorquere de manibus hostium 
glaiium, et Goliath sitperbissimi caput pro- 
prio mucrone tnmcare.^ Atque ipsa Ec- 
clesia istud a philosophia presidium 
christianos doctores petere non tantum 
suadet, sed etiam iubet. Etenim Conci- 
lium Lateranense V. posteaquam consti- 
tuit, " omnem assertionem veritati illu- 
minatae fidei contrariam omnino falsam 
esse, eo quod verum vero minime con- 
tradicat," 23 philosophise doctoribus prae- 
cipit, ut in dolosisargumentis dissolven- 
dis studiose versentur ; siquidem,ut Au- 
gustinus testatur, " si ratio contra divin- 
arum Scripturarum auctoritatem redditur, 
quamlibet acuta sit, fallit, veri similitu- 
dine ; nam vera esse non potest." 2 * 



Verum ut pretiosis hisce, quos memo- 
ravimus, afFerendis fructibus par philo- 
sophia inveniatur, omnino oportet, ut ab 
co tramite nunquam deflecta, quern et 
veneranda Patrum antiquitas ingressa 
est, et Vaticana Synodus solemn! aucto- 
ritatis suffragio comprobavit. Scilicet 
cum plane compertum sit, plurimas ex 
ordine supernatural! veritates esse acci- 
piendas, quae cuiuslibet ingenii longe 
vincunt acumen, ratio humana, propria? 
infirmitatis conscia, maiora se afFectare 
ne audeat, neque easdem veritates nega- 
re, neve propria virtute metiri, neu pro 
lubitu interprctari ; sed eas potius plena 
atque humili fide suscipiat, et summi 
honoris loco habeat, quod sibi liceat, in 
morem ancillae et pedissequae, famulari 
caelestibus doctrinis, casque aliqua ra- 
tione, Dei beneficio, attingere. In iis 
autem doctrinarum capitibus, quae per- 
cipere humana intelligentia naturaliter 
potest, aequum plane est, sua methodo, 
suisque principiis et argumentis uti phi- 



philosophy which may serve to uph-.ld 
revealed dogmas. Nor is the triumph 
of the Christian faith a small one in 
using human reason to repel power ully 
and speedily the attacks of its adversa- 
ries by the hostile arms which human 
reason itself supplied. Which species 
of religious strife St. Jerome, writing 
to Magnus, notices as having IU-I-TI 
adopted by the apostle of the Gentiles 
himself: Paul, the leader of the Christian 
army and the invincible orator, battling 
for the cause of Christ, skilfully turns 
even a chance inscription into an argu- 
ment for the faith ; for he had learned from 
the true David to wrest the sword from 
the hands of the enemy and to cut off the 
head of the boastful Goliath with his own 
weapon. 22 Moreover, the church herself 
not only urges, but eve,n commands, 
Christian teachers to seek help from 
philosophy. For the fifth Council of 
Lateran, after it had decided that " every 
assertion contrary to the truth of reveal- 
ed faith is altogether falsa, for the rea- 
son that it contradicts, however slightly, 
the truth," 23 advises teachers of philoso- 
phy to pay close attention to the exposi- 
tion of fallacious arguments ; since, as 
Augustine testifies, "if reason is turned 
against the authority of Sacred Scripture, 
no matter how specious it may seem, it 
errs in the likeness of truth ; for true it 
cannot be." 24 

But in order that philosophy may be 
found equal to the gathering of those 
precious fruits which we have indicated, 
it behoves it above all things never to 
turn aside from that path which the Fa- 
thers have entered upon from a venerable 
antiquity, and which the Vatican Council 
solemnly and authoritatively approved. 
As it is evident that very many truths of 
the supernatural order which are far 
beyond the reach of the keenest intel- 
lect must be accepted, human reason, 
conscious of its own infirmity, dare not 
affect to itself too great powers, nor deny 
those truths, nor measure them by its 
own standard, nor interpret them at 
will ; but receive them rather with a full 
and humble faith, and esteem it the 
highest honor to be allowed to wait up- 
on heavenly doctrines like a handmaid 
and attendant, and by God's goodness 
attain to them in any way whatsoever. 
But in the case of such doctrines as the 
human intelligence may perceive, it is 



Epist. ad Magn. 23 Bulla Apostolici regitninis. 

24 Epist. 143' (al. 7), ad Marcellin., n. 7. -4 



The Fopcs Encyclical. 



losophiam : non ita tamen, ut auctorita- 
ti divinae sese audacter subtrahere vi- 
deatur. Imo, cum constet, ca quae reve- 
latione innotescunt, certa veritate pol- 
lere, et quae fidei adv-ersantur pariter 
cum recta ratione pugnare, noverit phi- 
losophus catholicus se fidei simul et ra- 
tionis iura violaturum, si conclusionem 
aliquam amplectatur, quam revelatae 
doctiinae repugnare intellexent. 



Novimus profecto non deesse, qui 
facultates humanae naturae plus nimio 
extollentes, contendunt, hominis intelli- 
gentiam, ubi semel divinae auctoritati 
subiiciatur, e nativa dignitate excidere, 
et quodam quasi servitutis iugo demis- 
sam plurimum retardari atque impediri, 
quominus ad veritatis excellentiaeque 
fastigium progrediatur. Sed haec plena 
erroris et fallaciae sunt ; eoque tandem 
spectant, ut homines, summa cum stul- 
titia, nee sine crimine ingrati animi, sub- 
limiores veritates repudient, et divinum 
beneficium fidei, ex qua omnium bono- 
rum fontes etiam in civiiem societatem 
fluxere, sponte reiiciant. Etenim cum 
humana mens certis finibus, iisque satis 
angustis, conclusa teneatur, pluribus er- 
roribus, et multarum rerum ignorationi 
est obnoxia. Contra fides Christiana, cum 
Dei auctoritate nitatur, certissima est 
veritatis magistra ; quam qui sequitur, 
neque errorum laqueis irretitur, neque 
incertarum opinionum fluctibus agitatur. 
Quapropter qui philosophiae studium 
cum obsequio fidei chrisyanae coniun- 
gunt, ii optime philosophantur ; quan- 
doquidem divinarum veritatum splendor, 
animo exceptus, ipsam iuvat intelligen- 
tiam ; cui non modo nihil de dignitate 
detrahit, sed nobilitatis, acuminis, firmi- 
tatis plurimum addit. Cum vero ingenii 
aciem intendunt in refellendis senten- 
tiis, quae fidei repugnant, et in proban- 
dis, quae cum fide cohaerent, digne ac 
perutiliter rationem exercent : in illis 
enim prioribus, causas erroris deprehen- 
dunt, et argumentorum, quibus ipsae ful- 
ciuntur, vitium dignoscunt : in his au- 
tem posterioribus, rationum momentis 
potiuntur, quibus solide demonstrentur 
etcuilibet prudenti persuadeantur. Hac 
vero industria et exercitatione augeri 
mentis opes et explicari facultates qui 
neget, illi veri falsique discrimen nihil 



equally just that philosophy should 
make use of its own method, principles, 
and arguments not, indeed, in such 
fashion as to seem rashly to withdraw 
from the divine authority. But since it 
is established that those things which 
become known by revelation have the 
force of certain truth, and that those 
things which war against faith war 
equally against right reason, the Catho- 
lic philosopher will know that he vio- 
lates at once faith and the laws of rea- 
son if he accepts any conclusion which 
he understands to be opposed to reveal- 
ed doctrine. 

We know that there are some who, in 
their over estimate of the human facul- 
ties, maintain that as soon as man's in- 
tellect becomes subject to divine author- 
ity it falls from its native dignity, and, 
hampered by the yoke of this species of 
slavery, is much retarded and hindered 
in its progress towards the supreme 
truth and excellence. Such an idea is 
most false and deceptive, and its sole 
tendency is to induce foolish and un- 
grateful men wilfully to repudiate the 
most sublime truths, and reject the 
divine gift of faith, from which the foun- 
tains of all good things flow out upon 
civil society. For the human mind, be- 
ing confined within certain limits, and 
those narrow enough, is exposed to many 
errors and is ignorant of many things ; 
whereas the Christian faith, reposing on 
the authority of God, is the unfailing 
mistress of truth, whom whoso follovv- 
eth he will be neither immeshed in the 
snares of error nor tossed hither and 
thither on the waves of fluctuating 
opinion. Those, therefore, who to the 
study of philosophy unite obedience to 
the Christian faith are philosophers in- 
deed ; for the splendor of the divine 
truths, received into the mind, helps the 
understanding, and not only detracts in 
no wise from its dignity, but adds great- 
ly to its nobility, keenness, and stability. 
. For surely that is a worthy and most 
useful exercise of reason when men 
give their minds to disproving those 
things which are repugnant to faith and 
proving the things which conform to 
faith. In the first case they cut the 
ground from under the feet of error and 
expose the viciousness of the arguments 
on which error rests ; while in the 
second case they make themselves mas- 
ters of weighty reasons for the sound 
demonstration of truth and the satisfac- 



The Pope's Encyclical. 



conducere ad profectum ingenii, absurde 
contendat necesse est. Merito igitur 
Vaticana Synodus praeclara beneficia, 
quae per fid em ration! praestantur, his 
verbis commemorat : Fides rationem ab 
erroribus Jberat ac tuetur, eamque multi- 
plici cognitiene imtruit. 25 Atque idcirco 
homini, si saperet, non culpanda fides, 
veluti ratione et naturalibus veritatibus 
inimica, sed dignae potius Deo grates 
essent habendas, vehementerque laetan- 
dum, quod, inter multas ignorantiae cau- 
sas et in mediis errorum fluctibus, sibi 
fides sanctissima illuxerit, quas, quasi 
sidus amicum, citra omnem errandi for- 
midinem portum veritatis commonstrat. 



Quod si, Venerabiles Fratres, ad his- 
toriam philosophise respiciatis, cuncta, 
quae paullo ante diximus, re ipsa com- 
probari intelligetis. Et sane philoso- 
phorum veterum, qui fidei beneficio ca- 
ruerunt, etiam qui habebantur sapientis- 
simi, in pluribus deterrime errarunt. 
Nostis enim, inter nonnulla vera, quam 
saepe falsa et absona, quam multa incer- 
ta et dubia tradiderint de vera divinita- 
tis ratione, de prima rerum origine, de 
mundi gubernatione, de divina futuro- 
rum cognitione, de malorum causa et 
principio, de ultimo fine hominis, aeter- 
naquebeatitudine, de virtutibus et vitiis, 
aliisque doctrinis, quarum vera certa- 
que notitia nihil magis est hominum gen- 
eri necessarium. Contra vero primi Ec- 
clesiae Patres et Doctores, qui satis in- 
tellexerant, ex divinae voluntatis con- 
silio, restitutorem humanae etiam scien- 
tiae esse Christum, qui Dei virtus est 
Deique sapientia, 26 et in quo sunt omnes 
thesauri sapientia et scienti<z absconditi 
veterum sapientum libros investigan- 
dos, eorumque sententias cum revelatis 
doctrinis conferendas suscepere ; pru- 
dentique delectu quse in illis vere dicta 
et sapienter cogitata occurrerent, am- 
plexi sunt, ceteris omnibus vel emenda- 
tis vel reiectis. Nam providissimus 
Deus, sicut ad Ecclesiae defensionem 
martyres fortissimos, magnae animse pro- 
digos, contra tyrannorum saevitiam exci- 
tavit, ita philosophis falsi nominis aut 
haereticis viros sapientia maximos obie- 
23 Const, dogm. de Fid. Cath., cap. 4. 



tory instruction of any reasonable person. 
Whoever denies that such study and 
practice tend to add to the resources 
and expand the faculties of the mind 
must necessarily and absurdly hold that 
the mind gains nothing from discrimi- 
nating between the true and the false. 
Justly, therefore, does the Vatican Coun- 
cil commemorate in these words the 
great benefits which faith has conferred 
upon reason : " Faith frees and saves 
reason from error, and endows it with 
manifold knowledge'" 25 A wise man, 
therefore, would not accuse faith and 
look upon it as opposed to reason and 
natural truths, but would rather offer 
heartfelt thanks to God, and sincerely re- 
joice that, in the density of ignorance 
and in the flood-tide of error, holy faith, 
like a friendly star, shines down upon 
his path and points out to him the fair 
gate of truth beyond all danger of wan- 
dering. 

If, venerable brethren, you open the 
history of philosophy, you will find all we 
have just said proved by experience. 
The philosophers of old who lacked the 
gift of faith, yet were esteemed so wise, 
fell into many appalling errors. You 
know how often among some truths they 
taught false and incongruous things ; 
what vague and doubtful opinions 
they held concerning the nature of the 
Divinity, the first origin of things, the 
government of the world, the divine 
knowledge of the future, the cause and 
principle of evil, the ultimate end of 
man, the eternal beatitude, concerning 
virtue and vice, and other matters a true 
and certain knowledge of which is most 
necessary to the human race ; while, on 
the other hand, the early Fathers and 
Doctors of the church, who well under- 
stood that, according to the divine plan, 
the restorer of human science is Christ, 
who is the power and the wisdom of 
God, 26 and in whom are hid all the trea- 
sures of wisdom and knowledge, 2 ' took 
up and investigated the books of the an- 
cient philosophers, and compared their 
teachings with the doctrines of revela- 
tion, and, carefully sifting them, they cher- 
ished what was true and wise in them 
and amended or rejected all else. For 
as the all-seeing God against the cruelty 
of tyrants raised up mighty martyrs to the 
defence of the church, men prodigal of 
their great lives, in like manner to false 
philosophers and heretics he opposed 

26 i Cor. i. 24. 27 Coloss. ii. --,. 



120 



The Pop is Encyclical. 



cit, qui revelatarum veritatum thesau- 
rum etiam rationis humanae praesidio 
tuerentur. Itaque ab ipsis Ecclesiae pri- 
moidiis, catholica doctrina eos nacta est 
adversaries multo infestissimos, qui 
christianorum dogmata et instituta irri- 
dentes, ponebant pluresesse deos, mundi 
matetiam principio causaque caruisse, 
rerumque cursum caeca quadam vi et fa- 
tali contineri necessitate, non divinae 
providentiae consilio administrari. lam- 
vero cum his insanientis doctrinae ma- 
gistris mature congressi sunt sapien- 
tes viri, quos Apologetas nominamus, 
qui, fide praeeunte, ab humana quoque 
sapientia argumenta sumpserunt, qui- 
bus constituerent, unum Deum, omni 
perfectionum genere praestantissimum 
esse colendum ; res omnes e nihilo 
omnipotent! virtute productas, illius sa- 
pientia vigere, singulasque ad proprios 
fines dirigi ac moveri. Principem in- 
ter illos sibi locum vindicat S. Justinus 
martyr, qui posteaquam celeberrimas 
Graecorum academias, quasi experi- 
endo, lustrasset, plenoque ore nonnisi 
ex revelatis doctrinis, ut idem ipse fa- 
tetur, veritatum hauriri posse pervidis- 
set, illas toto animi ardore complexus, 
calumniis purgavit, penes Romano- 
rum imperatores acriter copioseque 
defendit, et non pauca Grsecorum phi- 
losophorum dicta cum eis composuit. 
Quod et Quadatus et Aristides, Her- 
mias et Athenagoras per illud tempus 
egregie praestiterunt. Neque minorem 
in eadern causa gloriam adeptus est 
Irenacus martyr invictus, Ecclesiae Lug- 
dunensis Pontifex : qui cum strenue re- 
futaret perversas orientalium opiniones, 
Gnosticorum opera per fines Romani im- 
perii disseminatas, origines haereseon 
singularum (auctore Hieronymo), et ex 
quibus philosophorum fontibus ema- 
narint . . . explicavit. 28 Nemo autem 
non novit Clementis Alexandrini dis- 
putaiiones, quas idem Hieronymus 
sic, honoris causa, commemorat ; " Quid 
in illis indoctum ? imo quid non de 
media philosophia est ?" 2U Multa ipse 
quidem incredibili varietate disseruit ad 
condendam philosophiae historiam, ad 
artem dialecticam rite exercendam, ad 
concordiam rationis cum fide concilian- 
dam utilissima. Hunc secutus Origenes, 
scholae Alexandrinae magisterio insignis, 
Graecorum et Orientalium doctrinis eru- 
ditissimus, perplura eademque labo- 
nosa edidit volumina, divinis litteris 
28 Epist. ad Magn. 



men of great wisdom, to defend, even 
by the aid of human reason, the treasure 
of revealed truths. Thus from the very 
first ages of the church the Catholic doc- 
trine has encountered a multitude of 
most bitter adversaries, who, deriding the 
Christian dogmas and institutions, main- 
tained that there were many gods, that 
the material world never had a begin- 
ning or cause, and that the course of 
events was one of blind and fatal ne- 
cessity, not regulated by the will of di- 
vine Providence. 

But the learned men whom we call 
apologists speedily encountered these 
teachers of foolish doctrine, and, under 
the guidance of faith, found arguments in 
human wisdom also to prove that one God, 
who stands pre-eminent in every kind of 
perfection, is to be worshipped ; that all 
things were created from nothing by his 
omnipotent power ; that by his wisdom 
they flourish and serve each their own spe- 
cial purposes. Among these St. Justin 
Martyr claims the chief place. Alter hav- 
ing tried the most celebrated academies of 
the Greeks, he saw clearly, as he himself 
confesses, that he could only draw truths 
in their fulness from the doctrines of 
revelation. These he embraced with all 
the ardor of his soul, purged of calumny, 
courageously and fully defended before 
the Roman emperors, and reconciled 
with them not a few of the sayings of the 
Greek philosophers. 

Quadratus also and Aristides, Her- 
mias and Athenagoras, stood nobly forth 
in that time. Nor did Irenrcus, the in- 
vincible martyr and bishop of Lyons, 
win less glory in the same cause when, 
forcibly refuting the perverse opinions of 
the Orientals, the work of the Gnostics, 
scattered broadcast over the territories of 
the Roman Empire, he explained (accord- 
ing to Jerome) the origin of each heresy 
and in what philosophic source it took 
its rise. 5 "* But who knows not the dispu- 
tations of Clement of Alexandria, which 
the same Jerome thus honorably com- 
memorates : "What is there in them 
that is not learned, and what that is not 
of the very heart of philosophy ?" - 1 He 
himself, indeed, with marvellous versa- 
tility treated of many things of the great- 
est utility for preparing a history of phi- 
losophy, for the exercise of the dialectic 
art, and for showing the agreement be- 
tween reason and faith. After him came 
Origen, who graced the chair of the 
29 Loc. cit. 



The Popes Encyclical. 



12! 



explanandis sacrisque dogmatibus illus- 
trandis mirabiliter opportuna ; quae licet 
erroribus, saltern ut nunc extant, omnino 
non vacent, magnam tamen complectun- 
tur vim sententiarum quibus naturales 
veritates et numero et firmitateaugentur. 
Pugnat cum hsereticis Tertullianus auc- 
toritate sacrarum litterarum ; cum phi- 
losophis, mutato armorum genere, philo- 
sophice ; hos autem tam acute et eru- 
dite convincit, ut iisdem palam fiden- 
terque obiiciat : Neque de scientia^ ncque 
de disciplina, ut putatis, tcquamur ? Ar- 
nobius etiam, vulgatis adversus gentiles 
libris, et Lactantius divinis pnesertim 
Institutionibus, pari eloquentia et ro- 
bore dogmata ac praecepta catholicae 
sapientiae persuadere homiriibus strenue 
nituntur, non sic philosophiam everten- 
tes, ut academici solent, 31 'sed partim 
suis armis, partim vero ex philosophorum 
inter se concertatione sumptis eos re- 
vincentes. 3 ' 2 Quae autem de anima hu- 
mana, de divinis attributis, aliisque 
maximi momenti queestionibus, magnus 
Athanasius et Chrysostomus oratorum 
princeps, scripta reliquerunt, ita, omni- 
um iudicio, excellunt, ut prope nihil ad 
illorum subtilitatem et copiam addi 
posse videatur. Et ne singulis recen- 
sendis nimii simus, summorum numero 
virorum, quorum est mentio facta, ad- 
iungimus Basilium magnum et utrum- 
que Gregorium, qui, cum Athenis, 
ex domicilio totius humanitatis, exiis- 
sent philosophiae omnis apparatu affa- 
tim instructi, quas sibi quisque doctri- 
1193 opes inflammato studio pepererat, 
eas ad hrereticos refutandos, instituen- 
dosque Christianos converterunt. Sed 
omnibus veluti palmam praeripuisse 
visus est Augustinus, qui ingenio 
praepotens, et sacris profanisque disci- 
plinis ad plenum imbutus, contra omnes 
suas setatis errores acerrime dimicavit 
fide summa, doctrina pari. Quern ille 
philosophise locum non attigit ; imo 
vero quern non diligentissime investi- 
gavit, sive cum altissima fidei mysteria 
fidelibus aperiret, et contra adversario- 
rum vesanos impetus defenderet ; sive 
cum, academicorum aut Manichaeorum 
commentis deletis, humanae scientiae 
fundamenta et firmitudinem in tuto col- 
locavit, aut malorum, quibus premuntur 
homines, rationem et originem et causas 
est persecutus? Quanta deangelis.de 
anima, de mente humana, de voluntate 
et libero arbitrio, de religione et de 

80 Apologet., 46. 31 Inst. vii. cap. 7. 



school of Alexandria, and was most learn- 
ed in the teachings of the Gereks and Ori- 
entals. He published many volumes, in- 
volving great labor, which were wonder- 
fully adapted to explain the divine writ- 
ings and illustrate the sacred dogmas; 
which, though, as they now stand, not 
altogether free from error, contain nev- 
ertheless a wealth of knowledge tending 
to the growth and advance of natu- 
ral truths. Tertullian opposes heretics 
with the authority of the sacred writ-' 
ings ; with the philosophers he changes 
his fence and disputes philosophical- 
ly ; but so learnedly and acutely did 
he confute them that he made bold to 
say, " Neither in science nor in school- 
ing are we equals, as you imagine." s< 
Arnobius also, in his works against the 
pagans, and Lactantius in the divine In- 
stitutions especially, with equal elo- 
quence and strength strenuously strive 
to move men to accept the dogmas and 
precepts of Catholic wisdom, not by 
philosophic juggling, after the fashion 
of the academicians, 31 but vanquishing 
them partly by their own arms, and 
parti)' by arguments drawn from the 
mutual contentions of the philosophers. 33 
But the writings on the human soul, the 
divine attributes, and other questions of 
mighty moment which the great Atha- 
nasius and Chrysostom, the prince of 
orators, have left behind them are, by 
common consent, so supremely excel- 
lent that it seems scarcely anything could 
be added to their subtlety and fulness. 
And, not to cover too wide a range, we 
add to the number of the great men of 
whom mention has been made the names 
of Basil the Great and of the two Gre- 
gories, who, on going forth from Athens, 
that home of all learning, thoroughly 
equipped with all the harness of philoso- 
phy, turned the wealth of knowledge 
which each had gathered up in a course 
of zealous study to the work of refuting 
heretics and preparing Christians. 

But Augustine would seem to have 
wrested the palm from all. Of a most 
powerful genius and thoroughly satu- 
rated with sacred and profane learning, 
with the loftiest faith and with equal 
knowledge, he combated most vigorous- 
ly all the errors of his age. What height 
of philosophy did he not reach ? What 
region of it did he not diligently ex- 
plore, either in expounding the loftiest 
mysteries of the faith to the faithful, or 
32 De opif. Dei, cap. 21. 



122 



The Popes Encyclical. 



beata vita, de tcmpore et aeternitate, de 
ipsa quoque mutabilium corporum na- 
tura subtilissime disputavit ! Post id 
tempus per Orientem loannes Damas- 
cenus, Basilii et Gregorii Nazianzeni 
vestigia ingressus, per Occidentem vero 
Boetius et Anselmus, Augustini doo 
trinas profcssi, patrimonium philoso- 
phic plurimum locupletarunt. 



Exinde mediae setalis doctores, quos 
Scholasticos vocant, magnae molis opus 
aggressi sunt, nimirum segetes doctrinae 
fecundas et uberes, amplissimis sanc- 
torum Patrum voluminibus difFusas, dili- 
genter congere, congestasque uno veluti 
loco condere, in posterorum usum et 
commoditatem. Quaeautem scholasticse 
disciplines sit origo, indoles et excel- 
lentia, iuvat hie. Venerabiles Fratres, 
verbis sapientissimi viri, Praedecessoris 
Nostri, Sixti V., fusiusaperire : " Divino 
Illius munere, qui solus dat spiritum 
scientke et sapientiae et intellectus, qui- 
que Ecclesiam suam per saeculorum 
aelates, prout opus est, novis beneficiis 
auget, novis praesidiis instruit, inventa 
est a maioribus nostris sapientissimis 
viris, theologia scholastica, quam duo 
potissimum gloriosi doctores, angelicus 
S. Thomas et seraphicus S. Bonaventura, 
clarissimi huius facultatis professores, 
. . . excellent! ingenio, assiduo studio, 
magnis laboribus et vigiliis excoluerunt 
atque ornarunt, eamque optime disposi- 
tam, multisque modis praeclare explica- 
tam posteris tradiderunt. 



"Et huius quidem tam salutaris 
scientiae cognitio et exercitatio, quae ab 
ubetrimis divinarum litterarum, sum- 
morum Pontificum, sanctorum Patrum 
et Conciliorum fontibus dimanat, semper 
certe maximum Ecclesiae adiumentum 
afferre potuit, sive ad Scripturas ipsas 
vere et sane intelligendas et interpre- 
tandas, sive ad Patres securius et utilius 



defending them against the fell on- 
slaught of adversaries, or again when, 
in demolishing the fables of the aca- 
demicians or the Manichaeans, he laid the 
safe foundations and sure structure of 
human science, or followed up the rea- 
son, origin, and causes of the evils that 
afflict man? How subtly he reasoned 
on the angels, the soul, the human 
mind, the will and free choice, on re- 
ligion and the life of the blessed, on 
time and eternity, and even on the very 
nature of changeable bodies ! After- 
wards, in the East, John Damascene 
treading in the footsteps of Basil and of 
Gregory Nazianzen, and in the West 
Boetius and Anselm following the doc- 
trines of Augustine, added largely to 
the patrimony of philosophy. 

Later on the doctors of the middle 
ages, who are called scholastics, ad- 
dressed themselves to a great work 
that of diligently collecting, and sifting, 
and storing up, as it were, in one place, 
for the use and convenience of posterity, 
the rich and fertile harvests of Christian 
learning scattered abroad in the volu- 
minous works of the holy Fathers. And 
with regard, venerable brethren, to the 
origin, drift, and excellence of this 
scholastic learning, it may be well here 
to speak more fully in the words of one 
of the wisest of our predecessors, Sixtus 
V. : " By the divine favor of Him who 
alone gives the spirit of science, and 
wisdom, and understanding, and who 
through all ages, as there may be need, 
enriches his church with new blessings 
and strengthens it with new safeguards, 
there was founded by our fathers, men 
of eminent wisdom, the scholastic theo- 
logy, which two glorious doctors in par- 
ticular, the angelic St. Thomas and the 
seraphic St. Bonaventure, illustrious 
teachers of this faculty, . . . with sur- 
passing genius, by unwearied dili- 
gence, and at the cost of long labors 
and vigils, set in order and beautified, 
and, when skilfully arranged and clearly 
explained in a variety of ways, handed 
down to posterity. 

" And, indeed, the knowledge and use 
of so salutary a science, which flows 
from the fertilizing founts of the sacred 
writings, the Sovereign Pontiffs, the holy 
Fathers, and the councils, must always be 
of the greatest assistance to the church, 
whether with the view of really and 
soundly understanding and interpreting 
the Scriptures, or more safely and to 



The Popes Encyclical. 



123 



perlegendos et explicandos, sive ad 
varies errores et haereses detegendas et 
refellendas: his vero novissimis diebus, 
quibus iam advenerunt tempora ilia 
periculosa ab Apostolo descripta, et 
homines blasphemi, superbi, seductores 
proficiunt in peius, errantes et alios in 
errorem mittentes, sane catholics fidei 
dogmatibus confirmandis et haeresibus 
confutandis pernecessaria est." 33 Quse 
verba quamvis theologian! scholasticam 
dumtaxat complecti videantur, tamen 
esse quoque de philosophia eiusque 
laudibus accipienda perspicitur. Si- 
quidem praeclarae dotes, quae theologi- 
am scholasticam hostibus veritatis fa- 
ciunt tantopere formidolosam, nimirum, 
ut idem Pontifex addit, " apta ilia et 
inter se nexa rerum et causarum co- 
haerenlia, illeordoet dispositio tamquam 
militum in pugnando instructio, illas 
dilucidae definiiiones et distinctiones, 
ilia argumentorum firmitas et acutissi- 
mae disputationes, quibus lux a tenebris, 
verum a falso distinguitur, haereticorum 
mendacia multis a praestigiis et fallaciis 
involuta, tamquam veste detracta pate- 
fiunt et denudantur," 34 praeclarae, inqui- 
mus, et mirabiles istas dotes unice a 
recto usu repetendae sunt eius philoso- 
phise, quam magistri scholastici, data 
opera et sapienti consilio, in dispu- 
tationibus etiam theologicis, passim, 
usurpare consueverunt. Praeterea cum 
illud sit scholasticorum theologorum 
proprium ac singulare, ut scientiam hu- 
manam ac divinam arctissimo inter se 
vinculo coniunxerint, profecto theolo- 
gia, in qua illi excelluerunt, non erat 
tantum honoris et commendationis ab 
opinione hominum adeptura, si man- 
cam atque imperfectam aut levem 
phiiosophiam adhibuissent. 

lamvero inter scholasticos doctores, 
omnium princeps et magister, longe 
eminet Thomas Aquinas, qui, uti Ca- 
ietanus animadvertit, veteres doctores sa- 
cros quia summe veneratus est, ideo intel- 
lectual omnium q^lodammodo scrtitits est. zf> 
Illorum doctrinas, veluti dispersa cuius- 
dam corporis membra, in unum Thomas 
cOllegit et coagmentavit, miro ordine 
digessit, et magnis incrementis ita ad- 
auxit, ut catholicae Ecclesiae singulare 
praesidium et decus iure meritoque ha- 
beatur. Ille quidem ingenio docilis et 
acer, memoria facilis et tenax, vitas in- 
tegerrimus, veritatis unice amator, di- 
vina humanaque scientia praedives, soli 
3 3 Bulla Triumphantis, an. 1588. 



better purpose reading and explaining 
the Fathers, or for exposing and refuting 
the various errors and heresies ; and in 
these late days, when those dangerous 
times described by the apostle are 
already upon us, when the blasphemers, 
the proud, and the seducers go from bad 
to worse, erring themselves and causing 
others to err, there is surely a very great 
need of confirming the dogmas of Ca- 
tholic faith and confuting heresies." 33 

Although these words seem to bear 
reference solely to scholastic theology, 
nevertheless they may plainly be accept- 
ed as equally true of philosophy and its 
praises. For the noble endowments 
which make the scholastic theology so 
formidable to the enemies of truth to wit, 
as the same pontiff adds, "that ready 
and close coherence of cause and effect, 
that order and array as of a disciplin- 
ed army in battle, those clear definitions 
and distinctions, that strength of argu- 
ment and those keen discussions, by 
which light is distinguished from dark- 
ness, the true from the false, expose and 
strip naked, as it were, the falsehoods 
of heretics wrapped around by a cloud 
of subterfuges and fallacies " 34 those 
noble and admirable endowments, we 
say, are only to be found in a right use 
of that philosophy which the scholastic 
teachers have been accustomed carefully 
and prudently to make use of even 
in theological disputations. Moreover, 
since it is the proper and special office 
of the scholastic theologians to bind 
together by the fastest chain human and 
divine science, surely the theology in 
which they excelled would not have 
gained such honor and commendation 
among men if they had made use of a 
lame and imperfect or vain philosophy. 

Among the scholastic doctors, the 
chief and master of all, towers Thomas 
Aquinas, who, as Cajetan observes, be- 
cause " he most venerated the ancient 
doctors of the church, in a certain way 
seems to have inherited the intellect 
of all." 3r> The doctrines of those il- 
lustrious men, like the scattered mem- 
bers of a body, Thomas collected to- 
gether and cemented, distributed in 
wonderful order, and so increased with 
important additions that he is rightly 
and deservedly esteemed the special 
bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith. 
With his spirit at once humble and 
swift, his memory ready and tenacious, 

Bull. cit. 35 In am. 2ae. q. 148, a. 4 in fin. 



124 



The Popes Encyclical. 



comparatus, orbem terrarum calore vir- 
tutum fovit, et doctrinse splendore com- 
plevit. Nulla est philosophise pars, 
quam non acute simul et solide pertrac- 
tarit : de legibus ratiocinandi, de Deo 
et incorporeis substantiis, de homine 
aliisque sensibilibus rebus, de humanis 
actibus eorumque principiis ita disputa- 
vit, ut in eo neque copiosa quaestionum 
seges, neque apta partium dispositio, 
neque optima procedendi ratio, neque 
principiorum firmitas aut argumentorum 
robur, neque dicendi perspicuitas aut 
proprietas, neque abstrusa quaeque ex- 
plicandi facilitas desideretur. 



Illud etiam accedit, quod philosophi- 
cas conclusiones angelicus Doctor 
speculatus est in rerum rationibus et 
principiis, quae quam latissime patent, et 
infinitarum fere veritatum semina suo 
veluti gremio concludunt, a posteriori- 
bus magistris opportuno tempore ct 
uberrimo cum fructu aperienda. Quam 
philosophandi rationem cum in errori- 
bus refutandis pariter adhibuerit, illud 
a se ipse impetravit, ut et superiorum 
temporum errores omnes unus debella- 
rit, et ad profligandos, qui perpetua vice 
in posterum exorituri sunt, arma invic- 
tissima suppeditarit. Praeterea ratio- 
nem, ut par est, a fide apprime distin- 
guens, utramque tamen amice conso- 
cians, utriusque turn iura conservavit, 
turn dignitati consuluit, ita quidem ut 
ratio ad humanam fastigium Thomas 
pennis evecta, iam fere nequeat subli- 
mius assurgere ; neque fides a ratione 
fere possit plura aut validiora adiumenta 
praestolari, quam quae iam est per Tho- 
mam consecuta. 

Has ob causas, doctissimi homines, 
superioribus praesertim setatibus theolo- 
giae et philosophise laude praestantissimi, 
conquisitis incredibili studio Thomae 
voluminibus immortalibus, angelicae sa- 
pientiae eius sese non tarn excolendos, 
quam penitus innutriendos tradiderunt. 
Omnes prope conditores et legiferos 
Ordinum religiosorum iussisse constat 
sodales suos, doctrinis S. Thomae stu- 
dere et religiosius haerere, cauti ne cui 
eorum impune liceat a vestigiis tanti viri 
vel minimum discedere. Ut Dominica- 
nam familiam praetereamus, quae summo 
hoc magistro iure quodam suo gloriatur, 



his life spotless throughout, a lover of 
truth for its own sake, richly endowed 
with human and divine science, like the 
sun he heated the world with the ardor 
of his virtues and filled it with the 
splendor of his teaching. Philosophy 
has no part which he did not toucli fine- 
ly at once and thoroughly ; on the laws 
of reasoning, on God and incorporeal 
substances, on man and other sensible 
things, on human actions and their 
principles, he reasoned in such a man- 
ner that in him there is wanting neither 
a full array of questions, nor an apt dis- 
posal of the various parts, nor the best 
method of proceeding, nor soundness of 
principles or strength of argument, nor 
clearness and elegance of style, nor a 
facility for explaining what is abstruse. 

Moreover, the Angelic Doctor pushed 
his philosophic conclusions into the 
reasons and principles of the things 
which are most comprehensive and con- 
tain in their bosom, so to say, the seeds 
of almost infinite truths, to be unfolded 
in good time by later masters and with a 
goodly yield. And as he also used this 
philosophic method in the refutation of 
error, he won this title to distinction for 
himself: that single-handed he victorious- 
ly combated all the errors of lormer time?, 
and supplied invincible arms to put 
those to rout which might in after-times 
spring up. Again, clearly distinguish- 
ing, as is fitting, reason from faith, 
while happily associating the one with 
the other, he both preserved the rights 
and had regard for the dignity of each ; 
so much so, indeed, that reason, borne 
on the wings of Thomas to its human 
height, can scarcely rise higher, while 
faith could scarcely expect more or 
stronger aids from reason than those 
which she has already obtained through 
Thomas. 

For these reasons learned men, in 
former ages especially, of the highest re- 
pute in theology and philosophy, after 
mastering with infinite pains the immor- 
tal works of Thomas, gave themselves up 
not so much to be instructed in his 
angelic wisdom as to be nourished upon 
it. It is known that nearly all the 
founders and framers of laws of the 
religious orders commanded their asso- 
ciates to study and religiously adhere 
to the teachings of St. Thomas, fearful 
lest any of them should swerve even in 
the slightest degree from the footsteps 
of so great a man. To say nothing of the 



The Popes Encyclical. 



ea lege teneri Benedictines, Carmelitas, 
Augustinianos, Societatem lesu, ulios- 
que sacros Ordines complures, statuta 
singulorum testantur. 



Atque hoc loco magna cum voluptate 
provolat animus ad celeberrimas illas, 
quae olim in Europa floruerunt, acade- 
mias et scholas, Parisiensem nempe, 
Salmantinam, Complutensem, Duacce- 
tiam, Tolosanam, Lovaniensem, Pata- 
vinam, Bononiensem, Neapolitanam, 
Conimbricensem, aliasque permultas. 
Quarum academiarum nomen astate 
quodammodo crevisse, rogatasque sen- 
tentias, cum graviora agerentur negotia, 
plurimum in omnes partes valuisse, 
nemo ignorat. lamvero compertum est, 
in magnis illis humanse sapientiae domi- 
ciliis, tamquam in suo regno, Thomam 
consedisse principem ; atque omnium 
vel doclorum vcl auditorum animos miro 
consensu in unius angelici Doctoris 
magisterio et auctoritate conquievisse. 

Sed, quod pluris est, Romani Pontifi- 
ces Pnedecessores Nostri sapientiam 
Thomae Aquinatis singularibus laudum 
praeconiis et testimoniis amplissimis 
prosecuti sunt. Nam Clemens VI., 36 
Nicolaus V., 37 Beneuictus XIII., 38 alii- 
que testantur, admirabili eius doctrina 
universam Ecclesiam illustrari ; St. Pius 
V. 3U vero fatetur eadem doctrina hsereses 
confusas et convictas dissipari, orbem- 
que universum a pestiferis quotidie li- 
berari erroribus ; alii, cum Clemente 
XII., 40 uberrima bona ab eius scriptis in 
Ecclesiam universam dimanasse, ipsum- 
que eodem honorecolendum esse affirm- 
ant, qui summis Ecclesiae doctoribus, 
Gregorio, Ambrosio, Augustino et Hie- 
ronymo defertur ; alii tandem S. Tho- 
mam proponere non dubitarunt acade- 
miis et magnis lyceis examplar et ma- 
gistrum, quem tuto pede sequerentur. 
Qua in re memoratu dignissima viden- 
tur B. Urbani V. verba ad Academiam 
Tolosanam: * Volumus et tenoreprae- 
sentium vobis iniungimus, ut B. Thomae 
doctrinam tamquam veridicam et ca- 
tholicam sectemini, eamdemque studea- 
tis totis viribus ampliare." 4 Urbani au- 
tem exemplum Innocentius XII. 42 in 
Lovaniensi studiorum Universitate, et 
Benedictus XIV. 43 in Collegio Dionysia- 



125 

family of St. Dominic, which rightly 
claims this great teacher for its own 
glory, the statutes of the Benedictines, 
the Carmelites, the Augustinians, the 
Society of Jesus, and many others, all 
testify that they are bound by this law. 

And here how pleasantly one's thoughts' 
fly back to those celebrated schools 'and 
academies which flourished of old in Eu- 
ropeto Paris, Salamanca, Alcala, to 
Douay, Toulouse, and Louvain, to Padua 
and Bologna, to Naples and Coimbra, 
and to many another ! All know how 
the fame of these seats of learning grew 
with their years, and that their judgment, 
often asked in matters of grave moment, 
held great weight everywhere. And we 
know how in those great homes of human 
wisdom, as in his own kingdom, Thomas 
reigned supreme ; and that the minds of 
all, of teachers as well as of taught, rested 
in wonderful harmony under the shield 
and authority of the Angelic Doctor. 



But, furthermore, our predecessors in 
the Roman pontificate have celebrated 
the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas by excep- 
tional tributes of praise and the most am- 
ple testimonials. Clement VI.. 36 Nich- 
olas V., 37 Benedict XIII., 38 and ethers bear 
witness that the universal church borrows 
lustre from his admirable teaching ; while 
St. Pius V. 39 confesses that heresies, con- 
founded and convicted by the same 
teaching, were dissipated, and the whole 
world daily freed from fatal errors ; others 
affirm with Clement XII. 40 that most 
fruitful blessings have spread abroad 
from his writings over the whole church, 
and that he is worthy of the honor which 
is bestowed on the greatest doctors of the 
church, on Gregory and Ambrose, Au- 
gustine and Jerome ; while others have 
not hesitated to propose St. Thomas for 
the exemplar and master of the acade- 
mies and great lyceums, whom they mav 
follow with unfaltering feet. On which 
point the words of Blessed Urban V. to 
the Academy of Toulouse are worthy of 
recall : " It is our will, which we hereby 
enjoin upon you, that ye follow the 
teaching of Blessed Thomas as the true 
and Catholic doctrine, and that ye labor 
with all your force to profit by the same." 41 
Innocent XII. 42 followed the example of 



38 Bulla In Ordine. 37 R reve ad FF. Ord. Prsedic., 1451. 

3 Bulla Pretiosus. Bulla Mirabilis. 40 Bulla Verio Dei. 

' Const. 5 a. dat. die 3 Aug. 1368 ad Cancell. Univ. Tolos. 
Litt. in form. Brev., die 6 Feb. 1694. 43 Litt - i 



- in form - Brev ' die 2I Au S- 1 7S*- 



126 



The Pope's Encyclical. 



no Granatensium renovarunt. His vero 
Pontificum maximorum de Thoma Aqui- 
nate iudiciis, veluti cumulus, Inno- 
centii VI. testimonium accedat : Huius 
(Thomae) aoctrina p-ce ceteiis, excepta ca- 
nonica, liabetpropnetatem verborum^ modum 
dicendortim, leritatem sententiarum, ita 
ut nunquam qui earn tenuerint, invtnian- 
tur a verilatis tramitc deviasse ; et qui earn 
impugnaverit, semper fuerit de veritate sus- 
pectus." 



Ipsa quoque Concilia cecumenica, in 
quibus eminetlectus ex toto orbe terra- 
rum flos sapientiae, singularem Thomae 
Aquinati honorem habere perpetuo stu- 
duerunt. In conciliis Lugdunensi, Vi- 
ennensi, Florentine, Vaticano, delib- 
erationibus et decretis Patrum inter- 
fuisse Thomam et pene praefuisse dixue- 
ris, adversus errores Grsecorum, haereti- 
corum et rationalistarum ineluctabili vi 
et faustissimo exitu decertantem. Sed 
haec maxima est et Thomae propria, nee 
cum quopiam ex doctoribus catholicis 
communicata laus, quod Patres Triden- 
tini, in ipso medio conclavi ordini ha- 
bendo, una cum divinae Scripturse codi- 
cibus et Pontificum maximorum decre- 
tis Summam Thomae Aquinatis super 
altari patere voluerunt, unde consilium 
rationes, oracula peterentur. 

Postremo haec quoque palma viro in- 
comparabili reservata videbatur, ut ab 
ipsis catholici nominis adversariis obse- 
quia, praeconia, admirationem extorque- 
ret. Nam exploratum est, inter haereti- 
carum factionum duces non defuisse, 
qui palam profiterentur, sublata semel e 
medio doctrina Thomae Aquinatis, se 
facile posse "cum omnibus" catholicis 
doctoribus " subire certamen et vincere, 
et Ecclesiam dissipare." 45 Inanis qui- 
dem spes, sed testimonium non inane. 

His rebus et causis, Venerabiles Fra- 
tres, quoties respicimus ad bonitatem, 
vim praeclarasque utilitates eius disci- 
plinae philosophicae, quam maiores nos- 
tri adamarunt, iudicamus temere esse 
commissum, ut eidem suus honor non 
semper, nee ubique permanserit : prae- 
sertim cum philosophise scholastics et 
usum diuturnum et maximorum virorum 
iudicium, et, quod caput est, Ecclesiae 
suffragium favisse constaret. Atque in 
veteris doctrinae locum nova quaedam 
Serm. de St. Them. 



Urban in the case of the University of 
Louvain, and Benedict XIV. 43 Avith the 
Dionysian College of Granada ; while to 
these judgments of great pontiffs on 
Thomas Aquinas comes the crowning 
testimony of Innocent VI. : " His teach- 
ing, above that of others, the Canons alone 
excepted, enjoys such an elegance of 
phraseology, a method of statement, a 
truth of proposition, that those who hold 
to it are never found swerving from the 
path of truth, and he who dare assail it 
will always be suspected of error." 44 

The oecumenical councils also, where 
blossoms the flower of all earthly wis- 
dom, have always been careful to hold 
Thomas Aquinas in singular honor. In 
the councils of Lyons, Vienna, Florence, 
and the Vatican one might almost say 
that Thomas took part and presided 
over the deliberations and decrees of 
the Fathers, contending against the 
errors of the Greeks, of heretics and 
rationalists, with invincible force and 
with the happiest results. But the chief 
and special glory of Thomas, one which 
he has shared with none of the Catholic 
doctors, is that the Fathers of Trent 
made it part of the order of the conclave 
to lay upon the altar, together with the 
code of Sacred Scripture and the decrees 
of the Supreme Pontiffs, the Summa of 
Thomas Aquinas, whence to seek coun- 
sel, reason, and inspiration. 

A last triumph was reserved for this 
incomparable man namel}-, to com- 
pel the homage, praise, and admiration 
of even the very enemies of the Catholic 
name. For it has come to light that 
there were not lacking among the lead- 
ers of heretical sects some who openly 
declared that, if the teaching of Thomas 
Aquinas were only taken away, they 
could easily battle with all Catholic 
teachers, gain the victory, and abolish 
the church. 45 A vain hope indeed, but 
no vain testimony. 

Therefore, venerable brethren, as often 
as we contemplate the good, the force, 
and the singular advantages to be de- 
rived from this system of philosophy 
which our fathers so dear!)' loved, we 
think it hazardous that its special honor 
should not always and everywhere re- 
main, especially when it is established 
that daily experience, and the judgment 
of the greatest men, and, to crown all, 
the voice of the church have favored the 
scholastic philosophy. Moreover, to the 
45 Beza Bucerus. 



The Pope's Encyclical. 



philosophic ratio hac iliac successit, 
unde non ii percept! sunt fructus opta- 
biles ac salutares, quo Ecclesia et ipsa 
civilis societas maluissent. Adnitenti- 
bus enim novatoribus saeculi XVI. pla- 
cuit philosophari cilia quempiam ad 
fidem respectum, petita dataque vicissim 
potestate quselibet pro lubitu ingenioque 
excogitandi. Qua ex re pronum fuit, 
genera philosophise plus aequo mullipli- 
cari, sententiasque diversas atque inter 
se pugnantes oriri etiam de iis rebus, 
quae sunt in humanis cognitionibus pre- 
cipuae. A multitudine sententiarum ad 
haesitationes dubitationesque persaepe 
ventum est ; a dubitationibus vero in 
errorem quam facile mentes hominum 
delabantur, nemo est qui non videat. 
Hoc autem novitatis studium, cum 
homines imitatione trahantur, calholico- 
rum quoque philosophorum animas vi- 
sum est alicubi pervasisse, qui, patrimonio 
antiquas sapientiaa posthabito, nova mo- 
liri, quam vetera novis augere et perfi- 
cere maluerunt, certe minus sapienti 
consilio, et non sine scientiarum det- 
rimento. Etenim multiplex haec ratio 
doctrinre, cum in magistrorum singulo- 
rum auctoritate arbitrioque nitatur, muta- 
bile habet fundamentum, eaque de causa 
non firmam atque stabilem neque robus- 
tam, sicut veterem illam, sed nutantem 
et levem facit philosophiam. Cui si 
forte contingat, hostium impetu ferendo 
vix parem aliquando inveniri, eius rei 
agnoscat in seipsa residere causam et 
culpam. Quse cum dicimus, non eos 
profecto improbamus doctos homines 
atque solertes, qui industriam et erudi- 
tionem suam, ac novorum inventorum 
opes ad excolendam philosophiam affe- 
runt ; id enim probe intelligimus ad in- 
crementa doctrines pertinere. Sed mag- 
nopere cavendum est, ne in ilia indus- 
tria atque eruditione tota aut prsecipua 
exercitatio versetur. Et simili modo de 
sacra theologia iudicetur ; quam multi- 
plici eruditionis adiumento iuvari atque 
illustrari quidem placet, sed omnino 
necesse est, gravi Scholasticorum more 
tractari, ut, revelationis et rationis con- 
iunctis in ilia viribus, "invictum fidei 
propugnaculum " 46 esse perseveret. 



Optimo itaque consilio cultores disci- 



127 

old teaching a novel system of 'philoso- 
phy has succeeded here and there in 
which we fail to perceive those desira- 
ble and wholesome fruits which the 
church and civil society itself would pre- 
fer. For it pleased the struggling i nno . 
valors of the sixteenth century to phi- 
losophize without any respect for faith 
the power of inventing in accordance 
with his own pleasure and benl being 
asked and given in turn by each one. 
Hence ii was natural that systems of 
philosophy multiplied beyond measure 
and conclusions differing and clashing 
one with another arose about those mat- 
ters even which are the mosl important 
in human knowledge. From a mass of 
conclusions men oflen come lo waver- 
ing and doubl ; and who knows nol how 
easily the mind slips from doubt to 
error? But as men are api to follow 
Ihe lead given ihem, this new pursuit 
seems lo have caught the souls of certain 
Catholic philosophers, who, throwing 
aside the patrimony of ancient wisdom, 
chose rather to build up a new edifice 
than to strengthen and complete the 
old by aid of the new ill-advisedly, in 
sooth, and not wilhoul delrimenl to 'the 
sciences. For a multiform system of 
this kind, which depends on the authority 
and choice of any professor, has a foun- 
dation open lo change, and consequently 
gives us a philosophy not firm, and stable, 
and robust like thai of old, but totter- 
ing and feeble. And if perchance it 
sometimes finds itself scarcely equal to 
sustain the shock of its foes, it should 
recognize that the cause and the blame 
lie in itself. In saying this we have no 
intention of discountenancing the learn- 
ed and able men who bring their indus- 
try and erudition, and, whal is more, ihe 
wealth of new discoveries, to the service 
of philosophy ; for, of course, we under- 
stand that this tends to the development 
of learning. But one should be vc-'v 
careful lest all or his chief labor be ex- 
hausted in Ihese pursuits and in mere 
erudition. And the same thing is true 
of sacred theology, which, indeed, may 
be assisted and illustrated by all kinds 
of erudition, though it is absolutely ne- 
cessary to approach it in the grave man- 
ner of the scholastics, in order that, the 
forces of revelation and reason being 
united in it, it may continue to be "the 
invincible bulwark of the faith." 46 

With wise forethought, therefore, not 



"SixtusV., Bull. cit. 



128 



The Pope's Encyclical. 



plinarum philosophicarum non pauci, 
cum ad instaurandam utiliter philoso- 
phiam novissime anirnum adiecerint, 
prseclaram Thomae Aquinatis doctrinam 
restituere, atque in pristinum decus vin- 
dicare studuerunt et student. Pari vol- 
untate plures ex ordine Vestro, Venera- 
biles Fratres, eamdem alacriter viam 
esse ingressos, magna cum animi Nos- 
tri leetitia cognovimus. Quos cum lau- 
damus vehementer, turn hortamur, ut in 
suscepto consilio permaneant ; reliquos 
vero omnes ex Vobis singulatim mone- 
mus, nihil Nobis esse antiquius et opta- 
bilius, quam ut sapientias rivos purissi- 
mos ex angelico Doctore iugi et praedi- 
vite vena dimanantes, studiosse iuventuti 
large copioseque universi praebeatis. 

Quae autem faciunt, ut magno id studio 
velimus, plura sunt. Principio quidem, 
cum in hac tempestate nostra, machina- 
tionibus et astu fallacis cuiusdam sapi- 
entise, Christiana fides oppugnari soleat, 
cuncti adolescentes, sed ii nominatim 
qui in Ecclesias spem succrescunt, pol- 
lenti ac robusto doctrinas pabulo ob earn 
causam enutriendi sunt, ut viribus va- 
lidi, et copioso armorum apparatu in- 
struct!, mature assuescant causam reli- 
gionis fortiter et sapienter agere, parati 
semper, secundum apostolica monita, ad 
salisfactionem oiuni poscenti rationem de ea, 
qua in nobis est, spe, 47 et exhortnn in doc- 
t.ina sana, et cos qui contradicunt, ar- 
gucre. 4h Deinde plurimi ex iis homini- 
bus qui, abalienato a fide animo, insti- 
tuta catbolica oderunt, solam sibi esse 
magistram ac ducem rationem profiten- 
tur. Ad hos autem sanandos, et in gra- 
tiam cum fide catholica restituendos, 
praeter supernaturale Dei auxilium, nihil 
esse opportunius arbitramur, quam soli- 
dam Patrum et Scholasticorum doctri- 
nam, qui firmissima fidei fundamenta, 
divinam illius originem, certam verita- 
tem, argumenta quibus suadetur, benefi- 
cia in humanum genus collata, perfec- 
tamque cum ratione corcordiam tanta 
evidentia et vi commonstrant, quanta 
flectendis mentibus vel maxime invitis 
et repugnantibus abunde sufficiat. 



Domestica vero atque civilis ipsa socie- 
tas, qure ob perversarum opinionum pes- 
tem quanto in discrimine versetur, uni- 
versi perspicimus, profecto pacatior multo 

47 i Peter iii. 15. 



a few of the advocates of philosophic 
studies, when turning their minds recent- 
ly to the practical reform of philosophy, 
aimed and aim at restoring the renown- 
ed teaching of Thomas Aquinas and 
winning it back to its ancient beauty. 

We have learned with great joy that 
many members of your order, venera- 
ble brethren, have taken this plan to 
heart ; and while we earnestly commend 
their efforts, we exhort them to hold fast 
to their purpose, and remind each and 
all of you that our first and most cherish- 
ed idea is that you should all furnish a 
generous and copious supply to studious 
youth of those crystal rills of wisdom 
flowing in a never-ending and fertilizing 
stream from the fountain-head of the 
Angelic Doctor. 

Many are the reasons why we are so 
desirous of this. In the first place, then, 
since in the tempest that is on us the 
Christian faith is being constantly as- 
sailed by the machinations and craft of a 
certain false wisdom, all youths, but es- 
pecially those who are the growing hope 
of the church, should be nourished on 
the strong and robust food of doctrine, 
that so, mighty in strength and armed at 
all points, they may become habituated 
to advance the cause of religion with 
force and judgment, " being ready always, 
according to the apostolic counsel, to 
satisfy every one that asketh you a rea- 
son of that hope which is in you," 47 and 
that they may be able to exhort in sound 
doctrine and to convince the gain- 
sayers. 48 Many of those who, with 
minds alienated from the faith, hate 
Catholic institutions, claim reason as 
their sole mistress and guide. Now. we 
think that, apart from the supernatural 
help of God, nothing is better calculated 
to heal those minds and to bring them 
into favor with the Catholic faith than 
the solid doctrine of the Fathers and the 
scholastics, who so clearly and forcibly 
demonstrate the firm foundations of the 
faith, its divine origin, its certain truth, 
the arguments that sustain it, the benefits 
it has conferred on the human race, and 
its perfect accord with reason, in a man- 
ner to satisfy completely minds open to 
persuasion, however unwilling and re- 
pugnant. 

Domestic and civil society even, which, 

as all see, is exposed to great danger 

from this plague of perverse opinions, 

would certainly enjoy a far more peace- 

48 Tit. i. 9. 



The Popes Encyclical. 



et securior consisteret, si in academiis et 
scholis sanior traderetur, et magisterio 
Ecclesiae conformior doctrina, qualem 
Thomae Aquinatis volumina complec- 
tuntur. Quae enim de germana ratione 
libertatis, hoc tempore in licentiam abe- 
untis, de divina cuiuslibet auctoritatis 
originc, de legibus earumque vi, de pa- 
terno et aequo summorum principum 
imperio, de obtemperatione sublimiori- 
bus potestatibus, de mutua inter omnes 
caritate ; quae scilicet de his rebus et 
aliis generis eiusdem a Thoma disputan- 
tur, maximum atque irwictum robur ha- 
bent ad evertenda ea iuris novi princi- 
pia quae pacato rerum ordini et publicae 
saluti periculosa esse dignoscuntur. 
Demum cunctae humanae discipline 
spem incrementi praecipere, plurimum- 
que sibi debent presidium polliceri ab 
hac, quae Nobis est proposita, discipli- 
narum philosophicarum instauratione. 
Etenim a philosophia tamquam a mode- 
ratrice sapientia, sanam rationem rec- 
tumque mooum bonae artes mutuari, ab 
eaque, tamquam vitae communi fonte, 
spiritum haurire consueverunt. Facto 
ct constant! experientia comprobatur, 
artes liberales tune maxime floruisse, 
cum incolumis honor et sapiens iudici- 
um philosophise stetit ; neglectas vero 
et prope obliteratas iacuisse, inclinata 
atque erroribus vel ineptiis implicita 
philosophia. Ouapropter etiam physicae 
disciplinae, quae nunc tanto sunt in pre- ' 
tio, et tot praeclare inventis, singularem 
ubique cienti admirationem sui, ex res- 
tituta veterum philosophia non modo 
nihil detrimenti, sed plurimum praesi- 
dii sunt habiturae. Illarum enim fruc- 
tuosae exercitationi et incremento non 
sola satis est consideratio factorum, con- 
templatioque naturae ; sed, cum facta 
constiterint, altius assurgendum est, et 
danda solerter opera naturis rerum cor- 
porearum agnoscendis, investigandisque 
legibus, quibus parent, et principiis, un- 
de ordo illarum et unitas in varietate, et 
mutua affinitas in diversitate proficis- 
cuntur. Quibus investigationibus mir- 
um quantam philosophia scholastica vim 
et lucem, et opem, est allatura, si sapi- 
enti ratione tradatur. 



Qua in re et illud monere iuvat, non- 
nisi per summam initiriam eidem philo- 
sophiae vitio verti, quod naturaliuin sci- 
entiarum profectui et incremento ad- 
versetur. Cum enim Scholastici, sanc- 

VOL. XXX. 9 



I2 9 

ful and secure existence if a more whole- 
some doctrine were taught in the acade- 
mies and schools one more in con- 
formity with the teaching of the church, 
such as is contained in the works of 
Thomas Aquinas. 

For the teachings of Thomas on the 
true meaning of liberty, which at this 
time is running into license, on the 
divine origin of all authority, on laws 
and their force, on the paternal and just 
rule of princes, on obedience to the 
higher powers, on mutual charity one 
towards anotheron all of these and 
kindred subjects have very great and in- 
vincible force to overturn those princi- 
ples of the new order which are well 
known to be dangerous to the peaceful 
order of things and to public safety. In 
short, all studies ought to find hope of 
advancement and promise of assistance 
in this restoration of philosophic disci- 
pline which we have proposed. The 
arts were wont to draw from philosophy, 
as from a wise mistress, sound judg- 
ment and right method, and from it also 
their spirit as from the common fount of 
life. When philosophy stood stainless in 
honor and wise in judgment, then, as 
facts and constant experience showed, 
the liberal arts flourished as never be- 
fore or since ; but, neglected and almost 
blotted out, they lay prone since philoso- 
phy began to lean to error and join 
hands with folly. Nor will the physical 
sciences, which are now in such great 
repute, and by the renown of so many 
inventions draw such universal admira- 
tion to themselves, suffer detriment but 
find very great assistance in the re-es- 
tablishment of the ancient philosophy. 
For the investigation of facts and the 
contemplation of nature is not alone 
sufficient for their profitable exercise and 
advance ; but when facts have been 
established it is necessary to rise and 
apply ourselves to the study of the na- 
ture of corporeal things, to inquire into 
the laws which govern them, and the 
principles whence their order and varied 
unity and mutual attraction in diversity 
arise. To such investigations it is won- 
derful what force and light and aid the 
scholastic philosophy, if judiciously 
taught, would bring. 

And here it is well to note that our 
philosophy can onl} r by the grossest in- 
justice be accused of being opposed to 
the advance and development of natural 
science. For when the scholastics, fol- 



130 



Popes Encyclical. 



torum Patrum sententiam secuti, in an- 
thropologia passim tradiderint, humanam 
intelligentiam nonnisi ex rebus sensi- 
bilibus ad noscendas res corpore materia- 
que carentes evehi, sponte sua intellexe- 
runt, nihil esse philosopho utilius, quam 
naturae arcana diligenter investigare, et 
in rerum physicarum studio diu mul- 
tumque versari. Quod et facto suo con- 
firmarunt : nam S. Thomas, B. Albertus 
magnus, aliique Scholasticorum princi- 
pes, non ita se contemplationi philoso- 
phise dediderunt, ut non etiam multum 
operae in naturalium rerum cognitione 
collocarmt : imo non pauca sunt in hoc 
genere dicta eorum et scita, quae recen- 
tes magistri probent, et cum veritate 
congruere fateatur. Praeterea, hac ipsa 
aetate, plures iique insignes scientiarum 
physicarum doctores palam aperteque 
testantur, inter certas ratasque recentio- 
ris physicae conclusiones, et philosophi- 
ca scholae principia nullam veri nominis 
pugnam existere. 



Nos igitur, dum edicimus libenti gra- 
toque animo excipiendum esse quidquid 
sapienter dictum, quidquid utiliter fuerit 
a quopiam inventum atque excogitatum ; 
'Vos omnes, Venerabiles Fratres, quam 
enixe hortamur, ut ad catholicae fidei 
tutelam et decus, ad societatis bonum, 
ad scientiarum omnium incrementum 
auream sancti Thomae sapientiam resti- 
tuatis, et quam latissime propagetis. 
Sapientiam sancti Thomae dicimus ; si 
quid enim est a doctoribus Scholasticis 
^el nimiasubtilitatequaesitum, velparum 
considerate traditum, si quid cum explo- 
,ratis posterioris aevi doctrinis minus co- 
haerens, vel denique quoque modo non 
probabile, id nullo pacto in animo est 
xtati nostrae ad imitandum proponi. Ce- 
terum, .doctrinam Thomas Aquinatis 
studeant magistri, a Vobis intelligenter 
lecti in discipulorum animos insinuare ; 
-eiusque prae ceteris soliditatem atque 
excellentiam in perspicuo ponant. Eam- 
dem academiae a Vobis institutae aut in- 
stituendae illustrent ac tueantur, et ad 
grassantium errorum refutationem adhi- 
beant. Ne autem supposita pro vera, 
neu corrupta pro sincera bibatur, pro- 
videte ut sapientia Thomae ex ipsis eius 
^ontibus hauriatur, aut saltern ex iis 
rivis, quos ab ipso fonte deductos,adhuc 
integros et illimes decurrere certa et 
concors dactorum hominum sententia 



lowing the opinion of the holy Fathers, 
always held in anthropology that the 
human intelligence is only led to the 
knowledge of things without body and 
matter by things sensible, they well un- 
derstood that nothing was of greater use 
to the philosopher than diligently to 
search into the mysteries of nature and 
to be earnest and constant in the study 
of physical things. And this they confirm- 
ed by their own example ; for St. Thomas, 
Blessed Albertus Magnus, and other lead- 
ers of the scholastics were never so 
wholly rapt in the, study of philosophy 
as not to give large attention to the 
knowledge of natural things ; arid, in- 
deed, the number of their sayings and 
writings on these subjects, which recent 
professors approve of and admit to har- 
monize with truth, is by no means small. 
Moreover, in this very age many illus- 
trious professors of the physical sciences 
openly testify that between certain and 
accepted conclusions of modern physics 
and the philosophic principles of the 
schools there is no conflict worthy of the 
name. 

While, therefore, we hold that every , 
word of wisdom, every useful thing by 
whomsoever discovered or planned, ought 
to be received with a willing and grateful 
mind, we exhort you, venerable brethren, 
in all earnestness to restore the golden 
wisdom of St. Thomas, and to spread it far 
and wide for the defence and beauty of the 
Catholic faith, for the good of society, 
and for the advantage of all the sciences. 
The wisdom of St. Thomas, we say ; for 
if anything is taken up with too great 
subtlety by the scholastic doctors, or too 
carelessly stated if there be anything 
that ill agrees with the discoveries of a 
later age, or, in a word, improbable in 
whatever way, it does not enter our mind 
to propose that for imitation to our age. 
Let carefully-selected teachers endeavor 
to implant the doctrine of Thomas Aqui- 
nas in the minds of students, and set 
forth clearly his solidity and excellence 
over others. Let the academies already 
founded or to be founded by you illus- 
trate and defend this doctrine, and use it 
for the refutation of prevailing errors. 
But, lest the false (or the true or the cor- 
rupt for the pure be drunk in, be ye 
watchful that the doctrine of Thomas be 
drawn from his own fountains, or at least 
from those rivulets which, derived from 
the very fount, have thus far flowed, ac- 
cording to the established agreement of 



The Popes Encyclical. 



est ; sed ab iis, qui exinde fluxisse di- 
cuntur, re autem alienis et non salubri- 
bus aquis creverunt, adolescentium ani- 
mos arcendos curate. 

Probe autem novimus conatus Nostros 
irritos futures, nisi communia cepta, 
Venerabiles Fratres, Ille secundet, qui 
Dcus scientiarum in divinis eloquiis 49 ap- 
pellatur; quibus etiam monemur, omne 
datum optimum ct omne donum perfectum de- 
sursum esse, descendens a Patre luminum 50 
Et rursus : Si quis indiget sapientia, pos- 
tulet a Deo, qui dat omnibus affluenter, 
et non improper at ; et dabitur ei. 51 Igitur 
hac quoque in re exempla sequamur 
Doctoris angelici, qui nunquam se lec- 
tioni aut scriptioni dedit, nisi propitiate 
precibus Deo ; quique candide confessus 
est, quidquid sciret, non tarn se studio aut 
labore suo sibi peperisse, quam divinitus 
accepisse ; ideoque humili et concordi 
obsecratione Deum simul omnes exore- 
mus, ut in Ecclesiae filios spiritum scien- 
tise et intellectus emittat, et aperiat eis 
sensum ad intelligendam sapientiam. 
Atque ad uberiores percipiendos divinae 
bonitatis fructus, etiam B. Virginis 
Mariae, quae sedes sapientiae appellatur, 
efficacissimum patrocinium apud Deum 
interponite ; simulque deprecatores ad- 
hibete purissimum Virginis Sponsum B. 
losephum, et Petrum ac Paulum Apos- 
tolos maximos, qui orbein terrarum, im- 
pura errorum lue corruptum, veritate 
renovarunt, et caelestis sapientiae lumine 
compleverunt. 



Denique divini auxilii spe freti, et 
pastoral! Vestro studio confisi, Aposto- 
licam benedictionem, caelestium mune- 
rum auspicem et singularis Nostne bene- 
volentiae testem, Vobis omnibus, Vene- 
rabiles Fratres, universoque Clero et 
populo singulis, commisso peramanter 
in Domino impertimur. 

Datum Romae apud S. Petrum, die 4 
Augusti ann. 1879, Pontificatus Nostri 
anno Secundo, 

LEO PP. XIII. 



learned men, pure and clear; be c;ireful 
to guard the minds of youih from those 
which are said to flow thence, but in real- 
ity are gathered from strange and un- 
wholesome streams. 

But welt do we know that vain will 
be our efforts unless, venerable brethren, 
He helps our common cause who, in the 
words of divine Scripture, is called the 
God of all knowledge ; 49 by which we 
are also admonished that "every best 
gift and every perfect gift is from above, 
coming down from the Father flights "j 80 
and again : " If any of you want wis- 
dom, let him ask of God, who giveth to 
all men abundantly, and upbraideth not : 
and it shall be given him." 51 

Therefore in this also let us follow the 
example of the Angelic Doctor, who 
never gave himself to reading or writing 
without first begging the blessing of God, 
who modestly confessed that whatever he 
knew he had acquired not so much by 
his own study and labor as by the divine 
gift ; and therefore let us all, in humble 
and united prayer, beseech God to send 
forth the spirit of knowledge and of under- 
standing to the children of the church, 
and open their senses for the understand- 
ing of wisdom. And that we may re- 
ceive fuller fruits of the divine goodness, 
offer up to God the most efficacious pa- 
tronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who 
is called the seat of wisdom ; having at 
the same time as advocates St. Joseph, 
the most chaste spouse of the Virgin, 
and Peter and Paul, the chiefs of the 
apostles, whose truth renewed the 
earth, which had fallen under the impure 
blight of error, filling it with the light of 
heavenly wisdom. 

In fine, relying on the divine assistance 
and confiding in your pastoral zeal, we 
bestow on all of you, venerable brethren, 
on all the clergy and the flocks commit- 
ted to your charge, the apostolic bene- 
diction as a pledge of heavenly gifts and 
a token of our special esteem. 

Given at St. Peter's, Rome, August 4, 
1879, in the second year of our ponti- 
ficate. 

LEO XIlI. t P<pf. 



49 i Reg. ii. 3. 



50 lac. i. 17. 



132 



Current Events. 



CURRENT EVENTS. 



AFTER THREE CENTURIES. 

To those who have given any at- 
tention to the histories of peoples 
it must always be a standing won- 
der to note how little men have 
profited by the past. The con- 
flicts that consume half our ener- 
,gies to-day are, with slight modifi- 
cation, those of three centuries ago. 
Science and discovery have done 
much to make the material part of 
life pleasanter than it then was ; 
but is life, the general life, itself 
=-.much improved ? Do we get on 
-better with our neighbors, whether 
they live next door or beyond the 
frontier? Are wars less frequent 
or gigantic, or waged for higher 
purposes, than they were three cen- 
turies ago? Have the masses of 
the people really been much ele- 
vated by the wider spread of edu- 
cation ? Are they better off in 
point of living, housing, and cloth- 
ing than they were then ? To 
come home, a very large portion 
^of the population of our city of 
New York lives in tenements ; and 
is tenement life for not the abso- 
lutely poor, but the laborer or ar- 
tisan, who can in many cases sup- 
port his family fairly well, worth 
,.three centuries of purchase ? We 
might go the rounds of life, and 
question at every turn how much 
we have advanced after our three 
centuries of progress, and the an- 
swer on the whole might be, How 
little ! 

We have gone three centuries 
back for our starting-point ; for that, 
of course, was the beginning of the 
millennium the fulness of which we 
now enjoy. That was the era 



when the reformation of the world 
began, and the world has gone on 
reforming ever since. The theory, 
as we all know \ve are not writing 
controversy now, but looking at 
popular and accepted facts was 
that the church (there was only 
one church then) was irretrievably 
bad and had fallen hopelessly from 
grace. A new departure, a new 
basis for faith and worship, was 
necessary, otherwise the world 
would go straight to the devil. 
The assumption of the pope to 
supreme authority was absurd and 
decidedly inconvenient. What need 
of a pope or a church when men 
had God's word in the Scriptures ? 
They could believe in God without 
the assistance of a pope, as they 
could pray to God without his as- 
sistance ; and they had no need of 
a mouthpiece while God's word 
lay open before them to pick and 
choose from. Accordingly, the 
pope was abolished or left to those 
who cared to cling to so effete a 
superstition. 

But just here arose all the trou- 
ble. Men and women who still 
chose to believe in the pope were 
possessed of something more than 
their belief. They held fair abbey 
lands, and churches, and goodly 
buildings, and in many cases great 
wealth, which in the course of 
years, of ages sometimes, had 
grown up by this pious gift and 
that pious legacy, and by purchase 
and the usual course of the ac- 
quisition of property. It was fit- 
ting for the new reform to begin 
here, and profitable, too; and here 
it did begin. Men will sometimes 
part with their faith more readily 



Current Events. 



133 



than with their property, so just on 
this point all the fighting began 
and raged around the world. 
Protestants fell foul of Catholics, 
and Catholics of Protestants, and 
there was much mutual damage 
done, while a spirit of rancor set 
in that has never died. 

But that was three centuries ago ; 
and three centuries is a fair time in 
which to allow people to cool off 
and become reasonable. People ! 
Alas ! the face of the earth has- 
been renewed time and again since, 
and generation after generation of 
antagonists has gone back to dust, 
and still the battle goes on. The 
coming of Christ was ushered in 
from heaven by an angel's song of 
" peace to men of good will." Did 
the Protestant Reformation bring, 
or help to bring, that peace ? Is 
there peace in Europe to-day 
peace among princes and peace 
among peoples? We should like 
to see it pointed out. Such bit- 
ter antagonisms between class and 
class, between peoples and princes, 
never existed before the Reforma- 
tion. Such wide-spread conspira- 
cies never existed. A new Ger- 
man Empire arises, with all the 
lessons of the past behind it, and 
what have they profited it ? Par- 
liamentary government there, after 
a nine years' trial, is regarded as a 
failure ; religious liberty is pro- 
scribed ; freedom of the press does 
not exist; poverty and infidelity 
alone make flourishing progress ; 
while the emperor and his chief 
minister daily tremble for their 
lives. A new kingdom of united 
Italy was set up the pet creation 
of the leading statesmen of Eu- 
rope, under pressure from behind. 
Everything was at once to assume 
a new aspect. Industry, the arts, 
religion, were to revive, and the 
Italian people at last were to bask 



in the sunshine of genuine royalty, 
under a really representative form 
of government, and pass lives full 
of happy days and cool nights, sip- 
ping Falernian under the shade of 
their own fig-trees. Well, what 
have we ? The poor are consider- 
ably poorer than they ever were ; 
the rich are not much richer ; the 
laws are laughed at ; the parliamen- 
tary system is practically a farce ; 
the country is beggared, and con- 
spiracy or brigandage seems the 
only profitable trade. 

And then there is France, the 
land of revolutions, of a history at 
once great and terrible. With its 
deeply-scored and memorable past 
to guide and to warn it, with no- 
thing to hinder it, save sheer dis- 
ability on its o\vn part, from con- 
structing a free government that 
might approve itself to the sense 
and the conscience of all, it plun- 
ges straightway into the dark and 
bloody ruts where it has more than 
once already been wrecked. His- 
tory has no warning here. Here, 
as elsewhere, all is to be begun 
anew as though the past had never 
been. 

From the disruption of a com- 
mon Christian belief three centu- 
ries ago have sprung the worst and 
most lasting of the contentions that 
still divide peoples. Statesmen 
have not yet risen to what is after 
all but the low level of seeing that 
since that disruption different con- 
fessions of faith will and must ex- 
ist, and will and must be legal- 
ly recognized, if they would have 
peace among men. In the most 
recent international assembly of 
statesmen, at Berlin, the truth was 
recognized in favor of the newly- 
erected provinces ; yet nearly every 
man of those who signed the treaty 
represented governments that not 
only refused religious freedom in 



Current Events. 



the true sense, but set severe dis- 
abilities on certain confessions of 
faith, the Catholic particularly. 
Nor was it that, though they saw 
beyond their people, they were 
dragged down by these and chain- 
ed to a vicious past. In the case 
of Germany and France the chief 
signers of the treaty were the chief 
agents and leaders in a new perse- 
cution of the Catholic Church. Of 
course there are occasions, which 
the absolute dependence on the 
private interpretation of God's 
word has multiplied and rendered 
fruitful of evil, when a so-called 
confession of faith may be at once 
a political and moral danger. The 
common sense of mankind, how- 
ever, readily detects and condemns 
such Mormonism, for instance. 
But no sane person pretends that 
the Catholic Church is a teacher 
of immorality ; though statesmen, 
following the false tradition of the 
great anti-Christian revolt, some- 
times choose to represent it as an 
enemy of the state, only to appeal 
to it again for help in times of 
* civil and national danger. 

The signs are that men are be- 
ginning to unlearn a little the false 
lessons of the three past centuries ; 
to try and look upon each other 
not as mutual antagonists, but as 
brethren living one life in this 
world, going to a common grave, 
striving after one end here such 
happiness as may be procured 
and tending to one hereafter. 
Life might certainly be made much 
pleasanter than it is, if we could 
only get rid of at least traditional 
hatreds, and strifes, and misunder- 
standings that we ourselves did not 
create, but were made for us. It 
ought to be plain to men now that 
you cannot scourge a Catholic into 
Protestantism or purge Protestant- 
ism out by fire. Religion is a mat- 



ter for persuasion, argument, ex- 
ample, prayer. These, with God's 
help, are the agents that, if any, 
will renew the face of the earth. 
Fire and sword have been tried 
long enough and failed. States- 
men who frame the laws of 
nations should see this, and give 
the freest scope to the noblest gifts 
and qualities of the human heart, 
instead of narrowing and confining 
them by short-sighted and mali- 
cious persecutions or restrictions. 

IRISH AFFAIRS. 

There is serious trouble brewing 
in Ireland, and not without cause. 
It is the old grievance the land. 
In conquest there are only two ef- 
fectual methods : one to destroy or 
so crush the native race that it is 
practically wiped out or rendered 
unable ever to raise its head or 
arm again. This method has been 
tried, and, in its cruel and brutal 
way, succeeded. All history gives 
memorable instances of it : one in- 
stance darkens our own door. An- 
other and more Christian method 
is, by a wise and just policy, to win 
to yourself the conquered race, to 
show them by every evidence that 
it is better to be your friend, your 
brother, a member of your family 
than your ineffectual foe. History 
also has memorable instances of 
the success of this plan. Not to 
go beyond ourselves a conquering 
and invading race, though to some 
people our comparatively few 
years of history seem everlasting 
the French succeeded in doing 
what we never did, and what we 
claim to think cannot be done : in 
winning the affection and alliance 
of the native races. The same 
thing is true of South America un- 
der the conquest of the Spaniards. 
Hard and cruel they were, yet for 



Current Events. 



135 



all that religion went with them, 
as it did witli the French, and in 
the face of everything maintained 
the natural and inalienable rights 
of man, pagan though he might be 
and however ignorant. 

In Ireland the English is the 
conquering race. Of course we do 
not attempt in a paragraph of this 
kind even to generalize the history 
of that conquest, which has been 
going on for full seven centuries, 
and yet is really as far as ever from 
achievement. But through the 
whole history of the relations of 
the two countries the first method 
mentioned has been the favorite 
with the English, in Catholic as in 
Protestant days. They wanted ra- 
ther to possess themselves of the 
land and its wealth for it is fair 
enough and rich enough than to 
benefit the native race and lift it 
up to what they considered their 
own standard of excellence. From 
first to last they looked upon the 
natives much as hunters regard 
their prey. That is a good enough 
policy with animals; but with men 
of courage, high feelings, and in- 
telligence it is apt to prove a cost- 
ly process, as, to take a recent in- 
stance, England has found even 
among the savages of Zululand. 
In Ireland, for a long time, the 
prey hunted the hunter. Indeed, 
only for its free system of tribal 
government, the island would pro- 
bably be a strong and independent 
nation to-day; for its sons and 
daughters have even a superabun- 
dance of the gifts and qualities 
that go to make success in this 
world. At last, however, the Eng- 
lish got full hold. They became 
all-powerful. There was no fur- 
ther active resistance on the part 
of the Irish (in Cromwell's time). 
And how did they use their power? 
They took up the old English 



tradition, and strove systematical- 
ly to destroy the race, root and 
branch. Happily for the world 
and for the Catholic Church, they 
did not succeed. Indeed, it seems 
to human eyes nothing short of a 
divine interposition that saved this 
people to the world. The nation 
rose from its grave, and slowly the 
dry bones gathered flesh, and as- 
sembled together, and crept into 
their old places, and in the course 
of years began again to spread over 
their own land, over the soil of 
which their fathers had been so 
cruelly dispossessed. They came 
back to their desecrated altars and 
vacant hearthstones. They were 
beggars and paupers at their own 
doors, yet full of the high faith 
and noble traditions of a noble 
past. What were laws and legisla- 
tion to them ? laws that made them 
criminals for daring to exist on the 
earth from which they sprang, and' 
daring to worship God in their own 
way, as the saints and fathers of 
the universal church had worship- 
ped him. They found over their 
heads a cruel and most unrighteous 
system of laws like a Damocles 
sword suspended to protect an 
alien and most profligate race. 

The English method of exter- 
mination had proved a failure; and 
when it fails its failure is very bad, 
for it leaves behind it a legacy of 
hate and a rooted memory of bitter 
wrong. This failure having been 
reluctantly recognized, instead of 
setting about to redeem the past, 
to acknowledge its terrible mistake 
and show that it was really a great 
and generous race, it stuck stub- 
bornly to its old traditions. It has 
never to this day done, we will not 
say a generous, but a barely just, 
thing to Ireland of its own accord. 
Everything has been wrung from it 
as you wring his ill-gotten gold from 



1 3 6 



Current Events. 



a miser. The progress of external 
events and the mutual strifes of Eng- 
lish parties have afforded the only 
encouragement and hopes of relief 
to the Irish people. Of spon- 
taneous good-will and kind offices 
not a single instance yet appears 
in English history to redeem long 
centuries of systematic wrong. 

O'Connell, as is eloquently re- 
corded in an article in the present 
number, at last taught the Irish 
people to feel and realize their 
power. Never yet in purely hu- 
man history has there been a 
stronger illustration of the power 
of the " reinforcement of one man." 
From the day of Catholic emanci- 
pation downwards the Irish people 
have gone on improving on O'Con- 
nell's great lessons, and never were 
they in a position to make their 
power and influence more felt by 
England than to-day. The main 
question for the Irish people now 
is how to make their influence 
tell. 

THE HOME- RULERS. 

During the last session of the 
British Parliament the Irish mem- 
bers, or at least the more active 
and what, in a phrase of the day, 
would be called the more advanc- 
ed section of them, have succeeded 
in making their influence tell in a 
very effectual, if somewhat extraor- 
dinary, fashion. It is true to say 
that ever since the Union the Irish 
members in the English Parliament 
have really been looked upon as 
aliens. And this was only natural. 
The paramount interest of the Eng- 
lish Parliament is the government 
of England; and the government 
of 'England that is to say, Great 
Britain is ample business for any 
parliament, quite apart from the 
country's vast imperial interests. 



It was natural and inevitable that 
the affairs of Ireland should be 
altogether subordinate to purely 
home affairs. The two countries 
are separated, and by something 
deeper and wider than the " silver 
streak " of narrow sea that divides 
them. It was equally natural and 
inevitable that the Irish people, 
with their growing sense of power 
and communication with the move- 
ments of the world without them, 
should object to this unsatisfactory 
arrangement. They have a distinct 
land of their own, with property 
and interests of their own, and 
difficulties of their own, and a 
people of their own. Quite apart 
from bitter memories of the past, 
quite apart from everything but 
the actual living present, there is 
ample material in Ireland for the 
constant care of a legislative as- 
sembly. It is absurd to think that 
Irish legislation is adequately trans- 
acted in the English Parliament. 
Year by year the work of legislat- 
ing for England itself grows more 
cumbersome and impossible. The 
Irish representatives have endured 
historic waits on faithless promises. 
They have very properly grown 
weary of this process. 

The meaning of the demand for 
Home Rule in Ireland, and the his- 
tory of the rise of the movement, 
have been fully given in THE CA- 
THOLIC WORLD by one of the ablest 
of the Home Rule members, Mr. 
A. M. Sullivan. (See CATHOLIC 
WORLD, June-July, 1876.) In the 
course of those articles he sketch- 
ed by anticipation the policy now 
known as that of the Obstructionists. 
A new, active, and resolute body of 
men has arisen in Irish politics, 
with the determination of forcing 
by every legitimate means in their 
power attention to Irish questions 
on the English Parliament. Who 



Current Events. 



137 



shall blame them for this ? They 
have stuck closely to their policy 
and plan in spite of all opposition. 
The result has been that the busi- 
ness of the House of Commons has 
on several occasions been complete- 
ly clogged. This is " obstruction." 
Englishmen of both parties have 
shown extreme exasperation. The 
process may be very annoying to 
them, but in the eyes of dispas- 
sionate observers the Irish mem- 
bers have proved their point : that 
there is really no room for Irish 
legislation in the English Parlia- 
ment. 

A most temperate and able arti- 
cle by Mr. O'Connor Power, one 
of the new school of Irish mem- 
bers, is before us. It was publish- 
ed in the London Fortnightly Re- 
view for August, and is supplement- 
ed by an article on " The House 
of Commons," by the editor. Mr. 
Power's article deals very effectu- 
ally and keenly with the *' Falla- 
cies concerning Home Rule," and 
his views are confirmed by the 
editor of the Fortnightly, who will 
certainly not be accused of being 
too Irish. As for the alleged vio- 
lence of the "Obstructives," the 
editor bears this candid testimo- 
ny : " It can hardly have escaped 
the notice of the most indolent ob- 
server that, in the various scenes 
of the present session, it is the 
Irish who have most often been 
strictly in order, and the respecta- 
ble representatives of the official 
parties who have most often, by 
hurry, petulance, and heat, put 
themselves out of order." And he 
goes on to say : " Mr. Parnell de- 
nies that he and his friends have 
any intention of damaging the 
House of Commons, and 'there 
seems to be no reason to doubt 
his sincerity. If, however, the 
real motive of the Irish party were 



less to make English legislation 
good than to secure attention to 
the requirements of Ireland, then 
it must be admitted that they have 
not been unsuccessful, and it is dif- 
ficult to see why such a motive is 
not entirely natural and free from 
discredit. Last year the govern- 
ment passed a law providing for 
intermediate education in Ireland, 
and in the present year they have 
introduced a bill for the constitu- 
tion of a new university in Ireland. 
This is an admission that the Irish 
nation, in the opinion of the gov- 
ernment, had, and have, a genuine 
ground of complaint, and that the 
subject is one of real and substan- 
tial^ interest to Ireland. Not long 
ago the government was ready en- 
tirely to deny this; its supporters 
were extremely impatient of any 
reference to the subject. Is it not 
notorious that their eyes have been 
opened solely and entirely by the 
persistency of the Irish party in 
making themselves felt and keep- 
ing themselves in evidence? If 
this be so, then what is called ob- 
struction is something very differ- 
ent from that mere arid and mean- 
ingless perversity which the ordi- 
nary public would suppose it to be 
from the reports of parliamentary 
proceedings, at once abbreviated 
and exaggerated out of all true 
proportion, in the newspapers." 

THE IRISH CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. 

We might quote at much greater 
length, and profitably, from this ar- 
ticle as an indication that intelli- 
gent and fair-minded Englishmen 
are waking up to the fact that there 
really are such things as Irish griev- 
ances, that these need a remedy, 
and that a remedy ought to be ap- 
plied. Nor does the editor of the 
Fortnightly Review stand alone in 



138 



Current Events. 



this opinion. To quote his own 
words : *' The courageous action in 
reference to Irish education of men 
of such unsuspected probity as Mr. 
Samuel Morley, Mr. Leatham, and 
Mr. Osborne Morgan ought to make 
the most jealous Liberals a little 
more ready to perceive that a will- 
ingness to see Irish affairs from the 
point of view of the people most 
immediately concerned is not ne- 
cessarily the proof of a spirit of dis- 
honest intrigue." This whole ques- 
tion of a Catholic university for Ire- 
land is a most striking instance in 
support of all that we have been 
saying and of all that Irishmen com- 
plain. Why should Ireland, with 
four-fifths of its population Catho- 
lics, be without a Catholic univer- 
sity to-day, while the Protestant 
foundation of Elizabeth continues 
to stand in Dublin? Simply be- 
cause the English Parliament and 
English people chose to refuse-Irish 
Catholics a university ! Something 
has been accomplished within the 
past few months. In a haggling 
and slipshod and most miserly spi- 
rit the government introduced an 
extraordinary measure purporting 
to found something or another equi- 
valent to a university, or there- 
abouts, for the benefit of Catholics 
in Ireland. The bill was amended 
out of recognition as it passed 
through the committee, and wha<it 
actually is now it would be hard to 
tell. It was encouraging to see, 
while the question was still pending, 
a man like Mr. Matthew Arnold 
address a letter to the London 
Times, from which we make no apo- 
logy for freely quoting: 

" It seems to me that the Irish have a 
very real grievance. It is a grievance to 
which I find no parallel elsewhere in Eu- 
rope. It is a grievance which must per- 
petually remind Ireland that she is a con- 
quered country. Finally, it is a griev- 



ance which must be the more irritating 
from the manner in which it is denied or 
excused. 

"First, there is nothing like it. so far 
as I know, elsewhere in Europe. The es- 
tablished European type of university in- 
struction is an instruction where a young 
man, Protestant or Catholic, may expect, 
in religion and in debatable matters such 
as philosophy or history, to find teaclters 
of his own communion. Minorities have 
university instruction of this type as well 
as majorities. Take Catholic France. 
The Protestants in France are now less, 
I believe, than a thirty-sixth part of the 
nation. France has lost Strassburg, the 
great centre of Protestant instruction. 
But the French Protestants have still the 
Theological Faculty, as it is called, of 
Montauban. This faculty has eight chairs. 
Four of them are in various branches of 
what we commonly call divinity, but the 
other four are in philosophy, Hebrew, 
Greek and advanced Latin, natural sci- 
ences. In all the chairs of this faculty 
the professors are Protestants. They are 
every one of them appointed by the state 
and paid by the state. 

"Take Protestant Prussia. In the 
Rhine province there is a large Catholic 
population. Accordingly, in the Uni- 
versity of Bonn there is a Catholic facul- 
ty of theology as well as a Protestant; 
and for philosophy and history there is a 
system of chairs, so that in those debat- 
able matters the student, Protestant or 
Catholic, may find teachers of his own 
communion. Here, too, the professors 
are all of them appointed and salaried by 
the state. The university buildings, col- 
lections, and library the students have in 
common. 

" Let us come to England. Here we 
have a university instruction of the same 
type. Oxford and Cambridge are places 
where the religious instruction is that of 
the Church of England, and where it 
would be impossible to find a Roman Ca- 
tholic filling one of the chairs of philoso- 
phy or history. The Scotch universities 
are places where religious instruction is 
Presbyterian, and where it would be im- 
possible to find a Catholic filling one of 
the chairs of philosophy or history. Our 
university instruction is provided partly 
by direct state payment of professors, but 
mainly from old endowments. Endow- 
ments, however, may most certainly be 
called a form of public and natural 
support, inasmuch as the nation assigns, 



Current Events. 



'39 






regulates, and in some cases withdraws 
them. 

" We cross to Ireland. There the Pro- 
testant minority has in Trinity College a 
place publicly endowed where the reli- 
gious instruction is Protestant, and where 
it would be impossible to find a Roman 
Catholic filling one of the chairs of philo- 
sophy or history. 

" But in Ireland the Catholics are more 
than three-fourths of the nation, and they 
desire a university where the religious in- 
struction is Catholic, and where debat- 
able matters, such as philosophy and his- 
tory, are taught by Catholics. They are 
offered something different, which they 
will not have. Then they are told that a 
university of the kind they want they 
must found and maintain for themselves, 
if they are to have it at all. But in 
France the state provides even for the 
Protestant minority a university instruc- 
tion of the type that the Irish Catholics 
want. In Prussia the state provides it 
for the Catholic minority. In England 
and Scotland old endowments have been 
made to follow the will of the majority, 
and, supplemented by state grants, they 
provide the majority with a university in- 
struction of the type that the Irish Catho- 
lics want. In Ireland, so far are old uni- 
versity endowments from following the 
will of the majorit}'', that they follow, as 
every one knows, that of the minority. 
At Trinity College, Dublin, the Irish Pro- 
testants have a university instruction of 
the type that the Irish Catholics want. 
Trinity College is endowed with confis- 
cated Catholic lands, and occupies the 
site of a suppressed monastery. The 
Catholic majority in Ireland is neither 
allowed the use of the old endowments 
to give it a university instruction such as 
it desires, and such as in England and 
Scotland we make the old endowments 
give us, nor is it allowed the aid of state 
grants." 

Could a case be more strongly 
put or an instance be produced of 
more flagrant injustice? Look at 
the facts : it is half a century since 
Catholic emancipation was declar- 
ed, and it is only now that Irish 
Catholics are thrown a nondescript 
bill apologizing for a lame permis- 
sion to grant them a university 
without endowments ! Is not this 



sufficient indication that Mr. Par- 
nell and Mr. O'Connor Power, and 
their friends, have a very good case 
in their plea for home rule ? See 
the immense time it has taken 
even a man like Mr. Matthew Ar- 
nold to write in this manly and 
liberal strain : 

" The way in which, in order to cheat 
our consciences, we deny or excuse the 
wrong inflicted can only make it more 
irritating to the sufferers. A Scotch 
member pleads that Scotland stipulated 
at the Union for the maintenance in the 
universities of certain state grants to re- 
ligion grants which would not be con- 
ceded afresh now. How it must stimu- 
late the feeling for home rule to hear of 
the Scotch nation thus stipulating for 
what it wanted and preserving it in vir- 
tue of such stipulation, while in Ireland 
the desires of the majority in a like mat- 
ter are to be overridden now because 
they have been overridden always ! Or 
we plead that we cannot now aid a Ca- 
tholic university in Ireland because we 
have made the English and Scotch uni- 
versities and Trinity College, Dublin, 
undenominational. Perhaps this must 
be to a Catholic the most irritating plea 
of all. We have waited until our uni- 
versities have become thoroughly of the 
character that suits us, and then, when 
the Anglican character of the English 
universities, the Presbyterian character 
of the Scotch universities, has got tho- 
roughly established and is secure for 
the next generation or two at any rate, 
we throw open our doors, declare tests 
and subscriptions abolished, pronounce 
our universities to be now perfectly un- 
denominational, and say that, having 
made them so, we are preclu'ded from 
doing anything for the Irish Catholics. 
It is as if our proceedings had had for 
their very object to give us an arm 
against the Irish Catholics. But an Irish 
Catholic may say : 'All we want is an 
undenominational university just like 
yours. Give us a university where the 
bulk of the students are Catholic, where 
the bulk of the teachers are Catholic, 
and we will undertake to be open to all 
comers, to accept a conscience clause, to 
impose no tests, to be ''perfectly unde- 
nominational."' We will not give him 
the chance." 



Current Events. 



Such an argument closes the 
case, and it probably had its effect 
in the manipulation of the bill, as 
it must have had on the mind of 
the English people. Had they 
only learned to look at matters in 
this light earlier there would pro- 
bably now be no need of a plea for 
home rule in Ireland. But the 
closing words of Mr. Arnold's let- 
ter have a far wider range than 
even the question of education : 

" My object, sir, in this letter is not to 
discuss the government bill. My ob- 
ject is simply to bring home to the mind 
of the English public that in the matter 
of university education the Irish Catho- 
lics have a great and real grievance, and 
what it is. At present we have one 
weight and measure for ourselves, an- 
other for them. But a spirit of equita- 
bleness on this question is visibly grow- 
ing. Among the country gentlemen on 
the ministerial side there is still found, 
indeed, in larger numbers than one might 
have expected, a spiritual progeny of 
Sir Edward Knatchbull. But almost 
everywhere else, among politicians, 
among the Dissenters, in the newspa- 
pers, in society, there is a manifest and 
a most encouraging advance in the fair- 
ness of mind with which this question is 
treated. We begin to acknowledge to 
ourselves that. as to their higher educa- 
tion the Irish Catholics are not equitably 
dealt with, and to seek to help them in- 
directly. More may not at this moment 
be possible. But some day we shall 
surely perceive that both the)' and we 
should be gainers both their culture 
and our influence upon it by our con- 
senting to help them directly." 

THE LAND QUESTION. 

A graver difficulty even than 
that of education is the land 
a question also that threatens Eng- 
land itself. For the land in Eng- 
land, as in Ireland, is owned by, 
as far as numbers go, a compara- 
tively insignificant fraction of the 
population. There is this difference, 
however, between the two countries : 
in England the great landholders 



are the nobles, who reside, for a 
certain portion of the year at least 
on their estates; take an active 
and intelligent interest in agricul 
ture and the condition of their 
tenantry; make themselves felt to 
be part and parcel of the people ; 
do their own work, and as a class 
are kindiy masters and employers. 
In Ireland the exact opposite of 
this is seen. The majority of the 
wealthy owners of the land live 
out of the country, and are only 
concerned in getting what money 
they can from the soil to spend 
out of the soil. Their work is 
done by agents, often with extreme 
harshness. The agent is bound to 
procure his master a certain amount 
of money by hook or by crook, and 
he is bound at the same time to in- 
demnify himself. The farmer or 
tenant becomes thus the prey of 
both; the land laws being alto- 
gether in favor of the holders of 
the land. A system and tradition 
of evil purpose have thrown the 
sanction of a legal right over a 
rooted wrong. An attempt was 
made by Mr. Gladstone to remedy 
this miserable condition of things, 
but the remedy was wholly inade- 
quate to the slow disease that has 
wrought itself into the system of 
tenure of land in Ireland, and atlast 
exhausted the patience of the peo- 
ple. The newspapers have recently 
furnished and continue to furnish 
details of the struggle now in pro- 
gress in certain Irish districts. 
The more active of the Home-Rule 
members have taken up the matter, 
and go about from place to place, 
advising the farmers to combine 
and refuse to pay any rent at all 
until they procure a reduction. 
The language in which they couch 
this advice, so far as cable reports 
have reached us, sounds altogether 
too violent and unwise. With the 



Current Events. 



141 



power of the Home-Rule members 
in Parliament and a real grievance 
and wrong to be clearly set forth, 
peaceful agitation, without threat 
or violence, ought to be able to 
accomplish all that is needed. 

Into the particulars of the ques- 
tions that agitate the Irish people, 
and into the special merits of 
Home Rule as advocated by Mr. 
O'Connor Power and his friends, it 
is neither our purpose nor our pro- 
vince to enter. Were it permitted 
we would give a friendly word of 
caution not to spoil their case by 
violent words. From whatever 
cause, the English ear is not so 
deaf as it used to be to their ap- 
peals, nor the English heart quite 
as hard as in the old days. Empty 
threats will do no good, and big 
words break no bones, unless they 
be those of the utterers. Mr. 
Power's argument for Home Rule 
is singularly free from violence of 
this kind, and is an honor to him 
and to those he represents. In 
view of the present excitable state 
of public opinion in Ireland English 
statesmen might find much food 
for reflection in the following re- 
marks : " As regards the property 
of the Irish landlords, the resolu- 
tion from which I have just quoted 
contains also a provision declaring 
' that no change shall be made 
by the Irish parliament in the 
present settlement of property in 
Ireland/ The more one considers 
the Home-Rule proposal, with its 
many safeguards and limitations, 
the more one is impressed with its 
moderate character. Irish land-re- 
formers are very far from looking 
to Home Rule as a means of at- 
taining the objects they have in 
view. They have no hope that 
Home Rule, if successful, would 
bring necessarily either fixity of 
tenure or a peasant proprietary, 



and their want of hope in tin's d'- 
rection shows the groundlessness 
of the fears which others entertain 
regarding the rights of the land- 
lords. / do not hesitate to assert 
that one of the earliest effects .of the 
establishment of Home Rule would 
be the development of manufacturing 
industry, which would draw off large 
numbers from the land, and so abate 
the prevalent desire for its possession. 
Land questions would not be so 
vital to the Irish people as they 
now are, and consequently their 
settlement in the new circum- 
stances need not involve those 
organic changes which many now 
consider to be desirable. The 
tillers of the soil in Ireland are 
certainly anxious to become the 
owners of their farms, and wisely 
so; but they don't want to abol- 
ish landlordism according to the 
method of the French Revolution. 
The conscience of the Irish peo- 
ple revolts at the idea. The most 
that they have asked from the 
state only amounts to a demand 
for such facilities as would enable 
them to acquire ownership by 
means of their own industry." 

Another strong point 'made by 
Mr. Power is the following: " It is 
in the same way a most mistaken 
notion that Home Rule would 
'drive English capital out of Ire- 
land.' Departing from the usual 
course of disputation, I will give 
the best argument first, and say that 
Home Rule would not drive Eng- 
lish capital out of Ireland, for the 
simple reason that English capital 
is not there to drive out. One of 
the golden promises of the Union 
was that it would cause an influx 
of English capital into Ireland. 
Castlereagh excited the most ex- 
travagant expectations on this head, 
which have never been realized. 
English capital finds its way to 



142 



Current Events. 



every part of the world except 
Ireland. It is supposed to be 
more safely invested in Egypt, or 
Peru, or Timbuctoo than it could 
be in Ireland. And we have only 
to consider whether Home Rule 
would not really attract English 
capital to Ireland. I am convinc- 
ed that it would. English capital, 
like any other capital, only wants 
security and profit, both of which 
it would find in Ireland, if Ireland 
were a self-governing country, be- 
cause Ireland self-governed would 
be Ireland tranquil and contented, 
no longer disaffected by a sense of 
injustice nor disturbed by the fear 
of revolution. At all events the 
Union has not brought English 
money into Ireland. Instead of 
causing an influx of English capi- 
tal, it has caused an efflux of the 
Irish people, who testify to-day, in 
every part of the world, to the se- 
verity of English rule." 

Again, the lessons of the past 
are quite forgotten or disregarded. 
Justice is doled out with a nig- 
gard hand. As Ireland stands to- 
day it is a thorn in the side of 
England. It is garrisoned with 
English troops, overridden by a 
semi-military constabulary, the mere 
support of which is a very costly 
affair. The country is plainly 
looked upon as dangerous by Eng- 
lish eyes. It is not to be trusted. 
A motion to extend the volunteer 
movement, corresponding some- 
what to our National Guards, to 
Ireland was defeated the other day 
in the House of Commons. Why ? 
They dare not trust the Irish peo- 
ple with arms. And why are the 
Irish people so restless and unhap- 
py ? Mr. Disraeli once, in a cyni- 
cal moment, attributed the Irish 
troubles to the necessity of the 
people being amused. They lived 
contiguous to the shores of a 
melancholy ocean. They could 



not help being sad. Their griev- 
ances were sentimental grievances. 
Such was the opinion of the lead- 
ing English statesman, and one 
may judge from it of the manner in 
which Irish questions are apt to be 
treated in the English Parliament. 
Another English statesman, Lord 
Derby, suggested a better solution 
of the Irish difficulty than a Punch- 
and-Judy show. His advice was 
to give the people something to 
eat and to do. Poverty and en- 
forced idleness are great disorgan- 
izers. Work, food, clothes, housing, 
education, religion, freedom on 
these things the health and happi- 
ness of a people turn. Take away 
any one of them, or throw obsta- 
cles in the way of any one of them, 
and the whole body politic is dis- 
turbed. But up to within a com- 
paratively recent date the Irish 
people might almost have been 
said to be deprived of one and all 
of them. Happily matters have 
much improved ; but much remains 
to be done. As soon as the Irish 
people find life worth living in their 
own country they will not care to 
emigrate. As soon as they have a 
sense of peace and freedom in the 
possession of their own soil and 
their own goods, as soon as they 
get a fair return for the toil of their 
lives, they will be satisfied and at 
rest. They are not naturally a 
discontented people. They are 
not the people to quarrel with their 
own good fortune. They only want 
a fair chance of exercising at home 
the active energy and enterprise 
that they carry into other lands. 
If the English people could only be 
induced to lop off such disabilities 
as remain to the Irish, if they could 
accept some fair means of letting 
them conduct their own business, 
they might soon and safely withdraw 
their garrisons and count Ireland as 
the bulwark of their mighty empire. 



New Publications. 



'43 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



THE LIFE IN COMMON. A Sermon 
preached before the Unitarian Confer- 
ence at Weir's Landing, N. H., by 
Rev. E. E. Hale, minister of the 
South Congregational Church, Bos- 
ton. Boston : Geo. H. Ellis. 1879. 

This sermon before the Unitarian Con- 
ference at Weir's Landing reiterates the 
idea contained in that delivered by the 
same author before the National Unita- 
rian Conference at Saratoga in^Septem- 
ber, 1876, and which was noticed in the 
pages of this magazine in the December 
number of the same year. Its author 
seems to labor under the impression 
that he has an important message to 
communicate to his Unitarian brethren 
and to deliver to the world at large, for 
the sermon preached at Weir's Landing 
was preached again, if the newspaper re- 
ports be correct, in the Unitarian Church 
of the Messiah in this city a few weeks 
ago. Had Rev. E. E. Hale contented 
himself with the repetition of his con- 
fused thoughts on a high theme, and 
with the reiteration of many silly accusa- 
tions against the Catholic Church, which 
were for the most part exposed before 
in these pages, we should have allowed 
this recent display to pass unnoticed. 
But with this he has not been content ; 
he must add another to his former un- 
supported assertions concerning Dr. 
Newman, and attempt to build upon it 
afresh his old thesis. He says: "In 
Dr. Newman's celebrated book on the 
Development of Christian Doctrine he 
admits that that theory is philosophical 
which says there was an original Chris- 
tian gospel which has been clouded and 
disguised by the corruptions of later cen- 
turies. But he dismisses it with a sneer, 
till some one will state what this original 
Christian truth is." The writer of the 
above passage should furnish the proof 
that Dr. Newman admits that a theory 
of Christianity is ""philosophical" and 
dismisses it with " a sneer," unless he 
would be held as one who draws upon 
his livel)' fancy for his facts, and whose 
habits of thought are the exact reverse of 
the known characteristics of that illus- 
trious author. 



UNCROWNED HEROES : The article to 
which was awarded the medal offered 
by the University of Virginia to the 
best original production written for 
the University Magazine during the 
college year of 1877-8. By Dudley 
G. Woolen, A.M., of Austin, Texas. 
"The silent martyrs whom the world 
ne'er knew." 

" Oh ! weep not for the dead alone 

Whose songs have told their life's sad story ; 
Weep for the voiceless who have known 
The cross without the crown of glory. 1 ' 

HOLMES. 

Reprinted from the Virginia Univer- 
sity Magazine, June, 1878. 
An able defence and eloquent tribute 
to the early Catholic missionaries of the 
Southwest. There is a fertile and ample 
field in the discovery and labors of the 
children of the Catholic Church in the 
early period of the history of our country 
which is destined, in our opinion, to en- 
gage the pens of the most gifted of our 
countrymen. We congratulate the au- 
thor of this brilliant essay as one 
among the most promising in its suc- 
cessful cultivation. 

ONCE EVERY WEEK. A Treatise on 
Weekly Communion. By Mgr. de 
Segur. Translated, with the approval 
of the Bishop of Salford, by a Tertiary 
of St. Francis. New York : P. O'Shea, 
Agent. 1879. 

Everything from Mgr. de Segur is 
good. This little pocket-treatise on 
Holy Communion is excellent. It is 
handsomely brought out by the pub- 
lisher. 

THE MACLAUGHLINS OF CLAN OWEN. 
A study in Irish history. By John 
Patrick Bro\*n, A.B. Boston: W. J. 
Schofield. 1879. 

This is an interesting little incursion 
into one of the many byways of Irish 
history. It will repay perusal, and can- 
not fail to prove of interest to the many 
members of the famous clan who still 
flourish in a high state of preservation. 
It is elegantly printed. 



144 



New Publications. 



A SECOND editionfo'f 'Father Hewit's 
admirable and unique work, The King's 
Highway; or, The C^holic Church the 
Way of Salvation, as revealed in the holy 
Scriptures, has been published by the 
Catholic Publication Society Co. The 
argument is addressed chiefly to Cal- 
vinists, and would have been of great as- 
sistance to the recent Pan-Presbyterian 
assembly at Geneva, had it only reached 
them. It is a pleasure to see a work of 
so much learning and thought, set at 
the service of any intelligent man, find 
readers enough to exhaust a first edition 
so speedily. Catholics who have non- 
Catholic friends in hesitation or doubt 
regarding matters of religion could do 
them no greater service than to place 
this book in their hands. 



PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. 

Historical Sketch of the St. Louis 
University : the Celebration of its 
Fiftieth Anniversary, or Golden Jubilee, 
on June 24, 1879. By Walter H. Hill, 
SJ. Sr. Louis : Patrick Fox. 1879. 

A Gentle Remonstrance. A letter ad- 
dressed to the Rev. F. C. Ewer, S.T.D., 
on the subject of Ritualism. Being a 
review of Dr. Ewer's recent lectures at 
Newark. By the Rev. Aloysius Joshua 
Dodgson Bradley, B.A. Fr. Pustet. 
1879. 

An Elementary Grammar of the Greek 
Language, for the use of Colleges. 
Chiefly from the works of Frederick 
Spiess, Professor in the Gymnasium at 
Wiesbaden, and Dr. Maurice Seiffert, 
Professor of the Joachimsthal Gymna- 
sium at Berlin. By J. M. A. Schultheis, 
New York : Fr. Pustet. 1879. 

Greek and English Exercises. Ar- 
ranged according to the Greek Grammar 
of Fr. Spiess. and the Greek Syntax 
of M. Seiffert. By Dr. Th. Breitter. 
Translated from the Eleventh German 
Edition, with a supplement containing 
Greek and English exercises in syntax, 
by Rev. Joseph Rainer, Professor in 
the Seminary of St. Francis de Sales, 
near Milwaukee, Wis. Fr. Pustet. 1879. 

The Silk Goods of America : a Brief 
account of the recent improvements and 
advances of silk manufacture in the 
United States. By Win. C. Wyckoff. 
New York : D. Van Nostrand. 1879. 



Confession and the Lambeth Con- 
ference. By A. C. A. Hall (of the So- 
ciety of St. John the Evangelist), As- 
sistant Minister of the Church of the 
Advent, Boston. Boston : A. Williams & 
Co. 1879. 

The Jesuits : their Foundation and 
History. By B. N. Two volumes. New 
York : Benziger Bros. 1879. 

Epitome Historiae Sacne, ad Usum 
Collegiorum. New York : M. Sullivan. 
1879. 

Reading as a Fine Art. By Ernest 
Legouve, of the Academic Frangaise. 
Translated from the Ninth Edition by 
Abby Langdon Alger. Boston : Roberts 
Bros. 1879. 

The Wandering Cainidae ; or, The An- 
cient Nomads. A lecture delivered to 
the Medical Society of Dubois County, 
and to the citizens of Huntingburg, 
Indiana, April 22, 1879. By Matthew 
Kempf, M.D. Louisville, Ky. : Jno. P. 
Morton & Co. 1879. 

Shakspere's Tragedy of Hamlet. With 
introduction and notes, explanatory and 
critical. For use in schools and classes. 
By the Rev. Henry N. Hudson, Profes- 
sor of English Literature in the School 
of Oratory, Boston University. Boston : 
Ginn & Heath. 1879. 

Fidei et Morum Fundamenta; seu 
Instructio Brevis pro omnibus, qui salu- 
tem in veritate quaerunt, nee expeditam 
rei tanti momenti investigandse oppor- 
tunitatem habent. Auctore J. Van Luy- 
telaar, C.SS.R. Benziger Bros. 1879. 

The Spirit of St Francis de Sales. 
Translated from the French of the Bishop 
of Belley. By Rev. Joseph M. Finotti. 
New York : P. O'Shea, agent. 1879. 

Cathedra Petri : The titles and pre- 
rogatives of St. Peter, and of his see 
and successors, as described by the 
early Fathers, ecclesiastical writers, and 
councils of the church. By Charles F. 
B. Allnott. London : Burns & Gates. 
1879- 

The New Departure in Catholic Lib- 
eral Education. By a Catholic Barris- 
ter. London : Burns & Gates. 1879. 

[In consequence of extraordinary pres- 
sure notice of these publications is de- 
ferred.] 



A . - % " " <r >\ 

^'.m.* 6 * 



THE 



<n 
t 



i^ 

( -^uVar<o. 



CATHOLIC WORLD 



VOL. XXX., No. i;6. NOVEMBER, 1879. 



STRUGGLES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY IN FRANCE. 



THERE has, perhaps, never been 
an epoch when attention has been 
more eagerly directed to the study 
of what we may call the history of 
religion than in our own day, when 
men's minds, at once checked by 
scepticism and goaded by fervent 
curiosity, have assumed a challeng- 
ing attitude at all points, and are 
calling on the church to justify her 
past and reconcile its seeming an- 
tagonisms and denials with the 
needs and sympathies of the pre- 
sent. Any one who brings us tid- 
ings from those ancient battle-fields 
and deserted council-halls is wel- 
come ; we bid him enter and de- 
liver his message, and while he 
speaks we impose silence and the 
strife of controversy is hushed. 

M. de Meaux, among higher 
claims to our grateful acceptance 
of his message, adds this special 
one of its opportuneness. His 
search after truth through the san- 
guinary struggles of the sixteenth 
century has been arduous and stub- 
born, but we who gather the har- 
vest of his patient toil feel no 
touch of this, only an interest that 



* Les Luttes Religieuses en France au Seizieme 
Siecle. Par le Vicomte de Meaux. Plon, edit., 
Paris. 

Copyright : Rev. I 



grows as we advance, until it cul- 
minates in delight and we close 
his copious volume with the pleas- 
ant sense of having been instructed 
without being fatigued. 

The history of religion is the 
history of the world's conquest by 
love ; but after the dawn of that 
great resurrection morning when 
the Victor, bursting the cerements, 
rolled away the stone and rose 
triumphant from the grave, the 
battle was still to be carried on 
between those who believed in his 
resurrection and those who denied 
it. For three centuries it raged 
with short intervals of rest; the 
Christians were hunted down, tor- 
tured, and butchered to make Ro- 
man holidays, while the decimat- 
ed churches sent round the acts of 
the martyrs like so many bulletins 
of victory. Then Constantine ap- 
peared. It would have been the 
logical reply to these three centu- 
ries of persecution if he had turn- 
ed the sword against the pagans; 
but, docile to that " sign " by which 
he had conquered, the Christian 
prince sheathed his sword and 
prepared to win the souls of men 
by the power of the cross. The 
Edict of Milan proclaimed liberty 

T. HECKER. 1879. 



146 



Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France. 



to Christians and pagans alike. It 
was a timid measure for the vic- 
torious captain ; but a decree sup- 
pressing the gods and abolishing 
the whole pagan system was too 
bold a stroke even for him to ven- 
ture on. The pagans were held in 
check, but left unmolested. Other 
enemies were quickly to appear, 
however, to whom it was more dif- 
ficult to extend the same toleration. 
Arius arose, and heresy for the 
first time reared its hideous head 
in the church. Constantine, dis- 
mayed at the rapid ravages it was 
making, called the bishops to a 
council at Nice, and gave the glo- 
rious example of a great and pow- 
erful sovereign bowing to the de- 
crees of the church as humbly as 
the lowest of his own subjects, 
though when it came to surrender- 
ing his imperial will to her con- 
trolling discipline he eventually 
showed himself less submissive. 

The conversion of the barbarians 
was achieved by love alone; no 
blood was shed in the conquest of 
those savage hearts ; the church 
held them captive by the sweet- 
ness of her doctrine and the fetters 
of her sacraments. So far we see 
the progress of the Gospel accom- 
plished without any 'external aid 
from the severity of the civil arm. 
But difficulties gathered as the con- 
quest advanced. 

"Christendom outside the church," says 
M. de Meaux, " had to deal with three 
classes of persons Jews, infidels, and 
heretics. The Jews were for her stran- 
gers to be watched ; infidels, idolaters, and 
Mussulmans were enemies to be fought 
against ; while heretics were rebels to be 
reduced to submission. '. . . She took 
rigorous and humiliating precautions 
against the Jews, but she allowed them 
to practise their worship in considera- 
tion of the involuntary and providential 
testimony which the synagogue afforded 
to the Gospel. She forbade them to be 
converted by force, or their children to be 



surreptitiously baptized, thus proclaim- 
ing practically in regard to them that no 
man can be saved in spite of himself. 
So much for her legislation. 

"As to her actions, we know that 
more than once the popes and the bish- 
ops protected the Jews from the popu- 
lar rage and the rapacity of princes ; we 
know that, when threatened and perse- 
cuted elsewhere, they found their safest 
asylum in Rome. 

" Only in one instance do we meet 
with an ecclesiastical jurisdiction which 
hunted down Judaism and handed over 
to the rigors of the civil law those who 
were convicted of professing it ; this was 
the Spanish Inquisition at its birth. But 
the Jews thus dealt with had been Chris- 
tians. Their conversion had, it is true, 
been censured by the church, for it had 
been brought about by threats and force ; 
nevertheless, it had been accomplished, 
and when they went back to their former 
creed they were punished, not as Jews, 
but as apostates. We should bear in 
mind, moreover, that this Spanish In- 
quisition, composed and organized by 
kings, was more a political than a re- 
ligious instrument, and that the Jewish 
race were more anciently established in 
Spain, and were more numerous and for- 
midable there, than in any other part of 
Europe ; they were always ready to rebel 
and to conspire, and the return of the 
false Christians amongst them to Ju- 
daism was with good reason looked 
upon as a premonitory symptom of re- 
volt." 

But it was not the Jews only, 
but, all persecuted racfes and classes, 
who found right of sanctuary under 
the protecting mantle of the church. 
We hear her motherful wail going 
forth incessantly through the mid- 
dle ages in behalf of the victims of 
the knights, " the ferocity of whose 
zeal is not Christian," she declares, 
"for they make slaves of all the 
peoples whom they conquer." 

Our historian leads us rapidly 
but without confusion along ser- 
ried ranks of witnesses, through 
these long struggles of the church 
with unbelief and with the secular 
powers, up to the sixteenth century, 
when his history itself begins. We 



Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France. 



are then introduced to the reform- 
ers as they appear upon the scene, 
under the flattering disguise of the 
revival of art and letters, and aid- 
ed too powerfully by the discredit 
which had been brought upon the 
church. 

France had long been clamoring 
for reform ; her people, echoing 
Savonarola's cry, had time and 
again demanded it; but her princes 
remained deaf to the appeal, and 
their silence had engendered a mis- 
trust that now served as a breach 
in the wall, through which the false 
reformers effected an easy en- 
trance. They were hailed by many 
loyal minds who had been waiting 
in patient hope for the true reform. 
The accomplished but frivolous sis- 
ter of Francis I., "la Marguerite 
des Marguerites," was one of their 
earliest and most important con- 
quests.. Gerard Roussel, expelled 
from his diocese and sent to her to 
await his trial, won her confidence 
by his plausible eloquence and ex- 
emplary life, and lured her into be- 
lieving in his false doctrine. He 
invented a Mass from which the 
adoration of the Host and the com- 
memoration of Our Lady and the 
saints were eliminated, and Margue- 
rite assisted at this unhallowed rite, 
which was performed in the cel- 
lars of her castle at Pan. The 
king burst in on them in a fury 
one day, and finding that the cele- 
brant, whom he meant to chastise, 
had been hurriedly concealed, his 
wrath fell upon the queen. He 
slapped her in the face, exclaim- 
ing : " Madame, vous en voulez 
trop savoir !" Yet this unmanner- 
ly husband and rude champion of 
orthodoxy was soon after induced 
to accompany his wife to the cel- 
lars and assist at the mockery of 
the adorable Sacrifice performed 
there. 



147 

Francis I. was himself, like so 
many others, deceived by the " bon 
air " of the new reformers, and saw 
in those who fiercely opposed them 
only the bigoted adherents of the 
old-fashioned scholastic divinity, 
whose representatives he had come 
to look upon with small reverence. 
"A note in the journal of his mo- 
ther, Louise de Savoie, bears witness 
that towards the end of 1522 he 
had begun to recognize the ' white 
hypocrites, and the gray ones, and 
the brown and the smoke-colored, 
and all the other shades of them,' 
and that he prayed God to deliver 
him from them, as in all human 
nature there was no more danger- 
ous race." 

So long as the new doctors kept 
to the discussion of points of doc- 
trine he let them fight it out with 
the divines and the men of letters. 
When the Faculty of Theology ar- 
rested certain "precbeurs" as her- 
etics and brewers of sedition, the 
king forbade proceedings to be ta- 
ken against them until he should 
be able to look into the affair him- 
self, and forthwith started on an 
expedition to the south, ordering 
the leader, Gerard Roussel, to be 
sent on bail to "our dear and only 
sister, the queen of Navarre." We 
know how the precautionary mea- 
sure succeeded. 

The Parliament and the Sor- 
bonne, not the court, were the first 
to take steps for arresting the pro- 
gress of heresy in the state, pro- 
testing loudly against the doctrines 
which Luther had submitted to , 
them for examination. The result 
of this divergence of opinion and 
feeling between the Parliament and 
the old Alma Mater on one side, and 
the court with the fluctuating sym- 
pathies of the king and the steadier 
adherence of his sister and Ins mis- 
tress, Gabrielle d'Estampes, on the 



148 



Struggles of the Sixteenth . Century in France. 



Other, was a growing sense of doubt 
On the subject of religion altogeth- 
er, which, while it encouraged the 
reformers, alarmed the champions 
of orthodoxy and roused in them a 
fierce spirit of fanaticism. Calvin 
had adjured the Duke of Somer- 
set, tutor to the youthful Edward 
VI., " to punish with death all who 
opposed the Reformation." This 
awful doctrine was vehemently de- 
nounced by many who came to 
adopt it practically, seeing, in their 
terror and dismay, no other means 
of stopping the growth of heresy. 
Cardinal Tournon, Francis' prime 
minister, was foremost amongst 
those who insisted upon violent 
repressive measures. " How can 
you, a Catholic bishop," he said to 
Duchatel, apropos of Etienne Do- 
let, u take part with the king for not 
only a Lutheran but an atheist ?" 
" It is I who speak as a bishop," 
retorted Duchatel, " whereas you 
would change bishops into hang- 
men." 

Thus did the wavering faith of 
the king, "blown about by every 
wind of doctrine," sow discord not 
alone amidst courtiers, but even 
in the hierarchy. This evil was, 
however, working out its own reme- 
dy. The heretics, made bold by the 
curiosity which had led Francis to 
examine their doctrines and then 
to dally with them, grew over-inso- 
lent and committed excesses which 
roused the slumbering faith of the 
king. A statue of Our Lady was 
thrown down and mutilated in Pa- 
ris one night, and soon after this 
a graver outrage was perpetrated 
in a blasphemous libel against the 
adorable Eucharist, which was cir- 
culated all over the city, a copy of 
it being even placed in the king's 
bed-room. The indignation of 
Francis was at last really arous- 
ed. 



" He took part in an expiatory proces- 
sion, in which the relics of the Sainte- 
Chapelle were carried through the 
streets of Paris, the royal children hold- 
ing the streamers of the canopy. After 
following this procession bareheaded, 
with a lighted torch in his hand, the king 
stood in the great hall of the bishop's 
palace, and before the assembled clergy 
and Parliament thundered forth in wrath 
against the heretics, going so far as to say 
that if his own children should be so un- 
happy as to fall into those accursed and 
miserable opinions, he would give them 
over to be sacrificed to God." 

An era of relentless persecution 
now began. Fires were lighted 
in the market-places, and corpses 
dangled from gibbets on the hill- 
tops of sunny France. 

Arr- edict of January, 1535, ex- 
tended the same penalties to those 
who sheltered heretics as to the 
heretics themselves. This lasted 
till the following May; then there 
was a pause, and in July a new 
edict proclaimed pardon to all who 
within six months should abjure 
their errors. If we may credit the 
Journal cTun Bourgeois de Paris, 
the pope had written to the Most 
Christian King, imploring " miseri- 
corde et grace de mort " for the 
Huguenots. The cry for mercy, 
from whatever source it came, was 
heard, and for a time the Hugue- 
nots were left in peace. But the 
reign of the brilliant and scholarly 
king is darkened by continually re- 
curring outbursts of cruel fanati- 
cism, ending in the terrible massa- 
cre of the Vaudois. 

M. de Meaux states the case for 
him with an impartiality which, 
though it does not acquit Francis, 
enables us to judge him more 
leniently. " Neither he nor the 
nation," says our historian, " had 
the smallest doubt either of the 
truth of their faith or of their right 
and duty to chastise the enemies 
of truth." 



Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France. 



149 



The death of Francis did not genius of the French character, to 



stay the tide of civil war. Henry 
II. knew none of those merciful 
recoils from the red-handed work 



its impulsive and emotional nature. 
The Spaniard rose above such wav- 
ering weakness. When Henry II., 



which had compelled his predeces- and even Catherine de Medicis, sick 

sor to call a truce from time to of blood-shedding, showed signs of 

time. Edicts of increasing rigor relenting from sheer disgust and 

were constantly promulgated and weariness, the Spanish king sent 

never suspended. Under this pro- Alba to upbraid them for their 

longed and bloody system of re- faint-heartedness. 

pression Calvinism became organ- The peace of St. Germain, which 

ized and struck root in France, closed the third religious war, was 



M. de Meaux shows us how the 
system worked, and enables us to 
draw our own conclusions from the 



certainly ill-chosen as to time, for 
it was made at a moment when the. 
Huguenots were in the ascendant, 



facts which he collects and mar- and it gave them a preponderance. 



shals before us with a patient te- 
nacity, and shrewd observation, and 
clear analysis that leave no room 
for mistrust or cavilling. 



which offended and alarmed the 
Holy See and the Catholics. 

" The court, victorious through Catho- 



" When men have begun to let ! ic a ] rms 'l' sa ^ s M " de Meaux ' " ca P itu ' 

4.1 i i , j , lated with the Huguenots. The peace 

themselves be lured by novelty, of LonjumeaU) lik * the peace of P Am . 

orments excite instead of deterring boise, maintained the preponderance of 

them," he says, quoting Bossuet ; the Catholics near the king; the peace 

and he lets us see how the Hugue- of St - Germain, on the contrary, prepar- 



nots who stole into the kingdom 
under Francis I. stand forward 



ed that of the Huguenots. These latter 
had relighted the war in 1567, principal- 
ly to put an end to their political dis- 



boldly to court the penal fires of credit, and effectively, after being beaten, 
Henry II., constituting themselves they contrived to rise up again. AlasJ 
voluntary martyrs of a persecuted their favor was destined to^haveamore 
creed, and mounting the scaffold 
"laughing and singing.'' 

An attempt had been made in 
the preceding reign to introduce 
the Inquisition into France. Paul 

IV. established it by a bull (1555), which lends a horrible fascination 
and named three French cardinals to the well-known story, is relieved 
grand inquisitors ; but the experi- by one tender and pathetic streak 
ment proved a failure. The dark of light the figure of the young 
and awful guardian of the faith queen cowering on her knees and 
which, as a political force, reigned praying God to pardon her hus- 
with unbenign supremacy in Spain band when, in answer to her terri- 

the 



fatal issue, both for themselves and the 
nation, than their disgrace : it led to St. 
Bartholomew." 

This tragedy, narrated by our 
historian with a sombre brilliancy 



never became acclimatized on 
other side of the Pyrenees. M. de 
Meaux sees the explanation of this 
fact in the incapacity of Frenchmen 
for working that dread tribunal ; 
the cold-blooded inclemency and 



fied inquiries, her attendants explain 
to her the meaning of this noise of 
fire-arms that wakes her from her 
sleep. 

The news of this treacherous 
massacre was announced to all the 



rigid impartiality needed for its courts of Europe under the name 
judges being entirely foreign to the of a repressive measure reluctantly 



Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France. 



carried out in self-defence against 
a pretended conspiracy to murder 
the royal family. Gregory XIII., 
whom Catherine took pains to in- 
form of this plot " headed by Co- 
ligny to massacre the king, his mo- 
ther, his brothers, and all the Ca- 
tholic lords of their suite," was 
duped by the story, and forthwith 
congratulated the French court on 
their escape, and Charles IX. on 
his unexpected victory over the 
Huguenots, and ordered thanks- 
givings to be offered up for both 
events in Rome. These thanks- 
givings have been a pet bone of 
Protestantism for three centuries ; 
but the pontiff, who was deceived 
into offering them, had been kept 
in complete darkness as to what 
was going on in France. It was 
not Paris alone but the entire 
country that ran with Huguenot 
blood ; and, as is always the case in 
France, the work of destruction, 
once begun, was taken up by the 
populace and degenerated into a 
wholesale slaughter. " Nowhere 
were the massacres greater than at 
Lyons, where the governor, Mon- 
delot, like a coward, let things go, 
prescribing nothing, prohibiting no- 
thing. The hangman had, never- 
theless, refused his ministry, and 
the soldiers of the citadel, when 
called upon to replace him, replied 
that they would not take that dis- 
honor nor put so foul a stain upon 
their arms." The populace had 
no such scruples, and did the 
work of slaughter so effectively 
that " the corpses borne along the 
Rhone were so numerous as to 
poison its waters as far as Pro- 
vence." The most circumspect 
historians reckon the number of vic- 
tims throughout France at twenty 
thousand ; many others, whom M. 
de Meaux quotes with chapter and 
verse, put it at four times that figure. 



Yet this unparalleled crime, 
which cost France so dear, proved 
utterly useless as a check to Pro- 
testantism. Edict after edict came 
forth with a view to propitiating the 
exasperated Huguenots; pledges 
were offered, promises held out, to 
tempt the return of those who had 
fled ; but it was of no avail. Blood 
was not to be atoned for by flat- 
tering words, or wounds healed 
by tardy concessions. The Hugue- 
nots, goaded to desperation, and 
inflamed by persecution to the 
highest pitch of exaltation, would 
hear of no compromise, would ac- 
cept no half-measures ; they would 
have entire and absolute liberty, 
or let them die to the last man. 
They drew up a treaty embodying 
the rights, privileges, and compen- 
sations they claimed, and sent it 
in to the king. 

Catherine de Medicis was so 
confounded by the boldness of the 
terms demanded that she exclaim- 
ed : " If Conde were alive and in 
possession of Paris with fifty thou- 
sand men and twenty thousand 
horse, he would not ask one-half of 
what these folk have the insolence 
to demand." This was all she had 
gained by St. Bartholomew. 

Charles IX. died crying out to 
his old Huguenot nurse to help 
him with her prayers. "Ah ! sire," 
replied the old nurse, "let the 
murders be jipon those who made 
you commit them!" And while 
she tried to comfort the wretched 
king his wife knelt by his bedside, 
praying for mercy on him, and 
when he died she spent the rest 
of her life praying for his soul. 

Thus did Charles IX. pass away 
from the troubled scene, on which 
Henry III. appeared with his cor- 
tege of " mignons " and little dogs. 
The nation was sick to death of 
civil war, of those " luttes eton- 



Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France. 151 



nantes, generalises et atroces," as 
M. de Meaux comprehensively 
styles them ; but, rather than let 
go the faith which had been her 
glory since the days of Clovis, she 
was ready to go on with the strug- 
gle. Out of this state of feeling 
the League was born. The king 
placed himself at the head of the 
movement, and the assembled 
states replied by voting the aboli- 
tion of the last edict and the re- 
union of all the king's subjects to 
the faith. But edicts were of no 
more effect than so much waste 
paper, and the new king was not 
of the race of monarchs who rule 
over the souls of men. He saw 
but one way of governing; that was 
by war, and the states would not 
vote him money. Despite, how- 
ever, their persistent refusal and his 
empty coffers, war was declared. It 
was of short duration. The Hugue- 
not ranks were exhausted, their 
leaders divided amongst themselves, 
and the royal party had an easy 
conquest of it. 

Peace was signed at Bergerac 
and a new edict proclaimed at 
Poitiers, opening to the Hugue- 
nots those high offices of the state 
which had hitherto been closed 
against them. This edict, the first 
political achievement of Henri de 
Navarre, opened the way to his 
accession to the throne by con- 
firming his legal right to succeed 
to it. 

But, in truth, it was no easy mat- 
ter in those days for righting men 
to live without fighting. On one 
pretext or another their sword 
was kept bright; religion, territori- 
al rights, a fair lady anything an- 
swered the purpose of a quarrel. 
Henri de Navarre, who had been 
chiefly instrumental in bringing 
about this peace, was the first to 
break it. The "Guerre des amou- 



reux," so called from its having 
arisen out of some intrigues of gal- 
lantry, won the Bearnais his first 
warlike laurels and placed his 
name high amongst the gens dt 
guerre, whose confidence and ad- 
miration he gained in that terrible 
four days' fight, whence he came 
forth " tout sang et poudre." 

But neither these gory laurels 
nor the edict restoring to Henri de 
Navarre his rights of succession 
could remove from his path the 
formidable barrier of his excom- 
munication by Sixtus V. Until 
this obstacle was raised the heart 
of France remained closed against 
him. " We will not give up the 
sacred deposit of the faith of our 
elders," was the cry of the nation. 
Nor could Henry, by words or 
acts, convince them that in his 
keeping this sacred deposit would 
run no risks. The very arguments 
that he used to reassure their tim- 
idity were turned against him by 
the League. He had respected the 
religion of every town and province 
that he conquered from the League, 
but where the Huguenots ruled no 
other was tolerated. In Beam this 
intolerance was carried so far that it 
was only in the small chapel of the 
queen's castle that Mass was said, 
and the few Catholics who crept 
in to assist at it under the shadow 
of her protection were in danger 
of being seized and beaten under 
the very eyes of the queen, and 
then thrown into prison. The Ca- 
tholics could not reasonably place 
at their head a prince who, far 
from looking on the national faith 
as the predominant power and es- 
sential greatness of the nation, 
extended to it a tolerance which 
practically he could not even en- 
force in his own states. 

After considering the League in 
its original character as a legiti- 



152 



Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France. 



mate association of defence, M. de 
Meaux proceeds to show how it 
became an agent of revolution, and 
how, as such, it failed. In the 
hands of the Due de Guise it be- 
came a formidable menace to the 
royal authority. The duke gov- 
erned Paris, and would gladly have 
governed the king also; "but he 
overstepped the mark, and, by let- 
ting Henry see that he despised 
him, he at once degraded him as 
an instrument and wounded his 
vanity. And so the royal prestige 
was weakened." The prince re- 
venged his wounded self-love by 
the death of Guise and his brother, 
the cardinal. 

Catherine de Medicis on her 
death-bed would fain have washed 
her hands of this blood, declaring 
that she had known nothing of the 
designs of her son ; but if on this 
single occasion he refrained from 
taking counsel with her, Henry to 
the last showed himself faithful to 
her policy. He was himself soon 
to appear at that bar of judgment 
to which he had sent so many vic- 
tims, faintly redeeming by a brave 
and penitent death a life of guilt 
and folly. 

And now France found herself 
in a strange dilemma. The king- 
dom was without a king, and the 
only rightful candidate to the 
throne was a Huguenot, conse- 
quently not eligible. The League 
would not hear of him, and yet 
it had no one else to propose. A 
duel to the death followed between 
the League and Henri de Navarre, 
that lasted from 1589 to 1594. 
The whole country was in arms. 
Paris was besieged, and made a 
defence which astonished alike the 
League and the royalists. 

" Hemmed in with a population of 
two hundred thousand souls, its ram- 



parts ruined, its faubourgs burned down, 
Paris was blockaded and starved for four 
months; its garrison consisted then of 
only three thousand men of the regu- 
lar troops with forty thousand armed 
citizens ; and when, by dint of skilful 
manosuvres, Alexander Farnese, the 
greatest captain of the age, compelled 
Henry IV. to raise the blockade without a 
battle, corn had been wanting for more 
than a month; from twelve thousand to 
thirteen thousand inhabitants had died 
of hunger, and Paris had not given in. 
. . . No doubt, as in -every besieged 
place, there were amongst this suffer- 
ing population a number of poor people 
who cried out for capitulation ; more 
than once plots for giving up the city 
were set on foot. But not being sup- 
ported by the public feeling, these plots 
are foiled so long as Henry IV. re- 
mains a Protestant ; the moment he 
becomes a Catholic the city opens her 
doors to him of her own accord." 

In embracing Catholicism at 
this crisis Henri de Navarre left 
himself open to be suspected of 
capitulating to ambition ; but had 
he been minded to sell his con- 
science for a crown he might have 
done it at once, and walked straight 
into Paris without subjecting the 
city to the horrors of a long 
blockade, and himself and his com- 
panions in arms to an exhaust- 
ing siege. His life and character 
give the lie to this accusation, 
which has been popularized, like 
so many other historical falsehoods, 
by a mot. "The king offered to 
take a certain time to have himself 
instructed, and to authorize the 
lords of his party to go in deputa- 
tion to the pope to inform him of 
his intentions and concert with him 
as to the means of his instruction." 
After much discussion it was de- 
cided that he should be instructed 
by the bishops who had remained 
faithful to him while praying for 
his conversion. Finally, on the 
25th of July, 1593, he made his ab- 
juration in the church of St. Denis, 



Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France. 153 

into the hands of the archbishop is not powerful enough to control 
ourges, and in the presence of their lives; nor is this belief mere 

" gossamer fine sentiment," but a 
secret force which unconsciously 
redeems our faults from their worst 
results, keeps conscience alive, and 
by 'breeding remorse prepares the 
way for repentance at the last. 

It is impossible for any dispas- 
sionate student of Henry IV.'s 



a vast concourse of the clergy and 
people. 

" The more we consider France at this 
critical moment of her history," says M. 
de Meaux, " the more anxiously we 
sound her needs and the essential con- 
ditions of her life, the less we can 
imagine her doing without Henry IV. or 
accepting him unless he became a Ca- 
tholic. There are certain hours, rare but arac ter to deny that his was es- 
decisive, when the destiny of a people sentially a religious nature ; we see 



depends on the free determination of 
one man. When God deems Jit to with- 
draw his favor from a people the man 
fails. When the people have returned to 
favor the man appears, and whatsoever is to 
be done is done.'' 1 

These words, applied to the 
France of the sixteenth century, 
have a sad, prophetic note as we 
read them and apply them to the 
France of the nineteenth century. 

Touching upon the question 
which has excited so much contro- 
versy viz., the sincerity of Henry 
IV.'s conversion M. de Meaux 
says : 

"It is sad, no doubt, to see that in 
changing his religion Henry did not 
change his morals, and it is not without 
a painful surprise that we see him pro- 
ceeding to his abjuration without inter- 
rupting the course of his gallantries ; but 
this does not authorize at this period the , 
suspicion of hypocrisy, otherwise we 
must condemn as hypocrites, in all 
camps and parties, the greater number of 
those who were fighting and dying for 
religion. In every direction license in 
morals displayed itself side by side with 
ardent faith ; at no period did men tes- 
tify more clearly how hard it is to bring 
conduct into harmony with belief." 

These remarks, applicable at all 
times to our common humanity, 
are more especially true with re- 
gard to France. Faith, even when 
it sleeps, is a principle of life with- 
in us, and men may be quite sin- 
cere in expressing a belief which 



this in his ardent invocation on the 
field of battle, in the reverent at- 
tention which he gave to the con- 
troversies going on around him, 
and in his frank confession to the 
divines who were charged with his 
instruction. An old historian says 
of him : " He had moments of ad- 
mirable devotion and returns to 
God that would have made a saint 
of him, if they had lasted." 

" It is worthy of remark," says 
M. de Meaux, " that belief in the 
Real Presence, which first began to 
detach him from heresy, seems to 
have remained dear to him above 
all others." And he goes on to 
tell us ho\v one day, a priest pass- 
ing with the Blessed Sacrament, 
Henry knelt down and adored it ; 
and when Sully exclaimed in 
amazement, " Is it possible, sire, 
that you can believe in that ?" the 
king replied : " Yes, vive Dieu ! I 
believe in it. One must be a fool 
not to believe in it. I would cut 
one of the fingers off my hand to 
see you believe in it, Sully." 

Rome, nevertheless, patient and 
slow as is her wont, waited before 
accepting the abjuration of the 
king of France. Spain was at work 
trying to hold back the hand of 
Clement VII. from absolving the 
head of the Huguenots; but the 
saintly pontiff looked for guidance 
above the councils of earthly kings. 
Baronius, St. Philip Neri, and the 



154 



Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France. 



Jesuit, Cardinal Toledo the great- 
est light of the church in those 
days, and a Spaniard to boot were 
called in to assist the Holy Father 
in coming to a decision. He called 
a conclave, and while the Sacred 
College deliberated he remained in 
prayer, calling down the light of 
the Holy Spirit on their counsels. 
Twice he was seen going bare- 
headed at daybreak from his palace 
to the church of Sta. Maria Mag- 
giore to say Mass " et faire longue 
oraison." On the lyth of Septem- 
ber, 1595, in the basilica of St. Pe- 
ter, he pronounced on the heads of 
Henry's procurators, prostrate at his 
feet, the solemn absolution which 
reconciled the crown of France 
to the Holy See. The Te Deum 
which greeted this absolution in 
Rome was re-echoed throughout 
France with a joy that proved how 
deep-seated was the devotion of 
the nation to the faith and the 
Holy See. 

And now the strife which had 
torn the sixteenth century was at 
an end. " Protestantism was hence- 
forth tolerated, Catholicism pre- 
dominant, and the king undisputed 
master of the kingdom. The royal 
power became more and more the 
keystone of French society ; the 
Catholic faith continued to be its 
life and soul ; the royal power was 
rooted in, and uplifted by its sub- 
mission to, the Catholic faith, and 
that faith itself, purified by its 
bloody ordeal, rose triumphant in 
peace above all contradiction." 

The accomplishment of the mis- 
sion which now devolved on Henry 
IV. demanded no ordinary gift of 
kingship. Tolerance towards the 
Huguenots, which, even when inevi- 
table, had seemed impracticable, 
was henceforth a boon not to be de- 
nied them. The pope, when absolv- 
ing Hen ride Navarre, knew that this 



clause of toleration was an essen- 
tial condition of the king's surren- 
der and complete allegiance to the 
Holy See. But though Henry de- 
clared his determination to allow 
full liberty to the Huguenots, who 
had fought his battles and placed 
him on the throne, he found it 
no easy matter to make good his 
words. The seventh chapter of Les 
Luttes Religieuscs enables us to un- 
derstand the obstacles which stood 
in his way, and the courageous 
perseverance which the Bearnais 
brought to the overcoming of them ; 
the one and the other are brought 
before us with a skill and impar- 
tiality that compel our assent to 
the writer's conclusions. 

The Catholic League had no 
sooner come to an end than Henry 
IV. found himself threatened with 
a Protestant one. The Huguenots 
could not forgive him for deserting 
from them ; and as to his policy of 
toleration, they had been too long 
mocked by royal promises to give 
full trust to those of a prince who 
had made the Huguenots a step- 
ping-stone to the throne and then 
abandoned their creed. Henry, 
however, soon proved that he had 
not changed his loyal nature in 
changing his religion. The Edict 
. of Nantes was proclaimed, and sat- 
isfied the most diffident and exact- 
ing of his old co-religionists. It re- 
dressed all their grievances and 
secured to them full liberty in the 
practice of their worship. They 
were granted free entrance to the 
universities and colleges, both as 
teachers and students, and the right 
of burial in consecrated ground; 
their civil position was regulated ; 
they were allowed to levy taxes 
and receive legacies for their 
churches ; the king even went so 
far as to allot to them an annual 
sum of forty-five thousand crowns, 






Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France. 



'55 



! 



thus making a budget of Public 
Worship for the Huguenots. We 
can readily believe that he had 
many a battle to fight with his 
Catholic subjects before receiving 
their consent to these terms. Yet 
the concessions of the edict, liberal 
as they were, would probably have 
failed to disarm the mistrust of the 
Huguenots had they not been 
guaranteed by the word of the 
Bearnais, who had never broken 
faith to friend or foe. 

It was not to be expected that so 
large a measure of toleration would 
be favorably looked on by the Holy 
See. Clement VII. received the 
news of the edict with consterna- 
tion. The straits in which the king 
was placed could not, of course, be 
at once appreciated at Rome, and 
Spain, ever on the watch to serve 
her own jealous policy, did not fail 
to reproach the Holy See with its 
over-indulgence to a heretic, in 
whose hands France was about to 
become an heretical nation like 
England. Clement felt but too 
keenly the justice of these re- 
proaches, and accused himself of 
having been guiltily rash in ab- 
solving Henri de Navarre. " All 
the fears which had preceded this 
momentous resolution agitated his 
soul. This edict appeared to him 
a great wound in his reputation, a 
gash in his face. Finding himself 
perplexed and ulcerated, he ad- 
dressed himself to the servants and 
ministers of the king, in order to 
be, if possible, reassured and com- 
forted." 

Cardinals Joyeuse and Ossat, the 
representatives of France in Rome, 
replied by placing before the pon- 
tiff the circumstances of their royal 
master, the weighty interests which 
had compelled him to the measure, 
and the benefits that must arise 
from it to the church herself, as 



well as the boon of peace and in- 
ternal concord which the edict 
would bring to the nation. " When 
these complaints were transmitted 
to the king by the faithful pen of 
Ossat, Henry did not take them 
amiss; he saw that they came from 
the heart of a friend, and that what 
chiefly distressed Clement was the 
doubt as to his sincerity ; and he 
set to work at once to reassure him 
on this score, not by changing his 
conduct toward the Huguenots, but 
by favoring more and more the re- 
storation of the Catholic Church." 

This restoration was no vain 
boast, but the desire of Henry's 
heart and the fixed purpose of his 
will, and one which now opens be- 
fore us a bright and consoling page. 
It is true that, after the storm had 
been quelled, traces of it still lin- 
gered; the waves went on heaving 
for a time after the winds that had 
maddened them had fallen. Ca- 
tholics had to be won over to full 
consent to the conciliatory policy 
of the king, and Protestants had to 
be persuaded of its absolute sincer- 
ity ; but, in spite of persistent mis- 
trust and antagonisms, both parties 
came gradually into mutual good- 
will. Catholic and Protestant 
preachers vied with each other in 
recommending union and concord 
to the people. In towns where the 
Catholics were predominant they 
took the Protestants under their 
protection, while the Huguenots, in 
places where they were the masters, 
did likewise by the Catholics. The 
result of the new policy soon be- 
came visible in the decline of Pro- 
testantism. " Since heresy had 
taken root in France the most 
clear-sighted amongst the Protes- 
tants had remarked more than once 
that open war had never done so 
much harm to it as peace. Now 
that peace was solid and sincere, 



156 



Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France. 



this became more evident than 
ever." And M. de Meaux goes on 
to explain this result by quoting 
the fable of the bet between the 
north wind and the south as to 
which should make the pilgrim cast 
away his cloak. So long as the 
cold north blew with its bitter 
breath the pilgrim wrapped the 
cloak tight round him ; but when 
the hot sunny zephyrs of the south 
came he gradually relaxed his hold, 
and at last threw away the cloak. 
Peace was secured, and the nation 
hailed it with thankfulness; but it 
could not repair in a day the rav- 
ages of nearly half a century of 
civil war. 

" France was like a place surren- 
dered after a long siege glorious in 
her triumphant resistance, but made 
desolate and wretched, her garri- 
son exhausted, her people starved 
and without food, her ramparts 
battered down, ruins everywhere." 
Henry IV. set himself to the task 
of rebuilding these ruins and re- 
storing the stormed citadel to its 
ancient splendor. This was no 
light undertaking. Disarray was 
everywhere; the ranks of the cler- 
gy were thinned; many dioceses 
were bereft of bishops, and in 
others the jurisdiction of her bish- 
op was contested at every step. 
Thus the clergy were without direc- 
tion ; high posts in the church were 
confided to mere boys, cadets of 
noble families, totally unfitted by 
habits and education for the sacred 
responsibilities of the priesthood. 
The results were deplorable ; it was 
the abomination in the Holy of 
Holies ; scandals were common and 
Christian hearts were sad. The re- 
medy to this deep-seated evil was 
far off, for the schools of the mid- 
dle ages were either abolished or 
fallen into decay, and the new 
seminaries prescribed by the Coun- 



cil of Trent were not yet founded. 
Henry IV. realized fully the extent 
of the evil, and brought his charac- 
teristic energy and single-hearted- 
ness to the correction of it, declar- 
ing that he would not rest until he 
had restored the church of God to 
what she had been one hundred 
years before. The clergy sent him 
a deputation petitioning for reform, 
and he received them just as he 
was, en deshabille, without any cere- 
mony. " My predecessors," he 
said, "gave you fair words and a 
great deal of show, but I in my 
gray jacket will give you deeds. I 
am all gray outside, but all gilt 
within." And he embraced the de- 
puties and sent them away full of 
trust in him. 

The most difficult part of his 
work was the restoration of the 
faith in Beam ; for, as M. de Meaux 
remarks, " it was a conquest to be 
made, and there is none so arduous 
as that of a land whence faith has 
been banished and where heresy 
has replaced it." 

The cradle of his race had spe- 
cial claims on Henry's forbearance 
and tenderness, and he proved him- 
self not unmindful of this by grant- 
ing a special legislation for Beam. 
Caumont la Force was sent as gov- 
ernor, with orders to proclaim the 
free exercise of the Catholic reli- 
gion. Two bishops and twelve cu- 
re's were nominated, and the Barna- 
bites were sent for to Rome to come 
and evangelize the people. These 
vigorous and gentle measures soon 
prevailed, and Catholic worship 
was restored in the stronghold of 
Protestantism ; the Vesper bell was 
heard in its beautiful valleys, and 
the dead were prayed for up and 
down the hills where the son of 
Jeanne d'Albret had run barefooted 
like other young mountaineers. 

The work of regeneration met 



Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France. 



157 



with fewer difficulties throughout cure of souls 



is accomplished by 



the rest of France. Instances of example and preaching than by the 



opposition and hostile feeling were 
not wanting here and there, but 
they were exceptional, and the king's 
will, aided by the generous spirit 
embodied in the Edict of Nantes, 
carried all before it. The faith 
was reinstated in all the provinces 



Inquisition and the hangman. If 
Henry IV. was not spared to see 
Catholicism entirely dominant in 
France, he lived to witness the tri- 
umphant progress of the movement 
which he had begun. 

Foremost amongst the religious 



from which it had been banished orders which he displayed zeal and 



by the Huguenot lords in 
than three hundred towns 



more courage in bringing into the king- 

and dom we must mention the Jesuits 

one thousand parishes throughout and the Carmelites, both Spanish in 

France whence it had been pro- their origin a circumstance which 

scribed for forty years while the raised a formidable barrier against 



full acceptance of the decrees of 
the Council of Trent prepared the 
restoration of discipline among the 
clergy and hierarchy. 

Tims had intolerance received 
its death-blow ; the demon of fa- 
naticism was exorcised from the 
soul of France, till the Revolution 
took possession of her and sowed 



their entrance. In a page which 
we long to quote in its entirety M. 
de Meaux narrates the arrival and 
early beginnings of the Carmelites. 
u St. Teresa said," he tells us, 
"that, had it not been for heresy! 
she would not have made Carmel 
so severe. Was it not, then, just 
and fitting that Carmel should 



seed which to-day in the Ferry Law flourish on the soil of that country 
is agitating her so perilously. The 
spirit of religion which had run 
riot in civil war, and found its 
more consistent expression in the 
League, now purified and guarded 
from its own excesses by the pro- 
tective legislation of the Edict of 
Nantes, took new life and blos- 
somed out in religious institutions 
where fervent souls, weary of strife, 
retired to rest and help on the work 
of national redemption by prayer 
and sacrifice. 

A monastery was founded in 
every province in expiation of the 
sacrilegious plunder of so many 
venerable abbeys, and soon it be- 
came evident that the monastic 
life had too deep roots ever to be 
eradicated from the soil where it 
had brought forth such glorious 
fruits. Conversions followed fast 
upon this peaceful propaganda, and 
proved once more to the world 
how much more efficaciously the 



which had been, as it were, the 
lists of the combat between the 
Catholic faith and Protestantism ?" 
M. de Berulle was despatched to 
Spain to fetch this treasure to 
France, and brought back with 
him six daughters of St. Teresa 
some of them formed by the hand 
of the holy foundress herself and 
they were welcomed by Henry IV. 
as heaven-sent gifts. This offshoot 
of Carmel was destined to put forth 
a new branch, " vivace et belle en- 
tre toutes," as our historian, with le- 
gitimate pride, observes ; and with- 
in seven years the order count- 
ed seven foundations in France. 
These " slaves given by God to 
his people," as the Carmelites called 
themselves, " paid back in better 
than gold or silver the welcome 
they received from France. . . ." 
They made intercession for the 
families who founded their monas- 
teries, for the towns that vied with 



158 



Struggles of the Sixteenth Century in France. 



each other in possessing them and 
hailed them as heavenly treasures. 
They made intercession above all, 
like good Frenchwomen, for the 
king and the kingdom; and there 
remains to us a striking and con- 
soling testimony of their interces- 
sion in favor of Henry IV. We read 
in the manuscript records of the 
Carmelites of Pontoise : " The day 
of the assassination of King Henry 
IV. Soenr Jacqueline de St. Joseph 
felt herself so pressed to pray for 
that prince that she was obliged to 
leave what she was doing, and to 
go before the Blessed Sacrament to 
pray earnestly for his salvation ; and 
it was remarked that on that day 
and at that very hour the king was 
killed in Paris in his coach." 

On coming to the throne of 
France Henry IV. had charged the 
President Jeannin to write his life. 
" I wish it to be the truth," he said, 
" written sans fard ni artifice, . . . 
so that posterity may know the co- 
lor of my soul and the image of my 
life." Jeannin died, and this life 
was never written. M. de Meaux 
pays a high tribute to the two 
modern historians * of the Bearnais 
when he says they have carried out 
the project confided to Jeannin. 
Without demurring from this testi- 
mony, we venture to say that the 
author of Les Luftes Religieuses 
himself has been the first to reveal 

* M. Poirson and M. Ch. de Lacombe. 



to us that side of the character and 
work of Henry IV. which has left 
the deepest mark on the history of 
Christendom, and entitled the gay 
king to a place on the roll of Chris- 
tian princes. Such a task, accom- 
plished as it has been by the son- 
in-law of M. de Montalembert, is a 
boon to a generation, for it sweeps 
away the mists of ignorance and 
prejudice that hang like thick 
clouds between us and the truth, 
thus hindering the light of past 
events from illuminating the road 
that lies before us. In every page 
of this work we see the Christian 
philosopher, deeply impressed by 
the responsibility of his mission, 
going hand-in-hand with the his- 
torian, the effect of his enthusi- 
asm never marred by rancor, the 
weight of his arguments never 
weakened by partisanship ; pre- 
senting to us with the simplicity 
and power of truth the lesson which 
he draws from the study of this 
dark and troubled epoch viz., that 
Hatred can never be made to do 
the work of Love, and that, in enlist- 
ing the passions of fanatics in the 
service of religion, we call in an 
auxiliary too powerful for our moral 
sense, and which must prove fatal 
alike to souls and to the honor of 
the church of Christ that divine 
mother whose hand wields no wea- 
pon but the Cross, and under whose 
blessed flag violence can never be 
made to accomplish the mission of 
her Founder. 



The City of St. John the Baptist. 



'59 



THE CITY OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

" Tell me of the fold 
That hath St. John for guardian." DANTE. 



ON the borders of that strange, 
melancholy region in Southwestern 
France known as the Landes, about 
thirty-five miles southeast of Bor- 
deaux, stands the ancient town of 
Bazas on a rocky height overlook- 
ing all the neighboring country. 
Around its base sweeps the gentle 
Beuve, that has its source a little 
to the west in three living springs 
which the peasants call les tres sos 
the three sisters. This pure, limpid 
stream flows softly over its pebbly 
bed, and goes winding along among 
gently undulating hills with a maid- 
enly grace worthy of its origin, its 
banks edged with poplars and wil- 
lows, and its current gradually 
swelled by a succession of brooks 
and rivulets till it empties into the 
Garonne at the village of St. 
Pardon. On every side the eye is 
charmed with the landscape, which, 
without ever rising into the sub- 
lime, is sufficiently varied to please 
the lover of the serenely beautiful. 
In the region of St. Come, for in- 
stance, where villages stand on op- 
posite heights each side of a spark- 
ing stream that here empties into 
the Beuve, you see pretty cream- 
colored houses in every direction 
half-hidden among fruit-trees, ter- 
raced gardens on the hillsides bril- 
liant with flowers, vines wreathing 
one homestead with another around 
the swelling heights, windmills 
faintly beating the air with their 
wearied sails, roads bordered with 
hawthorn hedges, and numerous 
streams giving life and freshness to 
the valleys. . You long to penetrate 
some of these green valleys seclud- 



ed among the umbrageous hills 
whence come the sound of running 
waters and the singing of birds. 
Everything breathes the peaceful- 
ness and tender charm of nature in 
her gentlest mood. You feel the 
fresh grace and poetry of the scene 
especially at the decline of day, 
when the hamlets and villages 
perched on the heights catch the 
last rays of the setting sun, and 
the sound of the Angelus echoes 
from one to another across the 
darkening valleys with measured 
peals, inviting to prayer. 

Out of this fair region, as from a 
sea of verdure, rises gray and with 
a certain majesty the old town of 
Bazas, a place so important in the 
time of the Caesars that Crassus 
considered its reduction necessary 
to the success of his arms, but 
now dismantled, lifeless, and for- 
gotten. We love these old places 
that have seen better days, with 
their ruins and battered monuments 
that are continually murmuring of 
the Past. The glories they recount, 
the traditions and legends they wit- 
ness to, are infinitely more delight- 
ful than all the statistics of modern 
prosperity. Here, for instance, in 
this scarcely-known town, there is 
a strange pleasure in gazing at the 
ruined walls beneath which the 
Romans, Goths, Huns, and Nor- 
. mans successively encamped ; at 
the old ramparts out of which grow 
tufts of verdure where Charlemagne 
set up his banner and summoned 
the knights of Bazas to join him in 
his expedition to Spain ; the bleach- 
ed rocks, gleaming peacefully in the 



i6o 



The City of St. John the Baptist. 



light, where once flashed weapons 
of warfare ; the turrets and gardens 
of the old Eveche, where lived the 
bishops, at one time the feudal 
lords of Bazas ; and above all, 
crowning the whole city, the cathe- 
dral of St. John with its strange 
legend, proud of its beauty, pierc- 
ing the blue heavens with its tall, 
slender spire, its two long rows of 
Gothic windows glittering in the 
sun, and its stout buttresses so 
arched as to give lightness and 
grace to the solemn pile. 

The name of Bazas is derived 
from Vasatum, the letters V and B 
being used rather indiscriminately 
in this region. It is the ancient 
Cossio Vasatum spoken of by Strabo 
and Ptolemy. It is certain from 
several ancient writers that the 
place is of great antiquity, and was 
eminently prosperous at the begin- 
ning of the Christian era. Many 
parts of the city still bear names 
that recall its ancient memories. 
The quarter of the Taillade is so 
called because here the Romans 
cut down its brave defenders, or, 
as the people will have it, where 
the Bazadais slaughtered the Ro- 
mans. The faubourg Paillas, where 
stand the ruins of the Franciscan 
convent built out of a commandery 
of the Templars in the time of 
Philippe le Bel, derives its name 
from an old temple of Pallas Mi- 
nerva that once stood here, a por- 
tion of which remained till very 
recent times. The faubourg Font- 
despan at the west of Bazas, which 
extends to the flowery meadows 
and rich fields, is so called from 
an ancient fountain consecrated to 
Pan, around which the shepherds 
used to pipe rude hymns to their 
favorite divinity while their flocks 
browsed in the neighboring mea- 
dow. There is also a street named 
Fontdespan, which leads to the 



pleasant promenade of St. Sauveur, 
the trees of which were planted by 
one of the old bishops. Here the 
peasants still gather for their rural 
sports, especially on holidays, and 
forget, after the manner of this 
happy clime, the cares and toils of 
every-day life. 

Trazits, a name corrupted from 
turris situs, is one of the heights 
overlooking the beautiful valley of 
St. Come, where stood an old tower 
as late as 1820, built by the Ro- 
mans. Another height nearer the 
city where the Huns entrenched 
themselves became known as the 
Collis Hunnorum, or Col des Huns, 
afterwards corrupted into Cou- 
Huns, and now called Gouhans by 
the peasants, though written Gans. 
Here the bishops of Bazas once 
had a chateau, but it is now gone, 
as well as the stately avenues and 
shady groves that surrounded it. 
The grounds, however, are still call- 
ed Labescaud a patois term sig- 
nifying le bien de Ffoeque. From 
this height you can trace the wind- 
ings of the Beuve to the Garonne, 
and here it was that Genseric was 
encamped in 439 when, looking 
down on the beleaguered city, he 
saw the bishop and clergy come 
forth on the ramparts at night in 
their pure linen robes, followed by 
men, women, and children bearing 
torches in their hands and praying, 
as they went, for the safety of the 
city. The white-robed forms lit 
up by flaming torches, the suppli- 
cating tones of their chanted pray- 
ers floating up through the still 
night air, and the slow, measured 
round of the mysterious procession, 
seemed like a nocturnal vision sent 
to admonish him. He abandoned 
the siege, and the people flocked 
joyfully to the churches to sing: 
Nisi Dominus custodierit civitatem, 
frustra vigilat qui ctistodit earn. 



The City of St. John the Baptist. 



161 



St. Gregory of Tours gives the 
account of Bazas being thus sav- 
ed by prayer. He also tells of a 
miraculous occurrence in the time 
of the same bishop, whose name 
was Peter. Arianism was then ra- 
vaging the church, and the great 
doctrine of the Trinity was assailed. 
Three drops of blood fell on the 
paten at the consecration as Peter, 
the bishop, was saying Mass, and 
after some minutes united in one 
drop resembling a precious jewel. 
He had it enclosed in a cross of 
gold, and it was preserved with 
great reverence till the time of the 
Normans, when it was buried for 
safety, and the secret as to the pre- 
cise spot for ever lost. 

The old Chronique Bazadaise also 
speaks of a place just without 
the city walls where the mighty 
Roland, leaping across a precipice, 
left the imprint of his foot on the 
rock, long to be seen, and known as 
lou pas de Rolland, though no trace 
of it is to be found now. It is also 
said that a great number of Baza- 
dais knights followed Charlemagne 
to Spain, the Pyrenees bowing their 
lofty summits that they might pass, 
and the eternal snows melting be- 
neath their feet, as if the very ele- 
ments waited, as it were, on vic- 
tory. Many of these noble preux 
were borne back to Bazas and 
buried in the ancient cemetery of 
the Targue, where marble sarco- 
phagi, fragments of mosaic, etc., 
are still found, attesting the magni- 
ficent honors they received. 

There is likewise a place near 
the city called lou pas des Ingleses, 
where the English, during their oc- 
cupation of the country, used to 
have their games and exercises. 
Richard the Lion-hearted came to 
Bazas in 1190 to seek recruits for 
the Holy Wars, and Bishop Gaillard 
de la Mothe not only accompanied 

VOL. XXX. II 



him Jbut induced several knights 
in his diocese to do the same. 
Among these was the lord of Ton- 
tolon, a knight of great bravery 
and enthusiasm, who with a vast 
retinue set out for the East. Here 
adverse fortune awaited him. He 
lost his horses, baggage, and means 
of subsistence, and was so reduced 
to despair that he turned the very 
arrows of his quiver against the 
heavens, as if to defy the divine 
power, seemingly so inimical. At 
that instant Raymond, Bishop of 
Puy, came upon the terrible scene, 
and so judiciously spoke to him 
concerning the mysterious designs 
of Providence in sending adversi- 
ties that he roused the frenzied 
knight from his state of despair, in- 
duced him to rally his followers 
and fall once more upon the enemy. 
This time he put them to flight and 
took an immense booty, enabling 
him to retrieve his fortunes. 

A later historical remembrance 
is perpetuated at Bazas by a breach 
in the ancient wall, still known as 
the Breche, made by a band of 
Calvinists from Nerac, then a very 
hot-bed of treason and religious 
plots, when they entered the city 
on Christmas eve, 1561, while the 
inhabitants were at midnight Mass. 
The defenceless worshippers fled be- 
fore the brutal soldiers, who over- 
threw the altars and statues, burn- 
ed the sacerdotal garments and sa- 
cred books, and massacred the 
clergy. In later raids they de- 
stroyed several churches, broke the 
very tombs of the dead in pieces, 
and scattered their ashes. One of 
the most sacred burial-places at 
Bazas, called the Sagrad dou Saint 
Marsau, is said to have been con- 
secrated by St. Martial, the great 
apostle of Aquitaine, who also 
founded the church of Notre Dame 
dau Mercadil, or du petit March?, 



1 62 



The City of St. John the Baptist. 



thrice devastated by the Normans, 
Huguenots, and Vandals of 1793, 
and thrice rebuilt by the people to 
attest their love for this ancient 
sanctuary of Mary. 

But the oldest and most cherish- 
ed Christian traditions of Bazas 
centre around the church of St. 
John, the foundation of which is 
believed to date from the very first 
century. Connected herewith is 
one of those strange, delightful le- 
gends of which this region is so 
full. 

Bazas is emphatically the City of 
St. John. The martyrdom of " the 
mighty Baptist," as Dante calls 
him, was not only depicted on the 
ancient banner of the city and 
graven on its money like that of 
Florence, but sculptured in stone 
at the portal of the cathedral and 
taken for a device on the city arms. 
Its very name, Cossio Vasatum, is 
said by some to be derived from a 
stiver vase, containing the blood of 
the martyred Baptist, brought from 
the East by a holy woman and hon- 
ored for eighteen hundred years 
in a church dedicated to his mem- 
ory. St. Gregory of Tours, in his 
De Gloria Marty rum, as well as the 
author of an ancient work call- 
ed Baptista Salvatoris, says this wo- 
man was a wealthy matron of Ba- 
'%^(inatxona Patensis)) who, accom- 
panied by a great number of her 
own people, went to Jerusalem in 
the reign of Tiberius to see the 
Saviour, the renown of whose mira- 
cles had spread to the extremities 
of the Roman Empire. There is 
certainly nothing incredible in this. 
As Chateaubriand says, the soldiers 
of the Roman Empire went from 
the shores of the Danube and the 
Rhine to those of the Euphrates 
and the Nile, and -'troops from 
Batavia went to relieve a post at 
Jerusalem. The wife of some Ro- 



man officer, therefore, might easily 
have undertaken such a journey. 

It is related, furthermore, tl 
this Dame Bazadaise, while at Je- 
rusalem, learning that the blessed 
John the Baptist was to be behead- 
ed in the prison of the very castle 
of Macheronte where Herod was 
celebrating his birthday, obtained 
access to the dungeon by means of 
rich gifts, and gathered up some of 
the martyr's blood, which she put 
with great devotion in a silver vase 
in the form of a shell, and brought 
it back to Aquitaine together with 
other precious relics which she 
valued above rubies, such as a gar- 
ment of the Saviour and some of 
the golden hair of his holy Mother. 
During the voyage the malignant 
fiends and princes of the air let 
loose the most furious winds against 
the frail bark, and made the seas 
run mountains high. Destruction 
seemed inevitable. But the vene- 
rable dame, undaunted amid th< 
peril, took the silver conque, 01 
shell, containing the relic of St. 
John, and, raising it to heaven, in- 
voked the aid of God. The wind; 
were at once lulled. The ragini 
sea grew calm. A favorable bree; 
sprang up which wafted the vessel 
to the western shore of Aquitaine 
at a place called Soulac. 

The tradition at Soulac, as w 
have related elsewhere,* says this 
matron was St. Veronica; and it 
a striking coincidence that Cathe- 
rine Emmerich beheld this sainl 
going with other holy women t( 
Macheronte to obtain, if possible, 
some relic of St. John. Howevei 
this may be, the old chronicle goes 
on to relate how this dame came 
by land from Soulac to Bazas, 
preaching Christ on the way and 
effecting a great number of con- 
versions. The places where she 

* See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for May, 1877. 






The City of St. John the Baptist. 



163 



halted are still indicated by church- 
es that are undoubtedly among the 
most ancient in the country. Most 
of them testify to a singular de- 
votion to St. John. First, there is 
his altar in the old church at Sou- 
lac, where she deposited a finger of 
the saint. At Grayan is the Hos- 
pitalet of St. Jean Decoullack, which 
annually celebrates on the 2gth of 
August the Decollation which St. 
Veronica witnessed in the prison 
of Macheronte. Carquans, another 
station, has also its popular festi- 
val of St. John. The history of its 
church is thus related in the Le- 
gende de Cenebrun : 

"The lady of Soulac and her 
husband proceeded towards Car- 
quans, passing through a dense 
forest. Now, there was no church 
in that place, therefore the lady 
Mary set up her tent beside a foun- 
tain. Here she heard Mass every 
day with great devotion.* And as 
the lady Mary, who was the most 
beautiful lady under the sun, was 
even more devout than she was 
beautiful, she built a church on 
the western side of the fountain, 
the first stone of which she laid 
with her own hands, and then, a 
rich tent being set up on the spot, 
she had a solemn Mass celebrated." 
Begaudan, another of St. Vero- 
nica's halting-places, annually cele- 
brates St. John's nativity with great 
pomp. A fragment of his skull 
is revered in the church, and a rep- 
resentation of his severed head is 
borne in the religious processions. 
Further on are the ruins of St. 
Pierre de 1'Ile, an old abbey that 
had an ancient chapel dedicated to 
St. John the Baptist. And on the 
shore of the bay called the Marais 
de Reysson is St. Jean de Segon- 
dignac, a chapel of remotest anti- 

* Another tradition says she was also accompa- 
nied by St. Martial. 



quity, adjoining which was a mon- 
astery, not founded, but enlarged, 
by Charlemagne. Other parishes 
along the way have also special de- 
votion to St. John, as Cussac, Lis- 
trac, Arcins, etc., all bearing traces 
of the pious Veronica. At Bazas 
she built an oratory on the very 
spot where the church of St. John 
now stands, and here she depo- 
sited the concha argentea she had 
brought with so much care from the 
East. 

What is certain, from time im- 
memorial there was a relic of St. 
John the Baptist at Bazas, the au- 
thenticity of which was never doubt- 
ed by clergy or people. During the 
Norman invasion in 853 it was con- 
cealed in a country place known 
ever since as Conque, and still 
marked by a cross. It was after- 
wards restored to the city and hid- 
den behind the high altar at St. 
John's, where it was found in a 
stone coffer when, the church was 
rebuilt at the end of the eleventh 
century. When Pope Urban II. 
came to consecrate the new edifice 
in 1092 he examined the documents 
concerning it and recognized its 
authenticity. The bishop, seeing 
the pope examine with particular 
interest the antique silver conque, 
which was, in fact, of remarkable 
workmanship, offered it to him as 
a mark of gratitude. Urban ac- 
cepted the vase, but the relic was 
kept at Bazas, where it was held in 
great veneration. 

Five festivals in honor of St. 
John were annually celebrated at 
Bazas during the ages of faith. On 
St. John's day the butchers, after 
an immemorial custom, used to 
present an ox to the jurats of the 
town, which the latter, clothed in 
their official robes, went to receive 
in presence of the multitude as- 
sembled at the great fair held on. 



164 



The City of St. John the Baptist. 



this occasion. On the eve an im- 
mense pile was prepared on the 
principal square, and as the sun- 
light died away on the towers of 
St. John cannon announced the 
approaching solemnity to all the 
country around. The clergy then 
sang the hymn of St. John and 
blessed the pile, which was lighted 
by the chief jurat amid the accla- 
mations of the crowd. Then the 
priests and magistrates went in 
procession to the church, where 
they made the circuit of the choir 
nine times in honor of the blood of 
the saint which was there enshrin- 
ed. This was called making the 
neuf tours du sang de St. Jean. 
Down to the great Revolution the 
people used to flock to the church 
from the very dawn of St. John's 
day to hear Mass and, candle in 
hand, devoutly make their neuf 
tours around the choir. It is said 
these nine rounds originated at 
the time of the Arians, when the 
people, to emphasize their belief 
in the divinity, unity, and co-eter- 
nity of the three Persons comprised 
in the Godhead, not only made 
triple acts of devotion, but some- 
times extended them to three times 
three. Three is the number above 
all others, says Ausonius, for it 
expresses the unity of the three di- 
vine Persons : 

44 Tres numerus sufer omnia, ires deus unus" 

The relic of St. John's blood 
which had escaped the Goths, 
Huns, Normans, and even the 
Huguenots, after being honored 
at Bazas for eighteen hundred 
years as a memorial of the first 
introduction of Christianity, was 
thrown into a cesspool at the Revo- 
lution and for ever lost to human 
eyes, though it still crieth from the 
ground not for vengeance, like 
the blood of Abel, let us hope, but 



in behalf of a land still so devout 
to God and his saints. 

But the church of St. John has 
been happily spared in the various 
civil commotions. It is an edifice 
of the purest Gothic style and of ad- 
mirable symmetry. Three portals 
admit you to the interior, and be- 
neath them you linger to study the 
beautiful sculptures in which the 
faith of the thirteenth century has 
recorded so many pages of sacred 
lore. In one is told the story we 
are never tired of pondering over 
the story of Mary's life, beginning 
with the tree of Jesse from which 
she sprang, and ending with her 
glorification in heaven. In an- 
other portal is the martyrdom of 
St. John, closely followed by the 
last judgment, as if to teach the 
sure retribution of sin, the sure 
glory that will crown the sufferings 
of the just. The angels who pre- 
sent the redeemed souls to the 
great Judge have uncommon bold- 
ness of expression. 

The interior of the church has 
something exceedingly light and 
harmonious about it. The lofty 
arches rest on pillars so tall and 
slender that Louis XIV., when he 
visited it, cried out with admiration 
that it looked like a beau vaisseau 
renverse" sur des fuseaux. There 
are no transepts, and the side aisles 
are united by an ambulatory around 
the apsis opening into five chapels 
that radiate around the choir, glo- 
rious with light, like an aureola. 
Five arches, too, span the nave, and 
on them is depicted a complete zo- 
diac.* The allegorical personages 



* The signs of the zodiac are also sculptured on 
the capitals of the columns in the curious old church 
of the Templars at Aillas, a place not far from Bazas, 
so named from Waillas, King of the Visigoths, who 
built a castle here in the fifth century. This cas- 
tle was rebuilt in the ninth century and became 
one of the residences of the family of Albret. 
Henry IV. inherited it from his mother, and used 
to visit it from time to time. On one of these oc- 



The City of St. John the Baptist. 



165 



corresponding to the seasons and 
the different agricultural pursuits 
are very curious. Capricorn, for ex- 
ample, is a genuine shepherd of the 
Landes with his unshorn sheep- 
skin mantle around him and a goat 
browsing hard by. 

From the towers of St. John you 
look directly down into the streets 
of the old city that has had its day, 
but, gray, scarred, and down fallen 
as it is, is smiling in the sun with a 
satisfied consciousness of its ancient 
achievements. You count one by 
one the old historic sites, with their 
ancient names that evoke so many 
centuries from the grave of the 
past. At the north you see the 
Beuve threading among the low 
hills, and at the south follow the 
road a great distance on its way to 
Spain. 

Bazas was an episcopal see down 
to 1792. Among the earlier bish- 
ops we find Sextilius, who attend- 
ed the Council of Orleans in 511. 
In 1152 the see was occupied by 
Arnaud de Tontolon, who, out of 
his great devotion to Our Lady, 
gave his Approval to a festival in 
honor of the Immaculate Concep- 
tion, instituted by Adon, abbot of 
La. Reole the first official recog- 
nition of this festival in France. 

The clergy of St. John's in the 
middle ages seem to have been en- 
dowed with 

" The lore the Baptist taught, 
The soul unswerving and the fearless tongue." 

When Amanieu d'Albret, one of 
the old lords who had imposed on- 
erous taxes on the people of Bazas, 
presented himself at the holy table 
he was refused communion till he 
should repair his injustice. The 
clergy understood their high pre- 
rogatives in those days, and there 

casions, while hunting in the neighboring wood, 
called lou base majou, a famous rendezvous for 
hunters, he came near being assassinated. 



are numerous proofs how truly they 
were the friends of the people. 
Pictures of the great, suffering tor- 
ments, were common in churches. 
Old missals had a Mass against ty- 
rants, and in some churches the 
Depusuit potentes de sede was chant- 
ed thrice a warning as to the in- 
security of earthly power. 

The chief baron in Bazadais 
claimed the honor in those days of 
holding the bridle of the horse on 
which a new bishop made his so- 
lemn entrance into the city. On 
one of these occasions two lords 
contested for the right, and had 
called their vassals around them to 
decide the question by force of 
arms, when the parliament of Bor- 
deaux interposed and gave the pre- 
ference to the Baron de Lausac, who 
had married a grand-niece of Pope 
Clement V. The bishops naturally 
rejoiced when this custom was abo- 
lished, for the baron who acted the 
part of esquire had the right of 
carrying off all the silver plate used 
at the bishop's dinner on this occa- 
sion a heavy loss, even when the 
bishop was a nobleman of wealth, 
which was not always the case. 
We read of one at Bazas, saintly 
and learned, a commentator to the 
extent of four volumes on the Master 
of Sentences, who was of a poor fa- 
mily and without the means of de- 
fraying the expenses of this solemn 
entry. It was, moreover, opposed 
to the natural simplicity of his 
character, and he begged leave to 
decline the usual honors. 

Cardinal d'Albret, Bishop of Ba- 
zas, is said to have had a somewhat 
unclerical love of hunting, and kept 
a numerous pack of hounds where- 
with to chase and kill the fallow- 
deer. It might be said in his ex- 
cuse that a taste for hunting was 
almost hereditary in the vicinity of 
the Pyrenees. It was even necessa- 



1 65 



The City of St. John the Baptist. 



ry that the mountain priests should 
know " full well in time of need to 
aim their shafts aright," for often, 
turning at the altar to say Dominus 
vobiscum^ they could see a bear of 
no inconsiderable proportions forc- 
ing its way through the door. And 
the accomplishment was by no 
means useless on the border of the 
Landes. But this did not prevent 
Cardinal d'Albret from getting a 
sly thrust now and then from the 
clergy of the provinces less wild, 
and even from the laity. On one 
occasion, when some savant of the 
Renaissance was relating in the 
presence of Louis XII. that no 
priest among the ancient Romans 
was allowed to have either dog 
or goat, or even pronounce their 
names, the king is said to have 
exclaimed : " What a sad time 
that would have been for the Car- 
dinal d'Albret !" 

One of the most zealous and 
saintly prelates of the sixteenth 
century was Arnaud de Pontac, 
Bishop of Bazas, called the Doctor 
Gallicanus on account of his vast 
learning. He belonged to an il- 
lustrious family from which had 
sprung many valiant knights and 
learned doctors of the law a fam- 
ily still perpetuated by the counts 
of Pontac, whose chateau is to 
be seen at St. Pardon, where the 
Beuve empties into the Garonne. 
In the terrible famine of 1598 Bi- 
shop Arnaud fed two thousand 
poor people at his own expense, 
besides aiding the sick and needy 
elsewhere. It was his boundless 
charity that induced all the Calvin- 
ists in his diocese to renounce 
their errors, and he had the satis- 
faction before he died of seeing his 
whole flock gathered into one fold. 

Bishop Maroni (1634) was of 
Mantuan origin and traced his 
descent from the family of Virgil. 



Bishop de Gourgues, who was ap- 
pointed by Louis XIV., was a 
grand-nephew of Dominique de 
Gourgues, who avenged the honor 
of the French in Florida. 

We do not know which bishop 
it was that, according to M. Lafon, 
had the misfortune to offend some 
irascible Gascon so deeply as to 
make him rashly vow he would 
never pray in the diocese of Bazas 
again. His resolution was tested 
rather sooner than he anticipated. 
One day, while sailing on the Ga- 
ronne, a squall suddenly sprang up 
that endangered the safety of his 
bark. The boatmen said all they 
could do was to commend them- 
selves to God. "First tell me," 
inquired the obdurate Gascon, 
"have you any idea whether or 
not we are in the diocese of Ba- 
zas ?" 

Among the more ancient recol- 
lections of Bazas we must not over- 
look the family of the poet Auso- 
nius, whose father, Julius Ausonius, 
one of the most celebrated physi- 
cians of his time, was born here 
about the year 286. Later in life 
he removed to Bordeaux, but still 
retained his vast possessions at 
Bazas. The poet, recounting his 
father's frugality, sobriety, and 
other virtues, makes him say : 

" Vicinas urbes colui, patriaque domoque ; 
Vasates patria, sed lare Burdigalam." * 

Ausonius often retired to his mat- 
son de plaisance in Bazadais, which 
he calls the kingdom of his ances- 
tors, and he celebrates a spring of 
clear water near by, which is still 
known to every one as the Fon- 
taine d'Ausone. This poet has 
been regarded by many as a pagan. 
Even Chateaubriand says : "Auso- 
nius of the religion of Homer is 

* I have dwelt in two neighboring cities : Bazas 
is my native place, but Bordeaux is now my home. 



The City of St. John the Baptist. 



167 






linked with Paulinas of the reli- 
gion of Christ." But St. Paulinus 
distinctly says their hearts and 
souls were united in Christ : 



Inque tuo tantus, nobis consensus amore est 
Quantus et in Christo connexa mente colendo." 



And only a Christian could have 
written Ausonius' beautiful morn- 
ing prayer : 

"O thou who art the Word of 
God, the God-Word, who wast en- 
gendered before all time, who didst 
exist before the first beam of Auro- 
ra ever lit up the starry vault ; who 
didst create all things, and without 
whom nothing was made ; . . . 
whom our fathers had the happi- 
ness of seeing, and under the veil 
of whose divinity beheld the Fa- 
ther; who didst take upon thyself 
the burden of our iniquities, and, 
weighed down beneath our sins, 
didst die for us a cruel death, . . . 
we offer thee these pious vows, 
trembling and grieving in view of 
our offences. O Christ, who art 
our Saviour and our Lord, eternal 
Wisdom, glory and word of the 
Most High, Son of God, very God 
of very God, Light of light, render 
them acceptable to the Eternal Fa- 
ther." 

It was Paulinus, a nephew of Au- 
sonius (the son of his sister Dry- 
ade), who defended Bazas against 
the Visigoths in 414. A place in 
the canton of Bazas is still called 
Thaleyson from Thaleysius, the 
father-in-law of Ausonius. It was 
on the pleasant heights of Tha- 
leyson that Crassus entrenched 
himself when he came to besiege 
Bazas. He tried to inundate the 
valley beneath by drawing off the 
waters of the Ciron, whence the 
name of Beau-Lac still given to the 
valley. Here was once a precep- 
tory of the Templars. From Tha- 
leyson you look off at the west 



over a sea of dark verdure, dreary 
and monotonous. Here begin the 
Landes with their forests of mari- 
time pines. 

A marble tablet has been found at 
Bazas with the inscription: " Apu- 
lit hinc Nolam divus Paulinus al- 
tam Ausonius Romam " It was 
from this place St. Paulinus set out 
for Nola, and Ausonius for Rome. 
Perhaps they came here to bid 
farewell to the home of their an- 
cestors, for St. Paulinus' father was 
also a native of Bazas, though he, 
too, removed to Bordeaux. The 
region of Langon belonged to him, 
and there the saint built a church, 
which St. Delphinus of Bordeaux 
consecrated. This was afterwards 
restored by the English, and here 
and there on the walls and vault 
are graven the arms of England. 
Langon is on the Garonne, sur- 
rounded by orchards and rich vine- 
yards that yield wines rivalling 
those of Medoc. 

Eutropius, a Latin historian con- 
temporary with Ausonius, was a 
native of Bazas. He bore arms 
under Julian in his unfortunate ex- 
pedition to Persia. 

Bertrand de Gouth, or Got, bet- 
ter known as Pope Clement V., is 
one of the glories of Bazas. This 
eminent pope, the illustrious victim 
of Italian hatred, has always been 
by turns an object of praise and 
blame, admiration and censure, and, 
though his reign was short, it fur- 
nishes a long chapter in the annals 
of the church and the history of 
France. The family of Bertrand 
was, from its wealth and alliances, 
of considerable influence in the 
south of France. It had property, 
among other places, in Provence, 
whence it came at the time of some 
civil disturbance to establish itself 
at Bazas in a manor which was 
thenceforth called Uzeste, or little 



1 68 



The City of St. John the Baptist. 



Uzes, from the family seat in Pro- 
vence. This was soon after Henry 
II. of England married Eleanor of 
Aquitaine, and the family De Gouth, 
from the time of their coming here, 
remained loyal to England amid 
all the political oscillations. At 
one time the domains of Uzeste 
were ravaged by the Count of Va- 
lois on account of this fidelity to 
the English crown. It was at 
Uzeste Clement V. was born, and 
here he was brought to be buried. 
He studied at the universities of 
Bologna and Orleans. His elder 
brother, the cardinal archbishop of 
Lyons, introduced him at the court 
of Pope Boniface VIII., who made 
him one of his chaplains, afterward 
appointed him bishop of Com- 
minges, and finally transferred him 
to the see of Bordeaux. 

On the mere testimony of Vil- 
lani, an undiscerning and often un- 
reliable chronicler, historians hos- 
tile to the Papacy have repeated in 
a chorus that Bertrand ascended 
the pontifical throne by an act of 
simony. This atrocious calumny 
sprang from the hatred of the Ita- 
lians toward "the Gascon pope," 
as they called him, because he 
transferred the papal residence to 
Avignon, where it remained seventy 
years a period termed by them the 
Captivity of Babylon. Even Dante, 
with his strong prejudices, places 
Clement, in the Inferno, among the 
followers of Simon Magus, and ac- 
cuses him of more devotion to the 
coin of Florence, 

" The metal with the Baptist's form impressed " 

(like the money of Clement's native 
province of Bazas), than to Peter or 
Paul. 

Villani pretends that Bertrand, a 
short time before his elevation, had 
an interview with Philippe le Bel 
at St. Jean d'Angely, in which the 



king promised him the tiara on 
certain conditions. One of these 
was to restore Philippe to the com- 
munion of the church, but this had 
already been done by Benedict XI. 
The decree of Bertrand's election 
proves the falseness of Villani's 
statements, and modern investiga- 
tions show beyond doubt that the 
interview never took place. The 
MS. Itinerary of Bertrand as arch- 
bishop of Bordeaux has been found 
in the archives of the Gironde and 
published, and the record of his 
pastoral visits in 1304 proves he did 
not set foot in St. Jean d'Angely at 
the time specified, and could not 
have done so, as he was too far 
distant. 

After the death of Benedict XI. 
the conclave at Perugia for the 
election of his successor lasted nine 
months. There were two factions 
^one French, the other Italian. 
Finally it was proposed to elect 
Bertrand de Gouth, who belonged 
to a -family noted for its devotion 
to England. 

Clement V. always retained a spe- 
cial affection for his native place, 
and not only built a new church at 
Uzeste, but a magnificent castle 
not far distant, called Villandraut, 
on the banks of the Ciron. While 
pope he made two visits here, and 
some of his bulls are dated at 
Villandraut, to which his family 
had transferred its residence. The 
picturesque ruins of this chateau, 
which was destroyed by the Hu- 
guenots, still form a prominent 
feature in the landscape. Four 
round towers, feudal in aspect, 
lofty, majestic, and sombre, are 
still standing, as well as part of the 
walls of the main building, tapes- 
tried with ivy. There is a great 
well in the court, surrounded by 
broken arches, vaulted cellars, a 
ruined chapel. Spiral staircases of 



The City of St. John the Baptist. 



169 



stone lead to the top of the towers, 
where you look off at the north 
over the vine-covered hills of Sau- 
terne and Langon that border the 
Garonne. Directly beneath the 
ruins flows the Ciron past a pretty 
village and its gardens, through 
fair meadows and rich grain-fields. 
At the southeast, contrasting with 
this fair scene, are the sombre 
woods of a vast pignada stretching 
away to the sea. 

Pope Clement was on his way to 
try the benefit of his native air 
when he died. By his will his re- 
mains were transported to his patri- 
monial estate and placed in a beau- 
tiful marble tomb in the choir of 
the church at Uzeste. This was 
destroyed by the Huguenots in 
1568, but the fragments are still to 
be seen a'mong them the recum- 
bent statue of the pope, with the 
head smitten off. There are few 
churches in France that do not 
bear similar marks of the favorite 
pastimes of these amiable sectaries 
of the sixteenth century. 

Another distinguished ecclesias- 
tic of this region was Arnaud d'Aux 
of La Romieu, by his mother, 
Jeanne de Gouth, a relative of Cle- 
ment V., with whom he became in- 
timate at the University of Orleans. 
After the latter ascended the pon- 
tifical throne Arnaud was appoint- 
ed bishop of Poitiers, and we read 
that on taking possession of his 
see, May 7, 1307, he was carried 
into his cathedral on a chair by 
four of the chief barons of Poitou. 
So high an opinion had the pope 
of his ability that he sent him 
to England with Cardinal Novelli, 
charged with the difficult mission 
of pacifying the differences between 
Edward and his barons, and induc- 
ing the king to transfer the proper- 
ty of the Templars, seized by the 
barons, to the Knights of St. John. 



They failed in the first object of 
their mission, and only succeeded 
partly in the second ; but Arnaud so 
won the esteem of King Edward 
that he conferred on him a pension 
of fifty marks of silver. After his 
return to France he was made car- 
dinal. He now bought a marsh at 
La Romieu, which he drained, and 
on this spot built a large church 
flanked by two octagonal towers. 
You enter it by an atrium, which is 
now beginning to show the effects 
of time and violence. When the 
cardinal died his remains were 
brought here and buried at the 
right of the high altar. His ne- 
phew, Fort d'Aux, who succeeded 
him as bishop of Poitiers, was en- 
tombed in the chapel of St. Ve- 
ronica, at the altar of which solemn 
oaths were administered, as at the 
tomb of St. Fort at Bordeaux. Two 
other tombs of the same family 
stood in the nave. All these were 
destroyed by Montgomery the Hu- 
guenot, who pillaged the church 
and consigned most of the priests 
to the flames. It was before the 
door of this church that, by virtue 
of a decree of the parliament of 
Bordeaux, a curious hymn in honor 
of St. John the Baptist used to be 
sung every year on St. John's Eve. 
This hymn, which is still extant, 
consists of fifty-seven couplets in 
the Gascon tongue with a Greek cho- 
rus, and is entitled: "A Dialogue 
in honor of St. John the Baptist, 
qui se cano cado annado daovant la 
porto de la gleizo parroissialo Nostro 
Damo de Larroumiou la beillo de St. 
Jouan" It not only recounts the 
life of St. John, but gives an epi- 
tome of sacred history from the 
very creation. It begins by calling 
upon the lords to listen to the song 
of St. John the Baron : 

u Barons, augis lou son a, eon 
De Sent Jouan lou Baron eleyson" 



I/O 



Noblesse Oblige. 



Dante, too, calls the mighty Baptist 
a baron. It is rather startling at 
first to hear the simple Biblical 
names thus aggrandized, but it was 
quite common in the middle ages 
to give a title to the saints. We 
read of Monseigneur St. Michael. 
Froissart calls St. James of Com- 
postella the Baron de St. Jacques. 
An old Spanish legend also speaks 
of him as an illustrious baron of 
Galilee. Gatien de Tours (tenth 
century), in a hymn in honor of St. 
Stephen, calls upon all good lords to 

"Escoter la legun 
De Sainct Estenne le glorieu barun." 



In the quaint old cantique of La 
Romieu the land of Egypt is styled 
the Terre de Nostro Damo, and 
Herodias' daughter is called Asi- 
liade a name we now and then 
hear in this region. The hymn 
ends by calling upon all who are 
present to pray God to "shield us 
from the tempest, watch over the 
wheat-fields, vineyards, and mea- 
dows, give peace to the earth, save 
us from war, and at the end of life 
grant Paradise to all the people of 
La Romieu and to all who bear 
them company in this pious cere- 
mony. Amen." 



NOBLESSE OBLIGE.* 



WHO can complain of a man for 
living in the house which he has 
built? No one will dispute his 
right, but the manner of his pos- 
session lies in his own hands. If 
in the midst of plenty he allows 
not one but many a poor Lazarus 
to lie at his gate, hungry and 
covered with sores, then indeed the 
popular voice will proclaim him a 
hard man, and will look upon him 
as one not worthy to be entrusted 
with his Master's talents. 

The makers of France, who had 
built the house, not only lived in it, 
as they had a right to do, but imi- 
tated that rich man in the Gospel 
who feasted whilst his poor neigh- 
bor starved. They ate and drank, 
making him pay by years of servi- 
tude for the benefits bestowed up- 
on his ancestors by their fathers. 
The whole structure of the middle 
ages was founded upon two princi- 
ples answering to two universally- 
felt needs. In the rude days of 

* // A nc 'en Ri>g 'm : Par M . T aine . 



the tenth century grammar and 
Latin were not the only sciences 
preserved by the clergy. Knights 
and princes were constrained to 
have recourse to their assistance 
for the simple knowledge of read- 
ing and writing. Monks, again, 
were beings of a higher moral 
caste, who lived in the solitude of 
their monasteries, occupied in no- 
bler intellectual pursuits, obliged 
by their rule to read for a cer- 
tain number of hours a day, bound, 
moreover, to be doers of a fixed 
amount of work on a given terri- 
tory. Insensibly, then, the clergy 
formed the basis of one of the 
great orders in France, represent- 
ing as they did a principle which 
must always govern the world to 
a certain degree the principle of 
authority. The second ruling no^ 
tion was the power of the sword, 
and it gradually built up the feudal 
structure according to which the 
kingdom of France was split up 
into as many parts as there were 



Noblesse Oblige. 



ry, little comfort. England was a 
troublesome neighbor, whose king 
carefully watched his opportunity 
of becoming something more than 
Duke of Normandy. On the mar- 
riage of the heiress of Aquitaine a 
bride of pestilence with Henry II., 
that monarch was more powerful in 



France than its king. When at 
last Charles VII. put an end to the 
weary fight for his position his suc- 
cessor, Louis XL, found out that 
his nobles at home were growing 
too powerful. His policy was con- 
stantly one of repression. Nearly 
two centuries later the subservient 
nobility gathered round the throne 
of Louis XIV. like children who 
would rather honor than love their 
father. Louis XIL, Francis I., and 
Henry II. were handles for the 
national pride ; they covered them- 
selves with foreign laurels more 
ornamental, certainly, than useful, 
but gratifying to the public feelings ; 
and one Francis I. was the avow- 
ed patron of the fine arts, whilst 
under Louis XII. Brittany became 
definitively united to the French 
crown. Who can doubt that the 
king of France had earned his 
bread ? A day came at last when 
he began to think about eating it, 
and, from eating it, to attach too 
much importance to its flavor. It 
was an evil moment when, arrived 
at the zenith of sovereign power, 
the king of France gave voice to 
his secret conviction, the outcome 
of many centuries of hard work on 
the part of his predecessors, Vetat, 
cest moi France is made for me, 
not I for France. The splendid 
court of Versailles, revolving round 
Louis XIV. like planets round the 
sun if one should not rather call it 
the sun's own photosphere prepar- 
ed the first discordant notes in the 
national harmony. But let us turn 
to history as it presents itself under 
the great-grandson of Louis XIV., 
Louis XV. 

The supreme power of the king 
was not tolerated by the letter, at 
least, of French law. There were 
three controlling authorities, which, 
however, somewhat resembled the 
ridiculus mus who sang of the war 



172 



Noblesse Oblige. 



of Priam. The Etats- Generaux were 
the most powerful of these bodies, 
but they owned no life apart from 
the convocation of the king, and 
under Louis XV. it was one hun- 
dred and seventy-five years since 
they had been called. Secondly," the 
Etats-Provinciaux subsisted mere- 
ly to enforce the bidding of the 
crown in the matter of taxation. 
Thirdly, the Parliaments were gag- 
ged by exile when they ventured 
to have an opinion. Thus Louis 
XV. had succeeded to the motto 
Ve'tat, c'est mot, and, if he nominal- 
ly accepted its responsibilities, he 
more than nominally enjoyed its 
advantages. Out of the public 
treasury four hundred and seventy- 
seven million francs were his pri- 
vate income, twenty-four to twenty- 
five millions that of his family.* 
The nobles, who on the outset 
of the feudal idea had been the 
king's equals, were compensated for 
his superiority by liberal grants 
of money, exemptions from fines, 
small panderings to their self-love, 
the right to be suzerains in their 
own generation to their dependants. 
The part of the clergy is estimated 
at from eighty to one hundred mil- 
lions without the tithes, making in 
all one hundred and twenty-three 
millions a year. The condition of 
France is well surmised by the 
proportion of one noble family to 
every square league of territory 
and to one thousand inhabitants. 
Each village had a cure, and every 
eighteen or twenty miles a religious 
community. Or again, dividing 
France into five parts, one-fifth be- 
longed to the crown and the com- 
munes^ one-fifth to the tiers Mat, 
one-fifth to the laboring class, and 
one-fifth to the clergy. But it will 

*Pp. 16 and 20. In all questions of figures it 
must be remembered that it is necessary to double 
or treble the given sums to form a notion of what 
they really represented. 



be shown what profit the laboring 
class were allowed to draw from 
their fifth of the soil. The abbes 
and priors en commende numbered 
fifteen hundred, the vicars-general 
and canons of chapters twenty- 
seven hundred a nobility, as it 
were, in the midst of the clergy 
besides which there were nineteei 
chapters of noble men and twen- 
ty-five chapters of noble women, 
wherein the high places were oftei 
bestowed by the crown not upoi 
merit but as gratuities to its owi 
particular friends. 

Riches do not soften hearts, an< 
at that luxurious time the nobles 
and the upper clergy expende< 
their superfluity on making a great 
figure at court. It will be seen 01 
the surface that a similar state ol 
things introduces the system of ex- 
tremes. For one that basked ii 
the sun of the king's favor ten pool 
men toiled and sweated, and that 
because France had reached that 
dangerous point in the history ol 
disease when the heart is incapabli 
of sending the life-blood througl 
the veins of a body. Paris, Ver- 
sailles, and an immediate neigh- 
borhood of sixty miles formed th< 
heart of France, where civilizatioi 
had reached its height, the clima: 
of enjoyment, of refinement, and ol 
the art of living; but beyond th< 
district of this enchanted circl* 
reigned poverty, discomfort of all 
kinds, and affliction of spirit. Th< 
gradual concentration or conflu: 
towards Paris of all that counted in 
the kingdom was the work of one 
hundred and fifty years, and on< 
of the causes of the well-nigh fatal 
malady which has afflicted France 
since 1789. The custom of the 
higher nobility was to have a ho- 
tel in Paris, an apartment in the 
palace of Versailles, and a country- 
house within sixty miles. Their 



Noblesse Oblige. 



173 



possessions in the country were 
administered by a steward, and the 
whole personal interest displayed 
in his tenantry by the grand sei- 
gneur amounted to this : " How 
much can I get out of them ?" It 
is unnecessary to say that the itch- 
ing desire to make money grow, as 
it were, out of the hedgerows was 
prompted by the false needs of an 
artificial splendor out of keeping 
with the most magnificent fortune. 
The same division was noticeable 
in the church. The priors and 
cures alone stayed behind ; the fif- 
teen hundred abbes and priors en 
commende buzzed round the court 
like moths, singeing their wings 
in the glare and losing the moral 
character which had constituted the 
force of the ecclesiastical order 
that of religion teaching with autho- 
rity. In the same way the twenty- 
seven hundred vicars-general and 
canons of chapters fled from soli- 
tude to enjoy the social pleasures 
of town life, where their chief occu- 
pation was dining out. The attrac- 
tions of the gilded crowd at Ver- 
sailles are in no way better establish- 
ed than by considering the singular 
advantages which even a moderate 
landed proprietor enjoyed on his 
own land in the province. He was 
the " first inhabitant," and treated 
as such not only during his life, but 
even after death. In the church 
he is presented with incense and 
holy water, and if he has found- 
ed it the poor cure has an evil 
time. All things are made sub- 
servient to his wishes, even down 
to the hour of the Masses, and for 
his reward after death his body is 
laid in the choir. If he bears a 
title the administration of justice 
is in his hands ; and there were 
whole provinces where this was an 
indispensable right for the landed 
proprietor. He has a prison for 



the punishment of various shades 
of delinquents, sometimes even a 
gallows. Like a prince within his 
own territory, he inherits the goods 
of the criminal, succeeds to the 
natural child dying without will or 
issue, and to all property where 
will and heirs fail. He may ap- 
propriate all goods on his estate 
which have no owner, and a third 
of any treasure which may be 
found. Besides these privileges 
he has the right of a taxation ex- 
tending to pretty nearly all the de- 
partments of life, and which he 
levies in virtue of the services he 
is supposed to render to society. 
In the middle ages these indeed 
were no sinecure, though the sys- 
tem was open to gross abuse ; but 
in the eighteenth century the ma- 
terial part of the feudal structure 
alone remained ; its spirit had been 
long dead. The concentration of 
power was totally opposed to the 
notion of feudalism ; the policy of 
Richelieu, faithfully carried out by 
the successors of Louis XIII., was 
preparing a race not of watch-dogs 
but of puppets, whose sole object 
was to shine, not to labor ; to domi- 
nate, not to govern. The crown 
gradually absorbed all local inte- 
rests, leaving to the feudal lords 
their rights, indeed, but cutting 
from under their feet the very 
ground upon which those rights 
rested. Under Louis XIV. any- 
thing like initiative on the part of 
the nobles was severely discoun- 
tenanced. Later on the whole 
administrative of the respective 
provinces was provided for by 
the crown, rendering the position 
of the smaller proprietors one of 
proud idleness. The situation, 
then, was made for them, and it 
was more vicious than they. It 
is difficult to decide which was the 
more pitiful lot of the two which 



174 



Noblesse Oblige. 



fell to French noblemen, to waste 
their days under the scorching 
sun of Versailles, or to be reduc- 
ed to the ignoble uselessness of a 
country-house, where the home du- 
ties were all performed by merce- 
nary hands. The consequences of 
the policy are manifest. No no- 
bleman who could possibly help it 
would endure provincial nonentity 
whilst the lucrative occupation of 
meriting the king's favor was to 
be "had at the court. And, once 
departed, they, the lesser lights of 
the firmament, imitated the great 
sun : they drew all their advanta- 
ges after them, or at least as many 
as were movable, and, as of neces- 
sity in human things, the excessive 
prosperity of the minority carried 
with it grievous suffering to the 
majority. Here we have only to 
deal with the non-residence of the 
landed proprietors inasmuch as it 
affected the country at large. 

The first, and in some respects 
the most fatal, consequence was 
the stagnation which it entailed on 
agriculture. Let it be borne in 
mind that during the reign of Louis 
XVI. it was estimated that the 
princes of the blood possessed one- 
seventh of the whole soil of France.* 
The domains of other grand sei- 
gneurs, such as the Due de Bouil- 
lon, the Due d'Aiguillon, the Prince 
de Soubise, were proportionately 
extensive ; yet generally, in the case 
of these large landed properties, 
the land was not under cultivation. 
Alluding to the two last, an Eng- 
lish traveller in France remarks : 
"The only signs I noticed of their 
great possessions were commons 
and land running to waste." The 
whole race, with few exceptions, 
knew nothing of their property, 
and only communicated with their 
farmers for the purpose of beating 



,rt- 

its 

!\V- 



them down. Here and there a 
verdant and well-cultivated district 
betrayed the work of the monks, 
for whom Versailles had no attrac- 
tions. Sometimes the sterile por- 
tion of an abbe in commendam 
would be found side by side with 
these oases, presenting a painful 
contrast to the patriot, the one 
looking like the ** patrimony of a 
spendthrift, the other where no- 
thing is omitted that can in any 
way conduce to amelioration." 1 
M. Taine thinks that probably one- 
third of France was as deserted 
and as ill cultivated as Ireland in 
its worst days of English oppres- 
sion. In most things seeing, and 
seeing alone, is believing. The 
weak and worn-down peasant out 
of work was not brought home to 
the luxurious absentee. Now and 
then the master was uncomfort 
ably reminded of the dependant 
distress by a letter from the ste^ 
ard telling him that the rents could 
not be paid, but grievances which 
were thus whispered had small 
echo in the midst of court revelry. 
Insensibly the nobility formed 
erroneous notion of the peasai 
gathered from the fanciful scene 
of happy Arcadia then in vogue on 
the fashionable stage. The very 
system of always acting through a 
steward was open to abuse, for the 
man was constantly tempted 
feather his own nest by playing 
dishonorable part towards the tei 
an try. 

" According to the canons," says 
one statement, " every one in 
session of a benefice is bound 
give a fourth of his revenues 
the poor. In our parish, howevt 
whereas a benefice of more tlu 
twelve thousand francs is receive 
nothing is given to the poor exc( 
a mere trifle by the cure." " L'Al 

Quoted by M. Taine, p. 65. 



Noblesse Oblige. 



de la Croix Leufroy, gros dedmateur, 
and 1'Abbe de Bernay, with a bene- 
fice of fifty-seven thousand francs, 
do not reside. They both keep 
everything for themselves, and 
hardly give their working cures 
enough to live upon." A cure of 
Berry says : " In my parish I have 
six simple benefices, whereof the 
titulars are always absent. Alto- 
gether they possess a revenue of 
nine thousand francs. Last year 
during the bad times I sent them 
a most pressing begging letter. I 
received two louis only from one of 
them ; the greater number did not 
even answer me." * If ever hones- 
ty were rendered all but impossible 
it would be in a system which 
obliged its members to cheat in 
proportion as they were cheated, 
and which went so far as to buy 
the privilege of cheating. It not 
unfrequently happened that a farm- 
er or a contractor would pay a cer- 
tain sum to his patron for license to 
claim his taxes, and in these cases 
natural rapacity, enhanced by the 
lack of breeding, made itself dearly 
felt on the shoulders of the unfor- 
tunate cultivators. Once given, the 
license could seldom be reclaimed, 
as the absentee at Versailles was 
involved in a network of debts, and 
was becoming by degrees the debtor 
of his inferiors. The French no- 
bleman, who fancied that honor- 
able occupation was derogatory to 
his dignity, had no delicate scru- 
ples about turning his property 
into ready money or encumbering 
it with mortgages for the comfort 
of his posterity. During the emi- 
gration, when it became a question 
of paying the debts of the nobles, 
it was found that the largest for- 
tunes of France were almost eaten 
up by mortgages. But the worst 
feature under this head was the 



*P. 66. 



traffic carried on in the adminis- 
tration of justice. What the pro- 
prietor wanted was money ; he cared 
very little about the measure meted 
out to his tenants in the province, 
and thus he was no doubt tempted 
to sell the post of judge to the 
highest bidder. Out of this sum 
he received yearly tithes, varying 
according to the place, and some- 
times he took occasion to barter 
the whole for more gold. The 
consequence of this auri sacra 
fames was the pestilential breeding 
of a crowd of officers who had to 
be supported by the sweat of the 
peasantry. "All the departments 
of justice appertaining to the lord 
of the manor," says a contempora- 
ry document,* "are infested'by a 
crowd of bailiffs of every descrip- 
tion. There are sergeants of the 
lord, mounted bailiffs, bailiffs of the 
wand (Jiuissiers a verge), and guards 
of various ranks. It is not uncom- 
mon to find ten in a district which 
would hardly be able to support 
two, if they kept to their work." 
These individuals are leagued to- 
gether, like fools at a fair, to feather 
their own nests at the expense of 
others, and in this case the other 
people were those who could least 
afford to be defrauded. Occasion- 
ally the miserable pay given by the 
proprietor to the local inspector of 
taxes forces him to visit his short 
commons on the peasantry. " The 
dark breed of judicial leeches," 
pointedly remarks M. Taine, " sucks 
the more greedily from a lean pro- 
vender in proportion as it itself is 
numerous, inasmuch as it has paid 
for the privilege of sucking." The 
cardinal virtue of justice has almost 
ceased to exist ; the lord is fearful 
of spending his money on a crimi- 
nal case, and the judges are equally 
so of not being paid for their pains. 

* Archives Nationales, quoted by M, Taine, p. 70. 



Noblesse Oblige. 



There is, however, one part of 
his domains which the proprietor 
tenderly fosters, one point at least 
where his jurisdiction is severe and 
repressive. The chase was almost 
as needful to a nobleman as food 
and drink ; it marked his rank as 
trade branded a bourgeois. At a 
time when a third of France was 
covered with forests overrun by 
wild beasts it had been the busi- 
ness of the feudal lord to exter- 
minate them; and here again he 
fastened his excesses to an ancient 
title-deed in virtue of which hunt- 
ing had once been a service to 
society. The crops were entirely 



numerous here than in the royal 
capitaineries, devours the seeds 
the crops every year, twenty thou- 
sand measures (razttres) of wheat, 
and as much of other seeds. At 
Evreux the game destroys every- 
thing up to the house-doors. . . . 
On account of the game the citizen 
is not even free in the course of the 
summer to take up the weeds which 
are choking the corn and spoiling 
the seeds. . . . How many women 
have been left widows and how 
many children fatherless for the 
sake of a wretched rabbit or hare !" 
In Normandy, at GourTern the game- 
keepers " are so stern that they in- 



jral 

of 

>u- 



subordinated to the preservation of suit, misuse, and kill men." In the 



the game ; gamekeepers, huntsmen, 
wood-keepers, magistrates usurped, 
indeed, the place of justices of the 
peace and judges to extend that 
protection to wild animals which 
should have been vouchsafed to 
man. There are many documents 
to prove the grievous consequences 
entailed upon the country by the 
inordinate passion for sport. For 
instance, in 1789 two cases of re- 
cent assassination are quoted as 
perpetrated by the keepers of Mme. 

A ,ofM. N , of a prelate, and of a 

marechal of France on two citizens 
who were taken up in the act of 
violating sporting regulations or in 
carrying arms. The four keepers 
rejoice in perfect security. In 
the province of Artois a parish de- 
clares that in the territory of the 
lord of the manor the game con- 
sumes the corn, and that in con- 
sequence laborers will be obliged 
to give up their cultivation. " The 
Comte d'Oisy hunts in twenty vil- 
lages round Oisy, riding recklessly 
through the harvest. His sports- 
men, who are always armed, have 
killed several persons under the 
pretence of looking to their mas- 
ter's rights. . . . The game, more 



baillage of Domfront "the inhabi- 
tants of more than ten parishes are 
obliged to watch the whole night 
for six months in the year, in order 
to save their crops." As it might 
be surmised, the province which 
most distinguished itself in its mel- 
ancholy passion for the chase was 
that of the He de France. In one 
single parish the wild rabbits of the 
neighborhood destroyed eight hun- 
dred acres of land under cultiva- 
tion and a harvest of twenty-four 
hundred setters of wheat the whole 
year's provision for eight hundred 
persons. At La Rochette dogs and 
deer overrun the fields by day, and 
devour by night the vegetables in 
the inhabitants' small gardens.* In 
districts belonging to these capi- 
taineries high walls are the only 
preservative against the obstrep- 
erous wild tribe. About Fontaine- 
bleau, Melun,andBois-le-Roi three- 
fourths of the land is not cultivated. 
Brolle, except for a few crumbling 
gables, is in ruins. At Villiers and 
Dame-Marie eight hundred acres 
are running to waste. By the or- 
dinance of 1762 every man living 
within the range of a capitainerie 
*P. 75- 



Noblesse Oblige. 



is forbidden to enclose his own 
ground or any ground whatsoever 
with walls, hedges, or ditches, with- 
out special license. He may not 
plough his meadow before the 24th 
of June, or enter his own field from 
the ist of May to the 24th of June, 
or visit the islands on the Seine to 
cut herbs or sticks (osier)) even if 
they belong to him. These tender 
precautions are intended to protect 
the partridges' cover. Less atten- 
tion, remarks M. Taine with well- 
merited sarcasm, would be bestow- 
ed upon a woman in labor.* No 
less than twelve hundred square 
miles of France were given up to 
these capitaineries. Small wonder 
was it that the popular mind con- 
fused the nobles with the animals 
they protected with so much zeal, 
or that, in fact, the sudden appari- 1 
tion of a troop of deer called forth 
such an exclamation as * There 
goes the nobility.' The reward 
they reaped for their enactions 
about mute animals procured them 
the honor of being accounted as 
one of the number. They them- 
selves viewed the chase as a pas- 
time which was, so to say, a part of 
loble blood. Louis XV. is report- 
id to have remarked to Mgr. Dil- 
lon, " You hunt a great deal, M. 
I'Eveque. I have heard something 
ibout it. How can you forbid it 
to your cures, if you pass your life 
in setting them the example ?" 

" Sire," answered Dillon, " as to 
y cures, hunting is their failing, 
in my case it is the failing of my 
incestors." f 

Another consequence of the ma- 
terial working of feudalism after its 
spirit had departed was the whole 
system of monopolies, which were 
fatal to the well-doing and pros- 
perity of the people. When the 
various orders of a nation seek to 

* Ib. t P. 72. 

VOL. XXX. 12 



appropriate privileges it is note- 
worthy that a latent cause of that 
nation's disorganization is at hand. 
Self-seeking destroys patriotic as 
well as family spirit, and when the 
nobles and higher clergy compass- 
ed themselves about with a bul- 
wark of exemptions and monopo- 
lies, they were in the French na- 
tion one of the foremost elements 
of national dissolution. That the 
nobles, in their measure and degree, 
should be as good as the king was 
but the proper development of the 
feudal idea, and so in fact it came 
to pass that the people were sup- 
porting not one but many courts 
where the luxury and splendor 
were all but royal. Total or par- 
tial exemption from taxation was 
one of the means adopted by the 
king of France of recognizing 
their ancient descent. The first 
weapon of the fisc was the tail- 
lage, or land-tax, which affected the 
landed proprietor of noble blood 
only through his farmers. The re- 
gal inspector passed him by as 
long as he or his steward worked 
his property, and consequently at 
the end of four hundred and fifty 
years the nobleman had contribut- 
ed little or nothing towards the 
land-tax. Two other modes of 
taxation had been in use for about 
a century capitation, or personal 
tax, which was made to depend 
upon the land-tax, and the twen- 
tieths. There was a fourth tax 
which became later distinct from 
the twentieths, to which it had been 
first attached. It was the statute 
duty, of which the burden fell most 
heavily on the poor in virtue of its 
being joined to the land-tax. The 
upper clergy and the nobility met 
these new assaults in different ways ; 
and perhaps, on the whole, the 
clergy, as the most united body in 
France, got the best of it. They 



.78 



Noblesse Oblige. 



could turn to their assemblies; and 
that which has collective strength 
stands a fair chance of success. 
They protested skilfully against the 
personal tax and the twentieths, 
and called the nominal tax which 
they consented to make a don gra- 
tuit. The nobles had no public 
organ of disaffection, but they be- 
stirred themselves in private, and, 
not being able to escape all pay- 
ment, they softened the blow by 
numerous devices, which were ta- 
ken in perfect good part by the 
government officers. They profit- 
ed even by their non-residence at 
their seats to shirk the full amount 
of the personal tax and to pay as 
little as they pleased. In the pro- 
vince of Champagne, of the sum of 
1,500,000 francs produced by this 
tax they contributed but 14,000 
that is, " two sous and two deniers 
for the same thing which cost 
twelve sous a pound to the ordi- 
nary man."* '* I manage the col- 
lectors," the Duke of Orleans used 
to say and he was one of the 
wealthiest princes in France. " I 
pay pretty much what I please." 
The princes of the blood paid 
180,000 francs instead of 2,400,000 
for their two-twentieths. We have 
seen the numerous monopolies en- 
joyed by the lord of the manor in 
virtue of his position. Privileges 
of the same kind could be granted 
to bishops and chapters to the det- 
riment of the people. Thus in 
1781, in spite of a decision of one 
of those lifeless bodies, a French 
parliament in this case that of 
Rennes the canons of St. Malo 
were maintained in their monopo- 
ly of a common oven against the 
unfortunate bakers of the place, 
who naturally wished to bake their 
bread at home, and thus furnish it 
to the inhabitants at a lower price. 
. * P. 25. 



Such privileges in small things 
were but a shadow of what was 
carried on in higher departments. 
A pernicious regulation was reviv- 
ed under Louis XV. by which 
plebeians were excluded from mili- 
tary preferment. To become a 
captain it was necessary to prove 
four degrees of nobility. It was 
farther decided about the same 
time that " all church goods, from 
the smallest priory to the richest 
abbies," should be reserved to the 
nobility.* It was no dead letter. 
Nineteen noble chapters of men and 
twenty-five noble chapters of wo- 
men, two hundred and sixty com- 
manderies of Malta, were thus secur- 
ed to them, besides the archbishop- 
rics and all bishoprics, save five, 
which they occupied by royal favor. 
The proportion of nobles in posses- 
sion of abbies in commendam and of 
vicar-generalships is three to four. 
Church preferment was, indeed, the 
most effective means of corrupti 
at the disposal of the crown. 
Taine notes that he counted eigh 
three abbacies in the hands of cha 
lains, tutors, or readers to the king, 
the queen, the princes and prin- 
cesses, f The richest prelates 
France likewise held the rich 
benefices. The same division e 
isted in the secular charges. The 
thirty-seven provincial governments 
of importance, the seven lesser pro- 
vincial governments, the sixty-six 
general lieutenancies, the four hun- 
dred and seven special govern- 
ments, "the thirteen governments 
of royal establishments, and many 
others, were in the hands of the 
nobles. And let it be remember- 
ed that all these posts were pure 
sinecures as far as work was con- 
cerned. The crown governed ir. 
reality, and paid its butlers and 
footmen with royal magnificence 
* P. 82. t P. 8 3 . 



in- 

r 






Noblesse Oblige. 



179 



to look as if they belonged to the 
king of France. A few figures 
will tend to reveal the sort of com- 
fort enjoyed by these domestics of 
an absolute monarch. The gov- 
ernment-general of Berry was val- 
ued at 35,000 francs, that of Guy- 
enne at 120,000, that of Langue- 
doc at 160,000. A small govern- 
ment, such, for instance, as Havre, 
was worth 35,000 francs without 
the extras. Roussillon, a secondary 
lieutenancy, brought in from 13,000 
to 14,000 francs, a government- 
general from 12,000 to 18,000. 
The single province of the lie de 
France numbered thirty-four of 
these governments.* 

There was yet another monopoly 
engendered by the system of ex- 
emptions the monopoly of hard 
work forced upon those who re- 
ceived but little of the pay. We 
shall speak later of the utterly mis- 
erable condition of the peasant ; 
now we wish to call attention to 
the kind of suffering imposed upon 
the lower clergy. The gates of 
ecclesiastical distinction, if we ex- 
cept three or four of the poorest 
bishoprics, were closed to the ple- 
beian cure, whose ministry was 
hampered from first to last by the 
struggle to keep body and soul 
together. As early as 1766, be- 
fore the Revolution, the existence of 
these two camps was clearly not- 
ed by a contemporary. The upper 
clergy would have considered it 
derogatory to their dignity to be 
offered a cure at all. They looked 
merely to the lucrative side of the 
question, leaving its toils to fall to 
the lot of the day-laborers of their 
order. It is doubtful whether the 
cavils of a harshly-inflicted pover- 
ty be conducive to zealous priests. 
If the cure, for instance, be obliged 
to dispute over a blade of corn or 
* P. 85. 



a tithe of peas or lentils, it is too 
probable that littleness will take 
fast possession of his soul, and a 
very sore littleness, too, when he 
considers that others are paid lux- 
uriously for the work he dees. To- 
wards 1760 an effort was made to 
improve the condition of the coun- 
try cure by raising his miserable 
pittance. In case of inadequate 
provision the holder of a benefice 
in his parish, the cottateur, or tithe- 
gatherer, was bound to make up the 
sum of 500 francs; later, in 1785, 
that of 700; and the salary of the 
vicaire was raised in the same way 
from 200 in 1760 to 350 in 1785. 
Unfortunately this effort seems to 
have been weak and wanting in 
thoroughness; however, much of 
the blame must be attached to the 
vicious state of things. Thus M. 
Taine speaks of an archbishop of 
Toulouse receiving half the tithes 
and giving eight francs a year in 
charity ; of a rich chapter at Bretz 
distributing ten for the same pur- 
pose. At Ste. Croix de Bernay, in 
Normandy, the abbe non-resident, 
with a revenue of 57,000 francs, 
gives 1,050 francs to the cure, who 
has no presbytery and 4,000 com- 
municants. At St. Laurent, in the 
same province, the ctire is not worth 
more than 400 francs, which the 
cure shares with an obitier (one 
who lives upon a foundation of 
black Masses), and there are 500 
inhabitants, three-fourths of whom 
live on charity.* 

In the midst of a self-seeking 
which pervaded all departments 
like an element of decomposition 
one principle of concentration sur- 
vived; it was that of fellow-suffer- 
ing in injustice. At the day of re- 
tribution the poor cure, one of the 
people, joined heart and cause with 
the oppressed. When at last the 



i8o 



Noblesse Oblige. 



convocation of the Etats-Gene'raux 
sounded the first knell of the mon- 
archy, out of three hundred depu- 
ties from the clergy, two hundred 
and eight were cure's of the strug- 
gling class we have been describ- 
ing. 

If the king's servants lived and 
revelled upon the fat of the land, 
what must the king himself have 
done ? It is time to, cast a glance 
upon the monarch who bore the 
burden of so much pleasure, upon 
the single man who alone constitut- 
ed the order which was of the most 
importance in France. If he had 
reduced his nobles to sparkling 
nonentities, or to brilliant orna- 
ments without political or legislative 
weight, it is manifest that, in justice 
to his country, he should have had 
some kind of definite or indefinite 
purpose to hold in his single hands 
the reins of the entire government. 
No ordinary man, much less a 
prince reared in a court hot-house 
of the eighteenth century, could 
suffice to the wide task ; in point 
of fact there were at least six items 
which he put before France, his 
paternal inheritance. These were 
his " self-love, his tastes, his rela- 
tions, his mistress, his wife, and his 
friends." If the unfortunate queen 
of Louis XV. had less than her due 
preponderance in this programme 
her place was but too ill supplied by 
rivals, and first and foremost by that 
of Mme. de Pompadour, on whom 
her kingly lover spent the sum of 
thirty-six millions of francs. Per- 
sonal interest on the part of the 
king had dictated all the wars dur- 
ing an interval of a hundred years 
from 1672 to 1774. A royal love of 
the chase was a necessary passion 
in the sovereign, as it was in his 
privileged subjects, and in the year 
1751 it was calculated that Louis 
XV. owned four thousand horses in 



his stables and had cost the nation 
sixty-eight millions, one-fourth of 
the whole revenue. Even the con- 
scientious Louis XVI. inherited the 
faults of his place, and, in the kind- 
ness of his heart, made his friends 
a burden to the public treasury. 
He once presented four hundred 
thousand francs to the Com- 
tesse de Polignac for the liquida- 
tion of her debts, with a further 
sum of eight hundred thousand for 
her daughter's marriage portion. 
She was, moreover, promised a 
property worth thirty-five thousand 
francs a year, and a pension of 
thirty thousand for her lover, the 
Comte de Vaudreuil. The Polignac 
family received altogether from the 
royal bounty the annual sum of 
seven hundred thousand francs, 
and the Noailles about twelve mil- 
lions. Versailles itself was like an 
immense house built for the con- 
venience of the sovereign. Each 
street was in some way connected 
with royalty, from the splendid 
hotels of the nobility, encircling 
their king like a bodyguard, to the 
wonderful spectacle presented by 
the small world gathered within 
the palace. When princes and 
princesses of France came of age 
or married they were given sepa- 
rate establishments; but the term 
then included all conceivable and 
inconceivable requirements. There 
were two hundred and seventy-four 
offices in the Duke of Orleans' es- 
tablishment, two hundred and ten 
in that of mesdames the aunts ol 
Louis XVI., whilst Mme. Elisabeth 
owned sixty-eight, the Comtesse de 
Provence two hundred and fifty-six, 
the queen four hundred and ninety- 
six. These figures may prepare 
minds for the astonishing fact that 
the king's own establishment was 
composed of nearly four thousand 
persons. In all, fifteen thousand 



Noblesse Oblige. 



181 



occupied offices at court, or rather 
they were thereto fulfil the exigen- 
cies of a post which measured its 
own importance by outward magni- 
ficence.* The one thing more stu- 
pendously appalling to the treasury 
than the court at Versailles was 
the court on a journey. The king 
had about twelve residences be- 
sides Versailles, and when he went 
away the vast multitude employed 
in imaginary offices about his per- 
son went too. In one way at least 
the sovereign paid the penalty for 
his splendor : his life in its smallest 
details belonged to his courtiers, 
and if the planets did not weary 
of revolving round their sun, we 
may be sure the sun would at 
times have gladly ceased to be 
what he was for a few hours' soli- 
tude. No sooner was he called in 
the morning than the entrees were 
introduced. Children, princes of 
the blood, great ladies, and great 
officers assailed him before. he was 
out of bed. There was a cere- 
monial even about the arm-chair 
and the dressing-gown, and hardly 
had the poor king sat himself down 
when other visitors were introduc- 
ed. In the corridor outside a 
crowd was waiting for a smile or a 
look when he passed along it to 
Mass. Every look, every tone of 
his voice had a reason for exis- 
tence or had been regulated by 
etiquette. There was no behind 
the scenes for this king who was 
stifled with courtiers. Much the 
same ceremonial was carried out 
when he started for his hunting, 
when he returned, and when he 
went to bed. ''Every day for six 
years," says a page, " my comrades 
and I watched Louis XVI. going to 
bed in public." f The throne of 
this monarch was surrounded by 
twelve princely courts for the es- 
* P. 127. t P. 140. 



tablishments of his near relations 
were nothing less. The same mul- 
titude of idle offices existed in 
these minor constellations in a pro- 
portionate degree. The queen's 
first bedchamber women, whose sal- 
ary was supposed to be one hun- 
dred and fifty francs, received 
twelve thousand, and made alto- 
gether fifty thousand by selling the 
wax candles which had been used 
in the day. At Fontainebleau the 
gamekeeper realized twenty thou- 
sand francs yearly by rabbits. The 
petit dejetiner of the queen's ladies 
was said to cost the state two thou- 
sand francs a year for each. When 
in 1780 Louis XVL, seriously wish- 
ing to retrench, signed the Re" for me 
de la bouche<) 600,000 francs were 
allotted to mesdames his aunts for 
their table the cost to the public 
of three old ladies' dinners ; his two 
brothers received 8,300,000 francs 
for the same purpose as quite apart 
from their income of 2,000,000; 
and 4,000,000 were apportioned 
to the queen for her table by this 
strange reform. As may be sup- 
posed, these sums represent capi- 
tal, not income. Their astonishing 
amount is explained by the step of 
M. de Calonne. On coming to the 
ministry he made a loan of 100,- 
000,000, not a quarter of which 
ever entered the royal treasury. 
They were stopped short of their 
destination by those about the 
court. Thus, the king is calculat- 
ed to have bestowed 56,000,000 on 
the Comte d'Artois, and 25,000,000 
on M. le Comte de Provence.* ' 
The Re for me de la bouche suggests 
the conclusion, What must the palm- 
ier days have been of the royal per- 
sonages whom it curtailed, if this 
was their economy ? 

Intercourse so constant with the 
sovereign as that which fell to the 
* P. 91. 



IS: 



Noblesse Oblige. 



lot of the courtier at Versailles did 
not beget noble sentiments. Mag- 
nificence and worldliness go hand- 
in-hand, and the predominating 
feature of his life was to make all 
he could out of his accommodat- 
ing master. Domestic insects were 
hard at work under the shadow of 
this splendid representation ; they 
were like moths eating away the 
fair cloth in the dark. One day 
out hunting Louis XV. asked the 
Due de Choiseul what he supposed 
he, the king, paid for the carriage 
in which they were sitting. The 
duke replied that his majesty, be- 
ing a king, and not always pay- 
ing ready money, might have given 
8,000 francs. " You are quite 
wrong," answered the king, ''for 
this carriage as you see it costs me 
30,000 francs. . . . The thefts 
committed in my household are 
enormous, but it is impossible to 
prevent them." The tradesmen of 
Louis XV. were so constantly kept 
waiting for their money that in the 
end they refused to supply and got 
out of the way. The custom of 
paying them five per cent, interest 
for their money was regularly adopt- 
ed, and in 1778, after all Turgot's 
reforms, Louis XVI. owed nearly 
800,000 francs to his wine mer- 
chant and nearly 3,500,000 to his 
purveyor. Mme. Elisabeth's ex- 
penses for fish alone amounted to 
30,000 francs yearly, for meat and 
game to 70,000, for lighting to 
60,000. The queen's wax lights 
came to 157,109 francs. These 
figures cover an amount of cheat- 
ing rare even in court annals. At 
Versailles the street is still shown 
where the courtiers were in the 
habit of selling whatever they 
could carry away from the king's 
table. The royal orgeat and 
lemonade was put down at 2,190 
francs, and at two years old Mme. 



Royale's soup came to 5,201 francs. 
The Dauphine, under Louis XV., 
was charged for " four pairs of 
boots a week, three yards of ribbon 
a day for her dressing-gown, two 
yards of sarcenet a day to cover a 
Basket which held her gloves and 
fan."* The king could not pay 
his debts, the courtiers could not 
pay theirs; the consequence was 
inevitable in so polite a country as 
France. The throne, indeed, for its 
own great misfortune, was surround- 
ed by families where splendid ap- 
pearances covered ruin in various 
stages. They were as proud monu- 
ments which hid rotting bones. 

To the sound of music and laugh- 
ter the first principle of social life 
was departing. Christian marriage 
existed only in appearance, and 
that in rare instances. Husband 
and wife called each other mon- 
sieur and madame, kept different 
establishments, and seldom met. 
A Parisian visiting at a remote 
chateau would express elegant sur- 
prise if a lady present ventured to 
speak of her husband as mon ami. 
The mistress of a house at that 
time knew of no other duties but 
that of entertaining visitors. She 
held her drawing-room as the king 
held his court, and lived in public 
as far as she might. The sole sem- 
blance of anything like a virtue 
displayed by that society which 
has passed away was its exquisite 
politeness. Louis XIV. had first 
set the example of perfect gallantry, 
and he had been faithfully imitated. 

Two princes of the blood were 
about to fight a duel, the Comte 
d'Artois and the Due de Bourbon. 
The latter being the injured party, 
it was the Comte d'Artois' place to 
take the initiative. As soon as he 
saw the duke he jumped from his 
horse, and said with a smiling air : 

* Pp. 166, 167 



Noblesse Oblige. 



183 



M Monsieur, people pretend that we 
are seeking each other." Whereat 
the duke answered courteously : 
" Monsieur, I am here to carry out 
your commands." 

" To carry out yours," replied the 
count, "you must allow me to go to 
my carriage." Returning with a 
sword, they separated after a short 
fight, and again began to be polite. 
** It is not for me to have an opinion," 
began the count. ** It is for M. le 
Due de Bourbon to speak. I am 
here to receive his orders." 

" Monsieur, "said the duke, " I am 
filled with gratitude for your good- 
ness, and shall never forget the 
honor you have done me." * 

It must be owned that if they sin- 
ned in deed they did not sin in 
language, and the same remark was 
made by Horace Walpole. The 
subtlety of crime was so great that 
the strongest passions veiled them- 
selves under outward decorum. 
When parents were troubled with 
children they treated them like 
strangers of inferior rank, and very 
often made them over to servants. 
Daughters were easily disposed of 
at convents, leaving their mothers 
free for society. The education of 
a certain little girl, Felicite de. Sfc v 
Aubin, who was kept at home> 
be taken as a fair instance of 
spirit which reigned amongst t&e 
upper circles. Up to the age* a^- 
seven the child saw her paren$ in M 
the morning and at meals ; th-p- rest 
of the time was passed wiOfc ladies' 
maids, whose catechetical^ instruc- 
tion was far outweighed^. l>y their 
telling of ghost-stories... r lihe mar- 
quise, her mother., bad* ^a^bled in 
operettas, and had b,VqUt a theatre 
in her chateau. He^e.at the age of 
seven, after twelve- weeks of re- 
hearsals, KtUe F^lipite performed 
the part oC Cupid* The costume 



appeared to suit her so well that 
she wore it for nine months all day, 
taking in it her dancing-lessons 
and reciting poetry before a large 
audience. At an early age children 
were indoctrinated as to the part 
they would have to perform ; and 
when we have said that we have 
given the clue as to what was ex-, 
pected of them. Dancing and tl|e 
most elegant way of acting the.- par_t 
of life were the two things tp,be 
learned in those days ; foj? s^qiety 
appeared to the young gon, elation 
as a vast stage where &Wy v were to 
become actors and acVtf&ss.es,. There 
was a received way qff d^ing the 
smallest actions ; s^ing.down, pick- 
ing up a glove, hiding a forjc, open- 
ing a fan, ofein-g v an\ar,m these 
were the important, occupations 
which it bfch-Qv^d, yat^g France 
to learn, aii^ i( f any wv. ventured 
to take arhy. steps AUl of lhp beaten 
way he. v^a^h^tiwjed as a specimen 
of ai> ^ri^ROwn tribe-. But this 
narro^ness^tended itself to con- 
vers^tiqp ,ai?4 to thought. Opinions 
w^e-r^ady-made^ and required only 
t>,be^ac.cepte<i Nothing could be 
$Jd v t9 ( a gentleman without i; put- 
t^p.g ypurseJC at his disppsal" (se 
& &$ wdre^ nor tp. a, 
by " casiipg yourself, afc 
."" A rich ^stance of 
tation w,hich had) so entife^ passed 
into .scqial custom, is (p4iQdi by- M;. 
T^ine v A young. 
cr.e^it cf her 
pensiQi} r for 

ing-master. Ssh<^ v^ent, <?ffi'W great 
joy to his hottse,, hplfJifl^ Wflt the. 
brevet. B^ Mjarcelj had w* notiort 
of such ^pjEvtaneijfyx IHjMfawing the 
brevet t *k gropn^ Ip,^ replied,;. 
" Is it thus^ mad^i^oi^le, th^fr Ij 
havelaught yo unpick- up a thing?, 
Pic:^ it up an^i Wg ^ back in the, 
way you ougbfr.'*' The girl 
throwing paw?^, grace into 



1 84 



Noblesse Oblige. 



tion. "Very good, mademoiselle," 
Marcel vouchsafed to say. " 1 ac- 
cept it, although your elbow was 
not properly curved, and I thank 
you." * 

Hardly better than this affecta- 
tion was the fashion to become 
feeling (sensible) which followed it, 
and which in fact was another 
offspring from the same source, 
idleness of mind, and emptiness 
of heart. Besides which it may 
be remarked in passing that few 
things done purely for fashion's 
sake are of much worth. Guided 
by this ruler, people discovered that 
they ought to admire nature and 
sympathize with peasants, become 
human, have a heart and some 
kind of religious belief. The good 
seed had in great part been choked 
by worldly enjoyments, and society 
was getting to that worst kind of 
infidelity which is engendered by 
long negligence of the truth once 
possessed. The worthless nature 
of the "feeling " phase is indicat- 
ed by the fact that it prompted 
a culte for friendship and benevo- 
lence, thus coming back to the old 
heathen idea of deifying one of 
God's attributes. A certain accent, 
a particular manner of looking at 
each other, was requisite between 
two friends who were "sensible "; 
and when a fashionable author 
read his piece for the first time in 
a drawing-room a fainting-fit was 
considered only a becoming hom- 
age to his talent, and the ladies of 
those days contrived so well that 
it was generally paid to him. Vol- 
taire, who forcibly represented the. 
century, was greeted by a passion 
of emotion. A lady threw herself 
into his arms, crying and sighing 
as if overcome by her feelings. In 
no way could the fashionable sen- 
sibility have better proved its utter 
*p. 206. 



despicableness. Life is a struggle, 
not a long day of enjoyment, and 
all faculties that are not used be- 
come less acute. Legs that are 
never walked upon forget the pur- 
pose for which they were created, 
and minds unaccustomed to labor 
lose the capability of exertion. At 
length a day came when the can- 
dles of the bright pageant were all 
extinguished, and the actors learned 
in their groping darkness the in- 
sufficiency of enjoyment, polite af- 
fectation, or sensibility to solve the 
mighty problems of life. It is a 
strange fact that a last sacrifice 
paid to agonizing etiquette should 
have caused the likewise dying 
monarchy to miss the flight to Va- 
rennes. But it is faithfully record- 
ed that Mine, de Tourzel claimed 
her place in the carriage as gov- 
erness of the children of France ; 
that the king lost precious time in 
order to obtain a marechal's baton 
to give to a friend ; that, in short, 
the queen found that she could not 
possibly travel without a dressing- 
case, and waited till an enormous 
one could be produced. By what 
extraordinary phenomenon the no- 
bility preserved their peace and 
serenity in the prisons of the un- 
chained Revolution or at the foot 
of the guillotine is not easy to 
explain. It may have been partly 
due to long-acquired habits of idle- 
ness ; it was certainly polite to smile 
in the face of so grim a death. 
But by these strong measures God 
doubtless saved many for himself 
who, without the bloody ordeai, 
would have perished in utter for- 
getfulness of their souls and been 
lost to him for all eternity. 

The new cant respecting friend- 
ship and benevolence met, how- 
ever, with a deep echo from the 
lower classes. At last the higher 
order was to be confronted with 



Noblesse Oblige. 



185 



the real peasant, not with that 
imaginary being who had existed 
in Rousseau's sensitive fancy. The 
burning torch, in falling from the 
brilliant drawing-room, found the 
cellar full of gunpowder. Before 
describing some of the sufferings 
of that miserable -being, the French 
peasant, it is very important to un- 
derstand the circumstances which 
led to the ascendency of the tiers 
etat. With all his magnificence, 
the king of France was in truth 
their debtor ; and if there is one 
thing more than another calculated 
to provoke a lender, it is to see 
the man whom he has consented 
to supply making merry with his 
money. It has been seen that the 
royal purveyors under Louis XV. 
and Louis XVI. enjoyed a some- 
what honorary dignity, but these 
symptoms of impecuniosity in high 
places were by no means the first 
of their kind. Already under Fleu- 
ry the national debt increased to 
18,000,000 francs, and during the 
Seven Years' War to 34,000,000 
more. Under Louis XVI. a loan 
of 1,630,000,000 was borrowed, and 
the interest alone of the debt rose 
from 45,000,000 in 1755 to 106,- 
000,000 in 1776, and to 206,000,000 
in 1789. Naturally the creditors 
were gaining power, and these cre- 
ditors were spread over the length 
and breadth of France. They 
were all gathered from the ranks 
of the bourgeoisie, financiers, and 
contractors of all sorts. Again, in 
this particular the concentration 
of the monarchy told against itself; 
for if the king's government under- 
took all local details the onus of 
unpaid debts could be laid to no 
other door. Insensibly the abso- 
lute sovereign of France was be- 
coming the debtor of his lesser 
subjects, and they, like men who 
approach a great picture which 



they had previously seen from a 
distance, suddenly awoke to the 
fact that the whole was a very poor 
compound, painted for distant ef- 
fects. The annual deficit amount- 
ed in 1770 to 70,000,000, and to 
80,000,000 in 1783. Efforts to re- 
duce it had been totally unavailing, 
or rather the remedy had been 
w.orse than the disease, for they 
had resulted in three most dis- 
astrous bankruptcies. There was, 
then, a certain justice in the cry 
for social reform, although its ex- 
cesses fell upon the wrong person, 
the virtuous and unfortunate Louis 
XVI. The long-suffering bour- 
geoisie wearied at last of lending, 
and required an account of their 
money. 

But their position was comfort 
compared to that of the peasant. 
The subordination of agriculture 
to the pastimes of the nobles, the 
magnetism exercised by the court 
at Versailles, and a system of taxa- 
tion of which he bore the brunt, 
all tended to make his existence a 
very burden. During the space of 
a hundred years before the Revo- 
lution the condition of the laboring 
classes had gone from bad to worse. 
In 1689 La Bruyere wrote : "Cer- 
tain wild animals, male and female, 
are seen scattered about the coun- 
try, dark, livid, burnt up by the sun, 
attached to the earth, which they 
dig and cultivate with invincible 
perseverance. They are just able 
to articulate, and when they stand 
up they show a human face; and, 
in fact, they are men. At night 
they retire to dens, where they live 
upon black bread, water, and herbs. 
They spare other men the neces- 
sary labor of sowing, .ploughing, 
and reaping, and thus deserve not 
to be deprived of the bread which 
they have sown." * But this un- 
* P. 429- 



1 86 



Noblesse Oblige. 



fortunate human animal cannot al- 
ways claim his offspring. In 1715 
about six millions had perished 
from want, and contemporary docu- 
ments prove that from 1698 to 1715 
the population of France was fast 
decreasing. One circumstance in 
particular helped to keep the pea- 
sant in his misery : his lively con- 
viction that more comfort would . 
imply a heavier taxation. At the 
height of Fleury's prosperity the 
laboring man hid his bread away 
from the receivers and his wine 
from the tax, feeling sure that he 
was lost if it were found out that 
lie was not dying of hunger.* 
When, therefore, he had no bread 
or wine to hide, famine and mor- 
tality were the order of the day. 
In 1740 the bishop of Clermont- 
Ferrand wrote to Fleury : " Our 
country people live in the greatest 
misery, without beds or furniture. 
Most of them even, for six months 
in the year, have neither barley- 
bread nor oats, which is their sole 
nourishment, and which they are 
obliged to snatch from their own 
and their children's mouths to pay 
the taxes. ... It really comes to 
this : that the negroes of our islands 
are infinitely better off; for by 
working they are fed and clothed 
together with their wives and chil- 
dren, instead of which the most 
laborious peasants in the kingdom 
are unable, by the hardest and 
most persevering labor, to obtain 
bread for themselves and their 
family and to pay the taxes." \ 
Ten years later, in 1750, the same 
evil was in a more advanced stage. 
A proprietor at thirty miles from 
Paris complained of increasing 
mendicity and the almost utter im- 
possijDiiity for the laborers of ob- 
taining work. But in this state of 
affairs the taxes were levied with 



a truly military discipline. <c The 
collectors with bailiffs, followed by 
locksmiths, break open the doors, 
take off the furniture, and sell all 
for a quarter of its value." * Day- 
laborers sought refuge in towns, 
and whole villages were abandoned. 
It was not without .cause that the 
peasant strove to hide any appear- 
ance of less than abject misery, 
for the faintest shadow of comfort 
was the signal for fresh impositions. 
One of the most fatal proofs of 
vital languor was the repugnance 
shown by the young people to 
marry. " It was not worth while," 
they said, " to create others to be 
as unfortunate as they were."f ^ n 
Touraine the people were too weak 
to work. A feeble resource was 
open to this unfortunate class 
expatriation from France or remo- 
val to towns ; but even there they 
were pursued by the tax-gatherers. 
Mendicity in its most appalling 
form was the result of the deser- 
tion of villages. Paris was overrun, 
Rouen and Tours contained 12,000 
beggars, and at Lyons 20,000 silk- 
weavers were kept by force from 
escaping to the frontier. In 1751 
a vicaire of the parish Ste. Mar- 
guerite, in Paris, stated that 800 
poor people had fallen victims to 
cold and hunger in their garrets 
during the single month dating 
from January 20 to Febuary 20. 
In short, official documents clearly 
prove that for the thirty years 
which immediately preceded the 
Revolution the peasant had barely 
enough to maintain existence, and 
not always that.J 

A fourth of France was unculti 
vated, and agriculture, according t< 
the remark of a competent English- 
man, was eight centuries behind 
its time. M. Taine calculates that 



, 43. 



tP. 431- 



*P.433- 
JP.437- 



t P. 434- 

Arthur Young. 



' Jfoblesse Oblige. 



is/ 



the price of bread and the then 
usual wages for labor did not allow 
more than half a loaf a day to the 
unfortunate man whose sole main- 
tenance was thus curtailed. An- 
other loss to the country engender- 
ed by the state of things was the 
absence of farmers in seven-eighths 
of France. The land was chiefly 
worked by metayers, a wretched 
race of hirelings, who gave their 
master their arms and received 
enough to keep them from starving. 
The small proprietor who worked 
his own field led a life only to be 
compared to that of modern tread- 
mills. Arthur Young speaks of a 
poor family in Champagne who 
fitly represented their class. A 
young woman of twenty-eight was 
bent by hard work till she looked 
between sixty and seventy. She 
and her husband owned a small 
patch of ground, a cow, and a half- 
starved horse, but likewise seven 
children. They owed one proprie- 
tor forty-two pounds of cheese and 
three chickens, three pecks of oats, 
a chicken, and a sou to another, 
besides the taxes and various im- 
positions. Here was a case of pay- 
ing down to the last farthing ; but 
it was the ordinary condition of 
peasants. The court, the nobility, 
and the landed proprietors absorb- 
ed the country's energies; the pro- 
vincial towns and outlying districts 
submitted generally to a compara- 
tive barbarity. Bourges in 1753 
and 175413 thus described by some 
exiled magistrates : " A town where 
nobody is to be found to whom one 
can speak with comfort upon any 
reasonable topic whatever ; nobles, 
three-fourths of whom are dying of 
hunger, stuck up with their birth, 
keeping lawyers and financiers at 
a distance, and thinking it queer 
that the daughter of a tax-receiv- 
er, married to a counsellor of the 



Paris Parliament, should allow her- 
self any intellect or any society; a 
bourgeoisie of the densest ignorance, 
sole support of the lethargic state 
into which most of the inhabitants 
have fallen ; bigoted and preten- 
tious ladies much given to gam- 
bling andflirtation." * Somuch for 
the mind; and the material part 
of the business was in keeping. 
At Clermont-Ferrand there were 
" streets which, for color, dirtiness, 
and bad smells, could be compared 
only to trenches on a dung-heap." 
Provincial inns were remarkable 
for " narrow quarters, discomfort, 
dirtiness, and darkness." Amongst 
them Pradelles distinguished itself 
for badness. " That at Aubenas," 
Young expressively says, " would 
be a purgatory to one of my pigs." f 
Unmitigated dirt, darkness, and 
hunger fell to the lot of the peasant ; 
but, pressed down as he was by 
over-taxation and the evils of his 
entirely subordinate condition, he 
had nevertheless been steadily ac- 
quiring land through the eighteenth 
century. This circumstance of it- 
self bears witness to the astonishing 
vigor of the French laboring-man, 
and to the peculiar capabilities of 
greatness which a nation with a 

O 

groundwork of such a class must 
possess. The growing importance 
of the tiers etat is comprehensible ; 
but how, in the face of ruthless tax- 
gatherers and a gnawing hunger, 
the peasant had contrived to have 
any earnings is a fact only to be 
explained by his enduring charac- 
ter and his innate love of the soil. 
How often he had watched his op- 
portunity to obtain a bit of field 
or meadow which was running to 
waste, and how easily sometimes 
the lord of the manor consented to 
dispossess himself of a worthless 
corner of land from which he was 
* p. 60. t P. 43- 



1 88 



Noblesse Oblige. 



still to receive both dues and rents ! 
In 1766 an ordinance in an indirect 
way helped on this alienation. Any 
tilled land was free from the faille 
Sexploitation for a term of fifteen 
years. Towards the end of the 
century it very frequently happen- 
ed that, apart from his house, and 
perhaps a neighboring' farm, the 
lord of the manor owned nothing 
but his feudal rights. * Nominally 
the possessor of broad lands, the 
proprietor was in fact reduced to 
sell portions of his domain to small 
cultivators. But the peasant was 
working for future generations; he 
himself did not eat the bread which 
he earned at so great a price. In 
satisfying his passion for patches of 
the soil he encountered the full 
burden of its taxation, aggravated 
by the petty jealousy of his neigh- 
bors and by the low-bred harshness 
of the tax-gatherer, who was a pea- 
sant as well as he. 

By the very law of nature the 
produce of the earth is due in the 
first place to its cultivator. Before 
anything else is done he ought to 
be paid back his expenses on the 
outset his beasts of burden, his 
utensils, his farming implements, 
the capital which he has laid out 
on live-stock, his seeds, and his la- 
borers. At this rate he will gain 
about half of the whole .profit. In 
the state of things we are describ- 
ing the king stepped into the cul- 
tivator's place and helped himself 
first, and then came the tax-gath- 
erer. After they were satiated the 
cultivator's own share was consid- 
erably diminished. The small farm- 
er received absolutely nothing of 
the fruits of his labors. A certain 
large farm in Picardy, worth 3,600 
francs, paid 1,800 to the king and 
1,311 to the tithe-gatherer ; another 
in the Soissonnai district, rented 
at 4,500 francs, paid 2,200 for taxes 



and more than 1,000 tcus in tithes. 
At a moderate metairie in Poitou 
348 francs went to the fisc, and 
the proprietor received only 238. 
Another near Nevers paid 138 
francs in taxes, 121 to the church 
and 114 to the proprietor. Yet the 
cost of the hired laborer on these 
metairies was comparatively noth- 
ing. They represented the yearly 
sum of 36.25 francs a head to their 
master, and ought, with their sober 
habits, to have been a source of 
grea,t wealth to the country. To- 
wards the end of Louis XV. 's 
reign it was estimated that in Li- 
mousin he drew as large a profit 
from a farm as the cultivator him- 
self, at the rate of 56^ per cent. 
In Champagne, on a hundred francs, 
the fisc appropriated 54 francs 15 
sous, and in some cases 71 francs 
13 sous; and, to go into details 
which give us the pretext of the 
demand, a document speaks of an 
instance where on 100 francs the 
treasury took 25 for the land-tax, 
16 for the accessories, 15 for perso- 
nal tax, and n for the twentieths.* 
But the non-possession of land did 
not ensure even a relative peace. 
Excepting the twentieths, the taxes 
were applied equally to incomes. 
Near Toulouse the day-laborer, 
whose arms were his sole fortune, 
was required to pay 8, 9, and 10 
francs of personal tax, gaining 10 
sous a day. In Burgundy it was 
even worse. Capitation there fre- 
quently imposed from 18 to 20 
francs upon the poor man without 
a sou. Nine-tenths of the working 
class in Brittany paid their all in 
taxes, and in Paris itself the most 
wretched street-walker, the seller 
of broken bottles, the gutter-scour- 
er became amenable to a personal 
tax of 3 francs 10 sous a head 
as soon as they had a roof over 

*P.459- 



Noblesse Oblige. 



189 






them at night. No den was too 
poor for the tax-gatherer, no mis- 
fortune was great enough to stop 
his visit on the appointed day. 
Injustice may to a certain extent 
be softened by the manner of its 
execution, but the machinery for 
levying money went heavily round, 
causing deep and unnecessary gash- 
es on the victim's warm flesh. Au- 
thority is wont to render a correc- 
tion more tolerable. What, then, 
can be said for a system which set 
a race of administrative leeches, 
their equals, loose upon the peo- 
ple ? It was a domestic civil war 
in a state of permanence, or a so- 
cial conscription in virtue of which 
every man was bound at certain 
intervals to fleece himself and his 
neighbors. In large parishes there 
were from three to seven of these 
temporary tax gatherers; in the less- 
er districts the small proprietors 
performed the task in their turn. 
In some villages artisans, working- 
men, metayers were forced to spend 
their valuable time in the odious 
labor; sometimes even it fell to 
the lot of women to gather the 
taxes. But the foulest part of the 
system was the gain which accrued 
to the receiver through late pay- 
ments. Those parishes which dis- 
charged exactly their taxation were 
not the ones to call forth his smile 
of approbation, for his command- 
ing officer, the receiver, made a 
positive profit on summonses, and 
consequently much approved of 
those who required a reminder.* 
The collector was responsible for 
the money he had to levy. This 
rendered his zeal quite fierce, and 
he would Unhesitatingly dispute the 
father of a family his daily bread. 
In most cases the collector could 
not write, so it was necessary to 
take a man who could about with 
* P. 465 



him from house to house ; and be- 
sides the scribe, he was generally 
accompanied by the lowest class of 
bailiffs, a tribe called garnisaires, 
taken from the scum of the people. 
The presence of these garnisaires 
was often quite indispensable in 
order to obtain the arrears. " The 
peasant," remarks M. Taine, " is 
like his donkey, who requires to be 
beaten before he will go,"* and if 
he appears stupid he is a wise 
donkey. He works patiently for 
his daily bread, feeling convinced, 
in whatever reasoning faculties he 
has, that a better condition would 
imply double or treble labor. Heav- 
ier taxation was the bugbear which 
ever rose upon the peasant's hori- 
zon and caused him to submit to 
present evils. 

The gabelle, or excise duties, 
which were chiefly on salt, was an- 
other means of levying money, and 
perhaps in no department was the 
arbitrariness of taxation more se- 
verely felt. In the provinces, where 
the gabelle was most strictly carried 
out, salt cost thirteen sous a pound, 
and by the ordinance of 1680 every 
person over seven years of age was 
obliged to buy seven pounds a year. 
In a family of four the necessary 
provision of salt would therefore 
absorb nineteen days' work, and it 
was a not uncommon case to take 
up for their shortcomings in the 
salt department those very people 
who had not bread to eat. This 
particular was the source of daily, 
almost hourly, vexations to the peo- 
ple through the extraordinary punc- 
tiliousness of the statute. Thus 
the seven obligatory pounds a year 
could only be, used for a certain 
purpose, " soup and salt-cellar " 
(pot-et-sabere). The villager who 
salted a pig or a little meat as a 
provision for the winter lost his 

* P. 4 '6. 



Noblesse Oblige. 



pig and paid a fine of 300 francs. 
The " soup and salt-cellar " was 
bound to be flavored from the year- 
ly provision of seven pounds. No 
other might be used. Two sisters, 
living at three miles' distance from 
one of these salt bureaux, had fin- 
ished their stock, and bethought 
themselves of boiling down some 
brine to obtain a few ounces. A 
lawsuit was the consequence, but, 
thanks to friends, they got off with 
48 francs fine. Penalties of 20 and 
40 francs were inflicted for drawing 
salt from the sea. Taking cattle to 
drink in marshes or other places 
where salt was to be found was even 
more heavily visited : confiscation 
and 300 francs loss were the conse- 
quences. Many other minute re- 
gulations protected salt, whilst they 
made human lives a burden and a 
misery. The other point which 
called forth the gabelles tyranny was 
wine. The vine proprietor himself 
was neither free to drink his own 
wine nor to give it away. The trans- 
port of wine was surrounded with 
difficulties. A shipful of Langue- 
doc Dauphine, or Roussillon was 
subjected to from 35 to 40 different 
kinds of duties on its way up the 
Loire to Paris. On arrival there 
the octroi levied 47 francs on each 
butt, and a further duty of 30 to 40 
francs was chargeable to the publi- 
can or hotel-keeper for the right of 
keeping it. Like the peasant who 
feared greater comfort, the vine 
proprietor feared his wine, an off- 
spring full of vexation and travail. 
Every year the gabelle produced 
4,000 seizures of property, 3,400 
imprisonments, and 500 condemna- 
tions to the fouet, to exile, and to 
penal servitude.* 

If the poor man paid his rich neigh- 
bor's taxes as well as his own, the 
same spirit of levying money on the 



473- 



poorest was visible in the immuni- 
ties enjoyed by certain towns. The 
richest and most noble cities were 
relatively exempt, whilst the burden 
of the hearth-duty fell chiefly upon 
the most wretched districts and 
country villages. Moreover, the 
capitation tax was considerably 
lightened for a certain number of 
charges, chiefly civil, outside the 
ranks of the nobility, which exemp- 
tion again pressed upon the poor 
man's shoulders. For all public, 
administrative, or judicial offices, all 
employment in the gabelle, the ca- 
pitation was limited to a fortieth of 
the whole income, and many were 
the devices to ease the well-to-do 
at the cost of the peasant. As 
M. Taine remarks, " On examining 
closely the great feudal net meshes 
are discovered at every turn through 
which, with a little industry or ex- 
ertion, the big fishes can pass; only 
the small fry remains in the trap " 
The military conscription was also 
generally shirked by the more pn 
perous members of society, to 
greater loss of the French army. 
Before the peasant could 
stirred from his apathy to feel any 
personal interest in the undercur- 
rent of dissatisfaction which was 
gradually coming to the surface, a 
last act of the ancien regime was to 
be performed on its stage. Like a 
beast he had come to be contented 
if he could only eat and drink and 
sleep with a shadow of ease, 
this he could seldom do, and 
grancy in its very worst form 
the culminating point of his sul 
ferings, the closing scene in his sad 
drama. All his better instincts 
had been choked in the struggle to 
live, and now a race of poor be< 
gars, without fear of God or mi 
were turned loose upon societ 
Brigands and vagabonds in Fran< 
* p. 4 8i. 



also 

: 



Noblesse Oblige. 



191 



amounted to 10,000, says Mercier; 
and there was neither justice nor 
moral force to put a curb on them. 
The absent lord of the manor was 
.fgiven up to other pursuits, and his 
provincial court of justice had no 
notion of gratuitous exertions for 
the benefit of society. The crown, 
indeed, enacted regulations against 
the unfortunate class of vagabonds 
and beggars, but penal servitude 
for various terms of years or im- 
prisonment was no cure for the 
sore of poverty and hunger. Un- 
der sixteen years of age the pen- 
alty was the work-house. No beg- 
gar was to be set free unless some 
person of means, worthy of confi- 
dence, could guarantee him work 
and food. No paper laws could 
touch the evil. Special prisons 
had to be buiit for the unhap- 
py people who had fallen at last 
under their multifarious burdens. 
Their support, such as it was, cost 
the king a million a year. In those 
miserable abodes they were favor- 
ed with an allowance of bread and 
water and two ounces of salt fat at 
a cost of five sous a day ; but even 
these short commons were not al- 
ways secured to them, on account 
of the rising of prices. The porter 
charged with their food was oblig- 
ed to make ends meet, and their 
rations would necessarily be sub- 
ordinated to his honesty. Besides 
the real beggars, however, an ordi- 
nance in 1778 ordered the arrest of 
all persons denounced as suspi- 
cious. This was opening the door 
to all kinds of low interests, and to 
a moral corruption quite fearful by 
reason of its sphere of action. In 
the interval between the arrest and 
the final detention the victims of 
both ordinances sojourned in tem- 
porary prisons on the way, where 
the sexes were mixed. Few reach- 
ed the depot pure either in mind 



or body. These measures had no 
effect whatever in quelling the dis- 
order, for it was in the blood, 
an hereditary grievance contracted 
under Richelieu's ministry. Then, 
as in 1871, and as in all revolu- 
tions, Paris began to be infected 
with strange-looking people whose 
faces were unknown. It was they 
who brought back the expiring 
monarchy from the magnificent pa- 
lace of the Grand Monarque to the 
deserted Tuileries, and they whose 
hunger had driven them at last to 
desperation. A severe winter in 
1788-9 had caused bread to fail 
throughout the length and breadth 
of France. 

The reign of fear and armed 
force, if it does not cure the prin- 
ciple of insubordination, will at 
least act as a palliative upon popu- 
lar risings; but the same deep and 
wide causes of disorganization were 
at work in the army. In their de- 
gree the soldiers had suffered from 
the system which recognized only 
the claims of the few, and they were 
biding their time to free them- 
selves from hateful distinctions and 
to seek their chance of fair play 
in the battle-field of life. ^In the 
army as elsewhere there were two 
camps one for the lesser number, 
which was the road to authority, 
distinctions, good pay, excellent 
food, the pleasures of the world and 
of society ; the other for the ma- 
jority, which held out a life-long 
prospect of subjection, toils, daily 
misery on six sous a day, and un- 
kind treatment ; 46,000,000 were 
divided amongst the officers, 44,- 
000,000 amongst the common sol- 
diers, who were often enlisted against 
their free-will. The condition of 
the latter was altogether so 
wretched that it could be imposed 
only on the dregs of society. Not 
only the nobles and the bourgeoisie, 



192 



Noblesse Oblige. 



but in general every person who 
had any sort of influence, was ex- 
empted from the conscription. It 
fell, therefore, entirely to the lot of 
the poor man, who was without 
friends ; and so odious to this class 
was the service of their country 
that armed force had occasionally 
to be employed to compel their 
enlisting. Young men were even 
known to cut off their thumbs in 
order to escape the soldier's misery. 
Another form of recruiting was 
adopted in choosing such beggars 
as appeared least vicious to be 
taught the trade of arms. Lastly, 
the system of decoying was regular- 
ly adopted and practised upon the 
scum of all classes, The decoyer 
was paid so much a head, and if he 
recruited men over five feet he 
received a gratification for every 
extra inch. After several days' 
merriment and debauchery no 
course but enlisting remained open 
to the young rake, who was obliged 
to sell himself to pay his debts. 
The army, the principle of ma- 
terial order, was therefore repre- 
sented in the main by " oppress- 
ed peasants, imprisoned vagabonds, 
and people without a position who 
were in debt or despair." * 

In the mythological fable a god 
is described as eating his children ; 
and the analogy may be applied to 
France, where the rulers consumed 
all the resources of the country. 
In 1789 an egotistical self-seeking 
had taken the place of patriotism, 
for the problem of living was with 
by far the greater number the 
essential question. Two powers 
loomed forth amongst the desolate 
ruins : brutal force and radicalism. 

*P. 513. 



What wonder is it that France 
should still be essentially the coun- 
try of two camps ? On the one 
side we see a war unto death wag-' 
ed against all religious principles ; 
on the other the fairest and richest 
blossoms of Catholic life. Perhaps 
these two broad outlines took their 
rise from the Revolution of 1789. 
The chambermaid who became 
mistress speedily abused her posi- 
tion to commit the most terrible 
excesses ; the few chastened in fire 
and blood have come forth purified 
from that sharp awakening, and on 
the ruins of the Revolution they 
have founded a new France, where- 
in the greatest shall be as the 
smallest, where the powerful shall 
minister and not be ministered to. 
Old distinctions have passed away ; 
a foreign invader has issued a de- 
cree from the palace of Versailles ; 
the Tuileries are in ruins ; but a 
higher patriotism is still offered to 
the sons of France. In the camp 
of the Catholic Church the truest 
and best Frenchmen turn their 
eyes in hope and confidence 
towards him whose sovereignty is 
founded on the first of all rights, 
and whose motto it is to be Ser- 
vant of the servants of God. Suf- 
fering has intensified their loyalty 
to the see of Peter, and caused 
them to cling to the spiritual royal- 
ty in proportion as all hopes found- 
ed upon their human dynasty have 
faded away. They see their coun- 
try materially governed by the 
Revolution ; their consolation is in 
a higher sphere, in the atmosphere 
of souls. If the very walls of so- 
cial France are quivering the faith 
of Catholic France is the flavor- 
giving salt which shall preserve 
the country from corruption. 



A Day at Lorctto. 



193 



A DAY AT LORETTO. 



IT was the eve of the Feast of 
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and a 
hot day in bright, laughing Naples. 
We had never been to Foggia, and 
were not prepared to find the road 
so beautiful. As we approached 
the picturesque town of Maddaloni, 
built at the foot of the hill, but 
with fortified walls climbing the 
heights, and crowning a lofty ridge 
with the round towers of its old 
castle, we looked back upon the 
great plain below, and saw the 
stately palace of Caserta in the 
golden mist of sunset, and caught 
our last sight of Vesuvius, with its 
banner of white smoke lying hori- 
zontal and motionless in the still 
air. The brief Italian twilight was 
succeeded by a fine moonlit night. 
But as the railway lamps had been 
forgotten, we resigned ourselves to 
silent meditation, awaiting sleep. 
Of this latter we had but little. It 
was, however, still light enough 
when we passed the station of Bene- 
vento for us to look with interest at 
the distant walls of that historic 
city, originally* called Maleventum, 
but blessed with a happier name 
when colonized by the Romans 
more than two centuries and a 
half before the Christian era. The 
crowning interest connected with 
this very ancient city lies in the 
battle fought beneath its walls on 
the banks of the river Callora, when 
Charles I. of Anjou vanquished the 
hero of his time, the fair and gen- 
tle Manfred. Dante places him in 
Purgatory, telling of " the wide 
arms of infinite goodness that em- 
brace all who turn to them." 

Far into the night we were star- 
tled from our repose by a bright 
VOL. xxx. 13 



red glare. A long, incandescent line, 
as of a distant city in flames, was 
explained as proceeding from some 
celebrated glass-works. It lit up 
the sky with a brilliant but some- 
what sinister effect as the melted 
glass ran along in streams of red 
fluid. 

We had telegraphed- our arrival 
at Loretto to make sure of having 
a carriage to meet us at the sta- 
tion. We drove about half a mile 
to the town, up a steep hill along 
a dusty road. The hedges were 
white with dust, the grass parched 
by the July sun of Italy;' but all 
along shone the bright blue flowers 
of the wild succory, looking like 
little shreds torn from Our Lady's 
mantle. It wanted a quarter to 
six when we left the station, and 
the only way to secure Mass and 
the blessing of Holy Communion to 
us tired and thirsty pilgrims was 
to drive at once to the cathedral, 
whose dome and campanile tower- 
ed high above the little town which 
nestles at its feet. The coach- 
man who met us at the station, and 
who subsequently appeared to be 
hotel-keeper, waiter, commissioner, 
and probably cook for we never 
saw any other male at the inn was 
evidently well used to taking his 
clients to church before giving them 
hospitality ; he conveyed us thith- 
er and left us to find our way to- 
the hotel at our leisure. 

Entering the sacred edifice with- 
out a guide, and beneath the ab- 
sorbing awe of reverential feeling, 
our first object was rather to per- 
form our religious duties than to 
ascertain definitely the exact local- 
ity in the cathedral of the Holy 



194 



A Day at Lorctto. 



House. In short, we were too 
much impressed by the sanctity of 
the place to be able to ask any 
questions. But after receiving 
Holy Communion at the altar of 
the Blessed Sacrament we inquir- 
ed of a young peasant girl kneeling 
near, where it was. She took us 
to the open door, and for a mo- 
ment we paused to look in before 
entering. Two of the doors of the 
body of the house, now a chapel, are 
at the side. There were several peo- 
ple, all peasants, and probably na- 
tives of Loretto, kneeling on the mo- 
dern tiled floor. It was rather dark. 
I entered, and fell on my knees 
close to the wall to my right. Be- 
fore me was an altar with an open 
space beyond, and a niche contain- 
ing the celebrated image of Our 
Lady of Loretto in black wood 
and entirely covered with jewels. 
A number of lamps of various 
sizes hang all around the house, 
which would otherwise be very 
dark. I leaned against the wall to 
my right, and looked at the un- 
hewn stones of which it is built. 
They are dark in color and irregu- 
lar in shape and size ; and they are 
polished from the floor upwards to 
the height of a man by the passion- 
ate kisses of millions of pilgrims in 
ages of time. They seemed even 
warm to. my lips as I pressed them, 
on the smooth, hard surface. How 
difficult it is to analyze, and still 
more to describe, any strong emo- 
tion ! I had come to Loretto for a 
special purpose and with a special 
petition ; but as I knelt there on 
entering the house no recollection 
of my object remained in my mind. 
I only felt that I was there. I for- 
got why I had come. It seemed 
to me that I had been always 
coming, and had got there at last. 
There was no room left for any- 
thing but gratitude to Mary, and 



congratulation to myself that I 
had arrived. It seemed so natural 
to be there. Of course I had 
wanted to see the House of Naza- 
reth. Of course, as a Christian, 
and still more as a Catholic, I had 
a claim to stand within those walls. 
Was it not my home also ? I 
only felt as if I had been a long 
time getting there. Then by de- 
grees the past returned upon my 
memory : the petition I had to 
make, the grace for another which 
I had to implore. And suddenly 
it seemed to me to be such a sim- 
ple thing for Mary to obtain for 
me that I marvelled I had ever 
thought it improbable or difficult. 
I felt like a child who has hesitated 
long and doubted much before ask- 
ing his mother for a piece of bread 
the simplest thing in the world, 
the daily food that every mother is 
ready to deal to her little ones with 
a liberal hand. Could I doubt 
that I should get it in the house 
of my Mother, of my Elder Bro- 
ther, of my Master, of my Saviour? 
So I made my request and added 
many others ; my thoughts flying 
over Europe from the sunny shores 
of Italy, where a group of three 
loved ones had said at parting, 
" Remember us at Loretto," down 
to the savage lands of South Af- 
rica, where a brave young prince 
had just been massacred, and a 
near relative, his friend and of the 
same age, was in daily peril ; then 
over to America, where two sister 
convents harbor dear Daughters of 
St. Francis who are. ever before 
me. And thus, pausing here and 
there over great cities, in quiet 
villages, on wild Scotch moors, I 
picked up, as it were, the form of 
many a beloved one whose nami 
rose upon my memory with a 
prayer to Our Lady of Loretto. 
Nothing could be more quiet 



A Day at Loretto. 



'95 






and reverential than the demeanor 
of the peasants, men and women 
both, who were worshipping at the 
shrine. Most of the women wear 
Our Lady's colors, red and blue, 
like the women in County Galway, 
though not distributed in the same 
way. Here they cover their heads 
with a red handkerchief and wear 
a dark-blue skirt. The cathedral 
was full of worshippers, and Mass 
was being said at several altars, 
while Communion was given at one 
only. The contrast between the 
conduct of the worshippers and 
what we had been in the habit of 
witnessing at Naples was striking. 
An expression of real devotion 
dwelt on the countenances of the 
majority here, and there was no 
giggling and gossipping as in South- 
ern Italy. 

Having in a measure satisfied 
our first devotional needs, we pro- 
ceeded to examine the Holy House 
in all its parts ; and our readers will 
probably follow us better if we 
give some account of its miracu- 
lous appearance. It was on the 6th 
of May, 1291, that the wonderful re- 
moval of the Holy House from the 
town of Nazareth took place. It 
had always been held there in 
veneration by the faithful. It had 
been protected by other sacred 
walls about and around it, and was 
in fact part of the sanctuary at 
Nazareth, as it was called, which 
comprised the actual House of 
Loretto, and contained besides 
four altars and three chapels, and 
which was entered by a descent of 
fifteen steps. This remains now at 
Nazareth, still as a most sacred 
place; and there are to be seen and 
may be measured the foundations 
of the Holy House, corresponding 
precisely with the walls of the same 
house now at Loretto. Evidently 
a portion of the habitation of Our 



Lady and her divine Son ran into 
the rock against which the house 
abutted. That portion at Nazareth 
called the kitchen of the Madonna 
is in the rock; much in the same 
way as in Naples, where the houses 
of the poorer classes are built 
against the rock, which is excavat- 
ed at the back or side of the build- 
ing for the purposes of kitchen, 
stables, and even dwelling-rooms. 
The rock at Nazareth is of por- 
ous limestone, and consequently of 
easy excavation. The first resting- 
place of the Holy House in the 
month of May, 1291, was in the 
night on the top of a hill at Ter- 
satto, a small town not far from 
Fiume, on the eastern side of the 
Adriatic Gulf and south of Triest. 
On the top were a small campanile 
and two little bells. These have 
since been removed. The stones 
of the wall were, and are, of a red- 
dish hue and capable of polish. 
There were then some cupboards 
against the walls, and some crock- 
ery and earthenware. But at Lo- 
retto the only piece which w;is 
shown as still preserved is a small 
terra-cotta plate with the remains 
near the edge of a blue enamel 
line. The plate is now set in a 
beautifully-wrought gold case, and 
the faithful are allowed to lay their 
rosaries and objects of devotion in 
the plate, which is believed to have 
been used by our Blessed Lord and 
his Mother during the unchroni- 
cled years of his hidden life. The 
house, on its arrival at Tersatto, 
contained also an altar with a blue 
antependium, and a wooden cross 
with a painted figure of our Lord 
crucified ; also on one side of the 
cross a Mater Dolorosa, and a St. 
John on the other. There was 
also a wooden statue of Our Lady 
with the Infant in her arms, with 
the two fingers of the right hand 



A Day at Loretto. 



extended as giving benediction ; 
with the other he supported a gold- 
en globe, and both figures were 
crowned. This is the famous im- 
age still venerated by the faithful. 
With the early dawn the people of 
Tersatto were filled with surprise 
at finding a house there where none 
was visible the night before, and, 
while recognizing its sacred charac- 
ter, they were at a loss to explain 
its appearance among them or to 
guess from whence it came. It 
was Our Lady herself who revealed 
the secret to the curate, or, as he is 
sometimes called, the Bishop of the 
Church of St. George at Tersatto. 
He had long been confined to his 
bed with a chronic malady when 
Our Lady appeared to him, sur- 
rounded by angels, and explained 
the arrival of the Holy House, at 
the same time bidding him rise 
from his couch and conferring on 
him restored health. The house 
rested on the property of a holy 
widow named Agatha, and Our 
Lady deigned to explain to her 
also the wonderful event. At that 
time the Grand Ban of Dalmatia 
and the adjoining provinces, and in 
whose dominions Tersatto was situ- 
ated, was the Count Nicholas Fran- 
gipani, a name still illustrious in 
Italy. Being a sensible man, he 
felt the necessity of fuller investi- 
gation into the case, so as to be 
prepared with an answer to the in- 
credulous ; and for this purpose 
he selected four credible persons 
one of them being the aforesaid 
bishop and sent them to Nazareth 
to inquire about the Holy House. 
There they were shown where once 
it stood, and the ruins of the church 
which St. Helena, that great pro- 
tectress of the holy places, had 
built over it. The messengers took 
all the measurements, in order to 
compare them with those of the 



house now in Dalmatia, and on 
their return found them satisfactory. 
Nicholas Frangipani enrolled their 
report in the chanceries of several 
of the neighboring towns, but these 
have since been lost or destroyed. 
They are, however, mentioned in 
the writings of more than one au- 
thority as having by them been 
seen and read. The last authen- 
tic copy that is known of them 
is mentioned by Father Riera, to 
whom it had been sent by the vicar- 
general of Tersatto in 1560. Infor- 
mation concerning copies of these 
archives is given by Cavalieri as 
late as 1735. 

The delight, however, of the peo- 
ple of Tersatto and of the neighbor- 
ing town of Fiume in the possession 
of such a treasure was not of long 
duration ; for on the loth of Decem- 
ber, 1294, after remaining for three 
years and seven months in its first 
resting-place, it disappeared as un- 
expectedly as it had come, leaving 
no sign of whither it had gone. A 
church wasbuilt by Frangipani which 
marked the spot it once occupied ; 
and though that has been destroy- 
ed, there is still to be seen a chapel 
on the hillside, with a stone giving 
in ancient characters the date of 
the first appearance of the house 
and of its departure. That very 
same night of the loth of De- 
cember the Sacred House, which 
had stood for three years and 
seven months amid the vineyards 
and olive-gardens of Dalmatia, was 
transported to the opposite side of 
the Adriatic Gulf, and was deposit- 
ed by its celestial bearers about 
one mile from the sea-shore and 
four from Recanati. Again it was 
to shepherds that the first sight of 
it was vouchsafed, their attention 
being attracted by a bright light. 
It was found standing on a spot 
generally asserted to have been 






A Day at Lorctto. 



197 



called the Wood of Laurels, but by 
some said to have been simply a 
forest land belonging to a lady of 
the name of Laureta. We ascer- 
tained that at the present time, and 
within the memory of man, no lau- 
rel-tree grows there nor in the vi- 
cinity. Nor is the laurel often 
seen in Italy, and certainly not in 
large numbers. As it is a shrub 
that propagates itself by dropping 
its seeds all around, the total ab- 
sence of any vestige of it in the 
neighborhood leads us to believe 
the name of Loretto had nothing to 
do with laurels, but was called after 
the wealthy lady of Recanati on 
whose land it stood. Its position 
did not prove convenient to the 
devotion of the great multitudes 
who flocked to visit it, for in 
those lawless times (not much im- 
proved in many parts of Southern 
Italy even now) thieves and rob- 
bers infested the forest paths and 
proved a serious obstacle to the 
devout visits of the pilgrims; there- 
by giving us another of those strik- 
ing examples of how the Almighty 
sometimes permits the malevolence 
of man to appear to contravene 
liis beneficent intentions. But in 
this case, as so often in others, he 
condescended to make it an occa- 
sion for a fresh miracle; and the 
Holy House was again mysterious- 
ly removed and placed at a short 
distance from the public road, on 
the slopes of a hill the property of 
two brothers. But here again the 
malice of mankind interfered with 
the devotion of the people; for the 
two brothers, who at first vied with 
each other in doing honor to the 
sacred edifice, ended by quarrelling 
over the offerings made by the 
faithful. And so once again the 
Holy House was lifted by angels 
and placed where it now stands, 
not far from the property of the 



two brothers. A stone marks the 
spot where it stood before this last 
displacement ; but we were assur- 
ed by a very civil and apparently 
well-informed Capuchin Father that 
there is no trace left of it where it 
formerly stood in the forest. The 
present position of the house was, 
at the time of its arrival, the centre 
of the high-road, and the town of 
Loretto has sprung up around it. 

The dates of its removals are 
these: December 10, 1294, the house 
arrived in the wood; in August, 
1295, it stood on the hillside; 
and in December of the same 
year it was placed where it now 
stands, a spot which at that time 
was the middle of the road. We 
remember seeing an old print of the 
House of Loretto before we knew 
much about it, which represented 
the cathedral as it now is, standing 
alone in the middle of a road, and 
we marvelled why it was so de- 
picted. Further revelations were 
granted by Our Lady on the sub- 
ject of the Holy House, one espe- 
cially to a hermit who lived on a 
wooded hill between Loretto and 
the sea, which hill is now a very 
" hanging garden " of vines and 
fruit-trees. About the same time 
the principal inhabitants of Reca- 
nati sent some of their leading 
men first to Tersatto and then to 
Nazareth to verify the identity of 
the house at Loretto with the sites 
it had previously occupied. They 
published their report in 1296; 
and as late as 1597 Tursellini, who 
wrote a history of Loretto, declares 
that several copies were extant in 
private houses. Very numerous 
were the miracles worked in con- 
nection with the Holy House. 
Supernatural lights were seen to 
surround it on the Feast of Our 
Lady's Nativity, which is the rea- 
son why the 8th of September is 



198 



A Day at Lorctto. 



held as the great festival of the 
cathedral. The magnificent build- 
ing which surrounds the Holy 
House was commenced by Paul II. 
about 1468, and was greatly added 
to by Clement VII. It was he 
who encased the Holy House in 
the walls of marble which encircle 
it but do not touch it, for it stands 
miraculously without foundations 
and without support, as has been 
tested again and again by passing 
a hand or a stick between the walls 
and the ground on which it rests. 
The roof that covered the house 
when it arrived was, by the order of 
the Sovereign Pontiff, taken down, 
and is buried beneath the predella 
of the altar. This was done on 
account of the danger of fire to a 
wooden roof when so many lamps 
were constantly burning beneath 
it. The present roof is supported 
by the wall that surrounds the 
Holy House, and which is faced 
with marble and adorned with 
sculpture. The floor of the Holy 
House has been frequently renew- 
ed, being made of brick or tiles 
and becoming worn and broken by 
the concourse of people. Some 
pieces of these tiles have from time 
to time been given as relics ; but it 
must be remembered they do not 
belong to the original structure, 
although they have rested within 
its walls. The house itself is en- 
tirely composed of stone, except, of 
course, the roof which was taken 
down. One beam of this roof has 
not been hidden out of sight, but is 
let into the floor; and it is very 
remarkable that, though the floor 
has required frequent renewal, this 
beam, which especially attracted 
our attention, seems to have resist- 
ed all the wear of time. 

The one great alteration to which 
the house hasbeen subjected consists 
in the closing of the original door on 



the north side, which is now blocked 
up. It was found that the crowds 
of people passing in and out made 
this one entrance inconvenient and 
dangerous. Three other doorways 
were therefore ordered by the 
Sovereign Pontiff Clement VII., 
and there are interesting accounts 
extant of how only those who had 
cleansed their souls by confession 
and communion were able, without 
some grave bodily injury to them- 
selves, to carry out the pope's 
commands. The small window in 
the western wall was enlarged at 
the same time, as was also the 
Sacro Camino, or sacred hearth, 
which is situated in the wall behind 
the altar. This was probably for- 
merly an entrance to the house, 
chimneys being unknown in Na- 
zareth. The original altar stood 
against the south wall. It is now 
enclosed wiihin the present altar, 
which stands at a distance from the 
west wall of about two-thirds and 
a half of the entire length of the 
house. In the east wall is the 
sacred hearth, as it is called, and 
above that is the shrine containing 
the famous image of Our Lady of 
Loretto, said to be cut out of 
olive-wood, that naturally becomes 
black with time, and which, in spite 
of its absence of all beauty, inspires 
devotion because it has been for 
centuries the object of so many 
acts of devotion from millions of 
God's people, and the channel of 
so many miraculous occurrences ; 
thereby showing that what Our 
Lady and her divine Son desire 
from us is our love and faith, as 
far above in value all that art can 
do to show them honor. It is 
love that gives equal value to the 
cup of cold water or to the oil of 
spikenard. The floor of the house 
behind the altar has been raised to 
a higher level than the rest, and, 



A Day at Loretto. 



199 






being divided by a screen, forms a 
sanctuary. It would appear that 
formerly this part had been divid- 
ed into two. The works under- 
taken by Pope Clement VII. were 
concluded in seven years by Paul 
III. 

There is a curious story of the 
Bishop of Coimbra, a Portuguese and 
an Augustinian named John Soarez, 
being induced by a mistaken and 
selfish devotion to carry away one 
of the stones of the Sacred House. 
The bishop, on receiving the stone 
from his secretary, Francis Stella, 
whom he had sent to Loretto to 
fetch it, was seized with fever. He 
thought he heard a voice bidding 
him restore the stone, and, being 
in doubt on the matter, referred it 
to some holy nuns at Trent, where 
the bishop was then staying. The 
reply sent by the nuns was this : 
" If the bishop wishes to recover 
let him restore to the Virgin of 
Loretto what he has taken away." 
This was the more extraordinary 
as no word had been said to the 
sisters about the sacred stone, the 
bishop only having asked for pray- 
ers to recover his health. He sent 
back Stella to Loretto immediately, 
and at the very moment the stone 
was restored the bishop recovered. 
That stone has since been enclosed 
in silver. 

As I knelt, with my right hand 
leaning upon the wall, I felt some 
of the gritty mortar crumble be- 
neath my touch. I did not dare 
bring even the smallest grain away, 
but carefully put it back. I did 
not at that moment know the story 
of Bishop Soarez. 

It is not our intention to weary 
the reader by any learned disqui- 
sition on the subject of the Holy 
House. Its authenticity has, of 
course, been frequently attacked by 
heretics and persons disposed to 



cavil at all that the church holds 
venerable. Probably in our time 
the remarks which have had the 
most weight have been those made 
by Professor Stanley in his work 
on Palestine. We will only assure 
our readers that the learned 
writer's statements are proved to 
be unauthentic and his given plan 
thoroughly incorrect ; also, that 
the identical nature of the stones 
and mortar of the house with those 
forming other houses in Nazareth 
has been established by the inves- 
tigations of Monsignore Bartolini 
and of Professor Ratti, who sub- 
jected portions of each to chemical 
analysis, as also proving their en- 
tire dissimilarity to the stones to be 
found in Loretto and its neighbor- 
hood. This is all given and explain- 
ed in the very interesting work 
on Loretto and Nazareth publish- 
ed by the late Father Hutchison, 
of the London Oratory, who vis- 
ited both places for the purpose 
of investigation. Doctor Kenrick, 
Archbishop of St. Louis, has writ- 
ten learnedly on the subject, as 
well as Dr. Northcote and others. 
These authors may be consulted 
by those who want further evidence 
than that given by the sanction of 
the church, the briefs of successive 
popes, and the never-dying devo- 
tion of multitudes of the faithful at 
all times and from all lands. We 
are chiefly indebted to the Rev. 
Father Hutchison's clear and in- 
teresting publication for many of 
the statements here made, having 
studied his book before our visit, 
and again subsequently. 

The French, at the time of the 
Directory, carried away the image 
of Our Lady in 1797. It was 
taken to Paris and exposed to vul- 
gar curiosity in common with other 
precious objects rifled from all 
parts of Europe. It, was, however, 



200 



A Day at Lorctto. 



later on restored to the veneration 
of the faithful in the church of 
Notre Dame in Paris ; and finally, 
at the earnest request of Pius VII., 
was sent to Rome, where it remain- 
ed a short time at the Quirinal. 
It was then exposed for three days 
in one of the churches, and was re- 
stored to Loretto in December, 
1802. The Litany of Loretto is 
far more ancient than the arrival 
of the Holy House in that town. 
It has acquired that name from 
the fact that it is solemnly sung 
in the Holy House every Satur- 
day. 

In the afternoon of the same 
day, after a few hours' rest, we re- 
turned to the cathedral. It was 
still filled with devout worshippers, 
and seems never to be empty. We 
went over the Holy House again, 
accompanied by a most amiable 
canon, who explained everything to 
us. 

I have, I think, never found my- 
self in a spot which so brought be- 
fore me and mingled together the 
devotion of the Catholic Church 
through all ages of time. I had 
but to close my eyes to see in im- 
agination pass in and out the figures 
of kings and princes, bishops and 
saints of the middle ages down to 
our own days. How many great 
and noble hearts have hastened 
hither and laid their petition be- 
fore Mary and her Infant ! How 
many crowned heads have for a 
while forgot their burden, how 
many humble souls have scattered 
their sorrows, within these four 
narrow walls ! And still the crowd 
pours on, and still it is the same 
story of sins forgiven, of trouble re- 
moved, of anguish healed; while 
of the many pilgrims who have 
knelt within those walls, how many 
millions now are sitting at the feet 
of Him who reigns in heaven, and 



looking from his divine glory 
down on the sweet, serene face of 
Mary in the full plenitude of 
knowledge, seeing into the mys- 
tery which here we only feel and 
believe. 

There is a tradition extant that 
the Holy House is to be moved 
yet once more, and is to rest near 
Santa Maria Maggiore, in Rome. 
We know not on what the report 
is founded. W T e were shown the 
"treasures" of the church, ranged 
in glass presses all round the large 
sacristy, but which- only impressed 
me as a touching proof of how 
little we can give, even when we 
bring our pearls and diamonds and 
precious stones to Mary's shrine. 

We had but little time to bestow 
upon anything outside the cathe- 
dral. The bishop's palace, which is 
attached to it, is a beautiful build- 
ing, and the fountain in the cen- 
tre of the fine piazza singularly 
graceful and striking. The chief 
merchandise of the place, so far as 
it met the eye, seemed to consist in 
rosaries and small objects of de- 
votion, mingled with infinite va- 
rieties of the red handkerchiefs 
worn by the women. 

We suffered the very small 
amount of mortification generally 
to be met with in modern pilgrim- 
ages in the utter insufficiency of 
food provided for us at the inn ; 
the butter uneatable and the milk 
conspicuous by its absence, because, 
as we were assured, the farmers 
keep it to make cheese, the staple 
commodity of the country, and ob- 
ject to selling it. Our bed-rooms 
were over an exceedingly unsavory 
stable, and when I woke in the 
early morning I wondered how I 
could have slept at all in such 
odors. The bill took none of 
these drawbacks into account, and 



Follette. 



201 



rivalled any in Rome, London, beforehand, as we counsel our 

Paris, or New York. But we were readers to do should they be so 

not inclined to cavil, and probably fortunate as to wend their way to 

ought to have made our bargain Loretto. 



FOLLETTE. 

BY KATHLEEN o'.MEARA, AUTHOR OF " A WOMAN'S TRIALS,' 1 " IZ.\'s STORY," " A SALON IN THE LAST 
DAYS OF THE EMPIRE," "FREDERIC OZANAM," " PEARL," E1C. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE FAMILY CIRCLE. 



GRIPARD'S cottage stood on the 
side of the mountain with the Gave 
running down below. It was call- 
ed Quatre Vents because the four 
winds blew upon it, and it defied 
them all. It was more like a 
house than a cottage, for it had 
originally been the lodge of a cha- 
teau which crowned the high ta- 
ble-land in olden times and had 
been swept away in '93. The 
arched doorway looked strangely 

Kit of keeping with the dark red 
^s of the slanting roof, and the 
assive stone wall of the left angle 
ade an odd contrast with the 
ght, which was of modern brick 
and plaster. These incongruities 
would not have prevented the cot- 
tage being picturesque and com- 
fortable, if things had gone on as 
in the time of old Gripard, the 
ather of the present owner. In 
hose days there were lichens on 
he walls and flowers in the gar- 
en, and the kitchen was a sight to 
see, with its shining copper sauce- 
pans symmetrically ranged round 
the whitewashed walls, and the lin- 
en-cupboard was filled with snowy 
piles of homespun sheets and tow- 
els, and the paneterie was fra- 
grant with the smell of flour and 



home-made bread, and the shelves 
bent under an array of jam-pots 
and pickle-jars that made Quatre 
Vents the envy and admiration of 
all the housewives in Bacaram. 

But times were changed. When 
our story opens Gripard fils was 
in possession of the old stone cot- 
tage, and it was shorn of all come- 
liness without and comfort within. 
Gripard lived there with his niece, 
Follette, the child of a sister who 
was dead ; and Victor, an orphan 
boy with no belongings, who was 
a foster-brother of Follette's, and 
whom the old man tolerated because 
he was useful about the place, and, 
moreover, he had grown used to 
the lad and would have missed him. 
Old Jeanne, who had nursed Gri- 
pard and Follette's mother, com- 
pleted the little household. It might 
have been a happy one, if Gripard 
had known how to be a happy 
man ; but he cared for no one, 
loved nothing but his money, and 
thought of nothing but how he could 
save it. 

Victor's presence was a per- 
petual grievance to him, yet he 
could not afford to turn the lad 
out ; some one was wanted to do 
the heavy work of the place dig- 



202 



Follctte. 



ging in the garden, hewing wood, 
and so on and Victor did this well 
and cost less than a paid outsider. 
Moreover, he was strong and 
honest, and no one would attack 
the house while Victor was there. 
No one ever did attack houses at 
Bacaram. There was a policeman 
in the village, a purely ornamental 
functionary, whose services had 
never within the memory of the 
oldest inhabitant been called into 
requisition at Bacaram ; but though 
people left their doors open all 
night, they liked to feel there was 
a policeman within call, and would 
have resented his removal as a loss 
of prestige. Gripard, more espe- 
cially, set store by his presence 
in the neighborhood ; but, all the 
same, he would have slept less 
easily if Victor's strong pair of 
arms had not been closer still in 
case of need. 

Then Follette, whose pretty face 
and merry voice made the only 
gleam of sunshine in the house 
Follette was another grievance. If 
Gripard had a soft corner in his 
heart for any living being it was 
for Follette ; but she ought to be 
out earning her bread instead of 
living on. him, and the sight of her 
hearty young appetite, as she ate 
her scanty meals at his board, 
was an offence and a source of daily 
irritation to the old man. 

They were at breakfast this 
morning if the comfortless repast 
deserved that cheerful name, for it 
consisted of nothing but a lump of 
bread and a bowl of cold carrot- 
soup. There was no fire, although 
the snow was deep on the ground 
and the window-panes richly silver- 
ed with frost ; the fire was only 
lighted for the evening meal, when 
the soup was made ready for the 
next morning. Old Jeanne was 
pouring out the cold brew into the 



brown bowls set on the kitchen- 
table when Victor came in with a 
jar in his hand, and cried out : 
" Hold, Jeanne ! Don't pour out 
the patron's. I have a bowl of 
hot soup for him." 

But old Gripard clutched the 
edge of the table, and said in a 
tone of angry suspicion : " I can eat 
cold ; what do you mean by burn- 
ing fuel at this hour of the morn- 
ing?" 

" Patron, if other folks are fools 
why should not wise people profit 
by their folly ?" said Victor, empty- 
ing the smoking liquid into Gri- 
pard's bowl. *' Mere Bibot lighted 
her fire before the house was astir, 
and she gave me leave to heat your 
soup. She says I may do it every 
morning." 

" Nay, nay, Mere Bibot is no 
fool to give something for nothing; 
she will be wanting more than her 
fire is worth," grumbled Gripard, 
sniffing greedily at the hot fumes. 

" I have seen to that ; I offered 
to carry in the wood for her in pay- 
ment for ten minutes' use of her 
fire." 

" Ah ! ha ! Thou art a knowing 
lad," said Gripard with a twinkle 
in his eye, as he now, reassured as 
to the cost of the luxury, fell to 
his soup with a gusto. 

He was a small man, with a 
short white beard, deep-set, green- 
gray eyes, and a face that would 
have been intelligent if cunning 
had left room for any other ex- 
pression. He wore, or rather he 
was cased in, a long coat tightly 
buttoned to his skin, and so neatly 
overlaid with large patches of cloth 
that it would have been a nice 
point to say which was the founda- 
tion of the garment and which the 
superstructures. 

Follette's large, dark eyes fas- 
tened hungrily on the old man's 



Follette. 



203 



steaming bowl; but she held out 
her own to Jeanne, and did not 
withdraw it until it was filled to 
the brim. Follette, in ner short 
blue petticoat, and brown bodice, 
and crimson head kerchief, was a 
bright object at the bare deal table. 
She had been' up these two hours, 
working hard, and her young appe- 
tite was whetted by the fast and 
the exercise ; nevertheless, she cast 
greedy eyes on the savory mess 
opposite. 

" Let me warm my hands, petit 
oncle," she said, and, without wait- 
ing his leave, she clasped her blue 
fingers round the hot bowl. 

u Nay, get thee gone! Thou 
wilt make it cold," cried Gripard, 
tapping the floor with his foot, and 
pinching the plump fingers to make 
them let go. 

"Let the child warm herself," 
said Jeanne ; " the soup is mad-hot, 
and she is numb with cold." 

"She is a selfish, lazy minx," 
said Gripard; " let her go and earn, 
if she wants fire. You would both 
burn and eat me out of the house, 
if I let you have your way." 

Jeanne turned her back with a 
shrug, and began pouring out Vic- 
tor's soup; but he drew away the 
bowl before it was half full. 

"There is plenty," she said, 
holding up the jug. 

" I have enough ; enough is as 
good as a feast," he replied. 

"Yes, yes, better than a feast; 
when folks eat too much they can't 
work," said Gripard, drinking up 
his soup with a loud noise. 

Follette rubbed her blue finger- 
tips, bit them and blew, on them, 
and set to her cold carrot-broth, 
and found the portion none too 
large. 

No more would Victor, thought 
Jeanne, if he had not laid in a hot 
meal at Mme. Bibot's already, the 



sly fellow ! Jeanne kept her eyes 
open, and was not to be taken in 
by palaver and cunning. 

The meal was over, and Gripard, 
warmed by the unexpected luxury 
of his, was in a good-humor, when 
the door opened and a slight, cur- 
ly-headed youth, with an olive skin 
and fine dark eyes, walked in. 

" Good-morning, M. Gripard !" 
said the new-comer. 

"Jules! mon petit!" exclaimed 
Jeanne, setting down her pail and 
going -to embrace the tall young 
fellow, her grandson. 

Victor and he exchanged friendly 
nods, and Follette's face lighted up 
with a new brightness as she wel- 
comed him. 

" I have brought you a little pre- 
sent of honey, M. Gripard," said 
Jules, laying down a large stone pot 
on the table; "and here is some- 
thing for you, Follette." 

Follette took the box and opened 
it with eager curiosity. 

" Oh ! how pretty. Look, my 
uncle ! A boy and a dog; does not 
the dog look as if it were going to 
bark ? O Jules ! how clever you 
are !" 

Jules was delighted. 

" I thought you would like it. 
I have made several, that I hope to 
sell well at t[ie fair at Earache. 
The patron says the group is good 
and will fetch a good price." 

" Then take this one and sell it, 
and give Follette the money," said 
Gripard; "if the toy is worth 
money why do you fool it away ?" 

" Oh ! but, my uncle, I like the 
group better," protested Follette. 

"No doubt, no doubt. Thou art 
a little fool. Thou shouldst take 
the money and buy thyself a meal 
or a pair of shoes to save my 
pocket." 

" Follette is not to blame, pa- 
tron," interposed Victor. " She is 



204 



Follette. 



but a child ; she would have been 
glad of the money, if she had not 
been tempted with the toy." 

Jules flashed an angry glance at 
Victor, but said nothing, while 
Jeanne took up the group and 
burst out into motherful praises. 

" Holy Virgin ! how live the 
dog is. And the boy's sabots! 
And the hole in his breeches ! I 
could want to mend it. Jules, 
Jules, thou art a genius!" 

" See, my uncle," cried Follette, 
"is not the little dog wonderful ?" 

" Mayhap, mayhap ; but the mo- 
ney were better." 

"The honey would have fetched 
money, yet you did not grudge 
Jules' giving you a pot of it," re- 
torted Follette. 

" Saucy jade ! The lad owes 
me more than a pot. of honey. I 
kept his mother till she died, and 
himself till there was no holding 
him in and he took himself off," 
said Gripard. 

Now, the truth was that the mo- 
ment Gripard fils became master 
he gave Jules the door, and it was 
old Gripard who had kept his mo- 
ther; and old Jeanne as good as 
kept herself, for she got no wages, 
only a small present at Easter and 
the New Year. 

" You are right, A M. Gripard," 
said Jules, anxious to make peace 
for Follette. "I owe you more 
than all the honey in Earache would 
pay. But now I must be going. I 
came on an errand from the manu- 
factory, and must not tarry." 

Jules bent his bright, curly head 
to Jeanne's mahogany face and 
kissed it on both cheeks, and with 
a smile at Follette, and a pleasant 
" Bon jour," departed. 

Then Follette gathered up the 
empty bowls, and swept the crumbs 
from the table, and hurried out with 
a big bundle slung over her shoulder. 



It had been her habit ever since 
she was a child to light her uncle's 
pipe for him every morning; but 
of late the office had slipped from 
her hands into Victor's. She could 
not tell how or why, and she did 
.not care. So long as Gripard had 
his pipe it was all the same to 
Follette who gave it to him. 

"You must not be hard on the 
little one, patron," said Victor, set- 
ting the chaufferette under the old 
man's feet ; " she will grow thrifty by 
and by. But Jules is a spendthrift 
and tempts her with presents." 

"Ay, ay; he will end badly. 
See that thou take warning by him 
in time. And look thee here : 
make sure that Mere Bibot does 
not cheat thee about the loan of 
her fire, eh ? She is a knowing 
one." 

" So am I, patron ; trust me not 
to be fooled by an old woman." 
And the two exchanged significant 
glances, Victor with a laugh, 
Gripard with a noise between a 
chuckle and a grunt. 

Follette disappeared down the 
road, and walked quickly on to 
the washing- shed by the river, 
where a fe\v early housewives had 
already assembled, and, slipping her 
bundle down on the bank, she hur- 
ried away across the bridge towards 
the forest. 

Nothing could exceed the beauty 
of the forest at this season. The 
ground was spread with a carpet 
of untrodden snow, except on the 
path that made the highway to 
Barache, which, was beaten down 
and pleasant to walk on ; the trees 
were laden with snow and hung 
thick with icicles, that sparkled like 
crystals in the morning sunlight. 
But Follette had no leisure to ad- 
mire these winter beauties. She 
was hurrying on to see Jules. 



Follette. 



205 



Jules was her friend, and she sel- 
dom saw him now, and she was 
anxious to make up to him for 
Gripard's surly mood. She caught 
sight of him playing at snowballs 
by himself where the trees made 
a kind of circle round a clearance 
that offered a good position for a 
game. As he made the balls he 
aimed them at the highest point of 
the trees, that shook down showers 
of snow when they were struck. 
Follette watched him for a mo- 
ment, until Jules, missing his aim, 
got covered with the white spray 
from head to foot, whereupon she 
burst into a peal of laughter that 
rang through the forest and brought 
him bounding over the snow to her 
side. 

" I thought you would come," he 
said, clapping his hands to shake 
off the snow. 

" You come so seldom now," 
said Follette. 

" Is it my fault ? My visits grow 
more unwelcome every time. The 
honey was a failure." 

" No, it wasn't. He was glad to 
get it, but your giving me the terra- 
cotta group vexed him." 

"Victor made it worse. He is a 
sly fellow. He is a miser, too, or 
else he pretends to be to, flatter 
your uncle." 

"I can't make Victor out," said 
Follette. " He is so kind and so 
fond of me, and yet he is always 
getting me scolded ; then he tries 
to mend it, and that makes things 
worse." 

" I tell you he is a sneak. I 
wish he were gone." 

He is always talking of going. 
It was settled for him to go with 
that orange-merchant to Algiers, 
but he did not go ; I don't know 
why." 

" He will never go," said Jules. 

" Poor fellow ! he is fond of us. 



He has nobody else in the world to 
care for." 

" And you, Follette are you 
fond of him?" 

" I don't know. I used to be 
very fond of him ; but he is not 
like what he used to be. And he 
is always making uncle cross with 
Jeanne; that makes me hate him 
sometimes." 

They walked through the white 
trees. Follette was looking up at 
the sky, her lovely young face ex- 
pressing doubt and vexation and 
tenderness in quick succession. 
The bright crimson and gold-color 
bandana that bound her dark locks 
and heightened the brilliancy of 
her eyes and cheeks, now all aglow 
with excitement and exercise, was 
a present from Jules; so was the 
blue cashmere capeline, that pic- 
turesque head-gear that serves the 
peasant of the Pyrenees in all sea- 
sons, folding square into a pad 
against the vibrating sun in sum- 
mer, covering her like a hood in 
winter. 

" He will never go," said Jules, 
knitting his brows in an angry 
frown. " It will pay him better to 
stay." 

" Pay him ?" said Follette. " But 
my uncle doesn't pay him a cen- 
time, and I'm sure he works as 
hard as any man in Bacaram." 

" He does, and makes money for 
himself, too," said Jules. "He 
sells fowls and sheep at Earache, 
and they don't belong to your 
uncle. But that's not what I 
meant. It will pay him in the 
long run to stay, because he intends 
to marry you and get Quatre Vents 
and all that Gripard has to leave." 

"Marry me!" Toilette's laugh 
rang merrily through the forest 
" I'd as lief marry Nicol." 

" If Gripard wished you to marry 
him YOU should." 



206 



Follctte. 



"But he doesn't wish it; it has 
never come into his head." 

" I don't know that; but, any- 
how, Victor will take care that it 
comes into his head one of these 
days. And then what will you 
do?" 

Follette was still under the sur- 
prise of the announcement, and 
made no reply. Jules repeated : 

" What will you do, Follette ?" 

" I will run away " to you, she 
was on the point of adding ; but, 
looking up at him, something 
checked the words: something in 
Jules' face that she had never seen 
there before a look of entreaty, of 
passionate expectation. The glance 
of beseeching love sent a strange 
thrill through Follette, and woke 
in her a sense of power, with a 
half-conscious impulse to exercise 
it cruelly. It was .such a won- 
derful surprise to see Jules at her 
feet that she could not bid him get 
up in such a hurry. Her little 
heart beat fast. 

" What will I do ?" she repeated. 
"I suppose I would have to obey 
my uncle. He can marry me to 
whom he likes ; and, after all, Victor 
might do as well as another." 

"Ah! You take it easy. It is 
because you are fond of him." 

" Of course I am fond of him," 
another 'little thrill of triumph an- 
swering to the jealous note in Jules' 
voice; "we have been like brother 
and sister, and he is fond of me 
and would be good to me." 

" He is fond of himself and of 
money, and of nothing else!" 
cried Jules, the angry flame leap- 
ing up in him. '* He is cruel, and 
a liar and a miser. But you will 
have your uncle's money, and that 
will do you instead of love. It is 
no business of mine, at any rate." 

He struck at a bough with his 
stick, and the snow came raining 



down on them both, powdering 
Follette all over with silver spray. 

Follette began to fear he was 
getting seriously angry, but she did 
not know how to appease him with- 
out letting him see how much she 
cared. 

"It is no business of mine," con- 
tinued Jules, after a pause which 
he had expected Follette to break 
by some sign of interest, a question, 
or a protest. " I am going away, 
and we shall all have grown old 
before I come back to Bacaram." 

" You are going away !" exclaim- 
ed Follette, roused from her plea- 
sant flutters into real alarm, and 
forgetting all her little wiles of co- 
quetry. 

4< I am going to Paris. I shall 
be in nobody's way there. I am 
going to seek my fortune." 

" You are going to Paris !" re- 
peated Follette almost under her 
breath ; and the flame of vanity 
died out in an instant, and she felt 
chill and trembling. 

" I have been thinking of it for 
a long time," Jules went on. "I 
want to find out whether I have 
any real talent or whether I am 
only a baker of clay. If the mas- 
ters tell me I have the fire, as peo- 
ple call it, I will give up my life to 
conquering the marble. After a 
while I shall grow rich, and I will 
send money to Jeanne, and she 
shall come to me, or, if she like?, 
she can have a little home of her 
own for her old days. I meant to 
tell her this morning that I was 
going, but my heart failed me. 
You will break it to her, Follette. 
will you not ?" 

" O Jules ! how can you be so 
cruel ?" said Follette, and the big 
tears pearled down her cheeks. 

Hope leaped up in Jules' heart. 

" You know it will break Jeanne's 
heart," continued Follette. 



Follette. 



207 



"Oh ! as to that," said Jules, dis- 
appointed, " all the mothers are 
used to it. While I was serving 
my volontariat, and in danger of 
being shot any day, she did not die 
of it. Besides, you will be good 
to her, Follette ; and Gripard will 
never turn her out. If he were to 
die it would be different. Victor 
would not let her come and live 
with you, would he ? He never 
cared for poor old granny, and he 
always hated me." 

Follette's heart began to swell, 
but she walked on quickly by his 
side, and made no answer beyond 
an inarticulate " Oh !" 

At last they came to the cross- 
roads, and of one accord both 
stopped, for Follette never went 
farther than this. 

44 Well, good-by," said Jules. 

Follette held out her little plump 
red hand, but she could not say 
*' good-by," though she tried hard. 
When she would have drawn away 
her hand Jules held it in his strong 
grasp. 

"Don't send me away without a 
word," he said. But not a word 
could Follette say. 

" Well, never mind. I shall 
always love you," said Jules, " and 
I pray the good God that it may 
be well with you. You deserve to 
be happy, my little Follette; and 
if you love Victor, and he makes 
you happy, I shall forgive him and 
be grateful to him." 

Follette could bear it no longer. 
She wrenched away her hand, and 
turned from him with a great sob. 

Jules' arm was round her in a 
minute, and he was kissing away 
the big tears from her cheeks. 

" Follette ! is it possible you 
care ? Are you sorry because I 
am going ? My little one, it is for 
your sake. Listen to me," as she 
strove to get away. " I love you, 



better than Victor, better than any- 
body will ever love you. I am 
going to learn to be a sculptor. I 
shall succeed. I feel it is in me. 
And then, when I have made some 
money, I will come back and make 
you my little wife. Will you wait 
for me, Follette ?" 

Follette sobbed out something 
inarticulate, but she ceased to 
struggle, and let her head drop on 
his shoulder. 

"And if Gripard wants you to 
marry Victor you won't ? " said 
Jules, assuming that his first ques- 
tion was answered to his satisfac- 
tion. 

"N-n-o-o," said Follette in a 
sobbing whisper, but with comfort- 
ing energy. 

" Then let us love one another 
and have patience, and the time 
won't seem long," said Jules, strok- 
ing her hand tenderly. 

But suddenly Follette started 
from him, and Jules let her go as 
suddenly, and the two stood aloof 
like frightened children. He blew 
her a parting kiss from his finger- 
tips and strode on his way to Ba- 
rache, while she turned back to- 
war^s Bacaram. 

" Ah ! good-morning, Nicol," 
Follette exclaimed, as a short, de- 
formed little creature came am- 
bling on, singing a snatch of some 
song to himself. 

Most people disliked Nicol, for 
he was ugly, misshapen, and ill- 
tempered ; children mocked while 
they feared him, and threw stones 
at him when they could indulge 
in the pastime in safety. Follette 
was almost the only person who 
liked the dwarf. 

"Good-morning, Mam's ell e Fol- 
lette. Here is a bundle of fagots I 
have gathered for you. Take them 
home as a present to Pere Gri- 
pard." And the dwarf held out an 



208 



Follette. 



armful of sticks to her nearly as 
big as his hump. 

" Thank you, Nicol. 1 am not 
going home; I am going to do my 
lessive" said Follette. 

" Take these to M. Gripard ; he 
will be glad to get them this cold 
morning, and if folks tell him you've 
been idling about in the forest he'll 
see it's not true," added Nicol, with 
a knowing look in his bright, wistful 
eyes ; and he thrust the bundle in- 
to her arms and went shuffling on. 

u What a crazy creature he is, 
poor Nicol !" said Follette, as she 
tucked the uncomfortable load un- 
der her arm, and hurried back with 
it to Quatre Vents. 

Victor lingered behind after 
Jeanne and Follette had left the 
kitchen. He had something to say, 
and he thought this would be a 
propitious moment, for .Gripard 
was in a bad temper with Jules, 
and this would serve his purpose. 

" Patron," he said, " that orange- 
merchant sent me word again that 
he would take me, if I would bind 
myself to stay with him for two 
years. So I have agreed to go. 
Two years seemed a long time, at 
first, but after all it will soon be 
over, and, meantime, I shall have 
saved a good bit of money and have 
learned the business, and be able 
to set up on my own account in a 
small way. I must be leaving next 
week." 

Gripard smoked away for some 
minutes, and then he said : 

" You will have saved nothing. 
You will have fallen into a mare's 
nest; that's what you will have 
done. The fellow will smuggle you 
into a place where he can sell you 
for a slave ; that's the trade those 
orange-merchants drive. They are 
all scoundrels and murderers. You 
had better keep clear of 'em." 



"You don't mean that, patron ?" 
said Victor, with an air of amaze- 
ment and alarm. 

" I do. I know all about 'em. 
A pack of thieves." 

" That's bad news for me," said 
Victor uneasily ; " but I'm in for 
it now. I've engaged myself to 
him." 

" More fool you. You had no 
business to do it without asking 
my leave," said Gripard, taking the 
pipe out of his mouth and waxing 
angry. " I've fed you and kept 
you all these years, and now that 
you ought to be paying me back 
something you must be going off 
to Af/ica. And all for the sake of 
getting a bit of money ! It's aw- 
ful to see such a love of money in 
a young fellow like you. But it 
won't bring a blessing. That fel- 
low will sell you, and serve you 
right." 

** Nay, patron ; you are unjust 
to me," said Victor; " it is just be- 
cause you've done so much for me 
that I feel I ought to go away and 
not stay a burden on you longer. 
If I could pay for my keep I 
wouldn't ask to earn money for 
myself." 

"And why can't you get jobs to 
do about the mountain, and make 
enough to pay for your keep ? I 
did when I was your age." 

" There weren't so many on the 
look-out for jobs in those days. 
I've tried, and I could find nothing 
to do. There is nothing for me 
but to go away." 

"If you worked harder and ate 
less I would not grudge you your 
bit and your sup," said Gripard. 
" I am as poor as a rat, but while 
there is a crust left I would not 
have seen you hungry. But you 
want to be off after adventures, 
like that fellow Jules. I see how it 
is. You are all alike." 






Follette. 



209 



" We are very different, Jules 
and I," said Victor humbly. "He 
is clever; everybody likes him. 
Jeanne and Follette were sorry 
when he left us, but they will be 
glad to get rid of me." 

" What ? Eh ? Have they been 
worrying thee ?" demanded Gri- 
pard sharply, and lapsing into the 
familiar thee and thou, which show- 
ed he was in a mood to be propi- 
tiated. 

"I'm not a girl to complain of a 
girl and an old woman," replied 
Victor; "it's natural they should 
wish me out of the way." 

" Eh ? What ? Whose way are 
you in ? This is my house, isn't 
it ?" And the old man darted a 
suspicious glance at Victor out of 
his green-gray eyes. 

"It an't their fault. They're 
set on to it," said Victor deprecat- 
ingly. " I only wish for Follette's 
sake that Jules was a little steadier. 
But I'll not be in his way much 
longer, anyhow, and I wish them 
both well." 

Gripard's mind was so habitual- 
ly absorbed in the thought of his 
money that it was slow to take in 
any new idea. He looked at Vic- 
tor for a moment, and then slowly 
drew his eyes away with an imper- 
ceptible movement of his eyebrows; 
and Victor fancied but perhaps it 
was only fancy he gave a low 
whistle. 

So this was how things were go- 
ing on under his very nose! That 
little sly-boots and that wicked old 
woman plotting against him while 
he fed them on the fat of the land ! 
Gripard had never troubled him- 
self about what was to become of 
Toilette when he died ; but he had 
lain awake many a night thinking 
what was to become of his money, 
and he had settled it in his mind 
to leave it to Follette. He meant 
VOL. xxx. 14 



to live for the next twenty years, 
and by that time she would be 
a steady old maid and well trained 
in habits of thrift, and he would die 
with the comfortable certainty that 
she would keep a tight hand on 
whatever he had to leave her. He 
was fond of Follette, as far as his 
dried-up heart could be fond of 
any one ; but he was interested in 
her chiefly as the trustee to whom 
he would bequeath his precious 
hoard, and in entrusting it to her 
he felt he was securing to her the 
only happiness worth having in 
this world. 

It would be difficult to describe 
the shock it was to the old man to- 
learn that the child was plotting to- 
hand it over to that spendthrift 
Jules, a fellow that fooled away his- 
earnings to every beggar he met. 
The heartless, treacherous jade 
while he fed her and clothed her 
she was actually scheming to nrin> 
him when he was in his grave ! It 
was horrible. Gripard had never 
once thought of her marrying. She 
had not a penny wherewith to buy 
a wedding-gown ; and men who* 
took a wife without a penny were a 
variety of the human species un- 
known to Gripard. 

He went on smoking for a few 
minutes; then, removing his pipe,, 
he spat vindictively into the dead 
ashes. 

' "Why did you not tell me of this- 
before ?" he said, turning on Vic- 
tor. 

" I thought you knew it, patron.'" 

"You thought nothing of the 
kind." 

" If I had said anything they 
would have set it down to jeal- 
ousy." 

" And what if they did ? How 
long has this been going on ?" 

" Jules has been thinking of it 
long enough ; but I believe Fol- 



210 



Follcttc. 



lette only began to care about him 
lately." 

" The scoundrel ! He shall never 
set his foot in the house, and if 
Follette speaks to him I will turn 
her out and curse her, and she 
slia'n't have a centime of my 
money." 

He struck the floor heavily with 
his stick and polished away at the 
knob, while he muttered angrily to 
himself, and then spat again at the 
ashes. 

" Patron, you won't betray me ?" 
said Victor. "I shouldn't like to 
part bad friends with Follette." 

" Nonsense ! You are not going 
to part. You must stay at home 
and see that I'm not robbed. I 
can't be left to the mercy of a set 
of schemers and thieves. They'll 
be turning me out of my own house 
by and by. No, no!" 

" Patron, if I were of any use " 
began Victor. 

" You will be of use, if you are 
honest and take my interests to 
heart, and keep an eye on those 
who would rob me. Not that I 
have anything to be robbed of. 
Don't suppose that, sir!" And he 
glared at Victor and struck the 
floor. 

." Patron, I never was one to pry 
into your secrets " 

" Secrets ! What secrets have I ? 
Answer me that ! What do you 
mean ? Sapristi ! You are worse 
than the others, setting such re- 
ports about. You want to bring 
all the thieves of the country down 
upon me, do you ? Have I a trea- 
sure hid away ? I am hard enough 
set to pay for the bread you eat, 
the lot of you, and you talk of 
my having a treasure ! It's enough 
to drive one mad. Everybody 
knows that rascal Blondec ruined 
me when he became a bankrupt. I 
had entrusted all I had to him, and 



he became a bankrupt. The whole 
country knows it. Blondec ought 
to have been hanged." 

It was true Blondec had been 
declared a bankrupt, but he had 
paid Gripard back every penny of 
his money. Gripard, nevertheless, 
always spoke of himself as having 
been ruined by Blondec. Jeanne 
was the only person who knew the 
truth of the story, but the loyal 
old soul never breathed it to any 
one, and would shake her head and 
echo Gripard's lamentations over 
his lost money as fervently as if she 
believed in them. 

"He ought to have been hang- 
ed," repeated Victor ; "but thieves 
don't get their deserts in this world. 
I only hope they will in the next." 

" If they don't I don't want to 
go there, that's all. Look you 
here, I have not a penny but what 
the garden and that bit of land 
bring in, and it's little enough to 
feed four ; but if you put your will 
to the work, and do it, and save 
me having to let some villain come 
about the place, I don't mind your 
keep," said Gripard. 

" Patron, you are too generous ; 
but that orange-merchant " 

" Send him to the devil." 

" I gave my word " 

" Take it back. You were a 
fool. Tell him you have found him 
out in time." 

" He may insist " 

'" Sabre de bois ! How many 
reasons will you find for driving 
me mad ? I tell you send your 
orange-merchant to the devil, and 
let me hear no more of him ! Jules 
shall never show his face here 
again, and I will be master of my 
own house." Gripard emphasized 
this remark by a succession of sharp 
bumps on the floor. 

" Patron, I would make any sac- 
rifice to prove to you that I am not 



Follette. 



21 1 



ungrateful," said Victor, making a 
move towards the door, and then 
stopping with an air of hesitation ; 
"but, you see, everybody would be 
the happier for my going." He 
paused, plunged his hands deep 
into his pockets, and then, as if 
taking a desperate resolution, " Pa- 
tron," he said, turning round and 
looking straight at the old man 
with his clear blue eyes, that seem- 
ed all frankness and young cour- 
age, " I may as well make a clean 
breast of it to you : I love Follette 
and she does not care for me. She 
loves Jules, and no wonder ; he is 
handsome, and can dance and sing, 
and make pretty toys in terra- 
cotta ; and then what he earns he 
spends in bandanas and pretty 
things for her, and that makes her 
believe in his love as she never 
would in mine, who have nothing 
to give her but an honest heart 
and a pair of strong arms that 
would work for her till I dropped." 
He spoke passionately, flinging 
down both his arms with a gesture 
of energy and hopelessness. 

" Heyday ! heyday !"* muttered 
Gripard, as if speaking to himself, 
but in no angry tone. 

" If she thought I made any 
mischief between you and Jules 
she would hate me, they would all 
hate me ; and I'd rather anything 
than that," said Victor, with strong 
feeling in his voice. " I have been 
a fool to my own interests often, 
blaming Jules for throwing away 
his money on foolishness, and tell- 
ing her it was wrong to encour- 
age him ; they only laughed at me 
and called me a miser. If I had 
had any money I would have 
hoarded it and had it to give her 
some time when she may want 
it." 

Gripard smoked on, making no 
answer except an occasional sound 



between a grunt and a chuckle. 
He had felt as if another mine had 
been laid under his feet when Vic- 
tor began his confession ; but gra- 
dually his bewilderment subsided, 
and he began to see in this new 
complication a way out of his 
troubles. 

"What do those two fools intend 
to live on, if they get married ?" he 
said. 

"They would wait, I suppose, 
patron." 

" Wait for what ?" And Gripard 's 
eye darted green lightnings at 
Victor. 

But Victor kept looking steadily 
before him out of the window, and 
wondered what would come of his 
coup de tete j for such it was, rash 
and unpremeditated. He had an 
exulting sense of superiority over 
this narrow-headed, one-idead old 
man, who could only look at his 
money, and lost sight of the very 
things that jeopardized it. He 
chuckled inwardly at his own cle- 
verness in playing off Gripard's 
avarice against himself, in cajoling 
him about the orange-merchant, in 
catching him so skilfully in that 
trap about Jules and Follette, and 
finally in gulling him with a pre- 
tence of independence and proper 
pride. He rejoiced like a young 
giant playing with this feeble old 
fool, whom he held at his mercy 
to terrify and dupe. He made no 
answer to Gripard's question, and 
Gripard did not repeat it. He pro- 
bably took the silence for what it 
meant, and, after devouring a few 
inarticulate grunts, he said in an 
altered tone : 

" Where is Follette gone ?" 

"I saw her going towards the 
forest a little while ago." 

"What is she doing there this 
time o' day ?" 

"Gathering sticks, no doubt," 



212 



Follette. 



said Victor, who knew perfectly 
well for what she had gone. 

"Was that fellow going on to 
Earache?" 

"Yes, patron. I saw him go 
straight to the forest." 

" Humph ! Go to thy work 
t.hou hast lost a deal of time talk- 
ing here and let me hear no more 
of that. Get thee gone, lad." 

Follette came hurrying on to- 
wards Quatre Vents with a sad 
heart, and not feeling at all grate- 
ful to Nicol for his bundle of fag- 
gots, which she was tempted more 
than once to throw away ; but 
something in the dwarfs manner 
prevented her, so she carried them 
straight home. 

When she entered the frozen 
kitchen Gripard was gathered up 
in his high-backed chair, smoking 
doggedly, and chewing the bitter 
cud of this discovery about her- 
self and Jules. Follette, without 
looking at him, went straight to the 
hearth, dropped her bundle of sticks 
on it, and knelt down to light them. 
"What! thou hast been to the 
forest ?" said Gripard. " Is not this 
the day for the lessive ?"' 

" The lessive can wait," said 
Follette, without turning her head ; 
she did not want him to see that 
she had been crying. " I am going 
to make a blaze for you. It's too 
cold for you to sit here till evening 
without a bit of fire." 

" Where didst thou get those fag- 
gots ?" 

" In the forest." 

" That's how that idle fellow 
spends his time instead of attend- 
ing to his work, eh ?" 

" If you mean Jules, he did not 
gather one of them. He is gone 
to Earache," said Follette, in a tone 
that sounded a war-cry in old Gri- 
pard 's ears. 



" He is a good-for-nothing, idle 
dog, a bad fellow. I will forbid 
his coming here any more." 

"You need not, my uncle ; he is 
going." 

" Where to ? He has been go- 
ing to the devil ever since I knew 
him. What road is he taking 
now ?" 

" He is going to Paris." 
"To Paris!" echoed Gripard. 
" To Paris, dost thou say ?" 

" He is going to learn to be a 
sculptor." 

u Pshaw! He will learn to be 
a scoundrel, and naught else. A 
sculptor, forsooth !" 

Gripard "hardly knew whether to 
be glad at this unexpected removal 
of his grievance or vexed at not 
having been consulted about it. 

"Well, he will be a good rid- 
dance, and nobody will miss him 
except his old fool of a grandmo- 
ther. If he had been a steady lad 
he would have stayed here and 
worked for me, instead of taking 
himself off to make gewgaws in 
red clay." 

" He coufd not help going; you 
turned him out, uncle," said Fol- 
lette, who was not in a mood to 
hear Jules blamed for being dis- 
missed with cruel, hard words, 
though she ought to have been 
used to it by this. 

"Dost answer me, you saucy 
minx ?" said Gripard, and his stick 
came down with an angry thump. 
" I suppose I am master in my own 
house, eh? I wasn't going to 
stand a mountebank dancing and 
singing about my ears all day long 
humph ! to say nothing of being 
poisoned with red clay sticking to 
every bit I ate. If he hadn't turn- 
ed mountebank I never would have 
put his mother's son to the door, 
although that villain Blondec rob- 
bed me of every penny I possessed. 



Follette. 



213 



Why can't he stay at home and get 
work in the village ?" 

" Why doesn't Victor get work 
in the village ?" 

<; Victor earns his keep. He's no 
drone ; he's worth fifty Juleses. I 
will have thee kind to Victor." 

Follette made no answer, but sat 
back on her heels, and held out 
her hands to the blaze that went 
crackling up the wide black chim- 
ney, lighting up the copper pans on 
the wall and spreading a cheerful 
glow through the icy kitchen. Old 
Gripard looked hard at her, and, 
though she kept her head averted, 
he saw that her lids were red, and 
he knew that she had been crying. 

If he loved anything except his 
money it was Follette ; but his 
heart was hardened to her now, 
though she looked very touching in 
her young trouble, such a helpless 
child, so dependent on him. 

"What ails thee? Thine eyes 
are red," he said presently, but not 
in a tone that invited confidence. 

" It is the frost," said Follette, 
looking steadily into the fire. 

" Little fool ! ' Little story-teller !" 
said Gripard with a chuckle that 
made Follette smart with vexation. 
Had he guessed so soon the secret 
she had only just discovered in her 
own heart ? Her lips trembled and 
the tears began to swell. 

"What a little simpleton it is !" 
said Gripard, with a touch of pity 
this time. " Hearken to me, little 
one. I have a fondness for thy 
mother's child, and while I have 
a crust thou shalt never want one. 
But take heed : I will have thee a 
dutiful child and docile to my bid- 
ding. Think no more of this fel- 
low Jules. I mistrust him ; he is a 
wily hypocrite. I would rather see 
thee dead than wedded to him." 

"O uncle!" cried Follette, 
kneeling up and looking at the old 



man with eyes that grew wide with 
wonder and distress. " Why do 
you say that ?" 

" I would sooner pay for thy 
coffin than for thy wedding-ring, if 
it was to wed that fellow. So see 
that I hear no more of him. If 
thou art a good child, I will find 
thee a husband by and by. I have 
had my eye upon a thrifty lad who 
will take care of thee. Ye shall 
have Quatre Vents, and what few 
crowns I may have scraped together 
before I go to my grave." 

" I don't want a husband, and 
I don't want Quatre Vents," said 
Follette, rising to her feet and 
meeting Gripard's eyes with a firm, 
undefiant look that made him won- 
der if this was Follette, the child 
who had never dared gainsay his 
lightest bidding, whom he had al- 
ways found as pliant as a kitten 
for all her little wayward naughti- 
nesses. 

" Humph ! We don't want a hus- 
band, and we don't want Quatre 
Vents !" he repeated in a mocking 
tone, slowly polishing the ball of 
his stick. " So, so ; thou thinkest 
to brave me, dost thou, eh ?" 

" I won't be married against my 
will," said Follette with the same 
quiet firmness. " If you are tired 
of me I will go to service and earn 
my bread. I can get work as other 
girls do." 

If Follette had announced her 
intention of enlisting as a sailor 
Gripard could not have been more 
taken aback ; the notion of her 
throwing off the yoke in this fash- 
ion was quite as unnatural and a 
great deal more wicked. But Gri- 
pard's wits were suddenly sharp- 
ened since his eyes had been open- 
ed to the depravity and duplicity of 
the female character as revealed 
in Follette's conduct. He was not 
going to give her the satisfaction 



214 



Follette. 



of seeing how successfully she had 
vexed and thwarted him. 

" Thou shalt do as thou pleasest," 
he said. "It is high time thou 
shouldst earn thy bread; and if 
thou hadst proposed it dutifully I 
should have thought the better of 
thee for the wish. But thou art a 
naughty, unthankful jade. I wash 
my hands of thee. Get thee to the 
river and do thy washing." 

Follette was glad enough to es- 
cape once more from the dreary 
kitchen. Since she had left it in 
the morning all the world had un- 
dergone a change. To her simple 
mind the cause of this change was 
mysterious and hazy, but she real- 
ized the fact fully. A great shock 
had disturbed the even tenor of her 
quiet, shabby little life, and as she 
hurried on over the snow to the 
river she was conscious of a min- 
gled sense of misery and exultation. 
Jules loved her, and she loved him. 
This wonderful discovery made 
her heart beat with happiness ; but 
then Jules was going away, and she 
would be alone, at the mercy of 
her hard uncle and deceitful Vic- 
tor, whom she had as suddenly 
discovered that she hated. This 
prospect made her heart sink ; but 
then, again, there was Jules' return 
to look forward to, Jules' success 
to glory in. Of course he would 
succeed. He had the fire, as Jeanne 
in her simple, picturesque language 
called the divine afflatus which lift- 
ed mere handicraft to genius, and 
shed the artist's aureole round the 
workman's head. He had the fire ; 
it was still smouldering within him, 
but he was going to the great city, 
where it would be kindled, where 
the spark would be fanned into a 
flame whose light would soon shine 
to all the world. Jules would cre- 
ate works of his own in marble, 



which the terra-cotta toilers would 
reproduce at Earache while they 
talked over the days when the 
sculptor was a common lad work- 
ing in red clay like themselves. 

Only a few years ago a young 
man had gone from Tarbes to 
Paris and become a painter, and 
his friends told wonderful tales of 
what he had achieved and what he 
had done there. He lived on fa- 
miliar terms with the great masters. 
One of them had taken him to 
court, and he had seen the palace 
lighted up, and all the beauty of the 
city gathered round the sovereigns 
in jewelled robes and the courtiers 
in their bravery. Why should not 
Jules see these splendid sights too ? 
Follette did not intrude herself in- 
to the fair visions that she evolv- 
ed for Jules. With the instinct of 
a true woman, her love took the 
form of renunciation. She would 
be no hindrance to him, but let 
him go forth alone to his enchanted 
life, content to wait at home, watch- 
ing him from afar, toiling and spin- 
ning, until he came back and set 
the crown of his love upon her 
head. 

But now she had her lessive to 
get through. 

They made a pretty picture, the 
washerwomen under the shed by 
the river. There was not one 
amongst them who could be called 
beautiful, but the group, as a whole, 
produced the effect of beauty. The 
gay colors of their petticoats and 
turban-like head-gear showed like 
a parterre of flowers against the 
surrounding snow, making the dark 
eyes darker and lending a warmer 
glow to the rich olive skins. One 
tall woman stood by the caldron, 
and as the boiling water rushed 
into her tub and enveloped her in 
clouds of steam she might have 
been a Sibyl taking part in an in- 



Follette. 



215 



cantation ; some were soaping their 
linen on short boards or beating it 
with wooden platters, while others, 
more advanced with the morning's 
work, knelt on little mats by the 
water's edge, and rinsed it in the 
running stream; many of them 
were singing, some in chorus, others 
hymning canticles to themselves, 
or ballads, and the broken concert 
made no discord with the music 
of the running waters. The Gave 
was only a make-believe river at 
this point ; but what it lacked in 
deptli and volume it made up in 
noise, chattering and babbling and 
tumbling precipitately over its peb- 
bly bed, and leaping in little bursts 
of foam over the bigger stones in 
the middle of the stream. 

The lessive was in full operation 
when Follette appeared on the 
scene, and as she stood for a mo- 
ment, looking round to see where 
she could place her tub, she might 
have been Nausicaa surveying her 
maidens while they washed their 
linen on the Scherian shore. 

"The petiote is late," said a 
short, square woman, whose cop- 
per-colored face was surmounted 
by a flaming yellow turban, and 
who looked uncommonly like a 
squaw as she pounded her clothes, 
keeping time to the tune of a musi- 
cal tub behind her. 

" Jules Valdory could tell us 
why," said Mme. Tarac, plunging 
a sheet into the scalding flood, 
then lifting it and plunging it in 
again. 

" He's a handsome lad," observ- 
ed Mine. Bibot, the squaw, "and 
would dance the heart out of any 
maid in Bacaram, or Barache 
either." 

" It would have been better for 
him if he danced like a mule," said 
Mme. Tarac. " Old Gripard turn- 
ed him out because he could not 



keep quiet, but was always caper- 
ing about as if he had quicksilver 
in his heels. Victor Bart is a lad 
more after Gripard's heart. A like- 
ly lad enough, too, is Victor Bart." 

"Victor Bart is a sneak ; he eats 
Jiot meals at the cabaret, and pre- 
tends to live on cold soups and 
lentils at Quatre Vents," retorted 
Mme. Bibot. "And he has a bad 
heart ; he flogged Nicol till the 
poor child's hump nearly dropped 
off him, and all for his picking up 
a stray carrot in Gripard's garden. 
I hate the sight of Victor." 

"Ah! bah! How are folks to 
sleep easy in tlieir beds if their 
carrots are to be eaten by idle 
waifs ? Nicol deserved the flog- 
ging ; he is a mischievous, good-for- 
nothing imp." 

" He is a harmless, afflicted crea- 
ture," said Mme. Bibot, "and those 
that hurt him are safe to rue it." 

" Oiii, da ; he is a spiteful toad 
and hurts when he can." 

" He hurts nobody ; but the good 
God pities him and takes his part. 
Bide awhile, and see if Victor Bart 
doesn't pay for that thrashing he 
gave the poor hunchback." 

Mrne. Tarac had no argument to 
pit against prophecy, so she turned 
to Follette. 

" Well, petiote, we are getting on 
to the fair." 

Follette was lathering away lust- 
ily over the steaming tub, her 
round arms bared to the elbow. 

" Yes," she replied, without look- 
ing up. " If this frost keeps on it 
will be beautiful ; they will hold 
the fete in the forest." 

" You young ones will have a 
great day of it this year," contin- 
ued Mme. Bibot. " Musicians are 
corning from Tarbes, and there is 
to be a dance in the evening." 

" And none in the forest?" said 
Follette, dropping her heavy mass 



2l6 



Follette. 



of linen into the water and look- 
ing up with blank disappointment. 
" Then I sha'n't have a dance at 
all ! Jeanne never waits till even- 
ing." 

" You can stay with me, petiote ; 
I will take care of you and bring 
you back," said Mme. Bibot. 
" And I'll be bound you'll have 
plenty of dancers wanting to see 
us safe home." 

"She'll have Victor Bart to look 
after her," said Mme. Tarac, with 
a knowing wink. 

But Follette made a little pout- 
ing grimace, shrugged her shoul- 
ders, and plunge'd back into her 
suds. 

She made up her mind that she 
would not go to the fair. Perhaps 
Jules would not be there ; he might 
leave Earache before, and, if so, 
she would not care to dance. She 
would certainly not dance with 
Victor. She had never cared for 
him as a partner, he was so awk- 
ward ; but now she would hate to 
dance with him. 

The Christmas fair was the great 
event of the winter to the Bacaram 
population, and the young folks 
looked forward to it with an eager 
expectation that was not checked 
by the sameness of the yearly pro- 
gramme. When there was a fine 
hard frost over the snow, that sel- 
dom failed at this season, the fair 
was held in the forest, midway 
between Earache and Bacaram, on 
a spot which made a convenient 
meeting-place for the surrounding 
hamlets and villages ; but if a thaw 
set in it was held in the market- 
place at Earache, an arrangement 
which nobody liked, not even the 
Earache people, for they were near 
enough to the forest to make the 
journey to the rendezvous easy and 
pleasant, and, once there, the fair 
went merrily as a picnic. 



Everybody was busy preparing 
for it now; some had wares to take 
to the annual market, and others 
looked forward to it as an oppor- 
tunity for wearing their best clothes, 
carrying on their little love-affairs, 
coquetting a shy lover up to the 
fatal noose, ousting a rival, or com- 
pelling a reluctant fair one to sur- 
render. Thanks to Jeanne's taste 
and wonderful management, Fol- 
lette had always made a creditable 
appearance amongst the little Ba- 
caram belles at the fair ; but this 
year she was, so to speak, coming 
out, and it was necessary that she 
should be equipped for conquest. 
Old Jeanne, remembering the days 
of her youth, set her heart to the 
task of preparing Follette's dress 
for the day of the fair. 

But Follette had graver cares in 
her heart this morning than muslin 
frills and a laced bodice. There 
was this new world that had come 
into her life. As she walked on 
through the morning sunlight over 
the snow, bending under her wet 
bundle, she seemed to be treading 
on air. A robin perched on a 
bough above her head, and sang to 
her as she laid down her burden 
and began to hang out the clothes 
on lines from tree to tree. She 
went about it very leisurely, for she 
was in no hurry to go in ; when at 
last the lessive was spread and 
hung napping in the breeze she 
still loitered in the field, hoping 
that Jeanne would come out from 
the house and see her, and then 
she could break to her the news 
of Jules' intended departure. Gri- 
pard was pretty sure to say noth- 
ing about it to Jeanne. He never 
spoke to her except to scold, and 
she kept out of his way as much as 
possible just now. His temper was 
never of the sweetest, but since his 
rheumatism was bad and kept him 



Follette 



217 



indoors, tied to his chair all day, 
he growled like a bear at her if she 
asked him a question ; so Jeanne 
went about like a dummy, washing 
her potatoes and scraping her car- 
rots in the scullery, where he did 
not see her. When her prepara- 
tions for the evening meal were 
made, and there was absolutely no 
excuse for remaining out of the 
kitchen, she fetched her knitting, 
and went in and sat down at the 
table as quietly as a mouse. 

She had a deep-down fondness in 
her heart for old Gripard, though 
she shook in her wooden slices be- 
fore him, and wondered sometimes, 
as she stole a glance at the hard 
mummy sitting bolt upright in its 
chair, whether this was the soft, 
cooing baby that she had kissed 
and cuddled sixty years ago. 

He was reading a stale news- 
paper that Victor had filched or 
borrowed from some neighbor, and 
he kept up a series of grunts and 
groans as he perused the market 
prices, and bethought him of the 
three mouths he had to feed be- 
sides his own. 

Follette found him grumbling 
when she came in. She looked at 
Jeanne with something of the feel- 
ing we have towards a person whom 
we know to be stricken with a mor- 
tal disease while they are yet un- 
conscious of it. Her love for Jules 
had made more space in her heart 
for every other love, and she was 
full of the thought of how she could 
best break the news of his going 
away to Jeanne. She sat down to 
her wheel and spun away diligently. 
For a while nothing was heard but 
the musical hum of the wheel, 
which drowned Gripard's inarti- 
culate commentaries on the price 
of provisions. Suddenly the hum 
ceased, the wheel came to a stand- 
still, and Follette began to blow on 



her finger-tips, that were blue with 
cold. The meagre fire had long 
since died out, and the kitchen was 
again like an ice-house. 

" Get thee across to Mme. Bi- 
bot's," said Jeanne, " and fetch the 
blue jug full of milk, and tell her 
to give it a boil first." 

"Eh? What?" said Gripard, 
dropping the Constitutwnnel&n& dart- 
ing an angry glance at her over his 
glasses. " This is the way you lay 
me open to be fleeced, borrowing 
folks' fire. You don't suppose I 
think you get the loan of it for 
nothing, do you ?" 

" Follette and I do many a good 
turn for Mme. Bibot," said Jeanne. 

" More shame for you ! You have 
no right to give your time to any- 
body. It's mine ; don't I pay dear 
enough for it, feeding and clothing 
you both, eh ?" 

" I never take from my day's 
work," replied Jeanne, who had the 
meek, chidden air of a dumb ani- 
mal used to being beaten; "but 
Mme. Bibot doesn't forget that 
when poor Bibot was down with 
the fever that carried him off I sat 
up with him of a night to let her 
get a little rest." 

"Yes, and lost half your time 
next day," said Gripard, polishing 
away at the knob of his stick. " I 
had reason to know it ; you fell 
asleep and let the soup boil over 
hem!" 

"Mme. Bibot was helpful when 
Follette was sick with the measles," 
said Jeanne. 

" Well, s.he got something for it ; 
nobody does anything for nothing 
but a knave or a fool, and I don't 
want either to be coming about me. 
D'ye hear?" 

Follette went to the dresser and 
took down the blue jug. There 
was an air of quiet determination 
about her which did not escape 



218 



Follette. 






Gripard. She had defied him 
about Jules, and she seemed in a 
mood to defy him now; and of 
course Jeanne would aid and abet 
her, as she always did. 

" I will have no fools coming 
about me," he repeated, bringing 
down his stick with a loud thump; 
" and I won't be braved under my 
own roof. If you mean to try it 
you had better take yourself to 
Paris with your hopeful grandson." 

"To Paris? Is Jules going to 
Paris?" 

Jeanne dropped her knitting and 
looked up at Gripard with a direct 
glance. 

" So he meant to skulk away like 
a sneak, eh ? A dutiful son ! But 
I always told you he would come to 
no good." 

" He never meant to go without 
telling you, Jeanne," said Follette, 
going over to the table and stand- 
ing before her uncle, as if to shield 
Jeanne from him. " He came on 
purpose to tell you this morning; 
but his heart failed him and he 
asked me to tell you. Don't be 
unhappy, Jeanne," she continued, 
seeing the tender old eyes fill with 
tears ; " he is going to be a sculp- 
tor. You will be proud of him ; be- 
fore long he will come back rich 
and famous. Think of it, little 
mother!" 

" Bonne Vierge Marie ! I always 
said he had the fire, my brave boy ! 
Why should he not go to Paris ? 
His poor old granny shall be no 
hindrance to him." 

" He will go to the devil ; that's 
where he will go," said Gripard. 

" He is a brave lad," said Jeanne, 
wiping her eyes and speaking up 
for her boy. " He fears God and 
he loves his old mother. Why 
should he take harm in Paris more 
than here ?" 



" Because Paris is Paris, and 
thou art an old fool. He will go 
to the devil. He can't help him- 
self." 

" But the good God can help 
him, and he will," said Jeanne 
with motherful energy ; love for 
Jules making the poor, meek drudge 
brave. "When is he going, my 
little one? Not till after the fair, 
surely ?" 

" He says he must go next week," 
said Follette. 

"So soon as all that? Well, if 
he must, I must be content. But I 
was looking forward to seeing him 
dance at the fair once more. Holy 
Virgin ! next week ?" 

" Vieille bete!" said Gripard 
with a contemptuous grunt. " He 
has played the fool long enough ; 
it is high time he left off." 

" He has been a steady lad and 
good to his old mother, and I don't 
want him to be an old man before 
he's a young one. But, petiote, 
how are we to get his linen ready 
in time? He hasn't a sound pair 
of socks to his feet, nor a shirt de- 
cent enough to wear in Paris, V\ 
be bound !" 

"You must go to Earache to- 
morrow and see about it," said Fol- 
lette. 

"Go to Earache? Without so 
much as 'by your leave' to me? 
Are you master here ? Parbleu !" 

" A mother's a mother, Gripard," 
said Jeanne. " I can't let my boy go 
to Paris without seeing to his linen. 
Think of it ! To Paris ! But the 
good God will watch over him." 

Jeanne quilted her needles into 
her knitting, put it away into its 
accustomed place on the shelf, and 
then left the .kitchen and went 
clacking up the brick stair, heed- 
less of Gripard's ill-tempered pro- 
test. 






TO BE CONTINUED. 



Shadows. 2 1 9 



SHADOWS. 



A GOLDEN shadow, full of prophecy, 
Across the sunshine of midsummer fell, 
Wrought sudden change, as by enchanter's spell, 

From high hill-dome to wayside broidery, 

Braiding the trembling azure atmosphere 

That veiled the mountains' cool, untarnished green, 
With glittering threads shining the grays between 

Wherein our autumn mourns the dying year; 

Kindling, the pure white- elder bloom amid, 
The gleam of lingering asters' purple crown, 
The clematis' light cloud of silver down ; 

Disclosing ashen robe of penance hid 

Beneath the common green of every day 

And happy festa's white and gold array. 



IT. 



Deep in the maples' scarcely sun-pierced shade 
The thrushes called with clear, unfaltering voice : 
" Ah ! summer it is sweet, so sweet ! Rejoice, 

Green earth; be glad, blue skies o'erhead !" 

In their calm hermitage these gave no care 
That any passing cloud made dim the sun 
Sweetness more deep their song from shadow won, 

Filling the listening silence of the air 

With that full melody the forests know 

When the long shadows climb the eastern hills 
And dying day with golden largess fills 

The earth and sky: no requiem sad and slow, 

But song exultant, as beseemeth best 

The hour that shadoweth forth eternal rest. 



in. 



Magic so great within a little thought ! 

'Twas but a golden-rod's tall, yellow plume, 

That turned to ashes all the summer bloom 
Death's shadow of the dazzling sunshine wrought 
An eager blossom, hastening to feel 

The warm, soft breath of summer on its face ; 

The hidden glory of its golden grace 
Unto blue skies rejoicing to reveal ; 



220 



Christian Art. 



Unconscious of the shadow so it cast, 

Heedless of hearts to whom its sunshine brought 
As cloudless days with blinding storm are fraught 
Vision of summer joys too swiftly past, 
Of birds grown silent, leafy woods grown bare, 
Earth's life death-smitten by the shivering air. 



IV. 

Shadow to one, to one a shaft of light 

The eager blossom in its gold arrayed 

As sweet the robins warbled in the shade 
Sweeter to sing as day drew near the night. 
Beneath the ashen robe of penance hid 

Are tremulous joys earth's sunshine cannot know. 

When woods grow gray, and hills are white with snow, 
Spring violets ope once more blue veined lid 
Spring's trust awakening 'mid the seeming gloom. 

The scarlet woods that mark the year's decay 

Are sunset promise of a brighter day : 
Warm is home's hearth when o'er the summer bloom : 
Golden the shadows shortening hours throw 
Whose sunset burns with the eternal glow. 



CHRISTIAN ART. 



THE VAN EYCKS; MEMLING; DURER; 
HOLBEIN. 

IF Murillo has been put forward 
as the representative of the Chris- 
tian-art school in Spain it was not 
because he had an exclusive mono- 
poly of such subjects; far. from it. 
A hundred years before he was born 
Juanes had made a name for him- 
self as a religious painter; and, in 
the opinion of at least one com- 
petent critic, Valentia can show a 
head of Christ, painted by his hand, 
more impressive even than that ex- 
ecuted by Da Vinci in his " Last 
Supper." To the century preced- 
ing Murillo also belonged Cespe- 
des, Morales, Ribalta, and Roelas 
artists, all ,of them, of no mean re- 



putation, and who had drawn their 
inspiration from Christian sources. 
' Alonso Cano and Ziirbaran were 
contemporaries of Murillo's, and, 
though little known out of Spain 
as compared with him, their works 
of sacred art are highly valued in 
their own country. Even the great 
court painter, Velasquez, could 
paint a " Crucifixion " for a convent 
of nuns which was never excelled 
by any school. It consists of one 
solitary figure, without landscape, 
clouds, or attendants ; the cross is 
not even carried down to the 
ground, and is relieved against a 
dark background, like an ivory 
carving on sombre velvet. All this 
is perfectly true; and yet Murillo, 
notwithstanding, is entitled to the 



Christian Art. 



221 



prominence assigned to him, on ac- 
count of his more systematic and 
more successful cultivation of reli- 
gious art, and also because no Span- 
ish artist is so well known as he out 
of Spain. At no other point in our 
examination of Christian art shall 
we find any one single name which 
so largely fills the eye as his. In 
the earlier schools the fewness of 
remarkable works, and in the later 
Italian school their very abun- 
dance, compel us to pass in review 
many various painters instead of 
one solitary representative. 

The pioneers of modern art were 
undoubtedly the miniaturists and il- 
luminators who adorned the church 
books of that early time ; the names 
of a few of them, here and there, 
are known, but the majority were 
content to devote their skill and la- 
bor to the work of the scriptoria in 
their monasteries and leave no re- 
cord of their names behind them. 
In many instances the art of sculp- 
ture suggested to painters a me- 
thod of expressing the ideas of art 
that presented themselves. Thus, 
we know that Ghiberti's baptistery 
gates at Florence were a school of 
study to his brethren of the brush. 
Thus, too, exquisite groups of 
sculpture like those in the tympana 
of the old doorway of St. John's 
Hospital, Bruges, representing the 
Death, the Assumption, and Coro- 
nation of the Madonna (date, 1270), 
have surely found a responsive echo 
in more than one subsequent work 
of the Flemish school of paint- 
ing. The rise of that school be- 
longs to the history of the fifteenth 
century. The first eminent name 
that meets us in it is that of the Van 
Eyck family, who are supposed, 
in the absence of more exact in- 
formation regarding them, to have 
migrated into Flanders from the 
neighborhood of Maaseyck, in Lim- 



bourg. Hubert, the elder brother, 
was some twenty years senior to 
John ; their sister Margaret was also 
a painter. The family settled at 
first in Ghent, where Hubert paint- 
ed the one great picture associated 
with his name, part of which still 
remains in the cathedral church of 
St. Bavon. " The Worship of the 
Lamb " is the title of it an embo- 
diment of the description in the 
Apocalypse (vii. 9). It has the form 
of a double triptych, consisting of 
an upper and a lower portion, with 
wings corresponding to each in all, 
twelve compartments. The upper 
central portion is divided into three. 
In the midst of all is the Eternal 
Father, crowned, sceptred, and en- 
throned, looking down upon the 
sublime action in progress below. 
At his feet lies an empty crown of 
regal state that which the Eternal 
Son has for a little while laid aside 
to assume the character represent- 
ed in the scene underneath. On 
the right of the Eternal Father is 
seated the Blessed Madonna, crown- 
ed and holding an open book ; on 
his left St. John Baptist. To the 
right and left of the central panels- 
are represented a choir of angels 
and St. Cecilia and her choristers, 
respectively, flanked on the extreme 
outside by nude figures of Adam 
and Eve. In the great oblong pa- 
nel underneath is depicted with 
immense elaboration the immacu- 
late Lamb, standing " as it were 
slain," and receiving the worship- 
ful homage of prophets and apos- 
tles, of martyrs and holy virgins, 
of popes and kings. In the fore- 
ground is the fountain of the water 
of life. In the distance, amidst a 
picturesque landscape, we discover 
the towered city of the New Jeru- 
salem. In the panels to the left of 
this scene are represented groups 
of magistrates and cavaliers on 



222 



Christian Art. 



horseback ; and to the right of it 
holy pilgrims under the guidance 
of St. Christopher, all pressing for- 
ward, through varied landscape sce- 
nery, to the same goal the so- 
ciety of the Blessed Lamb and his 
court. 

This memorable and, for its 
age, wonderful picture was com- 
missioned by the burgomaster of 
Ghent, Jodocus Vydt, lord of Pa- 
mele, for his family chantry-cha- 
pel in St. Bavon's. No descrip- 
tion can convey an idea of its ad- 
mirable execution, of its solemn 
effect. Every head in the motley 
throngs is a study; many of them, 
no doubt, are portraits. No other 
work of the Flemish school can 
show equal perfection in group- 
ing, drawing, and painting human 
figures. Severely natural as are 
the attitudes, their expression is 
full of dignity. The landscapes 
introduced heighten the effect ei- 
ther by harmony or by contrast, 
and are equalled by no other simi- 
lar work of the same age. The 
rich dresses and costumes have 
the additional interest of preserv- 
ing the fashions of the splendid 
court of the Dukes of Burgundy 
in the time of Philip the Good.* 
Hubert Van Eyck died in 1426, at 
the age of sixty, and before com- 
pleting all the parts of his ela- 
borate composition. What he left 
unfinished the careful hand of his 
brother John supplied. The por- 
traits of the two brothers are pre- 
served among the pilgrim-magis- 
trates, a portion of John's work. 
Hubert may be recognized as a 
mild, benevolent old man, in blue 
velvet trimmed with fur, and 
mounted on a richly-caparisoned 
gray horse ; while John faces the 

* Consult as to details Crowe's Handbook of 
Painting, after Kiigler and Waagen, where also 
the whole picture is reproduced in (reduced) out- 



spectator, on foot, dressed in black, 
with a keen and youthful counte- 
nance. Two other portraits must 
be mentioned : those of the worthy 
burgomaster and his wife, Isabella 
Borlunt, a daughter of a distin- 
guished family. They are painted 
on the outside of two of the lower 
wings, by John Van Eyck, with all 
his discrimination of character as 
well as power of delineating form. 
Jodocus, the benefactor of every 
lover of art, kneels with folded 
hands, looking upwards, in a simple 
red robe trimmed with fur ; his 
wife Isabella's features are nobler, 
more intellectual and expressive. 

Apart from its history as a rare 
work of art, the "Worship of the 
Lamb" has a further interest deriv- 
ed from its many vicissitudes. It 
was finished in 1432 ; little more 
than a century afterwards it had to 
be taken down and concealed in 
a tower during the storm of icono- 
clasm that swept over Ghent for 
two days, August 19, 1566. At 
another time the Calvinist leaders 
in a war of religion were about 
to offer the art-treasure to Queen 
Elizabeth of England as an ac- 
knowledgment of all they owed 
her; but a lineal descendant of Isa- 
bella Borlunt successfully contested 
their right to dispose of the picture 
thus. At length the stupid eco- 
nomy of a church-warden broke up 
a unique work of art which had 
hitherto escaped injury from riot 
and from faction. Six of the side- 
panels were sold to a Brussels deal- 
er in 1818 for twelve hundred dol- 
lars, were afterwards purchased 
from a dealer in England by the 
King of Prussia for eighty-two 
thousand dollars (; 16,400), and 
are now placed in the Berlin Mu- 
seum. The life-size figures of 
Adam and Eve were long banish- 
ed by scrupulous prudery to the 



Christian Art. 



22 



sacristy, and are now housed in 
the Fine-Arts Museum at Brussels. 
All, therefore, that remains in the 
chantry-chapel at St. Bavon's are 
the central panels, one below and 
three above. An excellent copy 
of the entire work, originally made 
for the Hotel de Ville, Antwerp, 
hangs in the museum there. Of 
another copy, made by Van Cox- 
cien for Philip II. of Spain, three 
panels found their way into the 
Pinacothek at Munich. 

Before taking leave of Hubert 
Van Eyck we must refer for a 
moment to a painting in the Tri- 
nidad Museum at Madrid, some- 
times attributed to the Van Eycks, 
but much more probably the work 
of pupils of the same school. It is 
called indifferently " The Triumph 
of the Christian Church " and 
"The Fountain of Living Waters." 
Hubert, then, being dead, the 
picture in St. Bavon's finished, and 
Margaret also dying about the 
same time, John Van Eyck, who 
had till then possessed the lease 
of a house at Bruges, purchased 
another there, and probably also 
married. John was more of a 
courtier than his brother. He had 
early attached himself to the ser- 
vice of Philip Duke of Burgundy, 
in whose court he held the respon-' 
sible office of chamberlain. On 
several occasions of importance the 
painter undertook distant jour- 
neys about the duke's affairs. Thus 
in 1428 he is found at the court 
of Portugal, one of an embassy 
commissioned to ask the hand 
of the Princess Isabella in mar- 
riage for his master. While at 
Lisbon he painted her portrait, to 
be sent to Bruges, and afterwards 
spent several months in travelling 
in Spain. At that period native 
art had not yet begun to awake in 
the peninsula ; any tincture of it 



that existed was indirectly derived 
from one or other of the great Ita- 
lian schools. Later on the duke 
stood godfather to the painter's 
boy, and several years after John's 
death, in 1440, paid a dowry to en- 
able his daughter Lievine to enter 
a convent at Maaseyck. 

Before pointing out one or two 
of John Van Eyck's masterpieces 
of religious art it may be well to 
put the student on his guard against 
forming an opinion, at first sight, of 
an altar-piece, for example, which 
he may find in a museum or public 
gallery. He ought to remember 
that it was originally designed for 
a very different position and pur- 
pose. Those sacred pictures, now 
dissevered from their original sur- 
roundings, were invariably paint- 
ed expressly for the interior of 
a church ; their perspective, their 
tone and arrangement, were calcu- 
lated for the place they were to 
fill, not to be stared at or coldly 
scrutinized by an idle and perhaps 
self-sufficient visitor in an art-col- 
lection. Their original destination 
was to serve as the background of 
the great act of Christian worship ; 
to attune the minds of men, and 
bring them into harmony with 
thoughts and aspirations belonging 
to the spiritual order. The meek 
Madonna or the suffering saint 
reflected the beliefs and traditions 
of Christian ages, cherished by 
whole peoples as, in an emphatic 
sense, a token and assurance of 
their own final deliverance from 
evil and suffering. The critic may 
possibly think the attitudes of the 
early Flemish painters stiff or their 
style somewhat dry and hard ; but 
the honest burghers in the parish 
or cathedral church had no such 
misgivings about the execution of 
those paintings when they were 
kneeling before them, submitting to 



224 



Christian Art. 



their influence, feeling something 
of the inspiration that had ani- 
mated the artist while calling them 
into being. Many prayers have 
mounted to heaven in presence of 
those old paintings, many graces 
have in return descended; many 
agitations been calmed, many 
hopes revived, many grateful tears 
been shed by eyes which for cen- 
turies have been closed in death. 
All this must be taken into account 
if we would estimate the service 
rendered to religion by one such 
picture as we are examining. 

Examples of John Van Eyck's 
work for the church are to be met 
with in several of the public gal- 
leries in Belgium: at Brussels an 
" Adoration of the Magi " ; at Ant- 
werp a Madonna and her Child 
enthroned,' supported by St. Dona- 
tien and St. George ; and, kneeling 
before them, a portrait of the do- 
nor, George Van der Paele, a canon 
of St. Donatien's at Bruges, 1436. 
A duplicate of this very striking 
picture, and probably the original, 
hung in the Cathedral of St. Dona- 
tien, Bruges, and now forms an in- 
teresting picture in the Academy 
Museum there. John Van Eyck 
was also distinguished in portrait- 
ure. The National Gallery in 
London possesses three originals 
of extraordinary merit ; one of 
them the portraits of Jean Arnol- 
fini and his wife, Jeanne Chenany, 
i434 Round a mirror at the fur- 
ther end of their chamber are rang- 
ed ten miniature scenes from the 
Passion and Resurrection of Christ. 

The story of the Flemish art- 
school now introduces us to a 
painter round whose name and life 
romance had woven a tissue of in- 
vention which more accurate re- 
search has lately cleared away. 
Hans Memling was not the poor 
outcast of the old guide-books, who 



repaid the charity he had received 
by painting marvellous pictures for 
the Hospital of St. John at Bruges. 
He was a man of substance and 
position, the proprietor of several 
houses in that town ; his wife, 
Anne, bore him three children, and 
he died in 1485. Not the less true is 
it, however, that the hospital chap- 
ter-room is a treasure of religious 
art, chiefly formed by the genius 
of Memling. In the course of each 
summer it is visited by several 
thousand persons, as the custodian 
informed the writer of these lines 
a week or two ago. Memling was 
by birth a German, a native, in all 
probability, of the village of Meme- 
linghe, in the neighborhood of As- 
chaffenburg. He is found domi- 
ciled at Bruges about 1479. '^ vvo 
important triptychs * and the fa- 
mous shrine of St. Ursula consti- 
tute the chief attraction of this re- 
markable collection. One of the 
triptychs represents 'the mystic mar- 
riage of St. Catherine a composi- 
tion, both in drawing and coloring, 
attesting the work of a master who 
was gradually acquiring greater 
breadth of treatment and emanci- 
pating himself from the trammels 
of miniature, while still adhering 
to its fine execution and ten- 
der feeling for color. Many saints 
are gathered about the Madonna's 
throne the two St. Johns, St. Bar- 
bara, and others and portraits of 
the principal managers of the hos- 
pital at the date, 1479, wno P r t> a ' 
bly defrayed the cost of the paint- 
ing. Another triptych exhibits the 
" Adoration of the Magi," of the 
same date. The shrine of St. Ur- 
sula, a reliquary of wood construct- 
ed to hold an arm of the saint, is 
covered with six exquisite paint- 

* A common form of altar-piece in early art, con- 
sisting of a central frame flanked by two wings, 
which opened or closed at pleasure and were 
painted upon, inside and outside. 



Christian Art. 



22 



ings representing successive scenes 
in the history of her martyrdom 
and that of her companions. From 
Cologne they travel to Bale, and 
thence to Rome, where they are 
welcomed by the pope. They again 
embark on the Rhine at Bale, drop 
down to Cologne, and there meet 
their death. Paintings on either 
end of the chest represent the Ma- 
donna and her Child and St. Ursu- 
la's protection of her clients. The 
execution of the whole is masterly ; 
the date of the work, between 1480 
and 1486. 

Memling is met with in one or 
two other art-collections in Bel- 
gium, and notably in the Musee at 
Bruges in a remarkable triptych, 
where St. Christopher, St. Bene- 
dict, and St. Giles are portrayed in 
attendance on the Infant Redeemer. 
On the wings the donor, his wife 
and family kneel under the protec- 
tion of their several patrons. No 
traveller visiting Munich should 
omit to inquire in the public gal- 
lery for Memling's "Joys and Sor- 
rows of the Blessed Virgin " a 
painting of most original character, 
exhibiting, as in a vast landscape, 
groups and processions, surround- 
ed by suitable architectural details, 
and illustrating the several scenes 
which form the manifold subject of 
the work. The size of the paint- 
ing is 77 inches by 32 ; and on this 
surface of some 17 square feet 
1,500 figures and objects are repre- 
sented. The Nativity of Christ, 
the Adoration of the Magi, and 
Descent of the Holy Ghost at 
Pentecost occupy the foreground. 
The middle distance contains the 
Annunciation and the Resurrec- 
tion ; and from the distant hori- 
zon mountain-top the Redeemer's 
Ascension and the Madonna's tri- 
umphant Assumption take place. 
Neither crowding nor confusion 
VOL. xxx. 15 



mars the effect of the whole, which 
is alive with wonderful grace and 
beauty. The work was painted to 
the order of Peter Bultynck, a mas- 
ter-currier of Bruges, who present- 
ed it to his guild chapel, 1479.* 

The genius of the Van Eycks 
was destined to have an influence 
over subsequent art far beyond 
the Low Countries. There may be 
some exaggeration in the tradition 
that their new method of painting 
in oil was carried to Italy by 
Antonello da Messina about the, 
year 1460; but so much is certain* 
that, up to that time, Italian paint- 
ers, though acquainted with the 
use of oil as a vehicle for color, 
much preferred tempera (or dis- 
temper) that is, water thickened 
by some glutinous substance, as 
white of egg or the juice of young 
fig-tree shoots. To the early Flem- 
ish school may be traced the freer 
employment of oil mixed with a 
resinous varnish, to the immense 
gain of art in force and brilliance. 
Antonello took the method with 
him on his return from Flanders 
to Italy, and old Bellini, of Ven- 
ice, was one of the earliest masters 
there who adopted it. 

The Van Eycks' influence, how- 
ever, was attested in other ways 
also. They left behind them a 
flourishing school of Christian art, 
as we have seen, in Flanders ; their 
example also reacted powerfully 
on the early schools of Germany. 
To it we owe, in great part, the im- 
portant work of Albert Diirer, the 
head of the Franconian school, and 
universally regarded as the repre- 
sentative of German art in his day. 
His name cannot but be familiar 
to our readers, and some short 
account of what he achieved may 
not be unacceptable to them. The 

* A copy in outline (reduced) forms the frontis- 
piece of Crowe's Handbook of Painting, ut supra. 



226 



Christian Art. 



quaint, mediaeval city of Nurem- 
berg is proud of him now, though 
in life he was thought more of 
almost anywhere else than in his na- 
tive place. His father was a Hun- 
garian goldsmith, who had set- 
tled in Germany long before Al- 
bert was born.; 1471 was the date 
of his birth. Early evincing a turn 
for art, he was sent, at the age of 
fifteen, to the studio of Michael 
Wohlgemuth, the best painter and 
engraver in wood then in Nurem- 
berg. Part of his time as a student 
was passed, in conformity with Ger- 
man custom, in foreign travel ; and 
the young artist is found at Ven- 
ice about the year 1492. Shortly 
afterwards he settled in his native 
city and married the daughter of 
a musician. His earliest efforts 
with the brush were portraits of his 
father, of his old master, and of 
himself, all of which are preserved 
in various galleries in Germany. 
Nothing in the way of art seems to 
have come amiss to him. He drew 
and he painted, he engraved on 
wood and on copper, and etched 
also on iron. Out of Germany he 
is certainly better known by his 
wood-engravings than by his paint- 
ings. Up to his time the graver 
had never been handled with equal 
skill or power. 

Soon after the opening of the 
sixteenth century Diirer again 
crossed the Alps into Italy and 
renewed his acquaintance with 
'Venetian art. Bellini was then 
eighty years old, and his manner 
especially attracted the young Ger- 
mian artist. The Venetians made 
a good deal of their guest, and he 
received several commissions. To 
his great disappointment he just 
missed seeing Mantegna, who died 
at Mantua, 1506. The Italian schools 
exerted considerable influence on 
Diirer's subsequent style, and he 



parted with something of his na- 
tive ruggedness while studying their 
more finished work. 1511 is a 
remarkable year in his life, on 
account of three great series of 
wood-engravings which he publish- 
ed ; one of them, the " Greater 
Passion " ; another, the " Lesser 
Passion " ; and the third, the 
" Life of the Blessed Virgin." Into 
these miniature works he threw all 
his inventive power. The Passion 
series were instinct with solemn 
feeling and the tenderest sympa- 
thy, truth, and earnestness. The 
Greater represented the scenes im- 
mediately preceding the Redeemer's 
death ; the Lesser, other scenes 
more remotely connected with it, 
both before it and after his resur- 
rection. The " Life of the Blessed 
Virgin " afforded scope for more 
graceful and engaging treatment, 
as the other subjects were replete 
with severe and tragic significance. 
The scenes in her life included her 
birth, her flight into Egypt, her 
ephemeral repose there ; the whole 
closing with her peaceful death, 
into which the artist threw his 
utmost sense of beauty. Copies of 
all of these engravings are widely 
diffused, in greater or less per- 
fection. Their size is small, but 
their expression is out of all pro- 
portion to their diminutive size. 
A line, a dot, often supplies a dis- 
tinct feature in itself. The breadths 
of light, the contrasts of shadow, 
the exquisitely natural attitudes 
make them an invaluable study 
for artists of every class and style. 
For devotional purposes no better 
incentives could perhaps be found 
to assist the inner sense by the 
appeal of the visibile parlare to 
the outward eye. To take one of 
the least elaborate series " Christ 
Mocked by the Soldier," who kneels 
before him and offers him in de- 



Christian Art. 



rision the reed sceptre of domin- 
ion. How much is said, how much 
more suggested, within the little 
space of two inches square ! The 
Man of Sorrows is seated in lonely 
desolation on a slab of stone, his 
crown of thorns on his head, his 
hands clasped together. Turning 
away from his tormentor, he fixes 
his woful gaze on the spectator, 
as if to say, Did I deserve this ? 
Must I look for no better treatment 
either from thy hands ? Even the 
little anachronism of representing 
his hands as already pierced by the 
nails adds pathos, because com- 
pleteness, to the picture of what he 
suffered from ungrateful man. 

Passing on to the master's larger 
engravings, attention is due to his 
" Knight, Death, and the Devil," a 
print of which formed the frontis- 
piece to the English translation of 
La Motte-Fouque's Sintram, pub- 
lished a few years ago. Through 
a formidable assemblage of hide- 
ous spectres which gather round 
him the knight, grim and weather- 
beaten, rides on unmoved; round 
the head of his spear writhes a 
hideous beast transfixed by his 
powerful arm. " St. Jerome in his 
Study " is another engraved work 
of the highest merit. At the fur- 
ther end of a long and massive 
table, in a chamber of stately pro- 
portions, sits the old man, his fine- 
ly-conceived head bent over his 
desk, deeply engaged in his Vulgate 
translation of Scripture. The ac- 
cessories, the disposition of the lights 
and shadows, all the resources of 
art are directed to work out a 
striking scene, which, if it does not 
pretend to reproduce the literal sur- 
roundings of -the fourth-century 
dweller at Bethlehem, at least re- 
presents the dignity, all the concen- 
trated energy, of the fourth doctor 
of the Latin Church. A more ori- 



ginal and more powerful exercise 
of the master's genius produced 
his portrait of " Melancholy,'-' a 
grand, winged woman leaning her 
head on her hand, and looking out, 
with eyes deep-set in gloom, over 
a waste of waters spanned by a 
distant rainbow. Around her seat 
are scattered in profusion instru- 
ments and appliances of human in- 
genuity tools, magic crystals, di- 
vining apparatus.* All was insuffi- 
cient to call up the light of glad- 
ness into those eyes of deep intelli- 
gence, but also of blank despon- 
dency. 

For the German emperor, Maxi- 
milian I., several remarkable works 
were engraved by Diirer : a trium- 
phal arch, a triumphal car, and the 
celebrated ornamental borders for 
his prayer-book, now preserved in 
the Royal Library, Munich. Seve- 
ral of Diirer's best portraits were 
engraved on copper, as those of the 
Cardinal of Brandenburg, of Pirk- 
heimer, Melanchthon, and Eras- 
mus of Rotterdam. At one period 
of his life he was thrown into the 
familiar society of the early Ger- 
man Reformers, Nuremberg being a 
centre of their influence. But there 
is no doubt, although particular 
details are wanting, that he died 
in the peace of the Catholic Church. 
The remark of some critics may 
perhaps be credited, that while the 
artist trifled with the novel opin- 
ions of the Reformers his great 
powers of invention suffered not- 
able eclipse. A few words about 
his painted pictures must bring our 
notice of his life to a close. They 



* In particular the square 
of sixteen checkers, numbered 
so that the sum of any four 
checkers, taken in any direc- 
tion, amounts to thirty-four. 
Certain occult properties were 
associated with it. 



13 : 



228 



Christian Art. 



are rare, and for the most part pre- 
served in German arl-galleries. The 
Belyedere at Vienna possesses his 
" Trinity, with the Heavenly Host in 
Adoration," and emperor, king, and 
pope associated on earth below 
with the worship in progress above. 
High finish is here combined with 
extreme dignity, both in the groups 
above and below and in the wide 
landscape. In the same gallery 
hangs the " Martyrdom " of ten 
thousand Christians in Persia. In 
both pictures the painter lias in- 
troduced himself in a subordinate 
position, with his name and date. 
Two other pictures represent full- 
length figures of St. Peter with St. 
John, and St. Paul with St. Mark. 
Italian artists had by that time 
reached a higher mark; but, as ex- 
amples of German art at the peri- 
od, critics are unanimous in assign- 
ing them considerable importance. 
Diirer presented these pictures to 
the municipal council of his na- 
tive city ; but in 1627 they were 
carried to Munich and replaced 
at Nuremberg by copies. In his 
paintings his work rivalled the minia- 
turists in minute finish; his style 
retains a good deal of " Gothic " 
hardness, and his coloring is want- 
ing in the refinements of later art. 
In fact, he lived long enough to 
perceive his deficiencies, and, with 
characteristic candor, to lament 
them as then beyond his reach. 
Yet, on the whole, even as a paint- 
er there is much to admire in his 
work ; and as an engraver on wood 
and on copper he had no rivals in 
his day, and but few since, in feel- 
ing and invention. 

A journey into the Netherlands, 
undertaken in 1520, introduced him 
to the Flemish artists, who wel- 
comed him among; them with be- 
coming honor. In 1528 he died 
at Nuremberg, leaving no succes- 



sor to his great position in the Ger- 
man school. His fellow-citizens 
discovered after his death how 
great that had been, and, with 
tardy justice*, composed his epitapli 
in Latin, to the effect that Diir&r 
was "a luminary of art, the sun 
of artificers ; as a painter, an en- 
graver, and a sculptor, without a 
rival." 

A prominent place in any his- 
torical sketch of Christian art is 
due to Hans Holbein, the younger; 
less on account of his eminence 
in portraiture (which was great) 
than for the sake of two works of 
his art, the " Dance of Death " and 
the " Meier Madonna " at Darm- 
stadt and at Dresden. He stood 
at the head of the realistic school 
of German painters, as Albert Dii- 
rer was supreme in grand effects, 
in depth of feeling, and in wealth 
of conception and invention. Augs- 
burg was his native city ; the date 
of his birth, 1495. Erasmus of 
Rotterdam used to say that Hol- 
bein's portraits were more liked 
than Diirer's, as well as more ex- 
cellent in feeling of beauty (in 
which Diirer was deficient), in 
grace of attitude and arrangement 
of drapery. Holbein's talent was 
partly inherited from his father, 
the elder Hans, a painter of respec- 
table mediocrity, also born at Augs- 
burg, and who emigrated to Bale, 
in Switzerland, about 1516, taking 
with him his son Hans. They 
were attracted thither by the em- 
ployment afforded in illustrating 
books for the booksellers, which was 
a famous industry at Bale in those 
days. It was also much frequent- 
ed by men of letters, who sought 
temporary refuge there from the 
stormy turmoils then so universal 
in Europe. The younger Hans 
divided himself between portrait- 
ure and sacred art. Erasmus sat 



Christian Art. 



229 



to him, and, when the painter went 
to England in 1526 to try his for- 
tunes there, sent the portrait to the 
chancellor, Sir Thomas More, to- 
gether with a letter of introduction. 
More received the young artist 
with frank hospitality, lodged him 
in his house at Chelsea, and recom- 
mended him to his friends. Hol- 
bein, however, who had left his 
wife and family in Switzerland, 
soon returned to them, and after 
four years went back to London, 
in 1532. He fell into good prac- 
tice among the German merchants 
of the Steelyard, from whom he re- 
ceived many commissions; and in 
the following year he attracted the 
notice of the reigning monarch, 
Henry VIII. , then in the heyday 
of his insolent triumph in his mar- 
riage with Anne Boleyn. Holbein 
was taken into the king's service at 
a fixed salary, and executed many 
works for him. Among others he 
painted the portrait of the young 
widow of the Duke of Milan, at 
Brussels a lady on whom Henry 
had designs as the successor of 
the unfortunate Anne. He also 
painted the portrait of Anne of 
Cleves, and so flattered the origi- 
nal, as the gossips of the day as- 
serted, that the king was deceived, 
and afterwards avenged his disap- 
pointment by taking the life of 
Cromwell, who had arranged the 
marriage. One of Holbein's latest 
works represented the Company of 
the Barber-Surgeons receiving the 
grant of their privileges from Hen- 
ry a work preserved in the Roy- 
al College of Surgeons, London. 
Holbein died in England, 1543. 
One of his best-known works is a 
portrait of Morett, King Henry's 
jeweller and banker, now in the 
Dresden gallery, where it was long 
attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. 
Close imitation of nature was per- 



haps never carried further than in 
this admirable portrait. 

Not long before Holbein's first 
coming to England he received a 
commission from Jacob Meier, bur- 
gomaster of Bale, to paint a vo- 
tive picture, probably for a chapel 
of the Madonna, suggested by a 
domestic occurrence. His young- 
est boy, a child of some two years 
old, had been at the point of death, 
and had recovered after being 
commended to the love and the 
prayers of the Blessed Madonna. 
The grateful father desired to thank 
his Benefactress by a votive offer- 
ing. Holbein, whose comparative- 
ly few sacred pictures are invari- 
ably treated with elevated feeling, 
delineated the whole family ga- 
thered around the feet of the gra- 
cious Mother of Mercy. On her 
right hand kneel the worthy ma- 
gistrate and his two sons, one of 
them the darling child lately res- 
cued from death, and now in the 
bloom of infantine health and beau- 
ty. On the opposite side are kneel- 
ing the burgomaster's wife and 
mother and his two daughters 
homely-featured women and girls, 
all four of them, dressed in the 
unadorned, domestic fashion of the 
time. On a pedestal, beneath a 
canopied niche, stands the great 
Patroness of the afflicted, her long, 
fair hair falling down her shoul- 
ders to her waist, and her head 
encircled by a superb crown. A 
tender and noble compassion fills 
her countenance as she looks down 
on the kneeling circle. " In puri- 
ty, dignity, humility, and intellec- 
tual grace," says Mrs. Jameson 
(Legends of the Madonna), "this 
exquisite Madonna has never been 
surpassed, not even by Raphael ; 
the face, once seen, haunts the 
memory." The Child is in her 
arms, as usual, but not in the usual 



230 



Christian Art. 



attitude, erect and sharing her gra- 
cious interest in events that are 
occurring. He has fallen back 
on her shoulder, stretches out his 
left arm as if seeking help, and 
is emaciated as if with sickness. 
The critics have exhausted their 
ingenuity to explain the anomaly. 
Some of them have even gone so 
far as to allege that it is the sick 
child that the Madonna is carry- 
ing, and that the beautiful and 
strong infant standing on the 
ground is the Infant Jesus himself. 
A perversion of art such as this, 
we venture to say, never entered 
the wildest dream of the most ec- 
centric painter; none but a cri- 
tic could have imagined it. The 
child had been restored ; why, 
then, represent it as still ailing and 
infirm ? But the painter, doubt- 
less, intended to illustrate the words 
of Scripture : " He took our infir- 
mities and bore our diseases " 
(Matt. viii. 17, quoting Isai. liii. 4). 
This picture was painted twice 
by Holbein ; the earlier work, pro- 
bably designed for a chapel or 
oratory, is now at Hesse-Darm- 
stadt; the replica, possibly paint- 
ed for Herr Meier's house, and in 
several particulars evincing matur- 
er powers in the painter, is one of 
the precious treasures of the Dres- 
den gallery.* 

We mentioned the " Dance of 
Death "as another celebrated work 
of the younger Holbein. But here 
a distinction must be carefully 
borne in mind. In memory of a 
devastating pestilence which had 
carried off a promiscuous crowd 
of old and young, rich and poor, 
without distinction, a " Dance of 
Death " had been depicted on the 
wall of the old Dominican cemete- 
ry at Bale long before Holbein was 

* Reproductions of both pictures in outline are 
given in Crowe's Handbook. 



old enough to paint. His "Dance 
of Death," which soon became fa- 
mous, and still remains so, was a 
series of little drawings, executed in 
wood, to the number of forty-one, 
in which the grim skeleton was rep- 
resented as interfering with the 
enjoyments, pleasures, and occupa- 
tions of every class of society, from 
the pope and the emperor to the 
little child who stands watching its 
mother as she prepares the meal 
which it will never taste. The 
rich and spoiled daughter of fash- 
ion must yield when the fatal hour- 
glass is held up before her startled 
eyes. Nay, the very priest who is 
carrying the Viaticum to the dying 
receives notice that his own time 
has come when he sees the skele- 
ton leading the way, his sand-glass 
under his arm, and carrying in one 
bony hand the lantern with its 
light, while ringing the sacring- 
bell with the other, just as the sac- 
ristan does still in a Flemish or 
German town. Many of the little 
scenes are pointed with hardly-con- 
cealed satire, directed against sun- 
dry abuses of the time, both in 
civil and ecclesiastical matters; for 
in Holbein's day, as in Durer's, 
polemics ran high in politics and 
in religion. The moral of the 
whole is clear and forcible : the 
certain, and perhaps unexpected, 
arrival of the " ineluctabilis hora." 
The limits of our article are 
nearly reached before we have said 
a word of two later painters who, 
each of them in his own way, gave 
a new impulse to devotional art. 
Rembrandt in Holland and Ru- 
bens in Flanders united the high- 
est technical excellence as artists 
with such feeling of religious sub- 
jects as was necessary to guide 
their hands to the execution of 
great and lasting work in that di- 
rection. The " Descent from the 



A Prayer of Love. 



231 






Cross," in Antwerp cathedral, and 
another great picture there, the 
u Elevation of the Cross," exhibit 
Christian art in all the glory of 
color and splendor of drawing. 
A wide interval, indeed, separates 
the gorgeous style of Rubens from 
the simpler conceptions of Van 
Eyck or the tragic vein of Diirer. 
We shall not attempt to decide 
which is more likely to appeal to 
the heart with a lasting influence. 
Both are effective, though one may 
be more so than the other. As 
regards the sombre and intensely 
suggestive style of Rembrandt, " the 
inspired Dutchman/' his rendering 
of Scripture scenes rivets them on 
the memory as actually seeing 
them might have done. The very 
effort to pierce the gloom, and de- 



tect all that it only half reveals, 
makes it impossible ever again to 
forget the scene, be it a memora- 
ble incident in the Gospel narra- 
tive or in the' traditional history of 
the Blessed Mother. Great as a 
draughtsman and etcher, as he was 
a painter, his rich and inexhausti- 
ble imagination positively revelled 
in the endless possibilities of giving 
expression to his teeming ideas. 
What picture the most elaborate 
could suggest more than the empty 
chair at the Emmaus supper, which 
indicates that the Lord has vanish- 
ed ? The two apostles are start- 
ing to their feet, but too late to of- 
fer him their worship. A flash of 
light on the wall behind tells the 
whole story, "how they knew him 
in the breaking of bread." 



A PRAYER OF LOVE. 

MOTHER benign, upon whose sinless breast 
The weary head of Jesus oft hath lain 
In peaceful slumber, while thy wakeful thoughts 
Kept silent vigil, dwelling on his words, 

What must have been thy love ! 

Thou second Eve, Mother of life to man ! 
Whose sweet humility brought down from heaven 
Emmanuel; when Gabriel's greeting voice 
Told the good tidings, 'twas thy meek response 
Brought peace into the world : 

Peace to the sin-worn land of Israel, 
Truce to her living, rest unto her dead : 
And heaven rang forth with one exultant cry, 
Hail, full of grace ! thou first and only fair 
Of Eden's daughters, hail ! 

Virgin most lowly, by that sacred bond 
Which raises thee to heights no mind can reac'.i, 
Look kindly on thy children; guide our steps ; 
And bring back to the One Fold of thy Son 
All souls now led astray. 



The Gospel of Hygiene. 



THE GOSPEL OF HYGIENE. 



THERE is a large class of Pro- 
testant books which may be de- 
scribed as ethically "on the fence." 
These are written with the lauda- 
ble intention of giving advice to 
young men, forming the character 
of young women, brightening the 
domestic hearth, advocating the 
" small moralities " of life, and 
gently leading the tottering foot- 
steps of age to the peace of the 
tomb. It is much to be feared 
that these well-meaning books have 
seldom any readers, the very per- 
sons Avhom the,y are intended to 
benefit being the first to eschew 
them. There they stand, however, 
upon the library shelf of Young 
Men's Christian Associations and 
public lyceums. Bound in blue 
'and gold, they are presented to 
young lady graduates and find 
their way into Christmas stockings. 
They pop out at you in hotel par- 
lors, and lurk among your maga- 
zines and journals. They have 
often a pleading earnestness of ti- 
tle, such as Young Man! whither? 
or Maiden! wherefore? but their 
clean, uncut pages awaken a fear 
that they often plead in vain. 

Every man believes that he can 
give advice, and this is the raison 
d'etre of such books. But the dif- 
ficulty is, there is only one way of 
enabling men to practise advice 
i.e., by the help of supernatural 
grace and it is the utter ignoring 
of this essential which makes such 
books so incongruous. Despite 
the appeal to " religion," their car- 
dinal teaching is the worldly good 
which comes from being virtuous ; 
or, in other words, it pays to be 
holy, and morality is a powerful 



factor in the completion of Number 
One. This is an intensification of 
Pelagianism, and, we blush to say, 
it is confined almost exclusively 
to the writings of the " great Ameri- 
can moralists." Heaven knows we 
are sordid and selfish enough with- 
out seeking excuse in Scripture or 
incentives in ethical science. But 
the moralists know our love of 
money, our intense business energy, 
and our practical way of viewing 
most questions in their pecuniary 
relations, and thus is evolved the 
morality of selfishness, with its 
mystic symbol Al. 

Although such books claim to be 
embodiments of moral philosophy, 
they are excluded from any claim 
to that noble title by their failure 
to assign any motive for the moral 
actions which they counsel. Dr. 
Holland's Every-day Topics and T. 
Starr King's Substance and Shadow 
give no reason whatever for the 
morality which they inculcate, ex- 
cept the overmastering importance 
of Al. We have several excellent 
American moralists, as Dwight, 
Wayland, and Hopkins, who, falsely, 
it is true, but generously, hold that 
benevolence is the highest good, in 
direct contradiction to the Al 
ethicists. In fact, these latter 
gentlemen, emboldened by the full- 
fledged development of their sys- 
tem in the intense selfishness pn 
claimed by evolutionism, have 
dropped the " ideal," and repre- 
sent life as a desperate struggle for 
bread, in which the fittest survive, 
mainly through physical power, 
which may fully claim to be "mo- 
ral " in the highest sense. 

This brutal muscularity is not 



The Gospel of Hygiene. 



233 



to be viewed as synonymous with 
the beautiful strength which the 
Greeks idealized, thus taking away 
the gross realism attached to the 
sinews of a pugilist or an athlete. 
But young men and women must 
take exercise " in order to breathe 
to the full the bounding pulse-life 
of nature, and feel the royal exhila- 
ration of the uncorrupted animals 
of the forest. An unhealthy man 
cannot quaff the fulness of life's 
intoxication." If this means any- 
thing it means something which a 
Christian would regard as the ani- 
mality spoken of by St. Paul. 
The coarsest ridicule is showered 
upon the "puling wretches" who 
cannot take the stroke in a boat- 
race or do without an afternoon 
cup of tea. Dr. Hall and Dio 
Lewis both claim to be " moral- 
ists " in the truest sense, and trace 
all vicious inclinations to some- 
thing physically wrong, and the 
Al philosophers echo them most 
faithfully. One would think that 
no spiritual being could become 
so blinded as to place his highest 
moral good and its continuance 
upon the state of his nerves. We 
thought that Moleschott and D'Hol- 
bach were classed among material- 
ists. But we are told by "Chris- 
tian philosophers " that there is no 
thought without phosphorus, no 
moral purity without a just equi- 
poise of temperament, and no con- 
scientiousness without a big bump 
in the coronal region. 

To read these moralists one 
would fancy that the chief duty of 
man is to keep and to improve his 
health. Morning prayer may be 
advisable, but the bath is indis- 
pensable. There can be no moral, 
cleanliness without the vigorous 
use of the flesh-brush and the 
towel. The highest spiritual per- 
fection depends upon the efficiency 



of our shower-bath, and the glow 
of devotional fervor is undesirable 
unless the whole body is at nor- 
mal temperature. The beauty of 
the advice comes in with the intro- 
duction of the Scriptural warrants. 
All of us know the conditions of 
bathing, but how few of us last 
summer at Long Branch or Cape 
May realized that we were fulfill- 
ing to the letter the " moral injunc- 
tions " of Moses, John the Baptist, 
and the " far-seeing Saviour " ! The 
morning bath, according to the 
moralists, is the genuine baptism, 
" and theologians who prate about 
sacraments show that they know 
nothing about hygiene." Among 
the benefits of the bath may be 
noted " a firm determination to 
fight the battles of life and to over- 
come temptation " a happy con- 
summation which most of us think 
is brought about by prayer. But 
then prayer, being a " liberation of 
force," is unscientific. The young 
man and woman are conjured to 
preserve their health at all haz- 
ards. Cherish it as you would your 
own soul. Leave nothing undone 
to gain it, if lost. It is the pearl 
without price. Without health you 
have no show in the awful, the ter- 
rible battle of life. You are elbow- 
ed, driven to the wall, looked upon 
as a horrible burden, a leper from 
whom the Goddess of Health shrinks 
appalled. You drag out a misera- 
ble existence, unpitied and avoid- 
ed, and you are liable to be hur- 
ried to a pauper s grave, with a 
feeling of glad relief on the part 
of the survivors. On the other 
hand, how glorious is bonny, bux- 
om health, etc. 

The young man, in view of the 
supreme excellence of health, is im- 
plored to guard it with all the de- 
fences which bran-bread, oatmeal, 
and abundance of pure water throw 



234 



The Gospel of Hygiene. 



around it. He should carefully 
avoid the style of collars known as 
Piccadilly, and reflect long upon 
the proper width of his trousers. 
Ignorance may laugh at braces, but 
how many can trace the ruin of 
their health to too much tightness ! 
A false etiquette permits the clos- 
ing of windows when the thermome- 
ter is at freezing-point, though arc- 
tic travellers scout the idea. All 
the vertebrate animals should wear 
flannel ; and what if silly domestics 
do grumble at your insisting upon 
a warm foot-bath, with mustard, 
every night ? It is the chief moral 
duty to preserve your health, and 
all other duties must group them- 
selves around it. Whatever virtues 
you practise, never omit your prac- 
tice of the dumb-bells, and make 
it an invariable rule never to give 
a penny to a mendicant whom you 
suspect of not having washed his 
face. Ten to one, if he bathed, he 
would not be a beggar. If your 
church is unventilated on no con- 
ditions go to it. Rather take a 
leisurely walk to a public garden 
and inhale the Great Spirit of Na- 
ture, who cannot send his vivifying 
influence into the dingy tenements 
and lurking-places of disease which 
men, as if in irony, call his dwell- 
ing-place. Be careful that your 
toes are well protected in bed, and, 
if sleepless, on no account turn 
your mind to any devotional or 
other emotional subject, but calmly 
count one thousand until Morpheus 
waves you into the land of dreams. 
In fact, the Al moralists are so 
intent upon the importance of 
health that they forget all about 
any Christian practices which have 
not a medical aspect. Some praise 
the sanitary regulations of certain 
monastic orders, and vegetarians 
in particular are quite enthusiastic 
over the fasts prescribed by the 



Catholic Church. But as the church 
has not made bathing an article of 
faith, " like the grand old Mosaic 
covenant " she comes in for a num- 
ber of raps, particularly as she cer- 
tainly does not appear to condemn 
the " horrid austerities practised 
by some of her saints, under the 
delusion -that they are propitiating 
an angry Deity." Of course the 
whole spirituality of the Christian 
faith, as a ministry of sorrow and 
of suffering, is hidden from these 
men, who worship Hygeia without 
even the graceful forms of the old 
Romans and Greeks. The natural 
man recognizes health as the chief 
of our temporal goods, but neither 
Greek aestheticism nor Roman va- 
lor believed in coddling our bodies 
or placing physical strength as the 
summum bonum. Health is chiefly 
valuable, morally speaking, as an 
admirable facility for serving God 
and our neighbor more earnestly; 
but heathenism itself rejects it as 
an end. The nirvana of the In- 
die creeds is something heroic com- 
pared with this valetudinarianism. 
Sickness sweetens and purifies most 
men, and we may never know the 
genuine beauty of a friend's charac- 
ter, or his reserves of patience and 
tenderness, until we see him strick- 
en with disease and pain. 

The young man, glowing with 
health and fully acquainted with 
the number of bones in his back, 
must now proceed to develop his 
will-power. For the benefit of or- 
dinary Christians it may be said 
that the will-power corresponds to 
the divine help we are promised in 
order to fulfil God's commandments. 
The will-power dispenses with the 
aids to salvation. But here, alas ! 
there is a slight hitch. Before you 
gan be assured of possessing the 
will-power examine your face well 
in the glass. If your chin retreats, 



The Gospel of Hygiene. 



235 



and the angle formed by the tip of 
your nose, and your ears, and the 
top of your head does not fulfil the 
conditions of Cuvier's facial angle, 
return at once to the dumb-bells. 
Your whole future will now depend 
upon rectifying this unfortunate de- 
fect. Much may be done by phy- 
sical exercise, but you must bring 
the moral faculties into play. Ex- 
ercise your will in doing disagree- 
able things. Force yourself to get 
out of bed on a cold night, and to 
stand on one leg in your room. 
Run around the corner in your 
bare head and slippers, and face 
the ridicule of the passers-by. 
If you prefer one side of the 
street, take the other. Try to like 
people whom you naturally detest. 
Bring the will up with a jerk, 
if you L find it disposed to shrink. 
Be of good courage when you hear 
people speaking of you as obstinate 
and mulish, for it is a sure sign that 
you are advancing in will-power. 
It is hardly necessary to add that 
the favored mortal whose facial an- 
gle is perfect has no difficulty in 
obeying the Ten Commandments. 
In fact, he rather smiles at the 
limited number. The most dis- 
agreeable duties are cheerfully as- 
sumed, and he is a walking ful- 
filment of the Delphian oracle, 
" Know thyself!" 

All hail, grand, moral philosophy 
of the Number One ! for, recollect, 
we are only in the atrium of the 
glorious temple in which the model 
young man will shortly be enthron- 
ed. We shall see him, in fine phy- 
sical condition, reclining upon a 
fabulous heap of money-bags, with 
the model young woman, his wife, 
and his children, by the law of evo- 
lution, potentially much more high- 
ly developed than their parents. 

Still, it is with a pang of regret 
that we behold vanishing into thin 



air the speculations of the great 
sages of antiquity and those of 
their modern commentators. This 
system is not Epicurean, for our 
young man may not even smoke a 
cigar. T. S. Arthur has computed 
the cost of a daily five-cent cigar 
during the necessarily long life of 
our healthy young man, and the 
sum, properly invested, is enor- 
mous. It is not Bentham's utilita- 
rianism, for the young man is ad- 
vised to look chiefly to his own 
happiness, regardless of that of the 
greatest number. It is not the Car- 
tesian, for there is not a sylla- 
ble about the revealed will of God. 
It is not Kantian or Coleridgean, 
for it does not claim an immediate 
intuition of moral truth. In fact, 
it immediately intues only the bath- 
tub, and affiirms positively only of 
the superiority of gaiters to boots 
as a healthy covering for the feet. 
It is not Socratic, for it does not 
firmly distinguish between good 
and evil ; nor is it Platonic, for its 
virtue is not intellectual. It has 
not even the Aristotelian juste mi- 
lieu, for our young man of will-pow- 
er is a paragon of virtue, and his 
opposite an unhappy sink of vice. 
The Stoics would have laughed it to 
scorn, and the Neo-Platonists would 
have regarded it as the very depths 
of gross naturalism. The German 
metaphysical dreamers would puff 
it away with a whiff of their to- 
bacco-pipes, and Rosmini and Gio- 
berti would not give it even a 
thought. It has no spiritual ele- 
ment to attract the attention of 
any one, except the average young 
man, who has made up his mind to 
become president or a bank direc- 
tor, and who, in consequence, care- 
fully avoids billiards and euchre. 

Our young man, now having his 
will-power as highly developed as 
his facial angle will permit, must 



236 



The Gospel of Hygiene. 



proceed to exercise it in the acqui- 
sition of that station and influence 
among men for which his observ- 
ance of the rules heretofore laid 
down eminently qualify him. A 
careful examination of what is 
meant by the phrase " station and 
influence " has satisfied us that 
money is their equivalent. And 
here we protest, in the name of 
Americans, against the false idea 
that we live only to make money. 
It is just this class of books that 
misrepresents us before the world. 
We do like money, and we make 
money; but we spend it far more 
freely than any other nation. 
There are fewer misers in America 
than in any other part of the globe. 
It may be that we lavish money 
foolishly, but he knows little of the 
American character who would re- 
present it as penurious. To judge 
from our popular moralists, the 
American recognizes as his sole 
god " the almighty dollar," and 
pays it worship so assiduous that 
all his other reverences sink into 
nothingness before it. The natu- 
ral reason why we like to make 
money is because the nation is in- 
tensely energetic. A man of im- 
mense fortune would almost seem 
just as willing to lose it for the ex- 
citement of making another. No 
American cuts his throat merely 
for having lost his fortune. It is a 
libel on the national character to 
.represent it as wretchedly avari- 
cious; and it is in keeping with the 
absurdity of the " moralists " whom 
we are reviewing for them to ad- 
vise the young man to make money 
an object of attainment quite as 
precious as health, which, indeed, 
is one of the conditions requisite 
for the gaining of fortune. 

Parents are advised to train their 
children in habits of economy from 
the earliest age. The very first pre- 



sent should be a toy bank in which 
stray pennies may be carefully 
hoarded. Children should never 
be allowed to eat sweetmeats or in- 
dulge in such games as kite-flying 
or "commons." A good ball ought 
to last until they have outgrown 
the taste for play. Small pieces of 
string, pins, nails, etc., should be 
carefully preserved. A small pre- 
sent, such as the promise of an en- 
tertaining walk, should be held out 
to the child who has gathered the 
greatest number of pins. Fathers 
should promise their sons a new 
Bible if they wear their shoes to 
the furthest limit compatible with 
serviceableness. Attention should 
be frequently called to the improvi- 
dence of the Irish, who eat meat three 
times a day and go off to all sorts 
of concerts and other amusements. 
James Parton says that the unto- 
wardness of the Irish is mainly due 
to their fondness for smoking tobac- 
co. Resolve that you will never 
smoke. The Irish, moreover, buy 
too many vegetables, canned fruit, 
fish, etc., and are more eager for 
the first fruits in the marjcet than 
any millionaire. Resolve to avoid 
their extravagance. The Germans 
drink lager-beer, for which they pay 
five cents a glass. Five cents in 
fifty years will be a sum to contem- 
plate with glowing feelings of de- 
light and self-approbation. The 
French drink claret, which is also 
very dear. In this way parents can 
jmpress their children with the 
great moral virtues of self-denial 
and abstemiousness. 

On reaching maturity the youn< 
man is advised to study well the 
characters of those with whom he 
comes in contact in business. From 
the serene height of his virtues, 
he can quickly detect the weak- 
nesses of those unfortunate men who 
did not enjoy his moral training. 



The Gospel cf HygL ne. 



237 



He studies their weaknesses. He 
watches their unguarded moments, 
which are only too frequent, seeing 
that they generally have no will- 
power. He seizes opportunities. 
He does disagreeable things for 
the sake of the exceeding great re- 
ward in the future. He seeketh a 
wife (vide Young Ladies' Guide], 
and he lives, in full physical 
strength, to a happy old age, and 
descends into the tomb after the 
manner prescribed in The Sloping 
Pathway, by the same author. 

Books on old age, which flour- 
ish under such titles as Looking 
toward Sunset, invariably assume 
that the old gentleman is, to use 
a rather slangy expression, "pretty 
well fixed." He lias nothing to do 
but to be didactic. He gathers his 
grandchildren around him and tells 
them of his early struggles, his fierce 
fight against the temptation to buy 
an overcoat when he had the mo- 
ney and sorely needed one; his 
dispensing with a clerk and wash- 
erwoman when he was founding 
the fortunes of his house ; his 
rough experience when he acted as 
a private watchman, and his trium- 
phant defeat of coalitions of watch- 
men against him; his encounter 
with an Irish coalman when he ex- 
pressed his determination to put in 
his own coal, and his glow of manly 
satisfaction at thus having saved a 
quarter ; his determination to be- 
come a rich and honored member 
of society ; " And now my children " 
(smiling) " see me." 

There is a very charming book 
of Cicero's, De Senectute, in which 
he describes the compensations of 
old age, but lie evidently was not 
aware of the kind of compensation 
here described. The retrospect 
of old age, according to Tully, 
-should take in manifold deeds of 
heroism, of kindliness, of doing ser- 



vice to the commonwealth. But if 
the chief crown of old age is to 
be a night-cap of United States 
bonds the halo somehow or other 
vanishes. Even Macbeth's dream 
of honored old age is an improve- 
ment upon this, and the great old 
men whom Cicero describes had 
little fortune beyond honors and 
troops of friends. There is no- 
thing, more beautiful than age in 
its full ear of good works; but 
Heaven save us from ""descending 
the vale " in a patent invalid-chair, 
talking morally about our triumphs, 
which were somebody else's de- 
feats ! 

It is only when one reads these 
goody-goody books that he real- 
izes the extent which the biol- 
ogy of evolutionism has reached. 
The speculations of Herbert Spen- 
cer have quite supplanted the old 
teachings of the English moral phi- 
losophers, The deformity of evo- 
lution is most apparent in its mo- 
ral essays. There is something 
quite fascinating in the scientific 
writings of the Darwinian school; 
but then, you know, the great strug- 
gle for existence took place myri- 
ads of ages ago. You cannot be 
expected to sympathize with the 
extinct species that went down be- 
fore the fierce onslaught of the 
"fittest." It is all like the wars 
of the giants. But when the evo- 
lution theory applies its sociology 
you begin to regret that you ever 
felt any interest in the vile thing. 
Spencer, the moralist of evolution, 
asks you such horrible questions as 
Whether deformed persons should 
be encouraged to live; whether 
there is any "charity" in succor- 
ing the incurable; whether imbe- 
ciles and the insane had not best 
be disposed of as we are counsel- 
led to dispose of them in Plato's 
Republic ; is life worth living for 



238 



The Gospel of Hygiene. 



ihose who cannot make a living ? 
and other suggestions which go 
with a chill to the heart of him 
who, afar off, follows in the foot- 
steps of the infinitely compassion- 
ate Redeemer of mankind.* What 
business has anybody to be poor, 
lame, blind, or dumb? Whose 
fault is it? What right have sick- 
ly people to get married, or, if 
married, to preserve their diseased 
offspring, that will grow up burdens 
on society? Why do we encourage 
idleness and improvidence in the 
building of almshouses and refu- 
ges, when without them the wretch- 
ed race of inutiles would quickly 
perish under the law of the sur- 
vival of the fittest? O horrible 
outcome of science ! This is your 
boasted redemption of humanity ! 
Rejoice, O man ! if you are strong 
and well to do, and filled with the 
comforts and appliances of this 
life, for they will enable you all 
the more readily to overthrow and 
stamp out your weaker brother ! 

It is but justice to Protestantism 
to say that, while most of these di- 
dactic books profess that hybrid 
belief, they are in the main writ- 
ten by laymen. Yet we notice a 
vagueness and weakness in ser- 
mon literature which argue ill for 
the earnestness of the ministry. 
There is a timidity in citing Scrip- 
ture wholly unknown to the old- 
er divines. The Reverend Doctor 
Boardman's book entitled (rather 
vaguely) The Creative Week is a 
cumbrous apology for Genesis. So 
undefined is the relation of Pro- 
testantism to the letter of the 
Scriptures that we are at sea in 
every book of sermons we take up. 
There are but few Protestant cler- 
gymen unaware of the disintegra- 
tion that has been going on for the 

* H. Spencer's Essays in Biology. 



past decade in the old orthodox 
views regarding the inspiration, 
authenticity, and authority of the 
Bible ; and the younger generation 
have not the courage of the older 
to cite a text with a triumphant 
sense of infallibility. There is an 
uneasy consciousness that Biblicism 
has been pushed to lengths at 
which scholarship laughs, and lit- 
tle surprise would be felt if the 
changes now being made by the 
Board on the Revision of the Scrip- 
tures would touch all the vital 
texts to which Protestantism ap- 
peals for its doctrinal vindication. 
The word " faith " has been suffer- 
ed to stand in the Pauline Epistles, 
in sheer despair of getting a sub- 
stitute. Things look shaky indeed 
if the pet word of Protestantism 
does not signify what it has been 
taken for centuries to mean. 
Whatever be the reason, it is re- 
markable that -Protestant preach- 
ers, those at least who publish their 
sermons, are very sparing in the 
use of texts, and, indeed, rarely 
quote one without an apologetic 
footnote indicating their know- 
ledge of the objection to the sense 
in which it is employed. 

The older homiletical literature 
of Protestantism is hearty and vi- 
gorous. Old Doctor South is en- 
joyable to this day ; and, in fact, the 
old English divines were well vers- 
ed in the Scriptures, and, as they 
studied the Fathers, their discour- 
ses on general moral themes were 
theologically correct. The Ductor 
Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor is a 
fair enough moral theology, though 
he had not the advantage of seeing 
such moralists as St. Alphonsus 
Liguori, who may be said to have 
given scientific form to his model, 
Busenbaum. The peculiarity of 
the old English Protestant divines 
is their unquestioned acceptance of 



The Gospel of Hygiene. 



the literalness of their texts where 
a figurative meaning is not obvious ; 
but this off-hand interpretation is 
shrinkingly avoided by their suc- 
cessors, who are bewildered by 
their commentators and exegesists. 
The influence of German ration- 
alistic criticism on the Church of 
England has been very depressing, 
because the English mind is na- 
turally reverent of things sacred, 
and hates to sift an oracle of the 
Most High as it would examine a 
forged check. The German mind 
has no such weakness, and it is 
painful to read the cool analysis 
of even such "pious men" as 
Schleiermacher, who do not appear 
to be conscious of any other feel- 
ing than that of the love of inves- 
tigating the truth of the Scriptures. 
Once unsettled, the religious mind 
of England will never again place 
the Bible in its hallowed niche, 
unless, indeed, it places it where it 
properly belongs, in the hands of 
the Catholic Church, its witness 
and interpreter. The great thought 
of St. Augustine, " I would not be- 
lieve the Scriptures unless on the 
authority of the Catholic Church," 
seems to be interpenetrating the 
mind of the English Church. 
There is that strong, that supreme 
common sense of the Saxon which 
perceives the necessity of some au- 
thority behind the Bible, and in- 
dependent of it, to explain its ex- 
istence and its meaning. If this 
common sense is much longer out- 
raged the English will give up the 
Bible altogether, as unhappily some 
of their strongest minds have 
done. 

The current moral essays based 
upon the Bible might as well be 
predicated upon a sentence from 
Confucius. The texts selected are 






239 

those expressive of general moral 
obligations or of some historical 
event. Dogmatic theology is most 
scrupulously avoided. There is a 
painful lookout for some subject of 
present interest, and for the minis- 
ter a terrible railroad accident is 
rather a relief. He feels the need 
of saying something positive to his 
people ; but as they have no syste- 
matic faith, and do not as. a class 
believe in or know anything about 
supernatural grace, he necessarily 
falls back upon our moral young 
man and woman. It is very sad 
to see how utterly oblivious the 
preacher is to what is so familiar 
to Catholics namely, the necessity 
of obtaining grace through the sac- 
raments. ThisPelagianism is more 
limp and contradictory than the 
parent error which St. Augustine 
combated. Indeed, it is an open 
question with them whether we 
had Adam at all in whom to fall, 
and as to original sin, who knows 
what it is ? It is this wretch- 
ed shirking of the plainest doctri- 
nal and moral issues that condemns 
Protestantism without hope. What 
is the use of flattering a congre- 
gation, who despise the preacher 
quite as much as he despises them, 
for their mutual shrinking from the 
moral questions and responsibili- 
ties which must face them some 
day or other. 

But enough ! Here we are vio- 
lating one of the great canons of 
health by getting ourselves into a 
heat upon a subject very, very 
remotely connected with the chief 
end of man, which is to live health- 
fully, comfortably, and praise- 
worthily in this world, and, of 
course, as an estimable American 
citizen, to occupy a front seat in 
the next. 



240 



Irish Affairs in 1782. 



IRISH AFFAIRS IN 1782. 



THE occurrence of the centen- 
nial anniversary of few dates has 
evoked more glorious memories in 
the minds of men than will that 
now only two years distant of the 
i6th of April, 1782, in the thoughts 
of Irishmen. It is true that they 
cannot boast the keeping intact the 
great rights their, predecessors won, 
and the glorious winning of which 
1882 will remind them of, and 
equally true that they can hardly 
review the history of their country 
during the past century with un- 
mixed feelings ; but gloom-cover- 
ed and sad as may be the record 
over which they cast their gaze, yet 
still amidst its sombre writings, its 
black entries of oppression, rebel- 
lion, and famine, some brighter 
ones appear, and that scroll which 
tells the story of 1782 and of the 
winning of Catholic emancipation 
is not one of which Irishmen need 
be ashamed or regard with aught 
but feelings of pride. 

The year 1782 saw England sore- 
ly pressed by many foes, hemmed 
in by a circle of enemies. Struck 
down at Yorktown by the genius 
of Washington and the valor of his 
soldiers, again at Nevis and St. 
Christopher, at Minorca and in the 
Bahamas, by Frank and Spaniard, 
the ensign of England was never 
upheld more proudly than at Gib- 
raltar and St. Vincent by the de- 
termined Elliott and the valorous 
Rodney. It was at this climax of 
her struggle, when foes were press- 
ing her sore, that England dis- 
cerned that to the circle of these 
leagued against her there seemed 
about to be added another. The 
new-comer was Ireland demanding 



rights God-given. England was in 
her hour of sorest need. Necessity 
the most dire compelled her to 
yield to Ireland what her sense of 
justice would hardly have induced 
her to give ; and Ireland, without 
bloodshed, by the mere exhibition 
of the power, the military strength, 
which had so long lain dormant in 
her people, achieved a great vic- 
tory and accomplished a great re- 
volution. In the story of 1782 a 
curious fact stands out : the belief, 
strong almost as religious faith, in 
the nationality of Ireland was pre- 
served at a most critical period by 
those who can hardly be account- 
ed the hereditary guardians of that 
most precious heritage; and if we 
carry our glance onwards beyond 
the limits of this article, we will see 
that when the Irish Catholic was 
fitted again to uphold the banner 
of his country's rights, when a few 
years of comparative freedom had 
taught him again to walk erect and 
the limbs so long paralyzed by en- 
ervating chains had regained some 
of their olden vigor, then the cause 
of Ireland again fell to his keep- 
ing. In truth, no stranger story is 
there in all the strange episodes 
which histories tell than that which 
recounts how, almost against their 
will, the descendants of the English 
settlers in Ireland, the descendants 
of Norman, Cromwellian, and Dutch 
invaders, were driven to take up 
and uphold the banner of Ireland's 
nationality. The Catholic people 
of Ireland, plundered and oppress- 
ed, hunted to the hills and bogs of 
Connaught, banned, disinherited, 
and despoiled, deprived of educa- 
tion and the commonest rights of 






Irish Affairs in 1782. 



241 



man, by a miracle were enabled to 
keep their religious faith kept it 
in spite of temptation and terror. 
But a people in such straits were 
hardly fitted to maintain, could 
hardly hope to defend properly, the 
abstract and actual rights .of their 
native land to political freedom. 
And yet God willed not that those 
rights should sink into oblivion ; 
while the Catholic people of Ire- 
land, bruised and hampered by 
their disabilities, were unable to 
keep them as they kept them in 
the days of yore, Irish Protestants 
were driven to maintain them and 
to uphold the right of Ireland to 
freedom. 

When Ireland was first "con- 
quered " by the Anglo-Normans of 
Henry II., and the Irish chiefs 
pledged their fealty to that mon- 
arch, he called a council or parlia- 
ment at Lismore, at which it was 
mutually agreed that the laws then 
in force in England should become 
effective in Ireland. But it must 
be borne in mind that even Henry 
was not so rash as to seek to make 
them operative without the consent 
of the representatives of the Irish 
people. On Henry's return to Eng- 
land he appears to have sent to 
Ireland a " Modus tenendi parlia- 
mentum," or form of holding par- 
liaments there, similar to that which 
had become usage in England.* 
The authenticity of this document 
lias been much questioned, but the 
fact of its existence has been main- 
tained by as respectable authorities 
as those who have denied it. In 
1216 Henry III. granted a charter 
of liberties to Ireland. The same 
year he, by charter, conferred upon 
the English "a free and independent 
Parliament," f and in it confirmed 



* Molyneux. Madden's Connection of Ireland 
with England. 
t Madden. 

VOL, XXX. 16 



his charter to the Irish, stating that, 
" in consideration of the loyalty of 
his Irish subjects, they and their 
heirs for ever should enjoy all the 
liberties granted by his father and 
him to the realm of England." Dr. 
Madden, in his valuable work, Con- 
nection of Ireland ivith England, 
says: "Ireland under Henry II., 
John, and Henry III. had all the 
laws, customs, and liberties of 
England conferred on it, not by 
English parliaments but by English 
sovereigns. Assuredly the great 
privilege of all, that of the national 
council, was not withheld. Henry 
II. held this national council at 
Lismore; John confirmed all his 
father's privileges, and his succes- 
sor confirmed all those of the two 
preceding sovereigns, and exem- 
plified that form of holding parlia- 
ments which John transmitted into 
Ireland; while in France his queen, 
then regent of the kingdom, sought 
succors in men and money from 
the Irish Parliament, and left on 
record a document which all the 
ingenuity of the opponents of Irish 
independence cannot divest of its 
value as an incontrovertible tes- 
timony to the independence and 
perfect organization of a legislative 
body, composed of Lords and Com- 
mons, at that early period." With- 
out entirely agreeing with Dr. 
Madden that there is absolute evi- 
dence of the " perfect organiza- 
tion," at the period referred to, of 
an Irish Parliament, one cannot 
doubt that the early Norman kings, 
in many documents and by many 
acts, admitted their inability to 
bind the people of Ireland by laws 
uncanctioned by some body of re- 
presentatives. In the reign of Ed- 
ward III. the Irish knights, citi- 
zens, and burgesses were assem- 
bled in parliament in England. In 
the tenth year of the reign of Hen- 



242 



Irish Affairs in 1782. 



ry IV. the Irish Parliament affirm- 
ed its independence by enacting 
" that no law made in the Par- 
liament of England should be of 
force in Ireland till it was allowed 
and published by authority of the 
Parliament in this kingdom." A 
similar enactment was passed in 
the twenty-ninth year of the same 
king's reign. By degrees during 
the four hundred years succeeding 
Henry's landing all the public and 
fundamental laws of England were 
applied to Ireland, but never with- 
out the sanction of the Irish Parlia- 
ment being obtained.* 

By the law known afterwards by 
the name of its framer, Sir Edward 
Poynings, passed in the tenth year 
of the reign of Henry VII., it was 
enacted that before any statute 
could be finally discussed it should 
be previously submitted to the 
lord lieutenant of Ireland and his 
privy council, who might at their 
pleasure reject it or transmit it to 
England. If so transmitted, the 
English attorney-general and privy 
council were invested with power 
either to veto its further progress 
or remodel it at their will and then 
return it to Ireland, where the 
original promoters of useful mea- 
sures often received their bills back 
so altered as to be unrecognizable 
as those which were transmitted to 
England, and so mutilated as to be 
worthless for the attainment of the 
purpose for which they were pro- 
pounded. 

The sessions of the Irish Parlia- 
ment were held at uncertain inter- 
vals, never called together unless 
when the English governors had 
some object to accomplish, some 
danger to tide over, or when it was 



* Lucas. Dr. Madden states that during this 
period the Irish Parliament ' maintained a noble 
struggle for its rights with an unscrupulous, jeal- 
cuj and insidious rival. 1 " 



necessary to dupe the chiefs and 
people into allowing themselves to 
be victimized by some political or 
material fraud. During a quarter 
of a century, in the reign of Eliza- 
beth, there was no Irish Parliament ; 
for when parliaments were assem- 
bled, unless they were carefully 
packed, some voice was sure to 
be raised to protest against the 
wrongs done Ireland, some tongue 
was sure to utter denials of the 
right of the foreigners to legislate 
for Irishmen. Barnewall in the 
reign of Elizabeth, and Bolton in 
that of Charles I., made the hall of 
the senate-house ring with their 
denunciations of English turpitude 
and their affirmations of Irish in- 
dependence.* Wars and rebel- 
lions, the Cromwellian and Wil- 
liamite invasions, with the deter- 
mination of the English governors 
to permit no important gathering 
wherein the "mere Irish" could 
express their opinions, prevented 
the regular assemblage of the Par- 
liament; and it is therefore with 
the expulsion of James II. and the 
establishment of the rule of Wil- 
liam III. that the story begins 
which ends so gloriously with the 
episodes of 1782. 

In 1692 the first Irish Parliament 
of King William's reign was con- 
vened and assembled in Dublin. 
Thither came some Irish Catholics 
who foolishly believed that the rights 
won for them at Limerick by the 
valor of Sarsfield and the strategy of 
D'Usson would be held sacred and 
confirmed in the united council of 
the nation; but they were driven 
from the portals of the seriate-house 

* In 1642 the Irish House of Commons passed 
the following declaration, drawn up by Sir Richard 
Bolton, Lord Chancellor of Ireland : u That the 
subjects of Ireland are a free people, and to be 
governed only by the common law of England 
and statutes established by the Parliament of Ire- 
land, and according to the lawful customs used 
therein." 



Irish Affairs in 1782. 



243 



by the diabolically designed oath 
which designated the king of Eng- 
land head of the church, and that 
Holy Sacrifice which was to be their 
only consolation and strength dur- 
ing many a dark and wearying year 
of oppression "damnable." The 
Parliament of 1692 was, therefore, 
the Parliament only of a section, a 
miserably small section, of the peo- 
ple of Ireland ; but it contained 
much educated intelligence, though 
that intelligence was warped by bit- 
ter religious bigotry, and the wealth 
of the nation was represented there- 
in. A parliament composed of such 
men, most of whom knew that what 
they possessed of the world's goods, 
having been got by the sword, 
should be kept by it also who, mi- 
nority though they were, dared to 
say to the majority of the nation, 
" You shall have no rights but what 
we choose to give you, and we will 
give you none " was not one like- 
ly to submit tamely to the claim 
made by the Parliament of England 
to dictate to them, or to content 
themselves with merely ratifying the 
behests of the ministers of the asth- 
matic monarch of England. There- 
fore this Parliament affirmed the in- 
dependence of the Peers and Com- 
mons of Ireland, and, to prove it, 
rejected one of two money bills 
sent from England. A Parliament 
was again convened in 1695, and 
this, with many another that came 
after, gave their best efforts to the 
consolidation of Protestant ascend- 
ency, to the perfecting of those ter- 
rible instruments of persecution, the 
penal laws. Condemned to pov- 
erty and ignorance for any riches 
or learning attained by Irish Cath- 
olics were gained not by favor of, 
but rather despite of, the Irish Par- 
liament the Catholic portion of 
the people saw themselves deprived 
of arms, land, and political rights, 



their faith prohibited as a thing 
accursed, their priests banned and 
hunted ; yet somehow the fetters 
seemed to hang lighter on their 
limbs, and the night shades of per- 
secution seemed to grow less dark, 
as with bated breath they whisper- 
ed one to another the strange tale, 
which their masters had heard too, 
with mingled wonder and dread, 
how across the seas Irish soldiers 
had met their oppressors ; how at 
Steenkerke and Landen, and lateral 
Fontenoy, Irish bayonets had re- 
venged the Limerick fraud and 
Irish soldiers died for France for 
the sake of faith and the dear old 
motherland. 

It must be remembered that it 
was the Protestant portion of the 
nation which, possessing the wealth, 
felt taxation most ; which, possess- 
ing flocks, felt most the prohibition 
of the woollen manufactures ; and 
which, possessing manufactories, 
felt most heavily the commercial 
disabilities which England imposed 
upon Ireland. They were, there- 
fore, continually protesting against 
English interference and affirming 
their own right to self-government. 
Molyneux and Swift, Lucas and 
Boyle, with learned pens and elo- 
quent tongues, proclaimed the right 
of the Irish Parliament to govern 
Ireland as it chose, untrammelled by 
the commands of foreign minister, 
peer, or parliament. Often by cor- 
ruption, the favorite weapon of Eng- 
lish ministers, the objects of the go- 
vernment were attained ; but from 
the first quarter of the eighteenth 
century few parliaments met in 
which the power of the " Patriots," 
as they were styled, was not felt, 
in which the corrupters and the 
corrupted were not lashed by the 
scathing words of some of the ad- 
vocates of independence. 

In 1773 the men of Boston cast 



244 



Irish Affairs in 1782. 



the cargo of the Dartmouth into 
the waters of their harbor, and in 
1774 the Congress of Philadelphia 
sent words of greeting to the Irish 
people. Thenceforward men's eyes 
were directed to the desperate strug- 
gle waged between liberty and tyr- 
anny across the Atlantic, and the 
down-trodden of every land learned 
the lesson of the mighty power that 
dwells in the will of a united peo- 
ple. Irish Protestants saw that 
England, in her need, could spare 
them no men, nor ships-, nor money 
for the defence of Ireland ; that if 
the country was in danger of in- 
vasion, that danger would not be 
averted by any aid from England, 
for England found it difficult to 
guard her own shores. Then it 
was that in 1778 the Irish Parlia- 
ment passed the Militia Bill, and 
the people set themselves to work 
at that easy task for those of Cel- 
tic blood the learning to be sol- 
diers. 

It is difficult to restrain one's pen 
m describing the state of Ireland 
in 1779, when first Lord Charlemont 
took command of the Volunteers 
a<nd the force began to assume re- 
spectable proportions. Sir Jonah 
Barrington says : " By the paralyz- 
ing system thus adopted [*>., Eng- 
lish interference with Irish indus- 
tries and measures] towards Ire- 
land sh-e was at length reduced to 
the lowest ebb ; her poverty and dis- 
tresses, almost at their extent, were 
advancing fast to their final con- 
summation ; her commerce had al- 
most ceased, her manufactures ex- 
tinguished, her constitution with- 
drawn, the people absolutely de- 
sponding, while public and indi- 
vidual bankruptcy finished a pic- 
ture of the deepest misery ; and the 
year 1779 found Ireland almost 
everything but what such a coun- 
try and such a people ought to 



have been."* Twenty thousand 
people, destitute and out of work, 
begged and idled in the streets 
of Dublin ; merchants and traders 
were daily driven to insolvency; 
provisions rotted in the warehouses 
of Cork for want of purchasers ; 
the whole social fabric seemed 
about to be destroyed. 

On the ist of December, 1778,1116 
people of Armagh formed the first 
Volunteer Corps. They offered the 
command to Lord Charlemont, who 
held the position of lord lieuten- 
ant, of the county. He declined 
the proffered post at first, but after- 
wards, influenced probably by the 
advice of, and under pressure from, 
his friend Henry Grattan, he ac- 
cepted the position. It is difficult 
to form an estimate of the charac- 
ter of James, Earl of Charlemont. 
Honest but timid, patriotic but 
undecided, he had been a greater 
man had he been more ambitious, 
and perhaps made Ireland more 
his debtor had his love of peace 
been less. A patron of the fine 
arts, scholarly and artistic, he oc- 
cupied his position under compul- 
sion, and sheathed his sword only 
too readily, giving up his command 
with more of pleasure than regret. 
His probity cannot be question- 
ed ; he acted always as his uncer- 
tain capacity told him was right ; 
and while none can doubt his integ- 
rity, many will doubt the wisdom 
of those who made and maintained 
him commander-in-chief. 

Once started, the Volunteer 
movement grew apace. The men 
of every county, the citizens of 
every borough, nocked to the 
colors. The highest born and 
fairest ladies of the land handed 
them their standards and wished 
them " God speed." The govern- 

* Historic Memoirs of Ireland, page 9, first 
edition. 









Irish Affairs in 1782. 



245 



ment, against their will, had to 
hand them sixteen thousand stand 
of arms ; private munificence did 
the rest. Soon artillery and cav- 
alry corps were added, and with- 
in twelve months a fully-equipped 
Irish army, determined to uphold 
the rights of Ireland, faced the 
ministers of King George. At first 
no Catholics were admitted to the 
ranks of the citizen-army ; but by 
degrees a spirit of liberality pervad- 
ed most of the regiments, and Ro- 
man Catholics received as hearty 
a welcome as their Protestant breth- 
ren. In many places the Catho- 
lics subscribed to buy arms for 
the Protestant Volunteers, and by 
their disinterested conduct earned 
the respect of all on-lookers. 

As yet England still prohibited 
the free exportation of Irish goods, 
while her manufacturers with the 
products of their looms, and her 
merchants with their wares, inun- 
dated the Irish markets. These 
were sold at an immediate loss with 
a view to future profits, when Irish 
manufacturers and merchants would 
be ruined and their operatives pau- 
perized by this mingled system of 
prohibition and competition. The 
Irish people and the Volunteers, 
though determined at any cost to 
put an end to a state of things 
which could only terminate in the 
ruin of their native land, adopted 
with singular unanimity a course 
calculated to partly accomplish 
what they desired pending the le- 
gislative attainment of their ends. 
The guilds of merchants and tra- 
ders, the bodies corporate, and the 
mass of the people united in re- 
solutions to never buy or sell, to 
consume or wear, any articles of 
foreign manufacture whose equiva- 
lents could be produced in Ireland, 
" until such time as all partial re- 
strictions on their trnde should be 



removed." These resolutions en- 
couraged Irish manufactures, and 
commerce almost immediately be- 
gan to revive. 

On the 25th of November, 1779, 
the question of voting the supplies 
was to come before the House of 
Commons, and the "Patriots " de- 
termined to seek to limit the vote 
to supplies for six months, with a 
view to their being entirely with- 
held in the event of government 
not granting free trade. It was 
therefore thought well that a dis- 
play should be made of the armed 
power which was ready to sustain 
the words of Grattan, and hence 
on the 4th of November the Volun- 
teers of Dublin assembled in Col- 
lege Green under the leadership of 
Ireland's only duke, his Grace of 
Leinster. The artillery, under the 
command of Napper Tandy, shook 
the portals of the senate-house 
with the thunder of their salutes, 
while from their cannon dangled 
placards bearing monitory and 
mandatory warnings to the govern- 
ment. The flashing bayonets of 
th? infantry were backed by the 
unsheathed sabres of the cavalry, 
while the dense crowd of the un- 
armed populace, filling every ave- 
nue of approach to the mtistering- 
ground, sent up applauding shouts. 
This display had its due effect ; and 
therefore, when the question of 
supplies came before the house, 
despite the truculence of the at- 
torney-general, John Scott, after- 
wards Lord Clonmel, the reso- 
lution of the " Patriots " limiting 
their duration to six months was 
passed. The ministry of Lord 
North at once saw the folly of con- 
tending with an armed and united 
people, and yielded to compulsion 
all those liberties of trading which 
Ireland demanded. The popular 
joy at the attainment of this victory 



246 



Irish Affairs in 1782. 



was great and universal, but neither 
the people nor their leaders were 
content to regard it as the termina- 
tion of their struggle with England. 
They looked upon it as only the 
harbinger of future and more glo- 
rious victories. 

These victories were destined to 
be won as much by the genius and 
talents of Henry Grattan as by the 
armed strength of his countrymen. 
Pure and incorruptible, brave and 
determined to a fault, eloquent 
with a poetical and magnificent 
eloquence in which he had no 
rival, he was a man of all others 
qualified for the position which his 
own knowledge of his abilities led 
him to take, and which his proved 
talents induced his co-laborers to 
freely accord him. To say he had 
faults is perhaps but to call him 
human, for his faults were those of 
all, or nearly all, that group of bril- 
liant orators and able statesmen of 
which he was one. His chief fault 
was that while he loved liberty in 
the abstract, yet the liberty he 
would give the people would be 
only that which he himself might 
think fit; the Parliament should be 
independent, but the people should 
have little voice in its election ; they 
were to have liberty doled out to 
them only as the governing classes 
thought best in a word, his policy 
never offered, nor would he ever 
allow to be offered, any guarantee 
to the people against future tyran- 
ny on the part of those he would 
keep in eternal possession of power, 
His theory of government appears 
to have been akin to that of Thomas 
Hood when he wrote that he be- 
lieved in "an angel from heaven 
and a despotism," for, like Sir Jonah 
Barrington, "he loved liberty but 
hated democracy." He quarrel- 
led with Flood on the question of 
parliamentary reform, lost an able 



aide-de-camp for himself, and to the 
cause of Ireland a priceless soldier. 
His virtues were, however, many, 
his gifts and powers great, his pa- 
triotic devotion to Ireland unques- 
tioned ; his faults, after all, were 
caused by his mistaken determi- 
nation to love Ireland only in his 
own way. 

On the i pth of April, 1780, Grat- 
tan moved the celebrated Declara- 
tion of Rights which he hoped to get 
adopted by the House of Commons. 
His speech was a masterpiece of 
eloquence, and he was ably second- 
ed by his lieutenants. But cor- 
ruption was too strong for him, and 
he failed to accomplish his object. 
This year, 1780, was one devoted 
by the Volunteers to the perfecting 
of their organization. Patrician 
and plebeian, peer and citizen, la- 
bored together. The Earl of Bel- 
videre in Westmeath, Lord Kings- 
borough in Limerick, and Clare 
and Wicklow too, Lord Erne in 
Londonderry, Lord Carysfort in 
Dublin these and others, with 
Lord Charlemont and the Duke of 
Leinster, with the leading barris- 
ters, merchants, and bankers, work- 
ed unitedly for the one good cause. 
It was during this year that Lord 
Charlemont was elected command- 
er-in-chief of the Volunteers of Ire- 
land. 

All that Grattan jnight say or 
attempt in the corrupted and ser- 
vile House of Commons being use- 
less, the chief hope of the " Pa- 
triots " lay in the pressure which 
they might hope to bring to bear 
upon the government through the 
medium of the Volunteers. There- 
fore 1781 was given also to the re- 
viewing of the regiments, the per- 
fecting of their armaments, and 
perpetual reiteration by the various 
corps of the great truth they were 
pledged to maintain viz., that in 



Irish Affairs in 1782. 



the "king, Lords and Commons of 
Ireland " lay the only power to go- 
vern Ireland. On the i5th of Feb- 
ruary, 1782, the delegates of thirty 
thousand northern Volunteers met 
in the little church of Dungannon, 
and from the hill whereon it stood 
went forth to the four provinces 
the declaration that " the men of 
the north " at least would have leg- 
islative freedom for Ireland and 
liberty of conscience for their Ro- 
man Catholic brothers. 

During this same February Grat- 
tan introduced an address to the 
king declaring the rights of Ireland ; 
but the servile legislators obeyed 
the whip of the obstinate ministers, 
and he was defeated. The end of 
that ministry was at hand. Lord 
North, defeated and disgraced, was 
hurled from power, and Lord Rock- 
ingham and Fox became the king's 
advisers. Lord Carlisle, who had 
been as blatant of honeyed words 
as one of his successors in his title 
used to be a few years ago when 
filling the self-same post in Ireland, 
was succeeded by the Duke of 
Portland as viceroy. Portland was 
an adroit and wily courtier, well 
fitted to play the part he was sent 
to fill. Heralding his advent, Fox 
wrote some letters to the Earl of 
Charlemont " his old and esteemed 
friend " he styles him embellish- 
ed with his eloquence and adorned 
with compliments ; they are entitled 
to rank as the best efforts ever 
made in writing by one man to at- 
tain a point by playing on the va- 
nity of another. Luckily for Ire- 
land, by the desk of Charlemont 
stood Grattan, and Fox was in- 
formed that the postponement of 
the meeting of Parliament for which 
he pleaded was impossible ; that 
Ireland could have no confidence 
in any administration which would 
not concede all she declared to be 



hers in Grattan 's Declaration of 
Rights, and which he was to move 
anew on the meeting of the house. 
The government now saw that they 
should decide quickly whether they 
would reject the demands of Grat- 
tan, set at defiance an armed na- 
tion, or, acquiescing in the inevita- 
ble, yield to Ireland all that Ireland 
was prepared to take. The meet- 
ing of the Irish Parliament was 
fixed for the i6th of April, 1782 ; on 
that day Grattan 's Declaration was 
to be moved ; on that day would 
be decided whether war was to be 
waged between England and Ire- 
land or not. On the 9th of April, 
however, Fox communicated to the 
English House of Commons a mes- 
sage from the king, in which his 
majesty, "being concerned to find 
that discontents and jealousies were 
prevailing amongst his loyal sub- 
jects in Ireland," asked the house 
" to take the same into their most se- 
rious consideration, in order to such 
a final adjustment as might give mu- 
tual satisfaction to both kingdoms." 
This meant that all that Ireland 
asked for was to be conceded ; that 
England weak was about to do pen- 
ance for wrongs done when Eng- 
land was strong. Ireland's Mag- 
na Charta was to be signed and 
sealed by as unwilling hands, under 
as direct compulsion, as was the 
Great Charter of English liberties 
by the only coward amongst the 
Plantagenet kings. 

From early morning on the i6th 
of April the populace had begun 
to fill the streets, the Volunteer 
corps to assemble, those who had 
right to do so to seek admission 
to the galleries of the House of 
Commons. Lining the space be- 
fore its portals were drawn up in 
serried files some of those to 
whom belonged so much of the 
glory of this day, the Volunteers. 



248 



Irish Affairs in 1782. 



Other corps, cavalry, artillery, and 
infantry, lined the quays, were post- 
ed on the bridges and in the prin- 
cipal approaches. 

A few regular soldiers kept a 
narrow passage through the surg- 
ing crowd by the statue of King 
William, through Dame Street and 
Cork Hill to the castle gates, 
for the coming of the viceroy a 
" thin red line " indeed, fit emblem 
of the power of England to cope 
with Ireland that day. From every 
house fluttered banners; every win- 
dow and every housetop was crowd- 
ed with spectators spectators of a 
revolution. When the carriage of 
the viceroy appeared slowly moving 
between the soldiers, cheers such as 
had seldom rung through the streets 
of Dublin heralded his coming 
cheers from the throats of newly- 
made freemen who had burst their 
shackles themselves ; from the 
throats of citizens who saw their 
city raised to the dignity of the ca- 
pital of a nation; from the throats 
of Irishmen who saw the grasp of 
the stranger struck from their na- 
tive land. 

Inside the house the scene was 
even more impressive. In the gal- 
leries were assembled the wives 
and daughters of the senators and 
their friends, and the fairest of 
Erin's daughters looked down on 
that senate-hall wherein were as- 
sembled the most talented and no- 
ble of Erin's sons. Wearers of co- 
lonets and mitres from the House 
of Peers came and helped to fill 
the gallery. The students of the 
university also were there, and those 
citizens who had been so fortu- 
nate as to obtain admission. The 
bayonets of the Volunteers glis- 
tened even there, for some of them 
stood on guard within the senate- 
chamber. Now again from out- 
side, from the crowded street and 



crowded square, is heard another 
cheer, louder and deeper far than 
that which they within had heard 
greet the viceroy; for this cheer 
came from the hearts of the people, 
and the applause sounded in its 
echoes even like a blessing. That 
cheer was for Henry Grattan. 

When the excitement had some- 
what subsided within Hely Hutch- 
inson rose and delivered the same 
message as that which Fox had 
read to the Commons of England. 
Mr. George Ponsonby, a creature of 
government, then rose and moved 
an address of thanks to the king, 
and assuring him that the house 
would proceed to the consideration 
of the great objects recommended. 
This was the opening only. Grat- 
tan arose, his countenance worn and 
furrowed by illness and thought; 
his frame, enfeebled and attenuat- 
ed, seemed hardly that of a man fit 
for the mighty task he had set him- 
self, and which he knew was to be 
this day accomplished. Clear as 
a clarion note his matchless voice 
rang through the senate-house : 

" I am now to address a free 
people ! Ages have passed away, 
and this is the first moment in 
which you could be distinguished 
by that appellation. 

"I have spoken on the subject 
of your liberty so often that I have 
nothing to add, and have only to 
admire by what heaven-directed 
steps you have proceeded until 
the whole faculty of the nation is 
braced up to the act of her own 
deliverance. 

" I found Ireland on her knees ; 
I watched over her with an eter- 
nal solicitude ; I have traced her 
progress from injuries to arms, and 
from arms to liberty. Spirit of 
Swift ! spirit of Molyneux ! your 
genius has prevailed. Ireland is 
now a nation. In that new char- 



The Brebcuf Family. 



acter I hail her, and, bowing to 
her august presence, I say, Esto 
perpetua f" 

He concluded his splendid ora- 
tion by moving the Declaration of 
Rights. It was voted unanimous- 
ly, and Ireland was free ! 

How the solemn pact hereupon 



249 

entered into by the two nations, 
ratified by the Parliaments of Eng- 
land and Ireland, was foully bro- 
ken by one of them it is not within 
the scope of this article to repeat ; 
if it reminds its readers of at least 
one glorious day in Ireland's life 
its object will have been attained. 



THE BREBEUF FAMILY.* 



A MILE or two southwest of Caen 
you come to a valley among low 
hills delightfully fresh and peaceful 
to those who wish to escape for a 
few hours from the gloom of nar- 
row streets and the bustle of great 
thorough fares. Here is the grateful 
harmony of rippling waters, joyous 
birds, and whispering leaves. And 
the odors that spring from the 
clover, the profuse wild flowers in 
the meadow, and the very earth 
rank with vegetation are delicious 
to the unaccustomed sense. The 
pleased eye wanders up the valley, 
where there is nothing to break 
the view but a long line of pale 
poplars here and there that never- 
failing feature of a French land- 
scape. Through the very heart of 
the meadow slowly pulses the river 
Odon, an affluent of the Orne 
Frigidus Udo, as it is called by 
Huet, Bishop of Avranches, in his 
Carmina,) on account of the cool- 
ness of its sparkling waters. He 
was born on its banks. Everything 
here is Arcadian, peaceful, and full 
of repose, in spite of the railway 
that now passes through the val- 
ley. The whole region is best 
seen from the top of the Grande 

* Notice sur les trjis Brebeufs. Ch. Duniol et 
Cie., Paris. 



Cavee, where you look off over 
meadows, plains, and the distant 
outline of wooded hills. Caen is 
in full sight on its picturesque emi- 
nence, bristling with steeples and 
towers, among which the eye dis- 
tinguishes the two historic abbeys 
one founded by William the Con- 
queror and the other by Matilda 
of Flanders. 

At the foot of the hill is an old 
cemetery thick with crosses and 
sepulchral stones, with the Pres- 
bytere on one side, and on the 
other a cluster of houses somewhat 
quaint and interesting, one with 
stout buttresses supporting its time- 
stained walls. This is the parish 
of Venoix, a part of the old baro- 
ny of Louvigny. Louvigny itself 
is not far off. Striking across the 
meadow in which Henry V. of 
England set up his encampment 
when he came to besiege Caen in 
1417, and keeping along the river 
past orchards and vegetable gar- 
dens watered by numerous rills that 
seem trickling everywhere, you 
soon come to a picturesque old 
mill whose revolving wheel beats 
the stream into a foaming cascade, 
the monotonous dash of which only 
adds to the lulling character of the 
whole scene. A little beyond you 



250 



The Brdbenf Family. 



cross towards a fine avenue leading 
to the chateau of Louvigny. This 
is an interesting place, because it 
belonged for several centuries to 
the Bernieres family, two of whom 
were noted in the seventeenth cen- 
tury for their saintliness. One of 
these was Jourdaine de Bernieres, 
foundress of the Ursulines of Caen. 
The other was her brother, M. de 
Bernieres, Baron of Louvigny and 
royal treasurer at Caen, the well- 
known author of the Chretien In- 
te'rieur, an ascetic treatise of great 
repute, that has been republished 
in our day. His memory is also 
associated with the early mission of 
Quebec. This barony passed out 
of the Bernieres name some time 
last century by the marriage of the 
heiress with the Marquis d'Haute- 
ville. 

The barons of Louvigny were 
noted as far back as the twelfth 
century for their Christian charity. 
Some of them made generous do- 
nations to the religious houses at 
Caen, among which was the Hotel- 
Dieu, founded by Henry II. of Eng- 
land and administered by the regu- 
lar canons of St. Augustin, who, 
until 1792, had the right of nomi- 
nating the cure* of Venoix gene- 
rally a priest distinguished for his 
talents and piety, wlio bore the 
title of prior. This office was held 
for thirty years, in the latter part 
of the seventeenth century, by M. 
Nicolas de Brebeuf, the nephew of 
Pere de Brebeuf, the famous Jesuit 
martyr of Canada. Prior Nicolas 
was a man of so much eminence 
as to be held in great esteem even 
at the court of France. He was a 
persuasive, eloquent preacher, with 
a natural facility of language and a 
simple grandeur of style. His face, 
benevolent and open, reflected his 
very character, which was so mild, 
indulgent, and considerate of others 



that he was beloved by every one 
who knew him. 

The Brebeuf family had been 
noted for six hundred years for the 
heroic valor and other noble quali- 
ties of its members. One of them 
went over to England with Wil- 
liam the Conqueror, and became 
the ancestor, by the female line, of 
the earls of Arundel and the pre- 
sent Duke of Norfolk. Another 
took part in the crusades of St. 
Louis," and commanded the knights 
of Normandy at the siege of Da- 
mietta. The family, in fact, was 
a veritable nursery of valiant sol- 
diers. It was continued by an un- 
interrupted succession in the male 
line down to the close of the last 
century, and seems to have in- 
termarried with the leading fami- 
lies of the country. The Brebeuf 
manor was at Conde-sur-Vire, in 
the diocese of Bayeux. It was 
there the great martyr was born 
the bravest and most heroic of his 
warlike race. No~t far off were 
the domains of Arondel, or Arun- . 
del, with whose lords the Brebeufs 
were allied. A Roger d'Arundel 
and his kinsman, Hugues de Brebeuf, 
took part in the battle of Hastings 
and settled in England. From one 
of them the Arundels of England 
sprang, but in either case they are 
descended from the old Brebeufs 
on the Vire. 

The chateau of the Brebeufs was 
at a place called Les Pares, but no 
vestige of it is now to be seen. In 
the neighboring parish of Ste. Su- 
zanne, however, are some of th< 
Brebeuf lands, which belong to 
direct descendant of the ancient 
lords by the female line, and peo- 
ple of standing. Here are some 
remains of an old manor-house, 
from which it would appear the 
Brebeufs owned two fiefs on the 
river Vire. 



The Brtfbeuf Family. 



251 



But to return to Venoix. It was 
here that Georges de Brebeuf died, 
the brother of Prior Nicolas. He 
was born at Ste. Suzanne-sur-Vire 
in 1618, and made his studies at 
the university of Caen under An- 
toine Halley, a distinguished pro- 
fessor and a poet of considerable 
reputation. M. de La Luzerne, 
one of the students at this time, 
thus speaks of Brebeuf: " We were 
rivals, but he was more studious 
than I, and his melancholy tempera- 
ment gave him, if we are to believe 
Plato, a special aptitude for the 
study of letters, so that he soon 
outstripped me." M. de Brebeuf 
himself calls this tendency to me- 
lancholy "a vice of temperament." 
He belonged to a younger branch 
of the family and had but lit- 
tle or no fortune. Consequently, 
when his studies were ended he 
became a private tutor. Huet 
mentions this in his Memoires : 
"At the time I was studying among 
the Jesuits at Caen there was 
among my classmates a youth 
named Bernardin Gigault de Belle- 
fonds, afterwards Marshal of France. 
His preceptor was Brebeuf, the 
sublime poet, who became so fa- 
mous for his translation of Lucan." 
M. de Brebeuf was then only twen- 
ty years of age, but he fulfilled his 
duty to the young marquis with so 
much ability as to secure not only 
his attachment for life, but that of 
the whole family. It was Mme. 
Laurence de Bellefonds, foundress 
of the Benedictines at Rouen, who 
chose him as her nephew's tutor. 
She was a daughter of the lord of 
Isle-Marie, governor of Caen, to 
whom the Jesuits were indebted 
for their establishment in that city, 
and one of three sisters consecrat- 
ed to God, all remarkable for their 
mental superiority. She began the 
study of Latin at eight years of 



age, and at a time when most girls 
only think of their amusements she 
was reading the Fathers of the 
church and studying ecclesiastical 
history. Called in her very girl- 
hood to the religious life, she was 
so precocious that she was allowed 
to make her vows at the age of six- 
teen. She had a decided taste for 
literature, wrote a number of trea- 
tises held in estimation by the 
learned, and translated several 
hymns of the church in an elegant, 
harmonious manner, which were 
published in the Heures Catholiques 
of Pere Adam, proving her genuine 
talent for poetry, had she yielded 
to her bent. Corneille himself ad- 
mired the delicacy of her taste and 
the clearness of her mind. Bossuet 
speaks of her religious works as 
developing the Christian truths in 
that admirable manner which the 
practice of them alone could have 
inspired. Her literary tastes did 
not interfere with her duties in the 
various important offices she held 
in the convent. She fulfilled those 
of infirmarian with a chanty that 
shrank from none of the obligations, 
however repulsive, and became 
mistress of novices, and finally ab- 
bess. Her own family had so great 
a respect for her judgment that she 
was consulted in all its affairs. She 
watched over the education of the 
heir, and sought a tutor capable 
of being his guide in private as 
well as making him advance in 
knowledge. "She had the good 
fortune," says the Pere de Bou- 
hours, " to find one whom we need 
only name to justify her choice. 
This was M. de Brebeuf, so famous 
for his able works, and still more 
commendable for his elevation of 
soul, the uprightness of his con- 
duct, and the purity of his morals. 
This excellent tutor took charge of 
the young Marquis de Bellefonds 



The Brdbeuf Family. 



with the more interest that he per- 
ceived his good qualities and spe- 
cial facility for the polite sciences." 
The choice of M. de Brebeuf was 
the highest proof of Mme. de Belle- 
fond's confidence and esteem, and 
from this time she was one of his 
warmest friends. She exercised a 
great moral and religious influence 
over him, and encouraged him in 
his literary pursuits. It was in re- 
ply to some expression of commen- 
dation from her he said, if he 
merited it in the least, it was solely 
for having followed her counsels. 
** One must have a dull mind," he 
continued, "after having the privi- 
lege of hearing you converse so 
often, and receiving so many letters 
from you, not to have profited 
somewhat by the advantage. . . . 
I try to regulate all my actions in 
accordance with your precepts, and 
I look upon the slightest expression 
you utter as advice of importance." 
M. de Brebeuf has celebrated 
Mme. de Bellefonds in one of his 
sonnets as having 

" La puret6, 1'esprit, et le savoir d'un ange," 

and elsewhere declares she had 
energy, discernment, and mental 
qualifications enough for six states- 
men. Louis XIV. offered her the 
royal abbey of Montivilliers, near 
Havre, one of the wealthiest in the 
kingdom ; but she declined the 
honor, and it was given to her 
sister, Mme. de 1'Isle-Marie, whom 
the Pere de Bouhours describes as 
" very amiable and attractive, com- 
passionate, charitable, gentle with- 
out being weak, with great ability 
and acuteness of mind, and pos- 
sessing to a sovereign degree the 
art of pleasing." This nomination 
was communicated to Brebeuf, as 
news that would be welcome, by 
the archbishop of Paris, who in the 
same letter expressed his esteem 



for the poet and the interest he 
took in his career. 

The king now authorized the 
archbishop to offer Mme. de Belle- 
fonds a post that required no com- 
mon ability and piety that of ab- 
bess of Port Royal, celebrated for 
its obstinate adhesion to Jansen- 
ism. Every motive of conscience 
and religion was brought to bear to 
obtain her consent, and a promise 
made that her favorite niece should 
be her coadjutrice and successor; 
but she positively declined the 
doubtful honor. 

Towards the close of her life 
Mme.. de Bellefonds, from motives 
of increased austerity, renounced 
all books and studies, as well as all 
intercourse and relations, not forc- 
ed upon her by the strictest obli- 
gations of the monastic life. In 
this state of absolute renunciation 
she died at the age of seventy-two. 

We have spoken of this vene- 
rable religieuse in detail because of 
her influence over the career of 
Georges de Brebeuf. It was at 
Rouen he published his translation 
of Lucan's Pharsalia, which at once 
gave him a reputation. He also is- 
sued two volumes of original po- 
etry entitled Eloges Poe'tiques and 
Entretiens Solitaires. His health 
at this time seems to have been 
precarious, and it is surprising he 
could have written so much. " The 
greater part of these works," said 
he, " was composed in the inter- 
vals of the fever that has beset 
me for twenty years." Expressions 
are frequent in his letters, which 
have been published, showing what 
a life of physical suffering he led : 
" I have only just enough health to 
be a long time ill." " It seems to 
me that to live and to suffer are 
about the same thing." " It is a 
strange mortification to have a 
body which the mind cannot sur- 



The Brdbcuf Family. 2 -- 

mount." And to a friend who had say to myself that he treats me 
complained of the infrequency of with a forbearance I had no rea- 
his letters he wrote: "A little in- son to expect." "One must try 
dolence is not a great crime for a to submit to everything and find 
person who for seven months has comfort in whatever position he is 
done nothing but pine away, or, to placed by God." He found con- 
speak more to the purpose, to flue- solation also in his friends. He 
tuate between life and death. And thus writes Georges da Hamel, a 
yet the inconvenience of ill-health native of Vire, who was a distin- 
is not the hundredth part of my guished advocate and one of his 
troubles. I have so many different most intimate friends : " I cannot 
causes that my mind is overwhelm- refrain from repeating what I was 
ed." Perhaps one arose from some just no\v saying to myself, that if 
calumny that assailed him in spite God had not given me a friend like 
of his excellence of character, you I should be the most unhappy 
though he wrote in this philosophi- of men." And to another : " I have 
cal manner to Mme. de 1'Isle-Marie, always looked upon you as corn- 
abbess of Montivilliers, who had pensating me for an infinite num- 
given him a hint of it : "I do not ber of afflictions and forcing me to 
find it strange people have spoken consider myself fortunate at least 
ill of me. On the contrary, it in my friendships, though under 
would be stranger if they said any- great disgrace with Fortune her- 
thing good. No one can think so 
ill of me as I do myself. . . . For a 



self." Among his friends was Cor- 
neille, of whom he was a great 



long time I have not troubled my- admirer. Another was Chapelain, 

self as to the judgment of others now only known by Boileau's sa- 

concerning me. Praise and blame tire. He was in close relations 

are things bestowed every day with also with Mgr. Claude Auvry, Bishop 

so little justice that it would make of Constance and treasurer of the 

me very unhappy not to regard Sainte-Chapelle at Paris, whose dif- 

both with a certain indifference. I ference with the chantre furnished 

see nothing in the world so com- Boileau with the subject of his Lu- 

mon as the contempt of things trin. Brebeuf wrote a poem in ho- 

worthy of esteem, and the esteem nor of this learned and excellent 

of those which ought to be con- prelate, whom he regarded as a 



demned." 



benefactor. It is published in his 



The adverse fortune and pros- Eloges Poe'tiques. 

pects of M. de Brebeuf- also weigh- M. de Brebeufs sincere piety 

ed upon him. He even thought was the means of converting M. 

of going to India to better them, Guiffart, his physician and friend, 

and perhaps would have done so one of the most celebrated practi- 

had his health permitted. "I am tioners at Rouen, who has given 

afraid," said he, "of being kept in to the public the causes that led 

pawn at some inn, and finding my- to his conversion, preceded by a 

self ill in an unknown place where letter from M. de Brebeuf in which 



I shall have neitiier consolation nor 
assistance." His religious princi- 
ples seem to have been a great 
support at this time : " Far from 



he thus addresses the author: 
"You have shown that the cause of 
God is incomparably dearer to you 
than wealth or reputation. Your 



complaining of the will of God, I first work on religious matters has 



254 



The Brtbeuf Family. 



opened the eyes of many excellent 
men. It has even contributed to 
the happy change of that great 
queen of the north, now one of the 
most illustrious ornaments of the 
Roman Church." He refers here 
to Queen Christina, who had read 
the work in Sweden, where the re- 
putation of the author as a physi- 
cian had already extended. 

It was M. de Brebeufs piety and 
exemplary life above all that pro- 
cured him the friendship of the 
family of Bellefonds. He watched 
over the faith and morals of the 
young marquis in so effectual a 
manner as to influence his whole 
life. Even after the latter became 
Marshal of France he never forgot 
the precepts of his tutor, which had 
contributed so much to his eleva- 
tion of character and successful 
career. It was the Marshal de 
Bellefonds who took such an ac- 
tive part in the conversion of Mme. 
de la Valliere. She opened her 
heart to him when she began to 
feel a remorse for her frailties and 
the need of expiation. He also en- 
listed the persuasive eloquence of 
Bossuet in her behalf, and kept up 
a correspondence with both when 
at the seat of war. The mar- 
shal's aunt the Mere Agnes de 
Bellefonds, superior of the Carme- 
lites at Paris, and surnamed the 
Incomparable on account of her 
eminent virtues also lent her in- 
fluence to the work. She was a 
sister of the two abbesses already 
mentioned, and beautiful in per- 
son as she was lovely in character. 
Her portrait represents her with 
charming blue eyes, a fine fore- 
head, and an expression at once 
lively and agreeable. She was ad- 
mired in her very girlhood at the 
court of Marie de Medicis, but she 
renounced all her brilliant pros- 
pects at the age of seventeen for 



the holier joys of Mount Carmel. 
She soon rose to be the superior 
of the convent. She charmed the 
people of the world by her eleva- 
tion of mind, and the poor and un- 
lettered by her sympathy with their 
sorrows; and this power she made 
use of to win souls to a higher life. 
Queen Henrietta Maria of Eng- 
land went to her for consolation. 
Chancellor Letellier often consulted 
her. The Duchess de Longueville 
regarded her as a friend. It was 
with her that Mme. de la Valliere 
took refuge when she fled from the 
world, and under her guidance en- 
tered upon the austerities of the 
Carmelite rule, which she so heroi- 
cally practised for thirty-five years. 
Mme. de Sevigne speaks of the 
vivacity of Mere Agnes and the 
charm of her conversation, and 
says she was ravished with her 
spirituality. When this Incompa- 
rable Mere died in 1691, at the age 
of eighty, Bossuet thus wrote her 
successor : " We shall behold her 
no more, then, cette ch^re Mere. We 
shall no more hear from her mouth 
the words that chanty, meekness, 
faith, and prudence all dictated, 
and that were so worthy of be- 
ing listened to ! She was one of 
those consistent people who be- 
lieve in the law of God and are 
faithful to that law. Prudence 
was her attendant, and Wisdom 
her sister. The joy of the Holy 
Ghost was always with her. Her 
equilibrium never varied, and her 
judgment was always sound. No 
one ever went amiss in following 
her counsels. These were enforc- 
ed by her example. Her death 
was as peaceful as her life. She 
rejoiced when the last day came. 
I return you thanks for recollect- 
ing me on this sad occasion. I 
unite with you in spirit in the 
prayers and sacrifices made for a 



The Brdbeuf Family. 



255 



soul blessed of God and man. To 
the pious tears you shed on her 
tomb I join mine, and I take part 
in the consolations with which faith 
inspires you." 

It is somewhat remarkable that 
the present superior of the Carme- 
lite convent at Paris a mere rem- 
nant of the great monastery de- 
stroyed at the Revolution should 
be a direct descendant of Marshal 
de Bellefonds, the fourth of her race 
who has consecrated herself to 
God in this house founded in 1604 
by Mine. Acarie and M. de Be- 
rulle. 

When a fourth sister of the Belle- 
fonds family married the Marquis 
de Villars in 1651 M. de Brebeuf 
wrote her in this playful manner : 
"It is truly shameful, madame, not 
to have paid you my homage since 
your change of name, but, to tell 
you the truth, I felt I ought to give 
way to those more worthy of your 
attention; and, besides, among the 
crowd of people who had the same 
duty to perform I should have been 
easily lost. Now that every one 
else has fulfilled this civility, it 
seems the proper time for me to 
say i have for Mme. de Villars the 
same respect and esteem I always 
had for Mile, de Bellefonds. As 
she no longer exists, I trust, ma- 
dame, I shall not offend her me- 
mory in transferring to you what 
was justly due her. You are, I 
suppose, the rightful heir and will 
indemnify us fully for all we have 
lost in her. You resemble her so 
much in mind and person that it 
would be easy to confound you. 
Never did two sisters bear greater 
resemblance. Continue, I beg you, 
madame, to console us in this way 
for the loss we have sustained. In 
you may the beauty, generosity, 
and all the excellent qualities that 
were admired in that distinguished 



person be continued. Believe me, 
you could not have a more perfect 
model. Whatever virtues you may 
possess, you will find it difficult to 
surpass hers. But, that I may find 
nothing wanting to complete the 
resemblance, continue to show me, 
I pray you, the same kindness she 
manifested, and do me the honor, 
madame, to believe me, etc." 

The Marquis de Villars, who 
married Mile, de Bellefonds, was 
the French ambassador at the court 
of Charles II. of Spain. While the 
Marchioness was at Madrid she 
wrote Mme. de Coulanges many 
letters full of wit and observations 
on society, a part of which have 
been published. Whenever she re- 
turned to France it was one of 
her greatest pleasures to seek re- 
pose in her sister's convent at 
Rouen, and there forget for a 
while the honors of court and the 
pleasures of the world. Her son 
served under his cousin, the Mar- 
shal de Bellefonds, and received 
the baton of marshal himself at 
the age of fifty. In his Mtmoires 
he relates an interview with Louis 
XIV. at Marly in March, 1712, 
when affairs were going badly in 
the north. The king said : " You 
see my condition. God is punish- 
ing me. I shall suffer less in the 
other world. Were my army van- 
quished I would go to Peronne or 
St. Quentin to assemble the troops 
left, make a last effort with you, 
and perish all together or save the 
kingdom ; for I would never con- 
sent for the enemy to approach 
my capital." M. de Villars saved 
France the 24th of July following 
by his victory over Prince Eugene 
at Denain, his three saintly aunts 
meanwhile praying for his success 
in their convents at Montivilliers, 
Rouen, and Paris. 

The youngest sister of Mme. de 



256 



The Brtbeuf Family. 



Bellefonds married the Baron Cas- 
tel de St. Pierre-Eglise. She is de- 
scribed by the Pere de Bouhours as 
having every womanly perfection 
beauty and grace, a solid mind, 
a generous heart, and a lively, amia- 
ble disposition. She was simple in 
her manners, austere in her life, and 
full of Christian charity. She serv- 
ed the poor and nursed the sick 
in the hospital of her chateau, and 
was a mother to the orphans of 
the country around. Her husband, 
who was wealthy and generous, 
built the hospital she served, as 
well as the church in his parish. 
Of their four daughters three em- 
braced the religious life. The son 
became a priest, and is known for 
his Projet de Paix perpe'tuelle. His 
chanty was inexhaustible. " To 
give and forgive " was his motto, 
and he was constantly repeating: 
*' Heaven is for the beneficent." 

Such were some of the members 
of the truly Catholic family of the 
Bellefonds, in an age of great cor- 
ruption, but also of great virtues. 
It bespeaks the private worth of 
M. de Br^beuf to have numbered 
them among his warmest friends. 
He is better known by them than 
from any personal records, for his 
modesty was too great to leave 
many, even in his letters. " I like 
so little to talk of myself," he 
once wrote a friend, " that I am un- 
willing to say anything even to 
myself." 

Corneille is said to have suggest- 
ed M. de Brebeuf's undertaking 
the Pharsalia. This work at once 
became popular. Five editions of 
it were published in the seven- 
teenth century one by the Elze- 
virs and there were seven others 
before the close of the eighteenth. 
Louis XIV. read it. It was admir- 
ed in the solitude of Port Royal. 
Boileau, however, criticised it with 



great severity, and gave a blow to 
its popularity, though he acknow- 
ledged it to have many bold, bril- 
liant passages. Some admirable 
extracts from it are given in M. 
Tissot's Models of Literature which 
he considered worthy of Corneille 
or Lucan himself. One passage is 
frequently quoted for its happy 
precision and beauty of style. It 
refers to the invention of letters by 
the Phoenicians : 

" C'est de lui que nous vient cet art inge"nieux 
De peindre la parole et de parler aux yeux, 
Et par les traits divers des figures tracees 
Donner de la couleur et du corps aux pensees." 

Brebeuf's Poesies Diverses were 
dedicated to Fouquet, the celebrat- 
ed superintendent of finances in 
the time of Louis XIV., to whom 
our author remained faithful at his 
downfall. M. de Sainte-Beuve, in 
one of his Cauteries, says : " The 
greatest testimony paid Fouquet in 
his disgrace was assuredly that of 
the poet Bre'beuf, who is said to 
have died of chagrin at hearing of 
his arrest a death which in itself 
is an oraison furiebre. " 

Perhaps the most original and 
meritorious of Brebeuf's works is 
his Entretiens Solitaires, which is 
composed of prayers and pious me- 
ditations the Christian muse alone 
could have inspired. This work is 
the true index of the author's soul 
and genius. Marie Jenna, a poet 
of our day, says it breathes the ac- 
cents of David and the Imitation 
of Christ, and is not only truly spi- 
ritual, but possesses the charm of po- 
etic harmony. M. de Sainte-Beuve 
also acknowledges it to have features 
of noble and simple beauty. We 
quote one passage expressing the 
author's profound humility : 

" Que j'ai pour moi, Seigneur, de mepris et de 

haine ! 

Que souvent contre moi je me trouve en courroux 
D'etre esclave des sens, de me plaire en ma chaine, 
Et de n'etre pas tout a vous !" 



The Brtteuf Family. 



On another page is the following 
elan du emir : 

" C'est vous seul, O mon Dieu, c'est vous seul que 

j'attends ; 

C'est vous seul que je veux en Tune et 1'autre vie : 
Sans vous tous les plaisirs me sont empoisonnes, 
Sans vous rien ici-bas ne remplit mon envie, 
Et je renonce a moi si vous m'abandonnez." 

Brebeuf writes his friend Du 
Hamel : "The Entretiens Solitaires 
have on the whole been well re- 
ceived, you know where, and I 
pass for being so good that I am 
dying with shame for not being so. 
God grant that the reality may 
soon correspond to the appear- 
ances !" 

This work was dedicated to Car- 
dinal Mazarin. In the prolix and 
flattering address there is one pas- 
sage by no means common on such 
occasions : " In the midst of all 
your grandeur and occupations you 
will find time to say to yourself in 
secret that there is only one thing 
needful ; that all that is not God is 
unworthy of man ; and that the 
things that are to perish cannot 
constitute the happiness of the soul, 
which is to live for ever." 

M. de Brebeuf also celebrated 
the Paix des Pyrenees, that great 
achievement of Cardinal Mazarin's 
which contributed so much to the 
aggrandizement of Louis XIV. But 
whatever value the cardinal attach- 
ed to this homage, he only conferred 
on the author a small benefice that 
was rather an outlay than a source 
of revenue. Brebeuf hastened to 
resign it in a somewhat curious let- 
ter: "As I am persuaded your 
eminence thought the conferring of 
this benefice was doing something 
for my advantage, I feel it indis- 
pensable to return my most hum- 
ble thanks and express my disap- 
pointment. Though every favor 
bestowed by your hand is precious 
and carries with it its own recom- 
mendation, I take the liberty, mon- 
VOL. xxx. 17 



257 

seigneur, of saying that I am not 
in a condition to accept what you 
have conferred. The benefice you 
have been pleased to compliment 
me with does not suit me in any 
way. It is only a burdensome 
honor, without substance and with- 
out revenue; and as I have not 
health enough to accomplish the 
duties, or means enough to meet 
the expenses, I most humbly beg 
you, monseigneur, to place it in 
the hands of some one more worthv 
of it." 

M. de la Luzerne says the car- 
dinal, a little before his death, 
touched by the piety of the Entre- 
tiens Solitaires, proposed to in- 
crease the author's means, and his 
name was placed on the list of pen- 
sioners. According to M. Loret, 
the pension was actually conferred : 

" De feu Jules, pensionnaire, 
Qui savait fort bien discerner 
Ceux auxquels il fallait donner." 

If this is true it was a very small 
and insufficient sum. At all events 
the cardinal proposed aiding him 
in a more efficacious manner, but 
died March 4, 1661, without fulfil- 
ling his intention. Brebeuf's ill luck 
attended him to the last. " Do not 
be astonished," he wrote Du Ha- 
mel, " that I manifest so little ea- 
gerness to improve my fortunes, or 
so much indifference as to the pros- 
pect of anything better. I feel I 
have so little time to enjoy any- 
thing that I am in no mood to go 
out of my way in the pursuit." 

M. de Brebeuf's health was now 
rapidly failing, and he sought an 
asylum with his brother in the 
peaceful valley of Venoix. His mo- 
ther was already here, or accom- 
panied him. She was a Demoi- 
selle d'Armory or Emery. Brebeuf 
seems to have been the oldest son 
and to have lost his father while 



2 5 8 



The Brc'benf Family. 



young. He often mentions his 
mother with lively affection in his 
letters, and during her last illness, 
after dwelling on her sufferings, 
thus wrote : " You know my tender 
love for my mother, who is dearer 
to me than my life." He had al- 
ready lost one brother, the Sieur 
de Balanson. The poet himself is 
styled in an old document the 
Sieur de la Boissets, probably from 
a small patrimony in the vicinity 
of Ste. Suzanne, where both these 
names are still to be found. The 
tenderness of M. de Brebeuf s na- 
ture is to be seen from a thousand 
expressions in his letters, but there 
is nothing to lead one to suppose 
he ever thought of marrying. 

M. de Brebeuf passed several 
months at Venoix, calmly awaiting 
death. But how seriously he an- 
ticipated it may be seen from this 
extract : " I tremble when I con- 
sider the account God will demand 
of the talents he has given me. 
Can I justify myself by saying : 
' Lord, I have sung the wars of 
Caesar and Pompey '?" 

Shortly before his death he re- 
ceived a letter from Hardouin de 
Perefixe, Bishop of Rhodez, con- 
taining the assurance of the king's 
generous intentions towards him ; 
but once more it was too late. He 
died September, 1661, at the age of 
forty-three. 

M. Loret, the author of a weekly 
gazette in burlesque verse, thus 
announced the death of his com- 
patriot October i, 1661 : 



Dizons deux mots du trepas 
D'un veritable et grand poete 
Que de tout mon coeur je regrete. 

Ce Brebeuf, dont les nobles vers 
Sont prisez de tout 1'univers, 
Ce cher Normand de Normandie, 
Dont la plume belle et hardie 
Imitant le docte Lucain, 
Jadis si franc republicain, 
Renouvela les coups d'epee 
De Cezar et du grand Pompee : 



Enfin cet admirable autheur, 

Qui charme si bien son lecteur 

Par sa divine poe"sie 

Plus delectable qu'ambrosie, 

A vu trancher ses beaux destins, 

Depuis environs sept matins ; 

Et passe la fatale nasse 

Qu'il faret que tout le monde passe." 

A funeral eulogium was deliver- 
ed at Caen, and M. de la Luzerne 
wrote the following lines on the 
death of his friend : 

11 Sic fulsit, tumulique brevi se condidit umbris, 

Brebovius, nostri lux fugitiva soli ; 
Impare virtuti fortuna, corpore menti, 
Solam sortitus gloriam utrique parem" 

thus gleamed, then disappeared in 
the shadow of the tomb, Brebeuf 
too fleeting a light in our land. 
Less favored by fortune than 
merit, in health than talent, the 
glory he won equalled both. 

Prior Nicolas de Brebeuf pub- 
lished his brother's Defence of the 
Roman Church after the death of 
the author. After eloquently de- 
monstrating the truth of the Real 
Presence by the transformation it 
operates in the soul, he thus ad- 
dresses the Protestant reader : " Par- 
don me if I venture to say that the 
participation of this mysterious vi- 
and produces effects in our church 
that are wholly unknown among 
you. . . . I acknowledge that some 
features of your sects are not with- 
out merit, but I can say without 
exaggeration that you do not find 
in your church, as in ours, those 
transports of charity which raise 
man above himself, give him a dis- 
taste for all that is not God, or at 
least for all that does not aim at 
his glory. You do not find that 
complete abnegation of the will 
which triumphs over the passions 
and causes the purity of an ange 
to reign in the ordinary abode ol 
sensuality. You do not find that 
complete renunciation, or that ab- 
solute disengagement, from all that 
is most precious in the world all 



The Brdbeuf Family. 



259 



that is sweetest in life. You do 
not find that eagerness to meet 
death for the propagation of the 
Gospel. In a word, yours is an 
accommodating virtue that is easily 
reconciled with the satisfaction of 
the senses, that is satisfied with 
what is easiest, and voluntarily dis- 
penses with anything beyond. But 
that elevated and, so to speak, 
complete sanctity we so often ad- 
mire in religious people of our 
communion is certainly not the 
prerogative of yours. That virtue 
like a flame which ascends with- 
out ceasing, and never believes 
it has mounted sufficiently high ; 
the ardor which grows more in- 
tense from day to day ; the burn- 
ing zeal that finds its strength re- 
newed by labor; and that admira- 
ble kindling of the soul which puri- 
fies and transforms its nature such 
fervor, I say, so overpowering and 
so durable, is not the appanage of 
your followers. Whence do we de- 
rive, then, that grace so abundant 
and efficacious but in the holy use 
of a sacrament which is its source ? 
Experience shows us daily, without 
question, that extraordinary pro- 
gress in holiness is due to the 
sacred current of this inexhausti- 
ble fount. When we come to it 
with confidence and love we carry 
away a vigor of which we did not 
before consider ourselves capable. 
We are strengthened in proportion 
to the frequency of our approach, 
and we grow weak and relaxed in 
proportion to our withdrawing from 
it. This fervor would grow luke- 
warm of itself, if it did not find 
aliment and augmentation in that 
which produced it. Can we do 
otherwise, then, reader, than esteem 
what visibly produces such excel- 
lent results ? What appearance is 
there of our having scandalously 
altered the institution of our Sa- 



viour in this inconceivable mystery, 
when in our day it is as much the 
canal of divine grace and a source 
of consolation as it was in the very 
infancy of the church?" 

Prior Nicolas de Brebeuf died 
June 23, 1691. He was buried 
beside his mother and brother in 
the church of St. Gerbold at Ve- 
noix. This church was unfortu- 
nately destroyed during the Revo- 
lution, so the precise spot where 
they lay is unknown. A new 
parish church has recently been 
erected, a chapel of which is con- 
secrated to the memory of the Bre- 
beuf family. A memorial window 
is to be emblazoned with its arms : 
a bceuf furieux sable, with horns 
and hoofs or, on a field argent. 
A tablet has already been hung on 
the wall with a Latin inscription 
composed just after the death of 
the prior of Vencix, nearly two 
hundred years ago. We give a 
rude translation : 

"D. O. M. 

" Pause, whoever thou mayst be, 
and weep over those who during 
their life were honored, and whom,, 
dead, posterity will regret. 

" In the church of St. Gerbold,. 
near Caen, the same earth covers- 
two brothers and their mother.. 
The same disease carried off the 
mother and the oldest of her sons. 
The youngest was recently buried 
in the same church. With differ- 
ent degrees of merit they lived 
uprightly, but in different states of 
life. ""Both richly endowed, one 
had the natural charm of elo- 
quence; the other, grandeur and 
magnificence of style. Equal as 
to talent and birth, they enjoyed 
the highest esteem in the world. 

" In the year of this century six- 
ty-one the excellent poet Brebeuf 
ended his days. If the epic he 
wrote in French gave him an in- 



260 



Journey of a Greek Patriarch 



comparable superiority, hns genius 
also gave out a brilliant light in 
other directions. Though a great 
poet, he was also modest, pious, and 
upright. 

" The younger of the two bro- 
thers, canon, prior, and cure, when 
he spoke in public showed himself 
to be a true Christian orator. In 
his style there was grandeur with- 
out pretence, and a singular perspi- 
cacity in his persuasive language. 
He was eminently mild and indul- 
gent. The candor of his nature 
was to be read in his countenance. 
He made himself beloved by every 
one. With his friends he exercised 
a holy liberty. He molested no 
one. He gained the favor of all. 
As he Jived a Christian life, so 
he fulfilled his obligations to God 
when dying. Purified by the sa- 



craments of the church which ef- 
faces our stains, he was buried on 
the anniversary of his birth, the 
23d of June in this present year 
ninety-one, at the age of sixty- 
one." 

The glorious name of these dis- 
tinguished men has been rendered 
more illustrious by Jean de Bre- 
beuf, of the Society of Jesus, a 
scion of the same ancient and 
noble race. Like them, he sprang 
from Normandy, happy to have 
borne such a child. New France 
found in him a second Paul, a 
worthy brother of Xavier. His 
flesh slowly consumed, burned by 
red-hot hatchets, and torn off with 
incredible tortures, he passed from 
earth to heaven, giving a rare exam- 
ple of Christian courage and he- 
roic virtue. 



JOURNEY OF A GREEK PATRIARCH FROM BYZANTIUM 
TO IVJOSCOW THREE CENTURIES AGO. 



IN a recent number of the Revue 
des Deux Mondes there appears a 
most interesting article, under this 
heading, collated by Eugene-Mel- 
chior de Vogue from documents 
relating to the history of Russia in 
the sixteenth century. 

The article, which gives a gra- 
phic account of the visit made to 
Moscow in 1588 by Jeremy II., pa- 
triarch at Constantinople, when he 
was persuaded, or compelled by 
the then Russian czar, to institute 
the patriarchate of Russia in the 
person of Job, the first primate, 
and thus establish the supremacy 
of Russia over the Greek Catholic 
Church, is too long to translate 
entire. Yet a synopsis of it may 
prove interesting as well as in- 



structive, as marking the vanishing 
point of one ecclesiastical supre- 
macy, and the rise of another 
which now overshadows all East- 
ern Christianity. As M. de Vo- 
gue" justly observes, the picturesque 
though incomplete details of this 
voyage, given by his companion, a 
Greek priest, in a MS. which still 
survives, inspire us with a desire 
to make a more intimate acquaint- 
ance with the Patriarch Jeremy, 
whose personal trials and vicissi- 
tudes cast a dramatic interest over 
him. But a higher interest cen- 
tres in him, because a man per- 
sonally so obscure has really been 
the central pivot on which, three 
centuries ago, the equilibrium o 
Eastern Christianity rested. His 






from Byzantium to Moscow. 



261 



almost involuntary act gave birth 
to the Eastern question, which 
fire and sword and diplomacy have 
not yet contrived to settle on any 
permanent basis. 

Although three centuries have 
passed since the time of Jeremy, 
yet neither the place nor the ac- 
tors have greatly changed at Con- 
stantinople, where his troubles and 
trials chiefly were. After the Mus- 
sulman conquest the residence of 
the conquered Greeks and their 
priests was in the suburb of the 
Phanar. Here, remote from the 
glories of Sancta Sophia and their 
lost Byzantium, in a wretched and 
squalid suburb like the Jewish 
Giietto at Rome, dwelt, or rather 
huddled together, the descendants 
of the proud masters of the world, 
shut in by a gate which gave ac- 
cess to those forlorn lanes and 
dingy dwellings. In the midst of 
this retreat dwelt the oecumenical 
patriarch, the head of the Greek 
Church, the Christian grand vicar 
of the East, in a plain wooden 
building erected on the ruins of 
an ancient monastery. 

But had any one visited this 
humble temple on the occasion of 
one of the great festivals of the 
church he would still have found 
there the form and ceremony and 
pomps of the former age, though 
dimmed by time and persecution. 
The pontiff still sat on his ancient 
throne, preserved from the wreck 
and ruin ; the deacons wore on 
their shoulders still their gold-em- 
broidered vestments, and all the 
church paraphernalia were still 
there, with the relics in golden 
cases, the pastoral cross in pre- 
cious stones, and the pateritza a 
rod terminating in two twisted ser- 
pents, which was substituted for 
the cross. 

The patriarch himself wore a 



splendid tiara of enamelled gold 
ornamented with portraits of the 
twelve apostles and surmounted 
by a diamond cross ; and, sad 
mockery ! on top shone the impe- 
rial eagle of Constantine, grasping 
the globe in its talons the jealous 
souvenir but harmless symbol of an 
empire restricted now to the nar- 
row precincts of this poor church. 

Here, as in an imaginary world, 
dwelt these priests, to whom no- 
thing was changed and on whom 
four centuries of Mussulman rule 
had wrought no alteration ; who 
had changed no portion of his vest- 
ments, no word in his devotional 
book, no note in his chants, al- 
though the Turkish zabtie mount- 
ed guard at the door, and the cry 
of the muezzin from the minarets 
of the neighboring mosque, calling 
the "faithful" to prayer, blended 
with his devotions. In spite of 
this the Greek priest, placing his 
tiara on his brow, blessed his peo- 
ple and placed the same faith in 
his authority as in his benediction. 
Unchanged and unchangeable these 
things remained when in 1572, in 
this place and with these rights, 
they enthroned the Patriarch Jere- 
my as their spiritual head. 

" But before presenting our hero 
to the reader," says M. de Vogue, 
" let us briefly recapitulate the sad 
environments which he had to en- 
counter in mounting the throne of 
Chrysostom. For a brief moment 
Eastern Christianity was inspired 
by a gleam of hope, when she en- 
countered Mahomet II. over the yet 
smoking ruins of captured Byzan- 
tium, through his celebrated fir- 
man (or decree) which maintained 
the privileges of the oecumenical 
church the right to assemble their 
synod and elect their patriarch. 
But this firman lasted only so long 
as lasts a good intention, and soon 



262 



Journey of a Greek Patriarch 



became a dead letter. The list of 
patriarchs, up to the time of which 
we write, was but a long martyr- 
ology, and, if the truth must be 
told, a martyrology without dignity. 
It dealt no longer with catacombs 
and arenas. The Oriental drama 
was Shaksperian in its interludes of 
low comedy between auction sale 
and gibbet ; for factions fiercely dis- 
puted for the empty honors of the 
Phanar, and the cupidity of the Turk- 
ish rulers was alternately appealed 
to by the contestants. The elect of 
yesterday, with purse emptied by 
his purchase, was immediately out- 
bidden by a competitor, and had to 
yield his place peaceably, if wise; 
if not, according to caprice of sul- 
tan or vizier, by exile or impale- 
ment." The author arrays <; a sad 
procession " of patriarchs removed 
by death or exile from that high 
seat, and his recital reads like a 
page extracted from Dante's /;/- 
fcniO) so full of horrors is it. 

But still, although the place was 
really disposed of according to the 
caprice or cupidity of sultan or 
court favorites, the shadow-right of 
election and of investiture of the 
patriarch nominally was vested in 
the hands of the ecclesiastical sy- 
nod, which in the spring of 1572 
assembled at the Phanar and elect- 
ed Jeremy, a monk-metropolitan of 
Larissa, as their patriarch, who 
was solemnly installed on the Feast 
of the Ascension, the 25th of May. 

Jeremy is described by his con- 
temporaries as a tall man, of robust 
frame, with placid and immovable 
visage. Modest and of irreproach- 
able morals, he had peacefully per- 
formed his duties at Larissa, for 
which his tranquil nature suited 
him. He seems to have been a 
fair type of the ordinary Oriental 
priest, good-tempered, feeble, lym- 
phatic, and bigoted. 



His first duty was to visit the sul- 
tan at the serail to receive his inves- 
titure from the Grand Seigneur, 
at the extreme point of Stamboul, 
directly opposite the Phanar, on 
the other side of the Bosphorus 
a ceremony which, together with 
personal homage, involved the 
payment of the kharatch (or tri- 
bute) of ten thousand florins, paid 
the Turk for spiritual suprema- 
cy over his Christian subjects. 
The Sultan Mourad received the 
patriarch's homage in his palace, 
in the midst of those wonderful 
gardens of which Lamartine has 
,said : " If a man had but one hour 
to spend on earth he should pass 
it here !'' And the ceremony was 
humiliating enough, both to the 
patriarch and to the religion the 
Turk disdainfully tolerated. In 
the words of the chronicler : " The 
pontiff passed by the great church 
of Sancta Sophia (now a mosque) 
without daring to raise his eyes 
to the temple of his predecessors. 
He passed through the gate * Hu- 
mai'on,' where the body of one of 
his predecessors had hung for three 
days. He passed the third gate in 
the midst of black eunuchs, and 
taking off his slippers, which he 
left in their hands, stooped under 
the doorway, made intentionally 
low for the prostration of foreign- 
ers entering the royal presence ; 
and there, squatted on a couch 
whose covering was cloth of gold 
embroidered with precious stones, 
he saw the Grand Seigneur, who 
thus received all infidels when 
he did not compel them to pass 
through a hole in the wall." The 
new patriarch had to prostrate him- 
self on the floor at the feet of the 
sultan before receiving his firman 
of investiture. While this homage 
was being paid, in the next room 
a ceremony equally indispensable 



from Byzantium to Moscow. 



263 



was being performed viz., the 
payment by the patriarch's vicar 
to the sultan's treasurer of the 
ten thousand florins tribute, with- 
out which the patriarch's investi- 
ture was only an idle ceremony. 

These two ceremonies performed, 
the new patriarch left the serai'!, 
and, mounted on a white horse with 
golden trappings (the gift of the 
sultan), slowly rode over' again to 
the Phanar. 

In addition to his direct payment 
into the sultan's treasury the pa- 
triarch found it necessary to bribe 
high officials who could influence 
him. But, unhappily, these pro- 
tectors thus purchased either died 
or were assassinated shortly after- 

I wards, and the poor patriarch's 
troubles recommenced. So he had 
to renew his gifts to a new sul- 
tan and new favorites until his 
purse was empty, until the poor 
man complained to one of his cor- 
respondents at Tubingen (Samuel 
Hailand) that he feared to visit his 
provincial churches, lest on his re- 
turn he should find another patri- 
arch in his seat an accident which 
had really happened to his prede- 
cessor, Metrophane. This prede- 
cessor one fine day suddenly re- 
appeared at the Porte, demanding 
a retiring pension promised him, 
but not paid. The two parties 
bribed right and left, and a very 
scandalous litigation ensued. The 
result was the restoration of Me- 
trophane to the patriarchate, which 
he enjoyed but two years, his term 
being cut short by death. But his 
nephew, Theolepte, claimed the 
succession, and disputed it with 
our friend Jeremy, and managed 
so adroitly as to have his rival 
thrown into prison at the Seven 
Towers under a charge of high 
treason. But here unexpected in- 
terposition came to his relief. The 



French ambassador at Constanti- 
nople, De Noailles, accompanied 
by the Venetian ambassador, de- 
manded the patriarch's liberation, 
and the grand vizier commuted his 
punishment into exile at Rhodes. 
Jeremy, therefore, went to Rhodes, 
and took refuge at that place which 
Sultan Soliman had wrested from 
the Knights Templars fifty years 
before. But his absence did not 
aid Theolepte, his rival. "An im- 
pious and ignorant monk named 
Pacome " seized on the patriarch- 
ate without election, and in the 
midst of a general tumult he was 
bodily pitched out of the chamber. 
By doubling the tribute Theolepte 
received the imperial firman in 
1584 ; but both he and Pacome 
finally sold out to Jeremy, who was 
reinstated, and who resolved to 
visit the Grand Duke of Russia, to 
whose munificence lie trusted to 
recruit the finances of his church. 

As M. Rambaud observes in his 
History of Russia, the sixteenth 
century was for Russia what the 
fifteenth was for France a transi- 
tion period, in which national uni- 
ty and the concentration of pow- 
er in single hands went on to- 
gether. The French Louis XI., 
the great workman of French unity, 
seemed to have bequeathed his 
sombre genius to the two last Ivans 
of Russia. Ivan III. was a con- 
temporary ; but Ivan IV., surnamed 
" the Terrible," a generation later 
expelled the strangers from Russia, 
annexed the countries bordering 
on the Volga, as well as Siberia, 
and at his death Russia in Europe 
was the largest Christian state, 
and Russia in Asia existed in 
name. As Tolstoi, the Russian 
poet, says, " He passed over the 
earth like the wrath of God," and 
his death was as tragic as his life. 
It was he who first took the title of 



264 



Journey of a Greek Patriarch 



czar after subjugating Tartary, the 
word meaning a Christian Caesar. 

The third Ivan had gained a 
title as protector of Christianity 
by wedding Sophia the Byzantine, 
the last of the Paleologi, whose 
family, after the Turkish occupa- 
tion, had lived in poverty and 
misery at Rome when Paul II. 
was pope. 

Such was the court and such 
the throne to which Jeremy appeal- 
ed. 

Rehabilitated in position though 
not in purse, the patriarch left 
Byzantium for Russia at the close 
of the year 1587. He was accom- 
panied by two of his subordinates, 
Dorotheus, Bishop of Monobasia 
his zealous friend and adherent 
and, passing through the valley of 
the Danube, was joined by Arsen- 
ius, Bishop of Elassone, on Mount 
Olympus, who became their chroni- 
cler. The caravan went by way of 
Brest to Wilna, the capital of Lith- 
uania, and thence rapidly passed 
to the Russian frontier. To while 
away the tedious hours of travel 
the patriarch recounted to his com- 
panions all the trials and tribula- 
tions through which he had passed 
in his strange career. 

" He related to us," says Arsen- 
ius, "so many sad stories that the 
tears filled our eyes while he re- 
cited all his various persecutions 
and trials at the hands of the Turk- 
ish authorities." 

Thus they journeyed on towards 
that strange, new, and terrible 
country over which the Czar Feo- 
dor Ivanovitch, son of Ivan the 
Terrible, then held sway in name, 
though the real king was Boris 
Godounof, one of the great bo- 
zars, or nobles, who had wedded 
his feeble master to his sister, Irene, 
and for fourteen years ruled in his 
name. He was at once the War- 



wick and the Richelieu of Russia, 
his nominal master being more 
monk than king. 

Having in a fit of wrath stricken 
his eldest son a deadly blow, Ivan 
the Terrible pined away and died 
of despair, leaving as his successor 
a lame, weak child, Feodor, who 
mounted the throne in 1584. In- 
capable, gentle, and fanatical, his 
greatest pleasure was to steal away 
to the Convent of the Miracles, 
there to chant long liturgies with 
the choir and ring the bells with 
the sacristan, while his mayor of 
the palace governed and patiently 
paved his own way to the throne. 

In his march to the throne Bo- 
ris sought the powerful aid of the 
clergy to mould public opinion. 
He had called to the primacy of 
Moscow then the highest religious 
post one of his creatures, the old 
metropolitan Job of Rostoff, who, 
like all other church functionaries, 
was subject to the patriarch of 
Constantinople, the supreme head 
of the orthodox churches of the 
East. 

It was the purpose of Boris, 
seconded by his pious master, to 
break the tie which made the whole 
church subject to a head invested 
by the sultan, and he had already 
been intriguing at Constantinople, 
both with sultan and patriarch, to 
effect the independence of the Rus- 
sian Church, when Jeremy fell into 
his hands and became an instru- 
ment to effect his purpose. 

The czar had already asked the 
aid of his clergy to bring this about, 
calling on them to know "if God 
would permit, and the sacred Scrip- 
tures did not forbid, the high 
patriarchal seat of the Eastern 
Church to be instituted at Moscow 
instead of Byzantium." 

The clergy, in response, approved 
of the czar's project, but added 



from Byzantium to Moscow. 



265 






that it would be useful to obtain 
the consent of the entire Eastern 
Church, " that the Latins, and other 
heretics who write against our 
sacred faith, may not allege that 
the patriarchal seat was transferred 
to Moscow by the will of the czar 
alone." 

Negotiations were therefore open- 
ed, and had been going on for some 
time, with the patriarchs of Byzan- 
tium and Antioch, and the synods 
of Alexandria and Jerusalem ; but 
the proposal was coldly received by 
the high dignitaries of the Eastern 
church, naturally jealous of their 
ancient prerogatives. So, fearful of 
offending the czar, they tempor- 
ized. 

Such was the condition of affairs 
when the bozars of Smolensk, in 
July, 1588, informed the authorities 
of Moscow of the arrival in their 
town of a venerable voyager from 
Christian lands under the sway of 
the Turk. This was our friend Je- 
remy, who reached Russia with the 
very slender retinue and in the hum- 
ble manner already described. The 
response from Moscow was a re- 
buke to the vairodes of Smolensk 
for the tardiness of their intelli- 
gence : " Beware of repeating your 
negligence. No envoy or private 
person from abroad should be per- 
mitted to enter Russian territory 
without our being promptly noti- 
fied." At the same time a letter 
from the czar to the bishop of 
Smolensk contained these words : 
44 If the patriarch requests permis- 
sion to pray in our church we au- 
thorize him so to do. See that 
the church be properly prepared 
therefor, and a grand concourse 
of priests be assembled. You must 
go to the patriarch, and render him 
precisely the same honors and re- 
verence which you are accustomed 
to render to our metropolitan." 



The messenger sent to the patri- 
arch was further instructed to in- 
quire whether he still occupied the 
throne at Byzantium, "if he was 
travelling to collect alms, or if he 
was charged with a message to the 
czar from the sacred synod." 

The czar's messenger insisted 
on the immediate departure of the 
holy men for Moscow, and during 
the ten days the journey lasted they 
enjoyed the sumptuous hospitali- 
ties of the czar. Arsenius grows 
eloquent over the good cheer and 
the talent of the cooks. 

On the evening of the tenth day, 
as the travellers mounted a well- 
wooded hill, they saw their Rus- 
sian guides rush up to the summit 
and there prostrate themselves in 
prayer. It was the " Hill of Monks," 
whence the traveller first sees the 
panorama of Moscow open at his 
feet ; and the inhabitants of the 
Bosphorus, who had a right to be 
hard to please, testify to their sur- 
prise and admiration at the splen- 
did sight. A new east, entirely dif- 
erent from their own and mark- 
ed by a new character, revealed 
itself to them one which seemed 
to come from a yet remoter east 
and a more mysterious one than 
their own. It seemed less a city 
than an immense monastery stretch- 
ing away to the verge of the ho- 
rizon, with the cross conspicu- 
ous everywhere on the cupolas of 
strange shapes and dazzling colors. 
The eye was wearied in the at- 
tempt to wander over all the spires 
and domes of gold, silver, or star- 
ry azure which pierced the heav- 
ens. On each of the innumerable 
churches glittered five metal cupo- 
las. Between these churches multi- 
tudes of roofs, painted bright green, 
gave the city the appearance of a 
checker-board of bright green cop- 
per. Over all of these, as the 



266 



Journey of a Greek Patriarch 



Acropolis dominates Athens, the 
triangular plateau of the Kremlin 
looked down on Moscow. To the 
right of the Kremlin the eye was 
irresistibly attracted to the Cathe- 
dral of St. Basilius the dream of a 
mad architect, apparently modelled 
after the " kaouk," or voluminous 
turban of the pashas and Janis- 
saries with its twelve cupolas and 
their fantastic headgear. Between 
the cathedral and the sacred gate 
of the Kremlin the Red Place, de- 
nuded of its barracks by the con- 
flagration of 1587, displayed the 
gibbets of Ivan the Terrible, and 
solemn processions filed constantly 
past, conveying poor wretches to 
the gallows, while mournful litanies 
were sung as accompaniments. 

When the eye of the gazer left 
the heart of the city to survey the 
suburbs, beyond the second walls 
a labyrinth of streets and lanes, 
with gardens and ponds interven- 
ing, was distinguishable. 

In the distance, on the hills bor- 
dering the river, reposed convents 
with crenellated ramparts bound- 
ing this pious and warlike city, 
equally convenient for prayer or 
for battle. The monks were half 
soldier, half monk, always ready 
to repel invasion from the Tartars, 
even as to-day, in the Rock Convent 
of Mar Saba, in the wilderness of 
Engaddi, the Greek monks are com- 
pelled to take similar precautions 
against attacks from the Bedouins, 
whom they have dispossessed. 

Over the whole of this vast pano- 
rama sounded constantly the vibra- 
tion of the iron bells from the 
hundreds of turrets and towers, 
so that the ear, like the eye, receiv- 
ed the impression of a gigantic 
monastery from which prayer was 
ever ascending above the buzz and 
bustle of a capital absorbed in hu- 
man activities and interests. 



Well might these voyagers from 
a distant and far different land feel 
the double inspiration of pious 
emotion and of vague disquietude 
in gazing on this strange scene. 

They were escorted to the base 
of the Kremlin, where apartments 
were assigned them with great care. 
The patriarch was installed in the 
house of the Bishop of Riazan, and 
his companions and servants allot- 
ted inferior chambers in the same 
building. While he and his com- 
panions were forbidden to leave 
the house, all persons were forbid- 
den equally to visit him or them 
without special permission, which 
permission was accorded only to 
a few privileged persons. In fact, 
they found themselves in a kind 
of honorable captivity. Such was 
then the treatment of foreign am- 
bassadors, and, as such, Boris was 
treating them with a special pur- 
pose, as will be seen. 

The bozars, or nobles, came soon, 
with great pomp, to conduct the 
patriarch to their master, which 
Arsenius thus describes : " The 
nobles marched in front, magnifi- 
cently attired in golden brocade 
covered with pearls. The monks, 
in black robes, followed. His 
beatitude advanced with his two 
legates, the metropolitan of Mono- 
basia and myself, the humble Ar- 
senius of Greece." The procession 
paused at the Golden Gate of the 
palace, passed through a court 
still called the Hall of Patriarchs 
a small, dark chamber adorned 
with golden images of the saints, 
scarcely visible in the dim light. 

Everything in this palace breath- 
ed the religious respect with which 
Asia ever has surrounded its rulers, 
and Jeremy was reminded of his 
visit to the Turkish sultan. Here 
he found the Czar Feodor, seated 
on a splendid throne, over his head 



from Byzantium to Moscow. 



267 






an image of the Virgin resplendent 
with precious stones, at his right 
hand a great globe of gold repre- 
senting the world. In his hand he 
held an ivory sceptre glittering 
with diamonds and sapphires. He 
was surrounded by his higher cler- 
gy and monks in attitudes of re- 
spectful reverence. 

Boris Godounof, called by Ar- 
senius " the illustrious archonte" 
Duke of Kazan, occupied a place 
apart. The czar advanced a step 
to meet the patriarch. Two monks, 
one bearing the crown, the other 
the tiara, gave the compliments and 
benedictions, according to usage. 
The patriarch, in a piteous tone, 
told his sad story, and then the 
audience was over. The visitors 
were next taken to see the Czarina 
Irene, sister to Boris, and our 
Greeks imagined themselves once 
more on the banks of the Bosphorus 
on finding the costumes so similar ; 
for in the sixteenth century Rus- 
sian manners enforced on women 
a seclusion almost as strict as the 
Ottoman. 

The czarinas inhabited lofty 
apartments in the palace of Terem 
not unlike the Turkish harems. 
Even in our days the visitor to 
the Kremlin cannot but admire 
this beautiful building. The pro- 
cession halted at the gate, which 
men were not allowed to enter. 
Godounof alone was admitted to 
accompany the prelates. They 
were received in the first chamber 
by the female attendants of the 
czarina, clad in white from head 
to foot, without ornaments; and the 
gallant Bishop Arsenius avers that 
the splendor of these white gra- 
ces dazzled more than the snows 
of their country. But his admira- 
tion was beyond all bounds at sight 
of the czarina and the splendors 
of her surroundings. In a niche 



gilded with the precious metal, sur- 
rounded by images of saints with 
diadems and precious stones adorn- 
ing them, majestic and arrayed like 
unto them, as though she were one 
of them, sat the Czarina Irene on a 
throne of marvellous workmanship. 
She wore a tunic of Chinese silk 
richly embroidered with pearls and 
diamonds. On her head blazed a 
crown with twelve points in honor 
of the twelve apostles on each 
point a precious stone. The good 
priest, "plunged in pleasant stupe- 
faction," records her dress and or- 
naments with the minuteness of a 
man-milliner, and the gems to be 
seen to-day at the Moscow Museum 
attest his veracity. In prostrating 
himself before this human idol he 
even took time to observe the pat- 
tern of the Persian carpet, repre- 
senting the chase of tigers, stags, 
and swans, " which seemed to 
breathe." On rising he gives a 
similar inventory of the luxurious 
furniture. But all these things' 
moved him less than the beauty of 
the czarina and the spell of her 
voice. For this pompous idol prov- 
ed, after all, to be only a woman, 
and a most unhappy woman in the 
midst of her splendor. She ad- 
dressed the patriarch with tears in 
her eyes, praying his all-powerful 
intercession with Heaven that she 
might bear an heir to the throne of 
the Ivans. Twice during the short 
audience she passionately made 
this appeal, and, to interest the holy 
man more surely, sent him subse- 
quently a silver cup filled with the 
finest pearls as a reminder. 

This latter trait, though not re- 
marked on by the clever commen- 
tator in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
was equally significant of the thor- 
oughly Eastern type of this court 
and people. 

Since the days of Sara down 



268 



Journey of a Greek PatriarcJi 



to the present time all Eastern wo- 
men regard her as without honor 
who has borne no children, and all 
other blessings cannot compensate 
them, in their own eyes or those 
of their neighbors, for this default, 
which, in the case of this poor czar- 
ina, it seems the prayers of the 
patriarch, that we may suppose 
earnestly and faithfully rendered 
in consideration of his cup of 
pearls and kindness of heart, was 
never removed. 

And so Irene passes from history 
and from this touching chronicle 
of her sorrows. 

These . formalities over in the 
presentation of the patriarch to the 
two royal phantoms, who were but 
the puppets of this Russian Bis- 
marck, the real business commenc- 
ed, and Boris, taking his prisoner 
into a private study, had a serious 
talk with him. To the poor patri- 
arch this grim statesman, who could 
not be bought with gold, as were 
the Turks, was far more terrible 
than they. He again resorted to his 
only weapon supplication and 
told his piteous story of persecu- 
tion by the Turks and his long 
miseries of exile and outrage. At 
one point of his recital, depicting 
the desolation of the Holy Temple, 
soiled and profaned by the Turkish 
imaums, Jeremy burst into tears 
and exclaimed : " What earthly help 
can we hope for, except from holy 
Russia and our brothers of the or- 
thodox faith ? Therefore have we 
come here to ask Christian alms to 
rebuild a new temple to the true 
God in the ancient capital of or- 
thodoxy." The Russian man of 
blood and iron, like his modern 
successor, was no sentimentalist. 
He recalled the patriarch to prac- 
tical affairs, from weeping by the 
river of Babylon, by asking him 
what he had learned of the affairs 



of Poland during his trip. With 
the astuteness of the Greek the 
patriarch changed his note, and 
thereupon ensued a conversation 
which subsequently bore fruit. 

During this conversation Boris 
broached the subject of the pious 
project of the czar, which was 
warmly applauded by the patriarch, 
since the cunning Russian had pro- 
posed that he, Jeremy, should be the 
first to fill the high seat of which 
they conferred. Was not this a 
dream to tempt the poor patriarch 
to exchange his empty name for 
the reality on the glorious throne 
of Moscow, instead of the tottering 
chair of the Fhanar, supported by 
bribing Turkish officials, and men- 
dicancy ? 

Having secured his assent to the 
principle involved, the Russian 
made his second move, declaring 
that, in his master's judgment, the 
patriarchal seat ought to be estab- 
lished not at Moscow, but at Vla- 
dimir. Against this Jeremy vainly 
protested ; but Boris declared it was 
impossible to remove the venera- 
ble Bishop Job from this seat, nor 
could a stranger, ignorant of the 
language and of Russian usages, 
fill that place at Moscow, not to 
speak of the czar's own wishes. 

So Jeremy, who was but a child 
in the hands of the astute politi- 
cian, felt he had committed him- 
self in vain, but was powerless to 
escape the net he had rushed into. 
For Boris never had dreamed of 
giving him, a stranger, that high 
post. He had need, for his ulterior 
purposes, of his tool Job in that 
place, and his overtures to Jeremy 
about Vladimir were but intended 
to deceive ; for he knew the patri- 
arch would refuse what was equiva- 
lent to banishment and the loss of 
power. He knew he could use Jer- 
emy, and he did so without scruple. 






from Byzantium to Moscow. 



269 



The result of this conversation 
was a convocation of the bozars by 
the czar, and the following com- 
munication to them from him at 
the dictation of Boris : " It has 
pleased God to send us the patri- 
arch of Tsargrad, and we have 
thought the time propitious to ele- 
vate to the dignity of patriarch 
him whom God wills. If Jeremy 
of Tsargrad consents to accept the 
primacy of Vladimir, Moscow shall 
retain its metropolitan, Job. If 
Jeremy refuses, then let us estab- 
lish at Moscow a patriarch taken 
from our national church." 

Godounof then returned to con- 
fer with his prisoner, who proved 
obstinate. 

"What is the use of a patriarch 
remote from the czar?" answered 
the obstinate old man, convinced 
that he could make his own terms. 
Upon this the czar reassembled 
his bozars and said to them : 
"Jeremy is unreasonable in his 
demands. Job has a prior right 
to Moscow, and ought not to be 
dismissed from the shrine of the 
holy Mother of God and the mira- 
culous relics." So his opposition 
was vain. Boris now called to his 
aid the introducer of ambassadors, 
Stchelkalof, and the two alternate- 
ly cajoled and bullied the poor 
patriarch until he yielded every- 
thing, consenting to do whatever 
pleased the czar, on condition of 
being permitted to return to his 
own country. Terror had seized 
upon him in the midst of these 
grim counsellors of Ivan the Terri- 
ble. 

The formality of presenting three 
candidates to the synod, in con- 
formity with the church usage, was 
gone through and even in this 
Jeremy was not included and, of 
course, Job, the choice of the czar, 
was the one selected and proclaimed 



Patriarch of all the Russias, 23d of 
January, 1589. 

Six months had been consumed 
in these delicate negotiations, and 
Jeremy had not yet obtained his 
liberty. He was compelled to drink 
of his bitter cup even to the dregs, 
and to consecrate his rival with a 
pomp which doubtless embittered 
his regrets at his approaching re- 
turn to his poor church at the 
Phanar. 

The plans of Boris Godounof 
had at last attained that point when 
they might be brought to a head, 
and his tool and dupe, with whom 
he had played as the cat with the 
mouse, be allowed to perform his 
final function and depart to such 
peace as he might find at the Pha- 
nar under Turkish rule. On the 
23d of January, 1589, the state 
prisoner, Jeremy, whose dreams of 
the Russian patriarchate had long 
since melted into thin air, and who 
only now thought of escape from 
his gilded cage, was called upon to 
perform the last act of the come- 
dy in which he had been one of 
the chief actors. All Moscow was 
swarming like a hive of bees re- 
cently disturbed. From the early 
dawn the immense crowd, compos- 
ed of nobles, monks, and trades- 
men, thronged the open spaces 
near the palace. The cortege left 
the palace, headed by the czar, 
Boris, the two patriarchs, Jeremy 
and Job, and passed majestically 
down the red staircase. The great 
banners of the Virgin and the 
saints draped the streets along the 
path of the procession. The hun- 
dreds of church-bells in this "city 
of chimes" made the air vibrate 
for miles, while the silver bells of 
the Tower mingled their high notes 
with the deeper bass of the iron 
ones below. The procession pass- 
ed through the great gate, above 



270 



Journey of a Greek Patriarch 



which the colossal image of " Pa- 
nagia " (the Virgin) towered aloft, 
seeming to survey with fixed eyes 
the sacred city spread out below 
her feet. 

Reaching the cathedral, where 
reigned an obscurity like that of 
night, relieved only by 'the burn- 
ing lustres with their thousands of 
wax candles, the priests and people, 
all alike happy, defiled along the 
naves. In the midst of the church 
an elevated platform had been 
raised, over which was a purple 
canopy of velvet. Up the steps of 
this platform slowly marched the 
patriarch, the tiara on his head, 
clad in pontifical robes, his arms 
supported by two acolytes. The 
bishops ranged themselves in a cir- 
cle around him. Feodor, the czar, 
ascended his throne. The office 
commenced; the chant resounded 
in that melancholy but powerful 
melody dear to the Russian Church 
and dedicated to the czar and the 
two patriarchs. At a fixed time 
two cushions were placed together, 
surrounded by the men-at-arms. 
The metropolitan Job, the elect of 
God, appeared between the lights 
and clouds of incense. The pa- 
triarch of Byzantium, supported by 
archdeacons, appeared opposite to 
him. Then the multitude saw one 
of these venerable priests laying 
his hands on the head of the other, 
and invoking the people to salute 
their new spiritual master, while 
calling down the Holy Spirit to 
bless him. The two brothers ex- 
changed the kiss of peace, while, 
kneeling on their two cushions, 
Jeremy of Byzantium and Job of 
Moscow remained until the rite 
was finished. 

Well says M. de Vogiie that, in 
exchanging this kiss of peace with 
Job, Jeremy had communicated 
not only the breath of his own life, 



but also that of the institution 
which he personified ; through it 
the Greek had passed to the Mos- 
covite the better part of the mo- 
ral heritage which Byzantium had 
guarded until then ; and that after 
it he would return to the Phanar 
a discrowned pontiff. Truly the 
church-bells of Ivan the Terrible 
might well sound their most glad- 
some note to announce to the Rus- 
sian people that the head of the 
Eastern Church had relegated his 
mission to them. Perhaps of all 
that crowd the piercing vision of 
old Boris Godounof alone beheld 
the future consequences of that 
day's work, which was his. 

This memorable day finished 
with a sumptuous banquet at the 
palace. The czar dined alone at 
a small table, laying aside his dia- 
dem and substituting for it a pur- 
ple cap surmounted by a ruby as 
large as an egg. Jeremy sat at 
the table next the czar, at his right. 
The banquet lasted for six hours, 
with eighteen changes of plates. 
The magnificence and luxury of 
this repast cannot be described ; 
neither France, Hungary, nor Bo- 
hemia could surpass it. 

On returning home the foreign 
prelates found substantial proofs 
of royal munificence in the splen- 
did gifts awaiting them the Greek 
priest catalogues all with exceeding 
unction among which were pre- 
cious vases, Siberian furs, the stuffs 
of Italy and of Damascus. So 
Boris royally rewarded this sur- 
render on the part of the Greek 
prelates. 

Poor Jeremy had given all that 
was asked of him, and received all 
he could now expect. Yet his de- 
liverance was still delayed, al- 
though the sole wish he now en- 
tertained was to escape from the 
country where he had been in- 



from Byzantium to Moscow. 



271 



duced to entertain such high hopes 
and meet so bitter a disappoint- 
ment. Under different pretexts, 
however, they kept him lingering 
until his presence might strengthen 
the new creation in which he had 
been forced to play so conspicu- 
ous a part. 

Then the " honored guests," or 
prisoners, were liberated at last, 
and after a final audience with the 
czar, who escorted the patriarch to 
the Golden Gate with all the honors, 
they departed for Byzantium again. 

When their vanishing shadows 
had ceased to be visible it might well 
have been said that they had left 
their souls behind them. Sadly 
did the Greek priests retrace their 

I' sps across the deserts, more than 
mbtful of the reception awaiting 
em at home. Traversing Poland, 
Moldavia they found awaiting 
em a messenger from the sultan, 
dering their return to Constan- 
lople. Their long absence had 
:cited suspicion at the Porte, as 
ill as at the Phanar. 
On reassuming his duties Jeremy 
had to assemble a convocation of 
the elders to ratify his acts in 
Russia. He encountered not only 
the opposition of his brother pa- 
triarchs of Asia, but also of his 
two travelling companions, Doro- 
theus and Arsenius, who turned 
against him, and who boasted of 
their refusal to co-operate with 
him in Russia. Yet, although they 
gained great credit for this, and 
ecclesiastical historians have prais- 
ed them for their resistance, the 
archives of Moscow exhibit their 
seals and signatures, as well as those 



of the patriarch, appended to that 
document. 

After bitter recriminations the 
council, finding that the matter 
was concluded, consented to the 
act, but affixed the condition that 
the successors of Job should after- 
wards obtain investiture from the 
oecumenical see of Byzantium, 
thus preserving the shadow after 
the loss of the substance. Practi- 
cally this was never enforced, and 
formally abolished a century after 
by Denis II. 

With this act, wherein he was 
the unwilling accomplice, the in- 
terest in our wandering prelate 
ends and history ceases to take 
notice of him. He died in obscu- 
rity. Five years later his mortal 
remains were deposited in a hum- 
ble grave at the monastery of 
Chalki or of Pantocrator, and no 
man can point out his resting- 
place to-day. But the work in 
which he was the unconscious in- 
strument has survived him, and 
"holy Russia" is the guide and 
guardian of orthodox Eastern Chris- 
tianity to-day. 

Four years later the king-monk, 
Feodor, followed him, and in his 
last moments had a vision, em- 
balmed in the verse of the Russian 
poet, Pushkin, in which the dying 
monarch saw and conversed with 
the luminous apparition of " the 
great patriarch," whose image 
had impressed itself on the soul of 
the departing ; since the scene at 
which they jointly officiated was 
one to stamp itself on the mind of 
the feeble fanatic as the greatest 
of his reign. 



272 



Perraud, the Sculptor. 



PERRAUD, THE SCULPTOR. 



THE life of this great artist fur- 
nishes a striking example of what 
can be effected by a determined 
will. The sculptor of the " Faun 
and Bacchus," of " Despair >; and 
the " Adieux," was during his life- 
time deservedly appreciated as an 
artist, but it had been given to 
very few to know him as a man. 
He was one of those who prefer to 
live unknown to the multitude, and 
whose existence may be summed 
up in one word work. 

Never, perhaps, had any artist, at 
the outset of his career, more dif- 
ficulties to overcome, more obsta- 
cles to surmount, more opposition 
to vanquish, or more trials to un- 
dergo than Perraud ; but his was 
an irresistible vocation. If others, 
at starting, have had to struggle 
against poverty and to conquer or 
soften family opposition, still there 
are none whose beginnings have 
been so full of difficulty, whether 
as regards the condition of origin, 
education, or surroundings, all of 
which were, in his case, directly 
contrary to the development of his 
mental and artistic faculties. 

J. J. Perraud was born in an ob- 
scure hamlet buried among the 
valleys of the Jura. His father, a 
poor artisan, sent him as a child 
to tend sheep until he should be 
strong enough to follow the calling 
of a vine-dresser, to which he was 
destined. In his native village of 
Monay there was neither church 
nor school ; nevertheless at ten 
years of age, having never seen 
either a statue, a painting, or any 
kind of carved work soever, he al- 
ready busied himself with model- 
ling, with no guide but his own 



fancy, or in imitation of such types 
as came in his way figures, flow- 
ers, or other objects. " In sum- 
mer," he tells us in the notes he 
has left of the first half of his life, 
" when I was a shepherd-boy, I 
used to get a kind of clay from the 
bottom of ditches, and fashion with 
it whatever came into my head 
soldiers, or a bourgeois whom I had 
seen pass by ; or else, with no tool 
but a wretched knife, I cut in wood 
models of ploughs and wagons, 
etc.," adding, with perhaps a re- 
miniscence of the pride he had for- 
merly experienced, "little men that 
could move their eyes." 

At seventeen years of age he 
scarcely knew how to read. As 
we have said, there was no school 
at Monay, but at the commence- 
ment of every winter day-labor- 
ers who were short of work came 
in from the neighborhood to try 
their hand, for want of anythinj 
else, as pedagogues. For a month- 
ly payment often or twelve sols, ac- 
cording to circumstances, they open- 
ed a class for reading and writ- 
ing in some empty barn ; after 
which that is, when the return ol 
spring sent back alike masters an< 
pupils to the field the class was 
naturally closed ; those who had 
kept it quitted their tutorial func- 
tions, and, hiring themselves to 
farmers, were sent into the moun- 
tains to make cheeses. 

In a letter written about ten 
years ago to M. Max Chaudet, 
Perraud thus recalls his early 
years : " You could never imagine 
what it is to exist in an atmosphere 
in which there is an utter absence 
of anything vivifying, in which 



Perraiid, the Sculptor. 



2/3 






there is not an atom that can 
awaken the slightest intelligence- 
not a book to be had, or even seen, 
except the Parochial * Hours ' in 
Latin, which nobody understands, 
and for subjects of conversation 
nothing but the incessant, absorb- 
ing anxiety to find the means for 
procuring daily bread ; to be al- 
ways exposed to wind and wea- 
ther, hot or cold, wet or dry; often 
laden like mules under circum- 
stances such as these the imagina- 
tion reaches no further than the 
stable where one has to throw 
down the bundle of straw." 

In the same letter Perraud re- 
lates how he discovered his voca- 
tion : 

"At last, however, as ours is an 
nge of progress, a new schoolmas- 
ter had the brilliant idea of sup- 
plementing the Hora by little books 
in which were twenty-five trades, 
each of whose names began with a 
consecutive letter of the alphabet, 
with a woodcut on the opposite 
page representing the artisan at 
work. To me, always addicted as 
I was to disturbing the attention 
of the class by the manikins of 
my own production, these pictures 
were a revelation." 

After many difficulties, among 
which was the, for a long time, in- 
superable one of obtaining his fa- 
ther's consent, Perraud was at last, 
at the age of seventeen, allowed to 
go as apprentice to a cabinet-maker 
at Salins, knowing nothing beyond 
what he had learnt from his book 
of " Hours " and his illustrated 
alphabet. 

It was this peasant boy> left for 
so long in absolute ignorance of 
everything but what related to the 
trade of a vine-dresser, brought up 
without the faintest notion of his- 
tory or grammar, who, by means of 
patient research and long hours of 
VOL. xxx 18 



solitary study, was one day to be- 
come not only an artist of the 
highest order, but also a learned 
and literary man in the fullest 
sense of the word. 

When still too poor to purchase 
any books he made the beginnings 
of a library with the extracts or 
transcriptions of books which he 
had contrived to borrow ; and when 
later he increased this first trea- 
sure by the addition from time to 
time of a volume acquired at the 
cost of the hardest privations, he 
spent all his evenings, and frequent- 
ly a portion of the night, in earnest 
and persevering efforts to make up 
for lost time, and, without the aid 
of any other professor than himself, 
to acquire the classical knowledge 
which he had been unable to ob- 
tain at the ordinary age. In this 
life of unremitting toil and study 
he persevered for years, and its 
significant results appear in his let- 
ters and in the writings of various 
kinds which have been collected by 
the loving hand of a friend, and 
which will shortly be published. 

" You see," he wrote to M. 
Chaudet, " neither parents nor any 
single individual ever held out a. 
perch for me ; and, besides, it is 
amusing to do everything one's self 
and not have a suggestion from any- 
body." 

Here we have Perraud exactly. 
His years of eager and persevering 
labor seem to have been ever pre- 
sent to his mind. He often refer- 
red to them in his letters and in 
conversation with his few intimate 
friends. A short time before his 
death, in speaking of his success in 
1847, when he obtained the highest 
prize for his bas-relief of " Tele- 
machus taking back to Phalantis the 
Ashes of Hippias" of which Hor- 
ace Vernet, who was one of the 
judges, said that " he who had ima- 



) tlie Sculptor. 



gined that work could not be other- 
wise than a man of heart as well 
as talent " Perraud wrote again : 
" I had attained the object of my ar- 
dent ambition, but the way had 
been rough. The progress which 
had led me on thus far had only 
been made very slowly, and by 
dint of going often over the same 
ground. The little that I knew I 
owed, more than anything, to my 
obstinate determination. ... I 
could wish that the memory of 
that period of my youth, if it should 
survive me, might help to raise the 
courage of young men who find 
themselves in the same position as 
my own has been. I could wish 
that my example should convince, 
them that nothing can be acquired 
without much trouble, and that we 
must incessantly appeal to all the 
powers that we possess, if we are 
to obtain even moderate results." 

To judge of the space mental- 
ly and intellectually traversed by 
Perraud it is necessary to read 
letters written towards the close of 
his life. Here is one, for example, 
to M. Max Ghaudet, dated from 
Fontainebleau, 1873 : 

" I do not remember if you know 
Fontainebleau. It is finer, more in- 
teresting, more varied, more vast 
than Versailles. I am speaking of 
the palace only. This Italian Re- 
naissance, shaped in proportions 
so grand, is particularly remark- 
able for its stately and majestic as- 
pect, which to my mind has always 
been somewhat lacking in French 
architecture. What bold and grace- 
ful combinations in the various 
forms of decoration ! What gold ! 
what painting ! the remains of 
which strike with wonder those 
who know how to find them among 
so many meaningless restorations. 
Only, inversely to Michael Angelo, 
who was more architect and sculp- 



tor than painter, since he treated 
his paintings, if we may say so, in 
a sculptural manner, the Primativc 
has composed his sculptures as if 
they were paintings; and as sculp- 
ture has not, like painting, the bene- 
fit of aerial perspective, he has con- 
trived to do three times too much, 
and, besides, it is as bad as can be 
imagined it is atrocious. 

" I am not going to give you a 
description of this magnificent and 
truly royal abode, full of so many 
memories forming a part of our 
history, some glorious, others sad 
and painful, and some again ridi- 
culously puerile. I visited the 
principal sites in the forest, some 
of which are exempted from com- 
mercial speculation and classed 
among the historical monuments of 
the country in the same way as 
are our cathedrals, etc. A particu- 
lar species of oak, having a tall 
stem without branches, and high 
as the great fir-trees of my own 
part of the country, is magnificent. 
I went also to Barbizon,, the inn 
adorned by artists, but the merits 
of which are far below the stories 
told of it in newspapers The inn- 
keeper appears to have soon be- 
thought himself of offering the pa- 
nels most in view, and therefore 
most inviting, to the daubs of fancy- 
painters, and then selling them to 
tourists. Nothing remains but 
what is utterly insignificant." 

In referring to his colossal group 
of " Day " he writes : "This great 
group, for which I am making so 
many sacrifices, almost deprives 
me of my senses. At night I am 
either painfully sleepless or else 
dreaming that it is all limbs with- 
out trunks neither man nor wo- 
man, the woman thrown too much 
backward, the man on the left like 
a kite (I. mean the coleoptera) ; then, 
when morning returns, I tranquil- 



"Res Italics" 



275 



lize myself and go to verify the 
causes of my nocturnal troubles. 
. . . How much self-tormenting 
only to bring forth a mouse! . . . 

"Perhaps you are thinking that 
when a man has such absurdities 
in his head he needs country air. 
But, won cher-t when inveterate 
gamblers go into the country it is 
still to spend their nights in gam- 
bling; and so I too, not being able 
to carry on my game anywhere but 
in rny atelier, am quite forlorn when 
I find myself out of it. Heaven 
knows, however, that my brain is 
much more active than my body. 
. . . But, my young friend, I am 
growing old. It seems to me, when 
I am writing no matter what, that 
[ see displayed before me all the 
wearisome repetitions which have 
been trailing along the ground from 
the beginning of the world. In 
fact, there is for the old no more 
anything new but a transformation. 
Jt is always the same thing : once 
the turn of the circle made, we be- 
gin again ; there is only the differ- 
ence between a modern crinoline 
and the hoop and camlet petticoat 
of our grandmothers. But the 
manikin is always the same : love, 
hate, presumption, passion, avarice, 



ambition, and all that follows in 
their train ; this is what we begin to 
understand and to regard philosoph- 
ically in proportion as the frame 
withers and the hair grows thin." 

Perraud's death was hastened by 
his sorrow for the death of his wife. 
When she who had been the faith- 
ful aid and companion of his life 
was taken he felt that for him 
too all was finished in this world, 
and, patiently and calmly awaiting 
his end, he gradually sank after his 
great bereavement. 

" In proportion," he wrote, " as 
Time multiplies the weeks and 
months of my sad solitude, he hol- 
lows it into a deeper chasm and 
makes a vaster void." And again : 
" I am like the leaf of *a tree in the 
season when the fruit is fallen. I 
no longer shelter anything, but re- 
main only waiting until the wind 
of autumn carries me away." 

The invincible courage, endur- 
ance, and dignity of one so worthy 
of esteem, both in his private cha- 
racter as a man and his exalted 
merit as an artist, as M. Perraud,. 
present a noble and encouraging, 
example to many a young artist 
and to many a man of talesvt and 
perseverance yet unknown. 



' RES ITALICS." 



ROME, September 17, 1879. 
THE Italia Militare of August 31 pub- 
lished the following, which may be re- 
garded as official : " Under the title ' Res 
Italics' the Streffleurs Oesterreich ische Mi- 
litarische Zeitschrift, an official Austrian 
review for military matters, has publish- 
ed a study of Col. Haymerle, formerly 
military attache of the Austro-Hungarian 
embassy in Rome, in which study our 
affairs are discussed (especially from a 
political point) with an incorrect know- 



ledge of facts and a singular fallacy of 
judgment. We cannot conceal the sur- 
prise we have felt in seeing underneath 
the article published in the Streffleitr's 
Oesterreichische Militarise he Zcitschrift 
the name of a person who, until a few 
weeks ago, occupied an official position 
among us ; and our surprise increases, 
considering the special character of the 
review in which the work of Col. Hay- 
merle has been inserted." There is a 
tone of injured innocence coupled with 



2 7 6 



'Res Italica" 



ingenuousness in this note which is not 
unfamiliar in our recollections of the 
Italian Revolution. The unmistakable 
etiquette of the ancient fabric of Machia- 
velli crops out in its very wording. Col. 
Haymerle is the brother of the Baron 
Haymerle, who has been for some years 
the Austrian ambassador to the court 
of the Quirinal, and who is to succeed 
Count Andrassy as Minister of Foreign 
Affairs. On the colonel's return to Vi- 
enna this summer he published the re- 
sult of his observations of Italy in the 
brochure already adverted to. The title 
is very comprehensive ; but the subject- 
matter is very particular and very deli- 
cate, affecting the agitation in favor of 
" Unredeemed Italy," as the Austrian 
provinces of Trent and Trieste are here 
styled. The importance of the work is 
thus described by the Pesther Lloyd: 
" It is the first time that a personage in 
a high position reveals with so much 
frankness the action of Unredeemed Italy. 
Col. Haymerle has registered in this 
book the result of observations made 
during a series of years observations 
which were naturally facilitated for him 
by the precious information with which 
his brother was able to furnish him. He 
shows the machinations, the ramifica- 
tions, and the influence of Unredeemed 
Italy, not in the form of a sketch, more 
or less vague, but with particulars which 
could only be known by a man who held 
his position and was charged with the 
mission which belonged to him. It is a 
dark picture which he displays before 
our eyes. He shows that the revolu- 
tionary movement is much deeper and 
more serious than has been believed 
hitherto. But the most remarkable 
thing is that M. d'Haymerle does not 
hesitate to charge the Italian govern- 
ment and its agents with the responsi- 
bility for the excesses of the Unredeem- 
ed Italy. He proves that there is an 
excessive agitation against the integrity 
of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy not 
only in the press, in the associations, in 
the books, but that these machinations 
ate carried systematically into the field 
of public education." 

A brief review of the work will show 
whether Col. Haymerle has discussed 
Italian affairs " with an incorrect know- 
ledge of facts and a singular fallacy of 
judgment," as asserted by the officious 
Italia Militare. He writes in the outset : 
"When we spoke in the preface of the 



political programme of the Italian ac- 
tion-party, we said that, first ofall.it was 
a question of gaining Austrian territory, 
and that the annexation of ' Italian pro- 
vinces under foreign domination' was 
for the present only announced prj forma. 
We will now tell precisely why Austria 
should be the first object of the political 
action of Italy. It is for motives of op- 
portunity arising from the idea that it 
would be easier, when a favorable occa- 
sion is presented, to wrest provinces 
from the imperial state, which is expos- 
ed to several difficulties on account of 
its central situation in Europe and its 
internal conditions, than from other 
states which, being in a more advanta- 
geous geographical position, are there- 
fore considered more powerful. Before 
entering into this idea it is necessary, for 
reasons of historic truth, to show how 
this political action is being prepared ; 
a few facts of very recent date will suffice 
to give an approximate idea thereof." 
Here the author narrates at length how 
in 1876, when the Italians celebrated as 
a national feast the centenary of the bat- 
tle of Legnano, one would naturally sup- 
pose that the relative demonstrations 
would be directed against the North 
Germans. On the contrary, in the pre- 
sence of the Minister of the Interior, 
officially represented by the prefect of 
Milan, of deputations from the army and 
navy and from both houses of Parlia- 
ment, the flags of Trent and Trieste were 
borne in procession draped in mourn- 
ing, and discourses were delivered on 
the future annexation of those provinces. 
At the demonstration of Mentana in 
1877, where France ought naturally to 
have been the object of the patriotic 
fury of the demonstrators for it was the 
French chassepots that created the havoc 
among the republicans Austria was 
mercilessly attacked in discourses which 
aimed at the annexation of Trent and 
Trieste. On the catafalque in the Pan- 
theon of Rome upon which lay the re- 
mains of Victor Emanuel the minis- 
ters might have seen immortelles bearing 
the inscription, Trieste (or Trent] to her 
King ; as also, among the flags of tin- 
One Hundred Cities of Italy which deco- 
rated the streets through which the fune- 
ral cortege passed, that of the capital of 
Upper Istria. The commemoration of 
the Five Days at Milan during which 
Radetzky and his troops evacuated the 
city is always an occasion for the bitter- 



Iia!ic(z" 



277 






est invectives against Austria. The 6t'i 
of February, 1853 the day on which 
bands of armed assassins emerged from 
the wine-cellars of Milan and treachei- 
ously murdered every Austrian soldier 
found in the streets is celebrated as a 
patriotic feast, and a grand procession is 
made yearly to the cemetery to lay flow- 
ers on the tombs of the so-called " mar- 
tyrs of the justice of the Austrian slaugrr 
terers." The famous Peace Congress 
which was held at Milan in 1878 very 
nearly terminated ridiculously in a de- 
claration of war against Austria. The 
fanatical demonstrations in favor of Un- 
redeemed Italy which succeeded the 
Congress of Berlin are too recent to re- 
quire recapitulation. The throwing into 
the canal at Venice of the arms of the 
Austrian consulate, and the violation 
of the laws of hospitality, sacred even 
among the barbarians, which was involv- 
ed in the demonstrations that took place 
before the palace of the Austrian am- 
bassador at Rome and before the consu- 
lates of Leghorn and Genoa, militate but 
too strongly against the loyalty of pur- 
pose of the Italians ; while the fact that 
anti-Austrian demonstrations were or- 
ganized in the most retired villages and 
towns of Italy, where little or nothing is 
known of politics, betrays a systematic 
prejudicing of the ignorant classes 
against Austria. In these demonstra- 
tions the mendacity of the orators and 
of the journals that promoted the move- 
ment is simply shocking. For example, 
it was given out that the army which oc- 
cupied Bosnia was composed principally 
of Tridentine and Istrian regiments, and 
this was done for the malicious purpose 
of exterminating, if possible, the Italian 
race ; and it was quietly stated, and stu- 
pidly believed, that one Italian regiment 
the Twenty-second lost two thousand 
men in the first engagement. The fact, 
however, is that the Twenty-second 
Imperial regiment of infantry is not 
Italian exclusively, but is composed in- 
differently of recruits from Gorizia and 
the Adriatic coast. Belonging to the 
Seventh Division, which had its head- 
quarters at Trieste, it was sent to the 
seat of war with that division, but not 
for any special political motive. Even 
supposing that the regiment in question 
were exclusively Italian, the fact of its 
being sent to the field of action proves, 
not the malicious assertion of the Italian 
demagogues, but the significant truth 



that the government placed implicit con- 
fidence in the loyalty and bravery of the 
Italian soldiers. 

These agitations are, unfortunately, 
not without their fruits, chief among 
which is a deep-rooted antagonism of 
the masses against Austria. Even the 
sympathy of the more educated classes 
is lessened considerably under the false 
impression of the terrorism which reigns 
in the empire ; nay, more, one of the first 
conditions towards gaining popularity 
in Italy is to recognize, in some form or 
other, the aspirations of the people to- 
wards the future annexation of Trent 
and Trieste. And here a very natural 
query presents itself: Why should Aus- 
tria alone be the object of Italian aggres- 
sion? Do not France, and Switzerland, 
and England hold under their sway ter- 
ritories which are historically and geo- 
graphically Italian? And is not the 
conservatism of Germanv most odious 
to the advanced liberals of Italy? The 
explanation of this extraordinary phe- 
nomenon is to be found in a calculation 
on the greater probability of success 
should the realization of the " national 
programme " begin with Austria. After 
the violent conquest of Austrian terri- 
tories which would in consequence in- 
crease the military force of Italy the 
turn of the other nations would come. 
This probability is based on the hope of 
foreign complications in which Austria 
would be involved, and which would 
offer Italy a potent alliance against her, 
and also of internal difficulties which 
would paralyze her strength abroad. 
But this hope is a delusion. Although 
dualism is not the bean ideal of political 
organization, still for those who deduce 
therefrom the weakness of the monarchy 
the reply is ready : Austria will in any 
possible complication prove, as she did 
in 1858, that her people recognize but 
one law, and that is the law of patriot- 
ism. The Empire of Austria is made up 
of heterogeneous elements indeed ; but 
these elements harmonize marvellously 
in affection for the house of Hapsburg 
and in their desire to preserve intact the 
integrity of the state. The army counts 
Austrians, Hungarians, Bohemians, Ru- 
thenians. Poles, Slavonians, Istrians. 
Rumenians, and Austria is proud of 
them, for their oft-tested valor and de- 
votion to the emperor and to the state 
give to their national virtues the impress 
of a noble, patriotic rivalry. All these 



2;8 



'Res Italics" 



nationalities have lived in political and 
economical union with Austria for cen- 
turies, and neither the Thirty Years' 
War, nor the hardships of the campaign 
of Silesia, nor the violence of the Napo- 
leonic wars which oppressed Austria for 
twenty years could shake the solid edi- 
fice of the monarchy. 

But turn to Italy. Individualities 
more antagonistic than those of the Sici- 
lian, for instance, and the Piedmontese, 
of the Neapolitan and the Lombard, can 
hardly be imagined ; while so terrible a 
national cancer as regionalism is known 
only in Italy. As to political instability 
in Austria, the accusation comes with a 
ridiculously bad grace from Italy. Since 
1871 Austria has had but one Minister 
of Foreign Affairs ; Italy as many as 
seven Visconti, Melegari, Depretis, Ccr- 
ti, Cairoli, Depretis again, and now 
Cairoli anew. The facts of Villa Ruffi, 
Arcidosso, Rimini, and Benevento ; the 
disasters which followed the attempt 
upon King Humbert at Florence and 
Pisa ; in fine, the efforts of the republi- 
cans to overthrow the government, form 
a lively contrast with Austria, where 
such agitations are unknown. Can 
Italy undertake an isolated campaign 
against Austria? Certainly not, consid- 
ering the numerical force of the respec- 
tive armies. She would always have to 
calculate upon foreign alliances, as she 
, did in 1859 and in 1866. But even in 
this Italy has little to hope for. The Ita- 
lians interpreted the saying of Bismarck, 
that Austria should transfer her centre of 
gravity to the East, as an indirect encour- 
agement of their aspirations. But it is 
nevertheless evident that the sincere 
friendship of Austria and Prussia is 
founded entirely on the interests of both 
nations. 

Suppose that Italy should, in some 
way or other, effect the annexation of 
the desired provinces. Northern Tyrol 
would in that case become part of Ger- 
many, whose immediate vicinity to Italy 
would expose the latter's independence 
to serious danger. In fact, turn where 
they will, the Italians can discern no 
probability of their being able to secure 
Trent and Trieste. Italy cannot carry 
her revolutionary aspirations into the 
international field. The peace o;" Eu- 
rope is too precious to be risked in favor 
of a nation that, under the pretext of a 
mission of liberation, is ready to help 
any state that violates peace, simply for 



its own advantage. Italy can gain no- 
thing by provoking this antagonism with 
Austria. Granting even that she got 
possession of Trent, her territory would 
certainly be increased, but with this an 
increase in the public debt of from one 
to two milliards for the expense of the 
war. Or do the Italians indulge in the 
hope of imposing upon Austria the pay- 
ment of five milliards, and repeating the 
history of France and Prussia? A war 
for Italy would be simply a financial 
catastrophe. At the end of November, 
1878, Italy had in circulation 1,586,000,- 
ooo in paper money, and possessed but 
150,000,000 in coin to support the cur- 
rency. The bourgeoisie are taxed beyond 
endurance, the rural population is groan- 
ing in the most squalid misery, conse- 
quently there is little hope of being able- 
to increase the resources of the state. 

This is a brief summary of Col. Hay- 
merle's book. He concludes thus : "If 
for some time a serious discontent has 
manifested itself among us in the public 
opinion and in the press, it is simply the 
natural consequence of the agitation 
that has been kept up continuously for 
years, by every means and in all man- 
ners, in the press, in the right of reun- 
ion, in the literature and in the instruc- 
tion, against all that is sacred in our 
country an agitation which has cer- 
tainly done no harm to our position in 
Europe. As we have said, the govern- 
ment and people of Austria and Hun- 
gary desire a lasting friendship with 
Italy. But we ask absolute reciprocity, 
something more sincere than that friend- 
ship which is only to last as long as 
there is no embarrassment imminent, or 
which asks in exchange for services a 
grant of territory. The empire can lose 
a province in an unhappy war (we hope, 
however, that its valorous army will 
know how to avoid this disaster) ; but it 
will never renounce territory which its 
glorious history of centuries accorded to 
it as an inalienable inheritance." 

This book is a bombshell thrown by 
a dexterous hand into the very midst of 
the Italian agitators. The consternation 
produced among the plotters assumed 
the aspect of a panic. It is disconcert- 
ing, to say the least, to be surprised in 
malfeasance. The Radicals protested 
and threatened. The Moderates depre- 
cated in terms like those of the note of 
the Italia Mi it are. The burden, how- 
ever, of all their dcc'arhations may be 






"Res Italic*:* 



2/9 



reduced to the accusation that Col. 
llaymerle abused his position by pub- 
lishing a work that brings odium upon 
the government to which he was accred- 
ited. This accusation is at cross-pur- 
poses with common sense. The mission 
of a diplomat is to promote and main- 
tain good relations between his own 
state and that to which he is accredited ; 
but, at the same time, his principal duty 
is to look to the interests of his own 
government. It is the same old law 
of well-regulated charity beginning at 
home. Hence he must be continually 
on the alert lest anything occur which is 
derogatory to the dignity or interests of 
his country; and should he discover an 
attempt, either secret or overt, against 
the one or the other, he is in duty bound 
to apprise his government of the same. 
Col. Haymerle, in publishing his obser- 
vations on the anti-Austrian demonstra- 
tions in Italy, and drawing conclusions 
from the facts, did his duty ; and that he 
did it well is evident from the rage of 
those whose machinations he revealed. 
Had Col. Haymerle worked directly 
and secretly against Italy, endeavoring 
to disaffect the people towards the exist- 
ing institutions to the advantage of his 
own government, then, and then only, 
could the accusation of the Italian libe- 
rals be made and justly sustained. Had 
the facts narrated in the " Res Italicse " 
been either exaggerated or falsified the 
Italians might complain ; but the unbro- 
ken silence of official Italy, and the non- 
appearance of any categorical denial of 
the facts in any of the journals paid out 
of the Reptile Fund, are a very strong 
corroboration of Col. Haymerle's state- 
ments. 

For the rest, the Italians, before charg- 
ing any one with an abuse of diplomatic 
advantages, ought to review their own 
lives. La Marmora, in his book, Un 
pj piu di luce, writes : " As to sending 
abroad an official representative of a 
sovereign, in order that he may conspire 
officially against the sovereign to whom 
he is accredited, it is such an action that 
I cannot imagine a government that 
would dare propose it, and much less 
a diplomat who could accept." Pied- 
mont is that government ! Its diplomats 
were as base as their employers. The 
great annalist, Cesare Cantu, speaking 
of the Revolution of 1859 and 1860, 
writes: "The Piedmontese party work- 
ed underground. In 1850 Count Ales- 



sandro Orsi, of Ancona, published that a 
hatred should by all means be kept up 
against the papal domination, and he 
endeavored to unite the two liberal fac- 
tions in favor of the house of Savoy. 
The Marquis Gian Antonio Migliorati, 
Sardinian cJnr^e d'affaires at Rome, in- 
troduced to Orsi the principal men of 
action ; he travelled through those States 
(the Papal), creating commissaries, gain- 
ing over the Carbonari and the Mazzi- 
nians, and made arrangements for a gen- 
eral congress to be held in Ancona. 
In Rome itself, under the shadow of the- 
Count Delia Minerva, the fusionistr, 
plotted." With the doings of Signer 
Boncompagni at Florence we are fami- 
liar also. Of this "patriot" Lord Strat- 
ford de Redcliffe said in the House of 
Lords that the grand duke could have 
legitimately hanged him at the door of 
his palace ; and Lord Normanby wrote : 
" A thing of which we have no previous 
example to wit, that Sig. Boncompagni 
took advantage of his diplomatic charac- 
ter to grant in the Sardinian Legation 
every kind of protection to the con- 
spiracy organized against the Tuscan 
government to which he was accredited." 
Lord Malmesbury qualified Boncom- 
pagni's conduct as "incredible to an 
Englishman." Enough has been said to 
show the brazen effrontery of the Italian 
liberals in charging Col. Haymerle with 
abusing his diplomatic position, pro- 
claiming at the same time their inno- 
cence of the manifest evil laid to their 
charge. 

I cannot dismiss the subject of Unre- 
deemed Italy without noticing the move- 
ments of the man who may be regarded 
as the very incarnation of the agitation. 
I mean Gen. Garibaldi. He left Civita 
Vecchia unexpectedly on the ist instant, 
making direct for Caprera. It is now 
given out that he is about to return to 
the Continent. There is a something un- 
derlying the apparently erratic flights 
from and back to the island home of 
this man more positive than the idio- 
syncrasies of an invalid in his nonage. 
Garibaldi must be considered at present 
in the double condition of pensioner of 
the government and head of the revolu- 
tionary movement. When you read of 
his recommending " target-shooting" to 
the young men of Italy, and inculcating 
a general slaughter of the priests, and 
again throwing a sop of flattery to the 
" young sovereigns," he is Garibaldi the 



280 



Current Events. 



" fat stipendiary," as Petrucelli della 
Gattina styles him ; but when he writes 
to some friend begging that Cairoli be 
let alone, depend upon it he is Garibaldi 
the revolutionist. Why did Garibaldi 
leave the Continent so unexpectedly? 
Was his flight the logical or the chrono- 
logical consequence of the appearance 
of " Res Italicse " ? It is alleged as both. 
But why do we not hear more of the 
Demoaatic League? A partial answer to 
this question is in the fact that some 
relatives of Garibaldi who were in finan- 
cial embarrassments received from the 
king the sum of 300,000 francs. Depre- 
tis gave to Garibaldi himself the sum of 
180,000 francs. This was in May last. 
Since then Garibaldi has been compara- 
tively quiet. This is not idle gossip. 
About two months ago a pamphlet was 
published here by a person enjoying 
official confidence, called Garibalai the 
Ingrate. The author of the pamphlet 
quotes the letter of a friend of his and 
a senator of the realm, who character- 
ized the famous Manifesto as a financial 
scheme. This month another pamphlet 
by the same author has appeared, bear- 
ing the title of Garibildi the Politician. 
The author gives another letter from his 
senatorial friend which contains some 
interesting revelations : " I had never 
authorized you, my dear Gio, to publish 



my letters. In your Garibaldi the In- 
grate, which will be one of the finest 
pages in the history of Italian polemics, 
you quote a passage of one of my letters, 
and precisely that passage where I say, 
' The conspicuous patriots, in signing the 
manifesto for Garibaldi, attempted a com- 
mercial speculation to the detriment of 
the state. Do you not believe it? The 
manifesto is a note which the govern- 
ment or some one else will cash.' But 
as you have made cosmopolitan right 
permit me the phrase of a part of my let- 
ter, I give you permission to publish all 
that I write to you. Know, then, that the 
note was cashed. In a few days, if not in a 
few hours, you will hear that the ills of 
Garibaldi require the baths of Civita 
Vecchia. It is because Civita Vecchia 
is Caprera. Now that the note is paid, 
the conspicuous patriots, the friends, 
clients, and relatives, wish the general 
to cross the sea, reserving to themselves 
to recall him when there will be other 
notes to cash. Poor leader of the One 
Thousand ! No use in denying it : De- 
pretis remained stiff. But his successor 
(Cairoli) had not the heart. He enacted 
the part of the good and prodigal uncle. 
. . . The note was cashed, and for some 
time we will not read of programmes and 
manifestoes a la 26th of April ; but repub- 
lican plots will be discovered instead.'' 



CURRENT EVENTS. 



THE DRIFT IN EUROPE. 

THERE are mutterings of storm 
in the European camp, and the 
autumn military manoeuvres have 
been attended by manoeuvres of 
diplomacy less showy but far more 
threatening than the others. The 
two great chancellors flout each 
other at last ; and the Austrian 
premier retires, for a time at least, 
from the leadership of affairs in 
his country. Russia holds out the 
hand of fellowship to France, who 
crippled her in the Crimea; Ger- 



many squeezes that of Austria, 
after striking it numb and nerve- 
less at Sadovva. Italy, that talks 
so much and does so little, knows 
not which way to turn among the 
growing complications. The Aus- 
tro-Germanic alliance puts a very 
effectual stop for the time being to 
the Italia irredenta cry. England 
stands watchfully aloof. She has 
no quarrel with either Germany or 
Austria, both of whom served her 
very well at the Berlin Congress. 
Their alliance against Russia, or 
Panslavism, as some call it, answers 



Current Events. 



281 



her purpose singularly well at this 
juncture especially, when she is 
sorely troubled with discontent at 
home and dubious struggles in the 
East. 

Altogether the condition of af- 
fairs in Europe is far from reas- 
suring. Old jealousies are at work 
and new ones rising. As the Ger- 
man emperor rode into Strassburg 
the other day he was greeted by 
the inhabitants with closed blinds 
and deserted streets. Whatever 
enthusiasm was manifested was 
either manufactured or came from 
purely German sources. France 
.still possesses the heart of Alsace- 
Lorraine, though Germany may 
hold its soil. In this connection 
many will be surprised to learn 
that the annexation of Alsace-Lor- 
raine was made in opposition to 
Prince Bismarck's desire. It has 
often been rumored that the seiz- 
ure came about by advice of the 
generals in opposition to the wish- 
es of the prince. A correspondent 
of the London Titties^ who seems 
to have been used by the German 
chancellor from time to time as 
a medium of communication with 
the outer world, corffirms the truth 
of the rumor. Writing to his jour- 
nal from Paris, September 23, he 
says : " The peace of the world 
would certainly have gained more 
than Germany would have lost 
had Alsace-Lorraine, despoiled of 
all its fortresses, been made a kind 
of neutral zone, an honorable bar- 
rier between the two countries, and 
had Germany substituted for a sac- 
rifice of territory, which a nation 
can never forget, a still heavier 
indemnity, which ever-prosperous 
France would soon have forgot- 
ten." He goes on to recall a con- 
versation he had with the prince 
about a year previous. They were 
speaking of the San Stefano Trea- 



ty, and the conversation gave rise 
to these very reasonable reflections 
on the part of Prince Bismarck : 
"When an enemy is vanquished 
you may set your foot on his neck 
and make him give up what you 
want ; but it is necessary to think 
of the consequences of victory as 
well as of the consequences of 
defeat. We should not be where 
we are had I in 1866 acted like 
Ignatieff and taken territory from 
Austria. At that time I had every- 
body against me. I had said on 
setting out, ' If we are victorious 
I shall not take any territory from 
Austria; we must not remain the 
perpetual enemies of Austria. It 
is necessary that in ten or twelve 
years we may anew agree and be 
on good terms with her.' On our 
being victorious everybody pressed 
me to take the territory; but I 
stood out, and I have often since 
had reason to be glad of it." 

A sense of the truth of ihi, 
added to the pronounced Austrian 
leaning of Prince Bismarck at the 
Berlin Congress, may have provok- 
ed the genuine enthusiasm with 
which he was recently received in 
Vienna on his visit to Count An- 
drassy. The enthusiasm of his re- 
ception in the capital of the empire 
which can hardly help regarding 
him as its victorious enemy is in 
striking contrast to the chill greet- 
ing accorded to the German em- 
peror at Strassburg. The expla- 
nation of the marked difference in 
the attitude of the inhabitants of 
these two cities may be found in 
Prince Bismarck's words above 
cited. As he spoke, however, the 
man to whom he was speaking 
could not help thinking of another 
and more recent war where a peo- 
ple was despoiled of something 
more than blood and money. " At 
this point I involuntarily glanced 



282 



Current Events. 



at the prince, who was by my side." 
The prince read his thoughts, for, 
" without appearing to turn his 
eyes, he perceived the movement, 
and resumed : * I know what you 
mean ; but in 1871 I acted quite in 
the same way. At that time France 
was in our hands ; Paris was cap- 
tured, the Commune was in prepa- 
ration, everything was disorgan- 
ized; and had I done like Ignatieff 
I should have demanded Picardy 
and Champagne. But that entered 
nobody's head ; and even when I 
was pressed to take Bel fort along 
with Metz, I refused and said: 
4 No, Belfort is in the hands of the 
French; it must be left there.' 
Even as to Metz, too, on seeing the 
despair it caused poor little Thiers, 
I hesitated. But you know that at 
the end of such a campaign mili- 
tary men must always be taken in- 
to account. I had to listen to 
Moltke, who saicl to me : ' Metz in 
our hands or in French hands 
makes a difference of one hundred 
thousand soldiers more or less.' 
I could not throw on my country 
the burden of putting one hundred 
thousand men more into the field 
at a given moment." 

Whether or not this conversation 
be wholly authentic, it sounds 
plausible enough. At all events 
the attitude of Germany towards 
France has from first to last been 
essentially different from its atti- 
tude towards Austria. In the one 
case it has borne the semblance of 
a fair stand-up fight where one 
party has thoroughly beaten the 
other, where the defeat has been 
honestly accepted, and where, as 
the chagrin of the vanquished 
wears away, a pact is struck with 
the conqueror. The other case is 
vastly different. Here a terrible 
blow has been dealt a mortal foe; 
"but it is felt that the blow has 



not been mortal, and that sooner 
or later a desperate attempt will be 
made to return it. All the nego- 
tiations for peace were influenced 
by this overwhelming sense on the 
part of Germany. There was and 
could be no permanent peace be- 
tween the two nations. All the 
world accepts this as an axiom. 
The French 4< war of revenge " is 
looked forward to as one of the 
certainties of the future. The pos- 
session of Metz means just what 
Moltke is represented as having 
said. It is the difference of a large 
army. He himself has never pre- 
tended to disguise the true nature 
of the relations between Germany 
and France. *' What we have won 
by the sword we must hold by the 
sword " is his view of the relations 
between Germany and France. 
So he gripped Alsace-Lorraine. 

When, in the days of Louis XIV., 
these provinces were annexed to 
France, Germany was only a geo- 
graphical name. Though France 
at the time and subsequently was 
anything but a model nation, it 
was still a nation, and a great na- 
tion even. It was at least wortli 
belonging to ; whereas the Ger- 
man principalities were little better 
than a nest of robber chieftains. 
As time went on the affection of 
the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine 
deepened for the country to which 
they had become attached. The 
language of the provinces is still 
largely German to this day, but 
the hearts of the people are wholly 
French. Did it happen, as it hap- 
pened before, that the transfer was 
to a milder and a better govern- 
ment, the people might in time be- 
come reconciled to the change and 
yield their hearts up to the land 
whose common language is theirs. 
But no one will pretend that, even 
in the present condition of things, 



Current Events. 



-283 



the German is a milder or more 
beneficent government than that of 
France. It is harsher, more exact- 
ing, more military, and no small 
consideration for a thrifty popula- 
tion like that of Alsace-Lorraine 
the country and people at large 
are much poorer than in France. 
Here, then, lies a permanent bone 
of contention between two of the 
most powerful nations of Europe. 

Nobody dreams that France and 
Germany are friendly powers. Ev- 
erybody sees that France is the 
richer power. In a struggle to-day 
between Germany and France the 
-story of the last war would proba- 
bly be repeated. But who shall 
answer for ten or twenty years 
hence, when the German emperor, 
and his great chancellor and his 
leading generals, will in all human 
probability have passed away ? It 
was with a view to this, probably, 
that Prince Gortchakoff, at last 
openly avowing the resentment he 
felt at his desertion by Prince Bis- 
marck at Berlin, made the plainest 
overtures to France. It had al- 
Avays been his desire, he said, to 
nee France occupy her proper place 
in the councils of Europe. She 
had been deprived of that place. 
He wished to see it restored to her. 

Nothing could have been better 
calculated to touch French feeling, 
and the only weak point about it is 
that Prince Gortchakoff is no long- 
er what he was. He is failing, and 
ambitious rivals, with aid undoubt- 
edly from Berlin, are trying hard 
to push him from his place in the 
confidence of the vacillating czar. 
Nevertheless the Russian chancel- 
lor's interview with a correspondent 
of the Soleil, in which he freely 
unfolded his views regarding the 
restoration of France to her lawful 
place in the councils of Europe, 
added to the hasty meeting of the 



German and Austrian emperors at 
Alexandrowa, probably hastened 
the departure of Prince Bismarck 
for Vienna, and his conferences 
there with Count Andrassy and his 
successor in office, with the French 
and Turkish ministers, and even 
with Mgr. Jacobini, the Papal Nun- 
cio. The result was, so far as ap- 
pears, an alliance offensive and de- 
fensive between Germany and Aus- 
tria; though it was also alleged 
that a proposal for a general dis- 
armament was mooted, and that 
the mover was Prince Bismarck. 

Of what was actually discussed 
or agreed upon between Prince 
Bismarck and the Austrian states- 
men it is, of course, impossible to 
speak. The only thing certain is 
that Prince Bismarck did not spend 
his busy week for nothing ; that 
the Russian and German press do 
not continue their bitter wrangle 
for nothing ; and that Prince Gort- 
chakoff has not solicited a French 
alliance for nothing. It is clear 
that the enduring friendship of the 
Russian and German chancellors 
is broken, and that new allies in 
view of future developments are 
sought by both. Whether or not 
Prince Gortchakoff yields to his 
own age and the ambitious youth 
and intrigues of others, Russian 
resentment at German interference 
at Berlin will abide. French re- 
sentment it is a weak word here 
will also abide. Italian resentment 
at having gained nothing at the 
Congress will abide and increase. 
Germany and Austria are thus, as 
it were, forced into a mutual alli- 
ance. And where is it all to end ? 

We called attention last month 
to the little that men profited by 
the lessons of history. Here we 
have all the national jealousies and 
mutual jealousies of statesmen to 
trouble the peace of Europe as in 



28 4 



Current Events. 



the days of Louis XIV. There is 
this difference, however : that the 
armies to-day are larger, the in- 
struments of destruction more ter- 
rible, and internal social commo- 
tions, unknown in those days, have 
assumed a form and force more for- 
midable than armies and more per- 
manent in character. Military su- 
premacy is acquired at the cost of 
the liberty, the money, and the 
blood of the people. It is natural, 
then, to ask where all this is to end, 
for alliances at a pinch are as fra- 
gile as the paper on which they are 
written. Even Prince Bismarck 
has his moments of sobriety and 
humanity. According to a recent 
revelation of his accepted biogra- 
pher, Dr. Moritz Busch, in the 
Preussiche Jahrbucher, he feels what 
the wisest of men felt long ago : 
" Vanity of vanities, and all is va- 
nity!" "One evening," says Dr. 
Busch, " the prince complained 
that his political achievements had 
given him but little joy or satisfac- 
tion. ' They did not make any 
one happy/ he continued, 'either 
myself, my family, or any one else ; 
and they made many unhappy. 
Without me three great wars would 
not have taken place, eighty thou- 
sand men would not have perished, 
and parents, brothers, sisters, and 
widows would not have mourned.'" 
That would be a fitting epitaph 
to write upon his tomb, but the 
feeling it conveys is not likely to 
'deter him in any of his undertak- 
ings. Of all the "swallowers of 
formulae " he is surely the greatest 
living. He is likely to be influ- 
enced by no sentimental regards 
for other people's feelings or 
rights. He is Prussian first and 
nothing else afterwards, and the 
recent Prussian elections, which 
lua ve turned in his favor, are likely 
to make him more so than ever. 



He is, and will in all probability 
continue to be until his death, the 
prime mover in European politics. 
One great aim he has in* view: the 
consolidation and pre-eminence of 
Germany. To this end he works 
everything, and in his own way. 
Military pre-eminence Germany 
enjoys now ; real consolidation is 
another matter. Before that can 
be achieved there must be peace 
and contentment at home. Pov- 
erty, grinding taxes, swollen arma- 
ments, together with civil and reli- 
gious disabilities, even without in- 
terstate rivalries, are poor condu- 
cives to peace and contentment at 
home. Nor does the vote of a 
parliamentary majority or the pro- 
clamation of military law remove 
these troubles where they exist. 

As for military pre-eminence, that 
is always a challenge to rivals. It 
is not in the nature of things that 
it can last for ever. It will disap- 
pear with time ; it sometimes dis- 
appears with those who created it. 
It is a costly and a dangerous lu- 
xury at the best. It is a trophy 
held against all comers, apt to be 
stolen by surprise or faiily won 
by those who go into training to 
win it. 

Statesmanship is conducted on 
the lowest principle of trade : every 
man, every nation for itself at all 
hazards. Let the rest go ; let the 
weak suffer; we are concerned first, 
last, and wholly with Germany or 
Russia, with Austria or France, 
with England or Italy. Nationality 
rather than humanity is our article 
of faith. There was only One in 
history who looked beyond na- 
tionality to the great undying hu- 
man family. It was the Father of 
the human race, who bade his apos- 
tles to go and teach all nations, and 
baptize and make them Christians. 
He alone was the universal law- 



Current Events. 



285 



giver, and his spirit is preserved in 
his church alone. It speaks in 
Leo as it spoke in Peter, as it spoke 
in the long and venerable line of 
pontiffs and apostles, as it will speak 
to the end of time. So long as that 
voice is neglected and the law of 
Christ rejected, so long will the na- 
tions be at war, so long will injus- 
tice reign and the brotherhood of 
man appear but the frenzied dream 
of a conspirator against society. 
It is doubtful now even whether 
the leading European statesman 
was playing much more than a part 
in his prolonged negotiations with 
the head of Christendom towards 
the restoration of religious peace 
and liberty to the Catholic subjects 
of Germany. If he cares to hold 
out he can. No Catholic army 
will march into his territory to 
compel him to free the Catholics 
from their thraldom ; no Catholic 
hand be raised to threaten his 
life. It comes down to a question 
of absolute justice, favored, with 
him, by political expediency. Re- 
marking on the French elections 
in 1876, he said: "I doubt if the 
French radicals will get into power; 
but should they, I am sure they 
will begin eating the priests before 
they tackle the Germans ; the task 
is so much easier, and I have no 
desire to balk their appetite in that 
direction." 

His grim prophecy has proved 
true so far. The French radicals 
are trying to eat the priests. But 
in those days the German radicals 
were not quite so pronounced as 
they have since become. The Ger- 
man radicals have an appetite for 
monarchs and statesmen as well as 
priests, and the German emperor 
lias become painfully alive to that 
fact. It may be that Prince Bis- 
marck is sincere in his attempts to 
bring about an understanding with 



the German Catholics, and that he 
is awaiting the resuks of the federal 
elections before taking final action 
in the matter. It was certainly dif- 
ficult for him to go directly against 
the sense of an adverse majority in 
the Reichstag, while he already had 
difficulties enough on hand. With 
a working majority, which is now 
likely to be secured to him, he may 
change his policy, and, in the soberer 
views that seem to come upon him 
with his years, recognize the truth 
that no man will be truer to his 
country and more loyal to his 
government than he who is true to 
his conscience and loyal to his 
God. 

Since the above was written the 
returns of the Prussian elections 
have come in. The various par- 
ties going under the name of Lib- 
eral have suffered a bad defeat, 
while the Conservatives and Catho- 
lics rejoice in a proportionate gain. 
" The elections," says the Germania, 
the leading Catholic journal, " show 
that the people condemn the Cultur- 
kampf and demand their religious 
rights and liberties." It remains 
to be seen whether Prince Bis- 
marck will regard the matter in 
that light. The Ger mania's opin- 
ion is based on the fact that the Ca- 
tholics, weary of the Jong and thus 
far fruitless negotiations between 
Prince Bismarck and the Holy See, 
boldly set forth as their cry, "Aboli- 
tion of the May Laws." The Ca- 
tholics understood the issue per- 
fectly ancf responded admirably. 
They returned an increased ma- 
jority. The Liberals, on the other 
hand, who have all along been hesi- 
tating between the dreaded chan- 
cellor and their own convictions, 
had nothing definite to put before 
the people, and so lost their con- 
fidence. The Conservatives went 



286 



Current Events. 



honestly for Bismarck and shared 
with the Catholics the Liberal 
losses. 

The government is not yet strong 
enough to stand alone. It is be- 
tween the Catholics and the Lib- 
erals. In order to carry a measure 
it must secure the support of the 
Liberals or Catholics. Neither will 
serve without pay. The Catholics 
have named their price. They de- 
sire a restoration of the old reli- 
gious rtgime, at which nobody grum- 
bled while it lasted. It was con- 
ciliatory on all sides. The demand 
is only made rigorous by the fact 
of Prince Bismarck having gone so 
far in the other direction, which he 
must now see is condemned by the 
common sense of all lovers of free- 
dom. The demands of the Liberals 
are vague, and they vary between 
what is reasonable and the extreme 
pretensions of the Socialists. It 
remains for Prince Bismarck to 
choose. 

In France the government seems 
resolved on forcing through the 
Ferry educational measure, in spite 
of its rejection by the senate and 
its condemnation by the public 
opinion of France, and of all coun- 
tries so far as public opinion has 
chosen to express itself. The ma- 
jority of the councils-general re- 
jected it, after having* been invit- 
ed to express their opinion by M. 
Lepere, the Minister of the Inte- 
rior. The measure has met with 
marked disfavor in all quarters, 
save among the extreme partisans 



of revolution. Gambetta, the strong- 
est man in the government, is strong- 
ly in favor of it, and his is really the 
arm that sustains so obnoxious a 
measure. It seems to us that this 
ambitious and unprincipled man is 
resolved on forcing a crisis with 
the hope to lift himself into the 
president's chair, assume the office 
and functions, if not the character, of 
a dictator, which well accords with 
his calculated rashness and scorn- 
ful ignorance of the principles that 
regulate a well-governed society. 
His newspaper, the Republique 
Fran$aise, now supports a general 
amnesty to the Communists, large 
numbers of whom have already 
been restored to freedom and to 
France. Some of them are now 
posing as patriots, seeking for 
election to the Chambers, defend- 
ing the Commune, and promising 
a return to the days that preceded 
and accompanied the first French 
Revolution. One of these is Hum- 
bert, the editor of the infamous 
Pere Duchene during the days of 
the Commune. It will be a dis- 
grace to France if he is elected, 
and will encourage the whole 
brood of sedition to lift up their 
heads and aspire once more to 
their evil eminence. These are 
the men whom Gambetta now fa- 
vors in the name of liberty and 
order, while he declares that Ca- 
tholicity is the enemy of France. 
Well, let France choose between 
the rivals. She has had ample ex- 
perience of both. 



New Publications. 



287 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 






DE VIRTUTIBUS INFUSIS. Praelectiones 
Scholastico-Dogmaticae quas in Gre- 
goriana Universitate habebat A.D. 
1878-9. Camillas Mazzella, S.J., in 
eadem Universitate Sacras Theologize 
Professor Romae. Typogr. S. C. de 
Prop. Fid. 1879. 

The first volume published at Rome by 
Father Mazzella, in continuation of the 
series begun at Woodstock, is a new and 
improved edition of the treatise on the 
theological virtues formerly printed at 
the Woodstock press by the scholastics 
of the college for private circulation. 
We have long been familiar with this 
excellent work, the first one of Father 
Mazzella's productions which came into 
our hands. It is a satisfaction to us to 
reflect that we were among the first to 
appreciate and recognize their merit, 
since universally applauded, and re- 
warded by the high encomium bestowed 
upon them by Pope Leo XIII. , as well as 
by the appointment of their author to fill 
the chair of Perrone, Franzelin, and 
Palmieri in the Roman College. 

In a theological sense the most inter- 
esting and the most difficult of the topics 
treated in this volume is the one whose 
subject-matter is faith. 

The controversies, not only between 
Catholic authors and their various op- 
ponents, but also among the most emi- 
nent Catholic theologians themselves, on 
the numerous and important questions 
connected with faith, are well known 
to all students of theology. The expo- 
sition of the Catholic doctrine by Father 
Mazzella is complete and masterly. His 
treatment of the questions disputed in 
the schools is thorough and impartial, 
and his own opinions, which are chiefly 
in accord with those of Suarez, are most 
clearly stated and ably defended, with a 
philosophical method and an elegance 
of Latinity characteristic of the author. 

Besides the scientific aspect of this 
admirable work, which is undoubtedly 
to be ranked in the first class of theolo- 
gical treatises, it has another. The very 
nature of the topics treated, and their 
close relation with the first principles 
of solid spirituality and Christian piety, 
give an author who has, as much of the 



warmth of true devotion as of the light 
of speculative faith and intelligence, a 
grand opportunity of doing what the 
Fathers and St. Thomas were wont to 
do i.e., of furnishing nutriment to the 
heart as well as to the head. Father 
Mazzella has written in this spirit and 
according to this method. The work be- 
fore us can be used as well in giving a. 
retreat as in lecturing a class, and those 
who have spiritual and moral confer- 
ences to prepare for persons sufficiently 
educated to digest something stronger 
than milk for babes, will find here a 
treasury of ideas, abundant germs of 
thought, and rich results of the author's 
study of Holy Scripture, the Fathers, 
and even the best of the ancient philoso- 
phers. Will Father Mazzella's volumes 
be republished in this country as a part 
of the Woodstock Course ? We hope so, 
for otherwise we fear their circulation 
will not be so easy and general as it 
should be. 



BIBLE HISTORY. To which is added a 
short History of the Church. For the 
use of schools. New York : P. O'Shea. 

The Lessons in Bible History, by Mme. 
Catharine White, one of the most dis- 
tinguished of the Ladies of the Sacred 
Heart in this country, is decidedly the 
best book of its kind with which we are 
acquainted. The author now presents 
to the juvenile world a much smaller 
and easier manual for study, condensed 
and abridged from the larger work. A 
summary of church history has been 
added, which is contained within fifty 
duodecimo pages, and is a model of suc- 
cinctness and accuracy, while it is at 
the same time easy. The little book is 
published with remarkable neatness and 
good taste, and adorned with very pretty 
illustrations. The larger work was not 
published in a manner worthy of the 
same commendation. It is much to be 
desired that a new edition of it should 
be issued without delay, in a style of 
elegance similar to that which makes 
the abridgment so atti active as well as 
so useful a book for children. 

Both these oooks were carefully re- 
vised and corrected under the express 



288 



New Publications. 



direction of the Cardinal Archbishop. 
The preparation of the smaller history 
was the last of the efforts of the gifted, 
highly educated, and holy lady, who, at 
the time we are writing these words, is 
daily and hourly expecting the summons 
to meet her Lord. The writer of a no- 
tice of this little book which has been 
brought under our observation in one of 
our weekly Catholic newspapers a no- 
tice which does not deserve the name of 
a criticism if he had been aware that the 
author was in a dying state, would have 
refrained from the rude and disrespect- 
ful language which he made use of, and 
which every person who may have read 
it can qualify as it deserves. The lady 
on whom he has cast ridicule will soon 
be in a condition to repay him as the 
saints are wont to repay those who use 
them despitefully. We trust that her 
prayers will obtain for him the grace to 
write henceforth in a manner less unbe- 
coming a Christian gentleman. 

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ST. Louis 
UNIVERSITY. The Celebration of its 
Fiftieth Anniversary, or Golden Jubi- 
lee, on June 24, 1879. By Walter H. 
Hill, S.J. St. Louis: Patrick Fox. 
1879. 

This book is far more interesting than 
the mere title would indicate. In addi- 
tion to the facts which more immediate- 
ly regard the college itself, its rise and 
progress during its fifty years' existence, 
there is almost necessarily connected 
therewith the early history of the mis- 
sions established in the far West about 
the same period. It consequently gives 
us, in very pleasing form, an insight into 
the difficulties and labors of the pioneer 
missionaries of Upper and Lower Loui- 
siana, the former being now the State of 
Missouri. In these pages we follow with 
unfailing interest the wearisome jour- 
neys and self-sacrificing exertions of that 
noble band of devoted Jesuits, Fathers 
Van Quickenborne and Timmermans, 
who with seven novices all Belgians 
left their place of retreat in White Marsh, 
Maryland, April u, 1823, to establish 
a mission in the West. In the number 
of these novices was the venerable and 



illustrious De Smet, who became the 
apostle of the American Indians. It 
took them eighteen days to go from Bal- 
timore to Wheeling, and six weeks be- 
fore they reached St. Louis, then but a 
small town of five thousand inhabitants. 
To give some idea of the progress effected 
during the last fifty years, we may mention 
the fact that in 1829 there were but four- 
teen Jesuits (including lay brothers), 
while now there are three hundred and 
thirty-four members of the same illustri- 
ous order in the province of St. Louis. 

This work gives a list of one hundred 
and thirty-eight graduates, but, strange to 
say, only two of these entered the clerical 
profession. Their Jesuit brethren far- 
ther East are far more successful in that 
respect, as a large percentage of the grad- 
uates of St. John's, Fordham, and especi- 
ally of St. Francis Xavier's, in this city, 
have swelled the numbers of the priest- 
hood. 

This work of Father Hill will amply 
repay the perusal even of those who 
were in no way connected with the Uni- 
versity of St. Louis. It is very modest 
in its tone and entertaining in its varied 
contents. 

IN the present number we begin :\ 
new study in female character and 
French life by Miss Kathleen O'Meara. 
whose story of Pear! ran out in the last 
number of the magazine. So far as we 
are enabled to judge, Pearl met with 
singular favor from our readers. The 
new story, Follette, is of a very different 
kind and character. It throws a sweet 
and tender and deeply interesting ro- 
mance around the life of a simple little 
French peasant girl, whose love and suf- 
fering win the reader's sympathy as 
thoroughly as though they were those of 
a heroine of history. This is altogether 
owing to the writer's felicitous art. Those 
who watch the growth of Miss O'Meara's 
writings will discern in her later produc- 
tions evidence of a firmer touch, a truer 
artistic sense, a wider range of observa- 
tion, and a deeper thought than they may 
have at first suspected. The rich mate- 
rial was there always ; experience and 
growing knowledge are perfecting it in- 
to symmetrical strength and beauty. 



Literary Bulletin. 



25 



ITERARY 




ULLETIN. 



Tie Young Catholic's School Series. 

THE Catholic School Board of the Diocese of 
Pittsburgh and Allegheny has, after a thorough 
examination of the different series of school-books, 
and due deliberation as to the met its of each, 

adopted The Young- Catholic's Series of 
Readers and Speller Grammar-School 
Speller, Hassard's History of the Unit- 
ed States, Introductory History of the 
United States, Deharbe's Catechisms 

KTOS. 1 and 2, as text-books to be used, exclu- 
sive of all others of the same class, in the Diocese 
of Pittsburgh and Allegheny. Several other text- 
books, such as geographies, grammars, arithme- 
tics, etc., have aiso been adopted, thus giving to 
the entire diocese a uniform set of school-books. 
The Right Rev. Bishop has sanctioned the deci- 
sion of the board, and the change in books has al- 
ready begun. This makes the third diocese in 
which the Young Catholic's Series are used exclu- 
sively -Cincinnati, Vincennes, and Pittsburgh. 



The Illustrated Catholic Family An- 

Ziual fbr 2.88 J is now being printed Dealers 
and others are requested to send in their orders at 
dn:e. It will be ready for delivery early in No- 
vember. 

The Avc Maria thus notices the new edition of 

Father Hewit's King^s Highway : 

" We are pleased to see that the demand for this 
excellent book has been sufficiently great to call 
for a second edition ; but we cannot help thinking 
that if the learned author had not restricted it so 
exclusively to a particular class its sale would have 
been larger and its circle of influence widened. 

" The work is suited for all non-Catholics, of 
whatever shade of belief, who hold that the Bible 
is the word of God and its teaching divinely autho- 
ritative The number of such believers, though 
rapidly diminishing, as the author remarks in his 
preface, is still very large, and it is certainly worth 
while to continue addressing arguments to them. 

" Of the merits of Tke King's Highway we have 
no need to speak, the name of the respected author 
being sufficient recommendation for anything he 
may write. No one could be better qualified than 
he for the task of preparing such a work, having 
himself passed over the road which he now seeks to 
aiiike clear to his readers. There are few books we 
could so unhesitatingly recommend to inquiring 
non-Catholics who believe in the Holy Scripture as 
-~he King's Highway. The concluding paragraph 
of the preface, in which the author makes the dedi- 
cation of his volume to the Sacred Heart, is so 



beautiful and so characteristic of the writer that 
we cannot refrain from quoting it : 

'" Its concluding pages and preface have been 
written amid the charming silence and solitude cf 
the shores of that beautiful lake * who^e original 
and Christian name was given to it on the day of 
its discovery, the eve of Corpus Christi, by the 
heroic martyr, Father Isaac Jogues. I have had 
the happiness of laying the comer-stone of the 
first Catholic church on the borders of the lake, the 
site of which is in the midst of scenes of historic 
interest, where formerly the sounds of bloody war- 
fare were loud and frequent. On a still and bright 
Sunday afternoon, the magic panorama of nature 
wearing its softest and most attractive aspect, the 
air laden with the fragrance of sweet-fern, the 
psalms and litanies of the Roman Ritual were 
chanted, and the foundations of the church of 
Caldwell, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 
were blessed A crowd of Catholics and Protes- 
tants, including the offspring of various races and 
nations, white, colored, and Indian, picturesquely 
mingled together, devoutly partook in, or listened 
with respectful and curious interest to, the solemn 
prayers and psalmody, and gave attentive ears *o 
the eloquent voice of the preacher whose discourse 
closed the services of that auspicious day. In me- 
mory of this event, I dedicate this book to the 
Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, 
with the prayer that it may become the corner- 
stone of many new sanctuaries consecrated to his 
glory in the hearts of my readers.' " 

The third edition of Father O'Brien's book on 
The Holy IMIaSS is almost sold, large orders 
having been received from London and Dublin. 
The London Weekly Register gives the following 
excellent epitome of the book. It is the best notice 
we have seen of it. and we therefore give it in full : 
" Numerous as have been the woiks written upon 
thu same lofty theme, from St. Augustine's City 
of God to Dr. Reek's Hierurgia^ we have :: i 
for a long while met with any book about the Holy 
Mass so exhaustive and enthralling as the one ma- 
under notice, or one in which the materials have- 
been so thoroughly well arranged. It is a very en- 
cyclopaedia of information. And brief though the 
alphabetical index is, it enables the reader with un- 
erring accuracy, by the help of that little gossamer 
clue, to thrid the intricacies of the labyrinth to 
almost any point required. The mere list of the 
principal authors consulted by Father O'Brien in 
writing his work a work the composition of which 
has evidently been for him a labor of lovt is por- 
tentous. The origin of the word Mass, at the very 

* Lake George. 



6 



Literary Bulletin. 



outset, is traced variously .to the Hebrew massa/r. 
debt or obligation ; to the ( ireek wyes is, imitation ; 
to the Scandinavian mes, banquet ; and to the Latin 
missa, or inissio, a -dismissal, the last being the 
most generally favored /by liturgical authorities. 
The different kinds of Masses are carefully distin- 
guished from each othe.r v as.high, low, nuptial, vo- 
tive, or requiem. The first Mass ever celebrated 
was, traditionally, that offered up by St. Peter after 
the .descent of the Holy Ghost, the scene of it 
being that very same cenacle on Mount Sion to this 
day an object of special veneration in the holy lands 
in which the adorable Eucharist was first instituted. 
Until the coming of the Paraclete the apostles did 
not, it is said by the authorities, presume to perform 
so august an action. The language in which that 
first Mass was offered up is believed to have been 
the one then mostly prevailing in Jerusalem, the 
vernacular of our divine Lord himself and of his 
most Blessed Mother, meaning the Syriac or Syro- 
Chaldaic. Afterwards at Antioch and other Gre- 
cian cities Mass was said in Greek ; but later on, at 
Rome and throughout the entire West, in Latin, 
the most widely diffused of the then dominant lan- 
guages. Latin is since then since, that is to say, 
the very dawn of Christianity the living language 
of the Holy Catholic and Roman Church. It pre- 
serves to the church its immutability, it facilitates 
its unification, it secures to it the literary treasures 
of nineteen centuries. 

" The six sacred vestments worn by the priest in 
celebrating Mass are, one by one, carefully describ- 
ed. The amice, from the Latin verb amicire (to 
clothe or cover), has been variously called also a 
humeral, an ephod, and an anabolagium. Its sig- 
nificance is as ' the helmet of salvation.' The 
alb, from albus, white, has the exquisite figurative 
signification of the purity or newness of life requir- 
ed under the new dispensation. The cincture, 
otherwise the zone, girdle, band, or belt with 
which the alb is gathered in at the waist, is a linen 
cord signifying the girding up of the loins enjoined 
by our divine Lord himself. The maniple, worn on 
the left wrist and of the same material as the stole 
and chasuble, mystically reminds the celebrant of 
the trials and troubles with which life is surround- 
ed. The stole, as worn arour.d both shoulders, is 
the distinctive symbol of the priesthood. The 
chasuble, from casula, a little house (originally, 
like the seamless garment of our Lord, enveloping 
the entire person), is, according to the regulations 
of the rubric, one or other of five colors white, red, 
green, black, or violet. The amice, again, repre- 
sents the veil that covered the face of our Lord ; 
the alb, the vesture in which he was clothed by 
Herod ; the cincture, the scourge ordered by Pon- 
tius Pilate ; the maniple, the rope by which he was 
led like a lamb to the slaughter ; the stole, the 
cord by which he was fastened to the pillar ; the 
chasuble, the purple garment in which he was sa- 
luted with mock homage by the soldiery. The 
berretta, from birrus, cape or hcod, a square cap 
with three arched prominences rising from the 
crown, symbolic of the Adorable Trinity, is of great 
antiquity. Besides being worn by clerics in every- 
day life, it is worn by the priest in the sanctuary 
only during the less solemn portions of the Mass. 
The zucchetto, from the Italian zucchi, a gourd. 



is the skull-cap \yoni by bi.-.hops, cardinal, and 
popes, the first wearing the calotte in violet, the 
second in scarlet, and the third in white. The 
Roman collar, in French rabat, is an article of 
clerical attire which has only come into use since 
the sixteenth century. The cassock, or soutane, 
on the other hand, comes from a very remote pe- 
riod. 

' The five sacred vessels of the altar are next 
particularized. The chalice, or eucharistic cup. 
resembling in shape the open calyx of a lily, is al- 
ways now of either gold or silver, the inside of the 
silver one being invariably gilt. The paten, called 
by the Greeks agios diskos, the holy tray, formed 
invariably of the same material with the chalice, 
rests on the latter like a cover, bearing upon it, up 
to the Offertory, the large bread for consecration 
The ciborium, from cibus, food, a cup-shaped ves- 
sel like the chalice, only shallower and with a 
closely-fitting cover, contains within the Blessed 
Sacrament, which is always kept under lock and 
key in the tabernacle. The monstrance, or remon- 
strance, called also the ostensorium, is a portable 
tabernacle in which the Adorable Host is revealed 
during exposition through a circular aperture, in 
which is the lunette in which its disc is sustained. 
The radiating spikes and beams of gold and jewels 
surrounding the remonstrance symbolize the divine 
splendor of our Lord's countenance on Mount Tha- 
bor at the time of his Transfiguration. The cha- 
lice linens are carefully particularized. The cor- 
poral, so called from the fact that our divine Lord's 
body rests upon it under the Sacred Species, is the 
square piece of linen spread over the centre of the 
altar at the beginning of the Mass, and on which 
the chalice is placed. The purificator, or mundd- 
tory, is the piece of linen, twenty inches by four, 
which is of comparatively modern introduction, 
being unnamed by the ancient liturgists. The 
pall, a stiff piece of linen about five inches square, 
which ordinarily covers the mouth of the chalice, 
is, with the corporal when not in use, shut up in 
the burse. The veil, formed of the same material 
with the stole, the maniple, and the chasuble, cov- 
ers the chalice in crisp folds, and is surmounted, as 
well on leaving as on going to the altar, by the 
burse, an embroidered pouch containing the cor- 
poral and pall, this burse being of the same materi- 
al as the veil, the stole, the maniple, and the chasu- 
ble. The pyx, a gold or silver box of about the 
dimensions of a watch-case, contains the Adorable 
Host when it is carried by a priest, in a si ken 
purse hung about his neck by a string, when it L? 
conveyed to the sick or dying. The pyx is thus 
borne secretly in heretical countries like England ; 
the ciborium in Catholic countries being borne 
openly in procession to the ringing of bells as a 
yarning to wayfarers, who kneel, as it passes, in 
homage to our Lord going on his mission to the 
afflicted. 

" An interesting chapter is given to the subject 
of sacred music and musical instruments. A brief 
one even has relation to the incense, the boat, the 
spoon, the thurible, and the thurifer. Others re- 
late to the altar, the relics, the crucifix, the wax 
candles, the tabernacle (the interior of which must 
always be of wood covered with silk), the Missal (.por- 
tions of which, printed in red letters, are hence 



THE 




CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXX., No. 17;. DECEMBER, 1879. 



LEO XIII. ON SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. 



SINCE the publication of the 
magnificent Encyclical of Leo XIII. 
on the importance of promoting 
the study of scholastic theology 
and philosophy, numbers of intel- 
ligent and educated laymen have 
had their attention directed to the 
topics of that remarkable docu- 
ment. More especially they are 
desirous of knowing the reasons for 
so strong and urgent an admoni- 
tion to all bishops and other chief 
directors of Catholic education to 
cultivate the study of scholastic 
metaphysics and particularly of the 
philosophy of St. Thomas of Aqui- 
no. What is the great and urgent 
need at the present time for teach- 
ing and studying philosophy, and 
the decisive reason for insisting 
that the system to be taught and 
studied should be that of St. 
Thomas in preference to all others ? 

We will endeavor to give some 
brief and practical answer, accord- 
ing to our ability, to these natural 
and laudable inquiries. 

Of course what the Pope has 
chiefly in view is the interest of re- 
ligion and morality. Sound and 
truly rational philosophy is neces- 
sary for the refutation and destruc- 



tion of errors dangerous to reli- 
gion, the good order of society, and 
private morals. It is necessary for 
the enlightenment and confirma- 
tion of Christians in the principles 
and doctrines which are insepara- 
bly connected with the faith and 
with the divine law, and for pro- 
moting in general their intellectual 
and moral perfection. This sound 
philosophy is to be found in the 
tradition of ancient wisdom handed 
down and exposed in the great. 
Catholic schools by 'their great 
writers, and more especially in the 
writings of St. Thomas and his suc- 
cessors or expositors in the same 
line of rational doctrine. 

Philosophy is necessary, because 
the whole preamble of faith, the 
basis of all rational knowledge and 
certitude, all natural theology, all 
science of the soul and of morals, 
all evidences and criteria of reve- 
lation, all motives of the credibility 
of the Christian religion and proofs 
of the divine institution and au- 
thority of the Catholic Church, are 
within its scope and domain. More- 
over, it is so closely connected with 
dogmatic and moral theology that 
they cannot be successfully taught 



Copyright : Rev. I. T. HECKEK. 1879. 



2 9 



Leo XIII. on Scholastic Philosophy. 



without the aid of sound philoso- 
phy. 

In our own day, we have a great 

number of errors, more or less 
completely, and more or less di- 
rectly subversive of all religion, 
whether revealed or natural, of mo- 
rality, of the political and social 
order, and of genuine science and 
civilization, to contend with. These 
errors have their theoretical root 
and origin in certain false princi- 
ples of reasoning and of the inves- 
tigation of sensible and historical 
.facts. They are, fundamentally, er- 
Tors in respect to logic, metaphy- 
sics, psychology, cosmology, ration- 
al theology, and ethics. 

One class of the enemies of the 
Catholic Church and of revelation 
^denies all reality of knowledge, in 
the order of metaphysics or on- 
tology. This class embraces the 
sceptics, agnostics, and positivists. 
The disciples of Hume, Kant, 
Comte, and Spencer subvert all ra- 
tional science. They relegate the 
whole of objective reality and truth, 
or all which transcends the phe- 
nomena of sensible cognition and 
of consciousness, to the unknow- 
able. 

The disciples of Locke and the 
sensist school, admitting no source 
-of knowledge except sensation and 
reflection, are really no better in 
respect to their fundamental philo- 
sophy than these, and have prepar- 
ed the way for them. 

Then, there is the whole tribe of 
:Spinosa and the pantheists, and the 
motley crowd of rationalists, semi- 
Christian or anti-Christian. 

Mixed up with these, or follow- 
iing in their traces, are the multi- 
tude of social reformers and de- 
structives, the political doctrinaires, 
who seek to carry the revolution 
into practical matters. 

The field of argument and intel- 



lectual conflict with all these foes 
of religion, morality, science, and 
political order, is mainly in the 
domain of metaphysics and the 
other branches of rational philoso- 
phy connected with metaphysics. It 
is in a sound philosophy that the 
defensive and offensive armor of 
those who combat for Christian 
theology, Christian ethics, and gen- 
uine Christian civilization, against 
all these hordes of barbarians, must 
be found. , 

But where is this sound philoso- 
phy to be sought for and to be 
found ? 

History tells us that the revival 
of paganism and the decadence of 
Catholic Christianity began before 
the era of the Protestant rebellion. 
The close of the mediaeval and the 
beginning of the modern period, 
the age of Leo X., was attended by 
signs of general upheaval and re- 
volution in Christendom. One of 
these signs was a general disesteem 
for the prevailing philosophy of 
the Catholic schools and a mania 
for restoring one or other of the 
old pagan systems, inventing ne\v 
systems, reconstructing the whole 
building on the ground supposed 
to be left vacant by the passing 
away of an antiquated, obsolete 
philosophy. When the Reforma- 
tion broke out, this spirit of inno- 
vation had free course, ran, but 
was not much glorified by success, 
among all those who abandoned 
the Catholic communion. The 
result has been that in England 
scarcely anything worth any con- 
sideration has been achieved in 
philosophy, while in Germany, and 
all that part of the intellectual 
world which has followed the Ger- 
man direction, system after system 
of dreamy, baseless speculation has 
appeared and disappeared, leaving 
the caput mortuum of materialism 



Leo XIII. on Scholastic Philosophy. 



291 



1 



and pessimism as the latest result 
and loathsome residuum of disin- 
tegration and corruption. 

In Catholic countries, and among 
the remnant of Catholics in coun- 
tries where Protestantism is preva- 
lent, there has been, as well, a de- 
cadence in philosophy. The an- 
cient philosophy has retained some 
of its old strongholds, and has been 
partially preserved in the common 
teaching of colleges and semina- 
ries, in imperfect and variant forms. 
New systems, nominally Catholic, 
yet really so dangerous to Catholic 
faith that the Holy See has thought 
it necessary to condemn them, have 
been invented and propagated, in 
Germany and elsewhere. Such are 
those of Hermes, Giinther, the Tra- 
ditionalists and the Ontologists, all 
condemned by the more or less 
severe censures of Pius IX. 

The great corrupter of philoso- 
phy at its very source and fountain- 
head was Des Cartes, with his me- 
thodic doubt and false pyscholo- 
gism. He made it the first princi- 
ple of a new philosophy to reject 
all the wisdom of the ancients and 
begin entirely afresh from the foun- 
dation. Hence, he is referred to 
by his disciples and admirers as 
the author of anew epoch, the father 
of a new age. He has done in 
philosophy what Luther did in theo- 
logy, and with like disastrous re- 
sults. 

The natural consequence of the 
decadence of philosophy, of the 
disputes and dissensions of various 
schools, and of the paucity of works 
of a high order of excellence has 
been, a general neglect, a superficial 
and imperfect method of instruc- 
tion and study, of philosophy even 
in Catholic schools, until a some- 
what recent period. There is now 
going on what may be called a 
philosophical revival. There has 



been a general awakening of in- 
terest, a growing sense of the im- 
portance of this branch of science, 
and a rapidly extending conviction 
of the necessity of returning to the 
old, scholastic system in respect to 
principles, methods, and substan- 
tial doctrines. It is enough to re- 
fer to the columns of this magazine 
and to the pages of the Dublin Re- 
view for a number of years past, for 
evidence of this movement. The 
honor of being its chief standard- 
bearer certainly belongs to Father 
Liberatore, of the Society of Jesus. 
Almost twenty years ago he pub- 
lished his text-book of scholastic 
philosophy, which has been grow- 
ing in reputation and influence ever 
since, and has been supplemented 
by several other volumes of the 
highest merit. Several other emi- 
nent writers, such as Kleutgen, 
San Severino, Stockl, and Ramiere, 
have promoted the same cause by 
their excellent works. Pius IX. 
was always most anxious to pro- 
mote the improvement of education, 
especially among those devoted to 
the ecclesiastical state. He is well 
known to have expressed the con- 
viction, that in prolonging and aug- 
menting the course of studies in 
ecclesiastical seminaries, it would 
be wise to increase the time and 
effort bestowed upon the study of 
philosophy in preference to length- 
ening the course of theology. Leo 
XIII. has only followed up in a 
more solemn and decisive manner 
that which Pius IX. had initiated 
or projected for the advancement 
of philosophical studies. He has 
given voice and sanction to the de- 
sires and aims of many eminent 
men holding high positions in the 
church or in the ranks of learned 
Catholic laymen, and has imparted 
by his authoritative declarations 
new impetus and force to a move- 



2 9 2 



Leo XIII. on Scholastic Philosophy. 



ment, already very general and 
rapidly progressing, toward the re- 
establishment of scholastic philoso- 
phy in its ancient and just supre- 
macy, as the queen of all the na- 
tural sciences and handmaid of 
theology. 

Practical measures and regula- 
tions in regard to the adjustment 
of a curriculum of study, the selec- 
tion of text-books, and similar mat- 
ters, come under the category of 
discipline, directly, and not under 
that of doctrine; although the mo- 
tives and principles of disciplinary 
law are derived from doctrine. In 
his disciplinary regulation of the 
Roman colleges which lie under the 
immediate diocesan authority of 
the Pope as Bishop of Rome, Leo 
XIII. had already taken measures 
for improving the method of phi- 
losophical instruction before the 
promulgation of his Encyclical. 
Liberatore and San Severino were 
prescribed by an edict, as the text- 
books which must be used by the 
professors of philosophy and their 
classes. And, as a result of this 
official expression of the judgment 
of Leo XIII. in favor of the supe- 
rior excellence of these text-books, 
they have been already introduced 
into a number of colleges outside 
of Rome and Italy. We have heard, 
also, of two new text-books, follow- 
ing the same doctrine and method, 
which have been prepared in France, 
for use in French colleges, and one 
of these has been adopted by the 
Sulpicians of Baltimore. As a gen- 
eral rule, the directors of seminaries 
and colleges in all parts of the 
world are awake to the importance 
of a more thorough instruction in 
philosophy. Not to speak of secu- 
lar colleges, in ecclesiastical semi- 
naries to a considerable extent, and 
making all due exceptions, only 
one year has been given to philoso- 



phy, and the instruction given has 
been necessarily elementary and su- 
perficial. In many cases, the stu- 
dents in the class of philosophy 
have not had any course of Logic 
and Metaphysics at college. They 
must, therefore, begin at the begin- 
ning. Very few young students 
can really master a good compen- 
dium of Logic, General and Special 
Metaphysics, and Ethics, in one year, 
even if most of their time is given 
to this one branch of study. Ex- 
perience proves that a professor 
cannot take even a small class of 
intelligent and diligent students, in 
which each one can receive a great 
deal of his personal attention, 
through a course of Logic in one of 
the larger text-books, in less than 
six months. Two years, at least, 
are necessary, for the most intelli- 
gent and diligent students, under 
the most favorable circumstances, 
in order that they may acquire a 
competent knowledge of philoso- 
phy, sufficient as a basis and prepara- 
tion for a solid course of theology. 
When other studies, in mathema- 
tics, physics, modern languages, etc., 
must be prosecuted at the same 
time, a subtraction must be made 
from the time and attention given 
to philosophy, and this makes it 
necessary to lengthen out the 
period assigned for remaining in 
the class of philosophers. More- 
over, where there are large classes, 
with only the average amount of 
ability and application, we must as- 
sent to the opinion so strongly ex- 
pressed by Liberatore in his pre- 
face to the Institutiones Philosophi- 
cal, that a complete triennium is 
necessary. As for secular colleges, 
the preparatory schools must be 
first advanced to a higher grade, 
the conditions for matriculation 
must be raised considerably, and 
the course of study must be so ar- 






Leo XIII. on Scholastic Philosophy. 



293 



ranged that youths will not graduate 
before the age of twenty-one, in 
order that there may be time gain- 
ed for a sufficient study of Logic, 
Metaphysics, and Ethics, during the 
Junior and Senior years, without 
prejudice to other brandies. If 
we were to consider the case of the 
intermediate schools, or of those 
colleges called scientific, we should 
wade too deeply into a current that 
would carry us off from our present 
subject. 

We think it must be obvious that 
there is no lack of important rea- 
sons, why Leo XIII. should deem 
it befitting his office, and most 
opportune to present circumstances, 
to address an Encyclical Letter to 
the prelates of the church concern- 
ing philosophical as well as theo- 
logical education. Indeed, it is 
enough to read carefully the Ency- 
clical itself to find these reasons 
amply exposed. The excellence 
and value of philosophy, its su- 
preme dignity and utility, in which 
it is only surpassed by theology, 
cannot be disputed without deny- 
ing that there is any true and cer- 
tain philosophy. We are not writ- 
ing for the benefit of agnostics, but 
for that of Catholics. For these, 
only one more point needs explana- 
tion, viz., the reason for inculcating 
on all bishops and others who bear 
rule and preside in the church and 
in institutions under her spiritual 
jurisdiction, that they shall adopt 
the scholastic philosophy as taught 
by St. Thomas. 

It follows from the admitted 
reality of philosophy as a true and 
certain science, that it is ascer- 
tainable with certainty in what au- 
thors its correct exposition can 
be found, and which are the works 
where the truth is most clearly and 
ably exposed. In all natural sci- 
ences these things are ascertain- 



able, and the universal judgment 
of the competent furnishes a prac- 
tically unerring rule for men in 
general. There is such a general 
verdict of the competent in favor 
of the intellectual pre-eminence in 
philosophy of three men, Plato, 
Aristotle, and St. Thomas. From a 
purely scientific point of view, the 
judgment of Leo XIII. can be jus- 
tified and defended. 

But there is another aspect of 
the case, in which it must be re- 
garded by Catholics. This can be 
manifested by the analogy of theo- 
logical science. Theology, proper- 
ly so-called, exists only in the Ca- 
tholic Church. It is a science, but 
it is not a purely natural science. 
It is built on faith, and morally 
necessary for the maintenance, 
propagation, and defence of faith. 
It is necessary, therefore, that a 
certain criterion should exist for 
judging what theology is sound 
and safe, and a sufficient authority 
for the control and regulation of 
theology. Catholic theology must 
find its sources and rules in Scrip- 
ture, tradition, the decisions of the 
church, the writings of the Fathers, 
the Doctors, the standard and ap- 
proved theologians. Philosophy is 
a purely natural science, but it is 
subject to theology, and to the au- 
thority which regulates theology. 
It has a necessary relation to and 
connection with that which is 
properly the domain of faith and 
morals, in which the church is in- 
fallible, and the judgments of her 
supreme head final expressions of 
her unvarying and unerring doc- 
trine. In this relation and connec- 
tion, philosophy must have a suf- 
ficient security of possessing the 
principles, method, and substantial 
truth by which it can be kept from 
injuring either faith or morals, or 
becoming useless for their pro- 



294 



Leo XIII. on Scholastic Philosophy. 



motion, and made subservient to 
both, -and to theology as a rational 
science, and to the perfection of 
man in general. All distinctive- 
ly Christian civilization, while it 
adopts all that it finds which is 
good, develops under the influence 
of the church and of the Chris- 
tian religion. Christian philosophy, 
while it adopted all that was good 
in pagan philosophy, was develop- 
ed and grew side by side with theo- 
logy. All pagan philosophy, in 
scientific form, really possessing an 
intrinsic and permanent value, sub- 
stantially exists in the Greek philo- 
sophy, and, par excellence, in the 
writings of Plato and Aristotle. 
Christian philosophy has its sources 
in the writings of the Greek and 
Latin Fathers, and in those of their 
successors. St. Thomas is the 
prince among the doctors in 
theology, and he is also the 
prince among the scholastic doc- 
tors in philosophy. He has no 
equal and no rival. Any compari- 
son with his predecessors, coevals, 
or successors only brings out more 
clearly his superiority. Whoever 
has studied his works enough truly 
to appreciate them, and has enough 
knowledge of the works of other 
great authors on similar topics to 
make a comparison, must under- 
stand and feel that his genius, and 
his faculty of exposition, are unique. 
His erudition, in so far as the re- 
sources at his command permitted, 
was adequate to the exigencies of 
his great task, which was to com- 
pose a sum of theology and philo- 
sophy. In physics, he was of 
course unable to rise above the 
level attained in his age. But in 
speculative theology and the pri- 
mal philosophy, the data and the 
instruments for bringing these 
sciences to their substantial per- 
fection were as perfect as they 



ever will or can be, and the tran- 
scendent genius to employ them in 
the most perfect manner had been 
given to him, together with the 
highest gifts of sanctity which per- 
fect the intelligence and the will 
su p e rn at u rally, and elevate all na- 
tural virtues to their most sub- 
lime degree. 

These did not suffice to render 
him infallible, or to enable him 
to proceed so far in the attain- 
ment and teaching of theological 
and philosophical science, that 
all further progress is impossible. 
Theology is, plainly enough, a sci- 
ence which never can be finished 
in this world. With that we are 
not at present concerned. Philo- 
sophy can and should make pro- 
gress, and advance toward that 
ultimate perfection which cajmot 
be reached so long as the limita- 
tions of thought belonging to our 
present state continue. This is 
particularly true of all that part of 
it which touches on the realm of 
physics. . What we may call the 
physico-psychical branch of sci- 
ence is really a new science and 
one which is progressing experi- 
mentally. Whether or no it is 
proper to include it under the 
head of psychology, it has an inti- 
mate relation with it, and sustains 
the doctrine of St. Thomas against 
that of other systems. There are 
also questions in respect to space 
and time, and questions in cos- 
mology, which have hardly more 
than begun to be thoroughly dis- 
cussed. In our remarks upon the 
modern decadence of philosophy 
in the Christian schools, we have 
not intended to include all its 
single departments, but only those 
of the Second Part of Logic, On- 
tology, and the higher or ideologi- 
cal part of Psychology. Formal 
Logic has been neglected, but 






Leo XIII. on Scholastic Philosophy. 



295 



not corrupted- Natural theology 
and ethics have been diligent- 
ly and successfully cultivated. 
Certain parts of psychology and 
cosmology have been copiously 
and ably treated. We accord, 
also, to many works written by 
Protestants on single topics or 
branches of philosophy, and we 
say the same in respect to theo- 
logy, that meed of distinguished 
merit which is their due. The 
failure has been in the co-ordina- 
tion of all under the primary phi- 
losophy, the dominating metaphy- 
sics which gives the principle of a 
real synthesis. " Philosophy, in a 
word," says the chaplain of the 
Belgian court, Dr. Van Weddin- 
gen,* " is the science of the laws, 
and functions both representative 
and spontaneous, of the self-con- 
scious subject, and of the objec- 
tive reality regarded in its ultimate 
elements." " Two celebrated phi- 
losophers, the lamented Frederic 
Ueberwegg and Trendelenburg, 
have denned the peripatetic sys- 
tem as the 'doctrine of essential 
objectivity.' The Thomist system 
has been conceived in the same 
spirit." Every other system either 
subverts partially or entirely this 
objectivity, or presents it falsely 
or in a deficient manner, and by 
consequence alters the true idea of 
the subjective which depends on 
the objective. What is known, 
and how, and by what subject, is 
the substantial matter of the pri- 
mary philosophy. In this great 
science there are but two great 
masters, Aristotle and St. Thomas. 
And it is this philosophy which 
we affirm to have been brought to 
its essential perfection by St. Tho- 
mas. We may compare it to the 

* Rev. Ge"n4rale^ Sept., 1879, p. 444. This article 
contains a complete and able analysis of the Thom- 
ist philosophy. 



essential science of astronomy as 
contained in Kepler's laws. When 
such a science is gained, it is gained 
once for all, it can never be altered. 
From it, as from a starting point, 
all real progress must advance. 
Upon it, as a foundation, all sci- 
entific building must rest. Like 
all the greatest masterpieces of 
human genius, the works of Aristo- 
tle and St. Thomas are permanent 
and perpetual. 

Leo XIII., in his wise and pas- 
toral solicitude, admonishes there- 
fore the learned and the principal 
instructors of the young and un- 
learned, to go to the pure, peren- 
nial source of philosophy in the 
works of St. Thomas, and the less 
learned or learners to go to streams 
and rivulets derived from this foun- 
tain. There is only one passage in 
this part of the Encyclical which to 
our apprehension is somewhat am- 
biguous : " But, lest the counterfeit 
for the true, or the corrupt for the 
pure be imbibed, be watchful that 
the doctrine of Thomas be drawn 
from his own fountains, or at least 
from those streams which, derived 
from the very fount, have thus far 
flowed, according to the certain 
and concordant judgment of learn- 
ed men, without diminution or im- 
pure mixture ; be careful to guard 
the minds of youth from those 
which are said to flow thence, but in 
reality have been sivollen by foreign 
and unwholesome waters" 

The first part of this passage is 
plain and obvious enough. The 
second part, though equally clear 
as to the quczstio juris, is not so to 
us, as to the qucestio facti, if there 
is one in the mind and intention 
of the pontiff. There are different 
interpretations of certain doctrines 
of St. Thomas, in philosophy as 
well as in theology, which are tol- 
erated in the church and disputed 



296 



Leo XIIL on Scholastic Philosophy. 



between certain sections of pro- 
fessed Thomists, all of whom are 
above any censure in regard to 
their orthodoxy. The Pope can- 
not be supposed to intend official- 
ly to rebuke any advocates of any 
one of these variant interpretations, 
whatever his own private opinion 
may be. For instance, although he 
has directed the use of Liberatore 
or San Severino in his own pon- 
tifical colleges, we cannot suppose 
that he intends a doctrinal con- 
demnation of the system of Rosmi- 
ni so earnestly combated and re- 
jected by these two authors. Nor is 
it likely that he intends to give any 
sanction, ex cathedra, to the opinion 
concerning substantial generations, 
the chemical composition of com- 
posite bodies, and the nature of the 
relation of the soul as forma corpo- 
ris to the first matter of its organic 
body, so strongly maintained by one 
class of metaphysicians and physi- 
cists, and with equal firmness com- 
bated by most Catholic physicists 
and some distinguished metaphysi- 
cians, such as Father Ramiere and 
Father Bayma. All that Leo XIII. 
can be supposed to intend in rela- 
tion to such matters is, to propose 
the right way of determining what 
the real doctrine is which is con- 
sistent with the certain principles 
and doctrines of St. Thomas, viz., 
by the thorough examination of the 
genuine and pure teaching of the 
great Doctor, and by argumenta- 
tion from his known and undoubt- 
ed first principles and fundamen- 
tal doctrines. 

It may be that there are some 
spurious systems or particular opin- 
ions claiming to shelter themselves 
under the prestige of the great 
name of St. Thomas, which are at 
present somewhat in vogue in Italy, 
or elsewhere, which Leo XIII. had 
specially in h his eye, although he 



did not see fit to designate them. 
The axiom of St. Thomas, nil est in 
intellect^, quod non crat priits in 
senstf, has been perverted by the 
advocates of the sensist philosophy. 
Giobertians and other advocates of 
a spurious ontological doctrine have 
steadily endeavored to claim St. 
Augustine, St. Anselm, and St. 
Buenaventura as their patrons, and 
to insist that the spirit a^d the 
deepest principles of St. Thomas 
really agree with their own prima- 
ry idea. There may be some semi- 
Giobertian or modified ontologistic 
speculations, plausibly adjusted so 
as to evade the direct statement 
of condemned propositions, which 
are still rife in Italy. Probably 
those who are more familiar with 
the actual posture of these affairs 
than we can be, may be able to 
throw some light on what is to 
us obscure in this particular sen- 
tence of the Encyclical. 

Of one thing we are sure. The 
Holy See is always slow and care- 
ful in closing up open questions 
and narrowing the limits in which 
free opinion and discussion can 
expatiate. Thorough investigation 
and discussion always precede final, 
authoritative decision. In many 
cases, the decision is never given, 
though it is ardently desired and 
confideptly expected by persons 
and parties of great weight and in- 
fluence. In other cases it is long 
postponed. Existing controversies 
among those who consent in recog- 
nizing St. Thomas as the great 
master in theology and philosophy 
must necessarily go on, study, in- 
vestigation, and reasoning must be 
pursued, as the way to arrive at 
truth and agreement, in so far as 
certainty is attainable and conclu- 
sive argument possible. In those 
matters where we must perpetually 
come short of this result, and the 



Leo XIII. on Scholastic Philosophy. 



297 






supreme authority, assisted by the 
Holy Spirit, does not render a de- 
cision ; which it never does and 
never will merely to gratify our 
curiosity ; we have to remain con- 
tent with probability, with conjec- 
ture, and with ignorance. 

In so far as the connection of 
metaphysics with physics is con- 
cerned, no one can reasonably com- 
plain that any obstacle is placed in 
the way of physical investigations, 
the acceptance of discovered facts, 
or really probable theories based 
on these facts, or in the way of con- 
stant efforts to harmonize meta- 
physical and physical theories with 
each other by sound deductive and 
inductive reasoning. 

Tiie Council of the Vatican has 
explicitly declared that: "It is so 
far from being a. fact that the 
church opposes the cultivation of 
human arts and branches of know- 
ledge, that she actually aids and 
promotes all these in many ways. 
For she does not ignore or despise 
the advantages flowing from them 
into human life; rather, she ac- 
knowledges that as these things 
proceed from God who is the Lord 
of the sciences, so, if rightly used, 
they, by the aid of his grace, lead 
to God. Nor does she prohibit to 
branches of learning of this sort 
the use of the proper methods and 
principles belonging to each one 
within its own circle." 

In the same sense, Leo XIII. de- 
clares that scholastic philosophy 
"can only by the grossest injustice 
be accused of being opposed to the 
advance and development of natu- 
ral science." And also, that "if any- 
thing is investigated with too great 
subtlety by the scholastic doctors, 
or too carelessly handled, if there 
is anything which ill agrees with 
the proved doctrines of a later age, 
or which in any way is not proba- 



ble, it does not enter our mind to 
propose this to be followed by our 
own age." 

The study of physics, not only 
by secular students in Catholic 
colleges, but by those- destined to 
the ecclesiastical state during their 
collegiate and philosophical course, 
will receive a new impetus from 
the philosophical revival and from 
the Encyclical of Leo XIII. As 
a necessary consequence of the 
equal impetus given to all branches 
of scientific culture, we shall have 
more metaphysicians who are ac- 
quainted with mathematics and 
physics, and more physicists whose 
minds have been symmetrically cul- 
tivated, and whose mental horizon 
has been enlarged by philosophy. 
This will be a great advantage on 
both sides, and a great advantage 
to the cause of the Catholic Reli- 
gion. We shall gain a more uni- 
versal and synthetical science, to 
the corroboration and illustration 
of the Faith, which is infinitely 
above all natural science, yet con- 
descends to accept its aid. 

Some will undoubtedly wish to 
know, how those who cannot study 
the scholastic philosophy in the 
works of St. Thomas and his vo- 
luminous commentators, can gain 
some knowledge adequate to their 
own intellectual capacity, and suffi- 
cient for the purposes of their own 
mental culture and occupations. 
There are those who are even 
obliged to give elementary instruc- 
tion in philosophy, and who can 
either never hope to study it in its 
sources, or, at best, cannot wait for 
the end of such a study, even 
though they may be able to begin 
it and prosecute it to a moderate 
extent. Those who can read Latin 
may easily find what they need for 
their own information and for pre- 
paring them to teach young pupils, 



298 



Leo XIII. on Scholastic Philosophy. 



in several accurate and copious 
text- books which have been pub- 
lished within the last twenty years. 
There are also valuable writers in 
the Italian, German, and French 
languages, and new books of the 
same kind are continually appear- 
ing, as well as many most learned 
and ably written essays in the high- 
est class of European periodicals, 
which are more or less accessible 
to those who are able to avail them- 
selves of these sources of know- 
ledge. 

For those who can only pursue 
their reading in English books, we 
confess that their opportunities of 
acquiring a knowledge of the scho- 
lastic philosophy are very limited. 
Those who must teach can only, 
for the present, avail themselves of 
the few books we possess in the 
English language, endeavoring to 
select the best, and wait for better 
times. The same is true of those 
who merely wish to learn. We 
have endeavored to give them a 
modicum of help from time to time 
in this magazine*, in spite of the 
extremely small measure of thanks 
we have ever received for our la- 
bors. During the past year, we 
have given a succinct and compen- 
dious resume of all that " doctrine 
of essential objectivity," which con- 
stitutes the essence of the primal 
philosophy, in a series of articles, 
beginning with one on" The Reality 
of Being," and ending with one on 
" The Reality of the Supernatural 
Order "which links the evidence of 



Natural Theology with the evidence 
of the Christian Revelation.* This 
resume may be relied on as a per- 
fectly faithful presentation of the 
pure doctrine of St. Thomas with- 
out any foreign admixture whatso- 
ever. It is to be hoped that some 
of the excellent works written in 
the languages of Europe may be, 
ere long, translated; as, for in- 
stance, Kleutgen's Philosophic der 
Vorzeit, and Liberatore's philoso- 
phical treatises. We need, how- 
ever, a complete and extensive 
work on philosophy written in Eng- 
lish, and a compendium for class 
instruction, derived from and based 
upon such a work. Who is able, 
and who is willing to accomplish 
this task ? We do not know. Even 
if we had all the works of the 
kind we have indicated as needful 
or desirable, actually finished and 
lying in great piles of MSS. on the 
shelves of our office, we do not 
know how they could be published. 
There is an obstacle in the way of 
all literature which is not popular. 
Such stock is heavy and dull and 
there are no takers. In this part 
of the book market the bears have 
control. Moriamur in nescientia 
nostra is the practical maxim. 
The grand Encyclical, itself a spe- 
cimen of what the best philosophi- 
cal and literary culture of a mind 
of high order can produce, though 
not technically a Pupal Bull, will, 
we hope, scatter all bears and put 
an end to their supremacy. 

* THE CATHOLIC WORLD, April August, 1879. 



Follette. 



299 



FOLLETTE. 

BV KATHLEEN o'MEARA, AUTHOR OF " A WOMAN'S TRIALS," " IZA*S STORY," " A SALON IN THE LAST 
DAYS OF THE EMPIRE," " FREDERIC OZANAM," " PEARL," E1C. 

CHAPTER II. 
GRIPARD'S TROUBLES. 



IT was not a cheerful party that 
gathered round the table at supper 
that evening at Quatre Vents, al- 
though the meal was hot and a 
fire blazed merrily in the wide, 
black chimney. 

Old Jeanne's eyes were red with 
crying, and Follette's bright glance 
was veiled by a sadness which, 
though it lent it a softer fascina- 
tion, irritated Gripard beyond en- 
durance. 

Victor was the only one who 
wore his usual face of good-humor- 
ed content. He did not talk, see- 
ing that Gripard was in no mood 
for it, but ate his supper sparingly, 
without any offensive show of hun- 
ger. Gri para's rheumatism was 
worse than usual, and his temper, 
soured by pain and recent contra- 
diction, was also worse than usual. 
He was an ill-used man. He had 
harbored a nest of serpents, trai- 
tors, ingrates, and, now that he had 
found them out, he could not turn 
them out and lie could not run 
away. Old Jeanne was as neces- 
sary to him as his pipe or .his stick, 
and had been as docile as one and 
the other all her life; but she, too, 
had turned restive and was defying 
him. It was pretty much as if his 
pipe had begun to puff into his 
face, or as if his stick had turned 
in his hand and struck him. 

As to Follette, there was some- 
thing altogether unnatural in the 
child's conduct. There she sat 



opposite to him, coolly peeling her 
potato. There was something in 
the pose cf her delicately-curved 
throat that made his fingers itch to 
wring it. He felt that he might as 
well try to lift Quatre Vents on his 
rheumatic old back, and carry it to 
the other side of the river, as try 
to break Follette's will or turn her 
from her purpose. Where did the 
soft thing get the courage to brave 
him in this way? She depended 
on him for the potato she was eat- 
ing, for the gown she wore. If he 
turned her out she had no one to 
go to. He had often hugged him- 
self with this thought of the child's 
utter dependence on him. He had 
seen the toddling thing growing up 
and blossoming out into girlhood, 
full of health and activity and in- 
telligence, and he had said to him- 
self that all this was his property, 
and belonged to him as much as 
the pig he bought at the market or 
the vegetables he raised in his gar- 
den. She was his chattel, to be 
used by him according as he want- 
ed it. When Jeanne grew too 
feeble, or when she died, this 
strong, supple-limbed young crea- 
ture was there to take her place, to 
cook and wash, and mend and knit, 
and toil and moil for him, and 
nurse him when the rheumatism 
made him helpless and dependent 
on others. But, lo and behold ! 
this domestic animal, this vegeta- 
ble, this chattel had suddenly pro- 



3 



Follctte. 



claimed itself a human being with 
a will and a free soul, and turned 
upon him, like that worm ! And 
Jeanne, who had been as obedient 
x as a dog to him ever since he was 
a baby, had joined the rebel, and 
defied him as coolly as Follette. 
He had only himself to thank for 
it all. Why had he kept that curly- 
headed viper at his hearth so long, 
or tolerated his presence in the 
house after he had turned him out ? 
To be sure he might turn out 
these two just as easily; but what 
was he to do when they were gone ? 
Who would starve and slave and 
pinch for him, and poultice his rheu- 
matic old arms and legs, as Jeanne 
did ? The very thought of letting 
a stranger in about the place, to 
spy upon him and find out his 
secret, drove him crazy. Jeanne 
was loyal to him as the bark is to 
the tree. If she found out where 
his money was hid she would not 
tell it to her own right hand ; but 
if any one else found it out he 
would never know an hour's peace. 
He could not put Jeanne to the 
door, but she was none the less a 
wicked old woman, who deserved 
to be whipped. 

Victor was the only one Gripard 
had to turn to ; now that these 
rotten reeds had broken in his 
hand, Victor ,was a staff for him to 
lean upon. 

The meal was eaten in sullen 
silence. Follette cleared away the 
table, and she and Jeanne carried 
off the bowls and plates to the 
scullery, where they shared the 
washing-up between them. 

Victor filled Gripard's pipe and 
handed it to him. 

4< Thank 'ee, lad. I need a pipe. 
It's a hard world." 

" This frost is good for the cele- 
ry," said Victor, anxious to say 
something consolatory, " and the 



cabbages are splendid; they will 
fetch a good price at the market." 

"And the mushrooms they 
an't frozen, are they ?" 

" No. I took care of that. I 
covered them with three feet of 
straw." 

"Straw? Eh? I never bade 
you get straw. Straw costs a lot of 
money, eh ?" 

"Patron, I didn't invent gun- 
powder; but I know how to get a 
truss of straw gratis," said^ Victor, 
with a knowing laugh. 

" Nothing's got gratis that's worth 
having," retorted Gripard; "but I 
trust thee not to see me robbed, 
eh ?" 

" That's the least I may do, pa- 
tron." 

" Parbleu ! I should think it was. 
But that's no reason. You'll be 
turning against me one of these 
days." 

"Never, patron, while I've life 
in my body. I'm not clever like 
some, and don't set up for it; but 
I have a heart, and a conscience 
too." 

" We'll see, we'll see. Time was 
I never would have believed it of 
Jules." 

"We're different, Jules and I." 

" So much the better for you. 
He's a bad fellow." 

" Not bad, patron ; only idle and 
a bit of a spendthrift," said Victor, 
knowing well that, in Gripard's 
eyes, tjiere were no such abomina- 
ble vices in the calendar as these 
two. 

" He'll end on the gallows," said 
the miser vindictively. 

" I'm glad he's going, for Fol- 
lette's sake," remarked Victor, low- 
ering his voice and bending to- 
wards Gripard. "You never could 
have put an end to that" nodding 
significantly, "while he was in the 
way." 









Follette. 



301 



There was an interval of silence 
as far as tongues were concerned, 
but the clatter of crockery and the 
clacking of wooden shoes went on 
in the scullery. 

" Look ye here, my lad," said 
Gripard in a confidential tone, and 
removing his pipe ; " I don't want 
Follette to meet that fellow before 
he goes. I'll have no kissing by 
moonlight, and exchanging of coins, 
and that sort of betiscs that ties up 
young folk as tight as M. le Cure's 
blessing. See to it." 

" I will, patron ; but how can I 
prevent Follette going to meet him 
in the forest ?" 

"Say nothing to her. Tackle 
him. Tell him I'll thrash him if 
he comes in her way again." 

"He won't believe me." 

" Then say you'll thrash him 
yourself. Are you afraid of him ?" 
said Gripard with a sneer. 

" Not I !" said Victor, tossing his 
head. 

But in his heart he was afraid of 
him, for Jules was the best boxer 
in all the country-side and as brave 
as a lion. Victor had a plan in his 
head, however, which might answer 
as well as a hand-to-hand fight, 
while it involved no risk of broken 
bones. 

Jeanne rose an hour earlier than 
her wont next morning, and was 
ready betimes for her journey to 
Cotor. It was only a drive of six 
miles, but at her age this was a 
serious undertaking, and it was 
gratifying to see that her friends 
treated it with becoming solemnity. 
It was known all over Bacaram an 
hour after Jeanne knew it that 
Jules was going to Paris, and that 
Jeanne was going to Cotor to see 
to his gear before he set out on the 
bold adventure. There was quite 
a little demonstration at the door 



of- Quatre Vents as Follette helped 
the old grandmother into Mme. Bi- 
bot's market-cart, kindly lent for 
the occasion. One neighbor came 
with a chaufferette to keep the 
traveller's feet warm, another in- 
sisted on wrapping his goatskin 
round her knees, and as the cart 
moved off a chorus of " Bon voy- 
age, Madame Jeanne !" <l Heureux 
retour, voisine !" followed it down 
the road. 

Jeanne's heart was warmed by 
all this sympathy, and she set out 
in good spirits. After all, there was 
much to be thankful for in what 
had at first seemed nothing but 
cruel bereavement. Her boy was 
singled out from all the lads at 
Bacaram to rise above his fellows. 
Instead of staying at homelike Vic- 
tor Bart, digging and hewing, and 
earning a miserable living like other 
poor young fellows, her Jules was 
called to be an artist. There was 
a chord in the simple soul of the 
peasant woman that vibrated in 
unison with his to this call of the 
gods ; like the trees of the forest, 
that chant in praise while deaf to 
the music their murmurous leaves 
are making, so Jeanne's soul sent 
up unsung alleluias for the gift 
that had come to her boy. The 
early sunlight dancing on the snow 
and shifting the shadows of the 
forest touched her with a new sense 
of beauty, though she knew it not ; 
for her mind was not with them, 
but with the lad who was moulding 
figures out of red clay, and singing 
to himself at his window on the hill- 
side. 

When the high-wheeled cart drew 
up at the foot of the hill Jules 
looked up from his work. He re- 
cognized the well-known figure, 
small and wonderfully active, al- 
though the head was bent and 
shook a little ; and before Jeanne 



302 



Follette. 



had set foot on the rugged up-hill 
path he was at her side, fondling 
her in glad surprise. The manu- 
factory stood half-way up the moun- 
tain, and Jules' lodging was in a 
cottage close by overlooking the 
busy village that drew its life from 
the brick building with its stacks of 
chimneys and its working hive a 
flow of activity that never ceased 
streaming in and out of it. 

No time was wasted in idle senti- 
ment, but Jeanne proceeded at once 
to take stock of Jules' wardrobe ; 
and great was her dismay at the 
sorry plight it presented. 

" Hast thou no blouse but that 
one on thee, that is dyed as red as 
if thou hadst murdered a man in 
it? Where is the one I made thee 
at Easter ?" 

" Mother, it has gone the way 
of all blouses." 

" Oui, da, the way of all blouses 
with thee, except the one on thy 
back. Thou hast no more thrift 
than a baby. Gripard is right : 
thou wilt die a beggar." 

" I will die an artist, mother. 
Artists don't hoard for the morrow. 
They grow rich like the cornfields, 
working and trusting to the good 
God. Wouldst thou have me a 
miser like Gripard, say ?" 

" I would have thee learn to be 
thrifty," said loyal Jeanne. '* Where 
are thy socks ? And thy shirts ?" 
The remnants of Jules' hosiery was 
dragged out and elicited much 
wailing and la-la-ing. How was 
she to get things ready in time, and 
what sort of a figure would Jules 
make in Paris, if he did not learn to 
keep his clothes, and not give them 
to every beggar he met ? Jeanne 
was examining the dilapidated gar- 
ments with many a shake of her 
head, when Jules, with his hands 
full of red clay, wheeled round on 
his stool, and, pausing from his work. 



" Little mother," he said, " you 
will be proud when you hear of my 
statues in marble being copied by 
the old comrades in the manufac- 
tory here, will you not ? I shall 
long to hear that you praise them. 
And Follette she will love me the 
better when I am an artist, and 
have fought my way to the front 
with the men of genius, will she 
not ?" 

"Very likely; the young ones 
are caught by that sort of thing. 
They think more of a lad when the 
world praises him ; but thy old 
granny would love thee none the 
better if thou wert the greatest 
sculptor in France." 

" But you will be prouder of me, 
mother? It is a grand thing to 
be master of the marble ; to make 
it breathe, to give a voice to the 
dumb block. Think of it, mother ! 
And the marble never dies : it is 
eternal; the man who conquers it 
gains immortality. Thy Jules will 
some day count amongst the immor- 
tals !" added the young man with 
a kindling eye. 

" Bonte divine ! Of course thou 
wilt ! Hast thou not a soul, and, 
marble or no marble, dost thou not 
mean to save it? My son, I like 
not to hear thee uttering this wild 
talk about the marble making thee 
immortal," said Jeanne, drawing 
her hand out of a sock and look- 
ing at her grandson with a dubi- 
ous, uneasy glance. 

Jules gave her a merry, indulgent 
look as he tossed back his curls 
and laughed. 

" Mother, that is another kind of 
immortality; the marble will come 
first, and that after. Have no fear 
about me. I shall not forget my 
soul amidst the masters. Think, 
if my father had lived, how proud 
he would have been to see me an 
artist !" 



Follette. 



303 



" Child," said Jeanne with sol- 
emnity, and she laid down the gar- 
ments, and crossed her withered 
hands on her lap, and looked at 
him with grave eyes " child, I 
would rather see thee dead than 
thou shouldst forget it; I would 
pray the good God to let the marble 
fall on thee and crush thee before 
it should lead thee away from the 
straight paths of thy father. He 
was a good man. See that thou 
walkest in his steps, marble or no 
marble." 

"Nay, mother, I mean to do so, 
with God's help. Have you no 
more faith in me? Have I not 
always lived like an honest lad ? 
And have you not told me time 
and again that I had the fire and 
would be a sculptor ?" 

"Ay, ay; but I'd rather see 
thee a good Christian, and thy 
hands stained with red clay all thy 
days, than that thou shouldst go 
forth to glory and lose thy soul." 

"Have no fear of that, mother. 
God will watch over me, and your 
prayers will do the rest," replied 
the young man gently. " But, mo- 
ther, you will not let Follette for- 
get rne ? I wish Victor were out 
of the way/' he added, and a frown 
gathered on his open brow. 

" Thou hast naught to fear from 
Victor; the child has no love for 
him," said Jeanne, with a nod full 
of significance. 

''But Gripard likes him, and Fol- 
lette would never dare disobey her 
uncle." 

" Dost thou think so ? Be tran- 
quil ; she will not obey him if he 
wants her to give thee up for Vic- 
tor." 

" You think so, little mother ? 
But he is hard, the old man, and 
he can be cruel. I would not have 
Follette made a victim for my 
sake." 



" Tut, tut ! The patron is not an 
ogre. It was Victor that set him 
against thee. And thou wert al- 
ways thwarting him. What call 
hads:t thou to quarrel with Victor 
for beating the hunchback ?" 

"What call had I?" said Jules, 
with an indignant flash in his dark 
eyes. " Every man has a call to 
stand up for poor Nicol ; nobody 
but a coward would strike him a 
blow." 

"But the blow was struck, and 
quarrelling with Victor could not 
mervd matters; it only brought the 
punishment on thyself, foolish lad! 
See that thou keepest a cool head 
and a silent tongue in Paris, or evil 
will betide thee," said Jeanne, lift- 
ing her finger with a warning 
shake. 

She believed in the boy's genius 
as she believed in the stars, and 
she looked for its triumph as sure- 
ly as she looked for the coming 
spring; but she feared his impul- 
sive ways. He was always fighting 
somebody's battles, and no good 
came of it, except that the old folk 
smiled on him while they shook 
their heads, and the young ones 
loved him and thought him a hero. 

"The fair is on the 2ist, mo- 
ther; it seems a pity to miss it, and 
I would not if I could help it," 
said Jules ; " but the brewer and his 
wife are going on the 2oth, and they 
have offered me a lodging for two 
nights in Paris, if I go with them 
and do a few jobs on arriving. So 
I thought it was better to miss the 
fair and go." 

"Thou art right. It was a blow 
to think of thy going in such a 
hurry, but it is best so. I shall be 
easier to know thou art in compa- 
ny. The journey is long and full 
of dangers." 

Jeanne had never seen a rail- 
road, and had that mysterious awe 



304 



Follette. 



of the steam-horse with which ig- 
norance invests the unknown. 

" I will come to Bacaram after 
Mass on Sunday," said Jules. 
u Ask Follette to meet me in the 
forest at the cross-roads to say 
good-by ; will you, petite mere ?" 

"I will tell the child, and she 
will be foolish enough to go, I dare 
say," grumbled Jeanne. 

She stayed with Jules till late 
in the afternoon, and then the cart 
came back for her, and Jules car- 
ried the little bundle of mendable 
clothes down the hill, and kissed 
her, and settled her comfortably 
with the replenished chaufferette 
under her feet, and stood on the 
roadside watching the cart till it 
turned round the mountain and 
the rumble died away. 

Gripard's rheumatism had shift- 
ed from his legs to his shoulder; 
so, though he was suffering a good 
deal, he was able to leave his chair 
and mope about. When the sun 
shone he hobbled out into the gar- 
den, where he would lift the straw 
with the end of his stick, and peer 
at the mushrooms, and sniff about 
like a dog trying to scent a thief. 
He used Follette as a crutch, and 
leaned his bony weight on her 
round young arm unsparingly. 
But Follette did not grudge it. 
Anything was better than having 
him stuck there in his high-backed 
chair from morning till night, snarl- 
ing and snapping at everything, 
the perpetual tap of his stick on 
the floor going on like a drop of 
water, his sharp ear pricked at 
every passing footfall, always on 
the watch for an enemy, a thief, a 
spy, somebody to suspect or accuse. 
It was intolerable to Follette, who 
had to sit there shivering at her 
work because the old man did not 
like being left alone with old Jeanne. 



She used at first to escape on one 
pretext or another for half an hour 
now and then ; but since this dis- 
covery about herself and Jules 
Gripard could not bear her out of 
his sight, and catechised her so 
closely if she went on an errand for 
ten minutes that the poor child re- 
signed herself to her fate, and sat 
meekly at her wheel by the hour. 

Jeanne had given her Jules' mes- 
sage about the meeting on Sunday 
at the cross-roads, and this consol- 
ed her mightily and helped her to 
bear the week's imprisonment in a 
cheerful spirit. Victor had grown 
so kind and gentle that she felt re- 
morseful, and began to think she 
had judged him too harshly. He 
was on the watch to save her trou- 
ble in no end of little ways ; and so 
unobtrusive, never forcing his help 
on her, but following her about 
with his eyes like a dumb animal. 
She pretended not to see it, but 
it touched her all the same. 

Sunday morning came at last, 
and a lovely winter's morning it 
was. The sun shone brightly on 
the snow, and the robins and black- 
birds flew in little companies to the 
window-sill of Follette's room, and 
hopped and sunned themselves 
while she made her toilet. She 
made great haste to wash up the 
bowls and clear the kitchen after 
the breakfast which was hot on 
Sundays so as to have more time 
to plait her hair and adorn her- 
self carefully. Jeanne had been to 
early Mass, as usual, so that Gri- 
pard might not be alone during 
the long Office, to which Victor 
also went. Follette would gladly 
have dispensed with his company 
to-day in the walk to church; not 
that it much mattered, for they 
were sure to fall in with neighbors 
at once, and so avoid a tete-a-tete. 

"The bell is ringing, little one; 



Follette. 



305 



them wilt be late," Gripard cried at 
the foot of the stair in his shrill 
voice. 

Follette took a last look at her- 
self in her small glass, turning her 
head this way and that to see that 
the satin plaits peeped out to the 
best advantage from the crimson 
kerchief that had been carefully 
coiled round the well-set head; 
she shook her petticoat, and then, 
throwing on her dark blue cloak, 
she twined her coral rosary round 
her wrist and tripped lightly down 
the stair. But a terrible blow 
awaited her in the kitchen. There 
sat Gripard in his hat and great 
woollen coat, which only appear- 
ed on first-rate occasions. Was it 
possible he was coming to church ? 
Follette's heart gave a great leap 
of terror, and then ran down into 
her wooden shoes. 

"What a time thou hast been!" 
said her uncle. " Give me a hand, 
child. Where is Jeanne ? Gone 
a-gadding, eh ? Oh ! la-la. Sa- 
pristi!" he groaned, leaning on 
Follette till she shook under the 
weight, while he lifted himself out 
of his chair. 

"You are coming out, my uncle?" 

" Yes. What else should I have 
my hat on for?" 

" But, my uncle, it is bitterly 
cold; the church is like an ice- 
house; you will fall ill!" pleaded 
Follette, feeling guilty, but driven 
desperate. 

"I've kept the chimney-corner 
too long," said Gripard; "if- 1 don't 
bestir myself I will be a cripple. 
Oh ! la-la. Sab-r-r-e de bois !" 

There was no help for it. Out 
they hobbled, first going down the 
road to Mme. Bibot's, where Gri- 
pard had purposely sent Jeanne 
while Victor got him ready. 

Jeanne threw up her hands with 
a cry as if she beheld a ghost. 

VOL. XXX. 20 



" Go home and mind the house 
till we come back," said her mas- 
ter sharply ; and he turned away, 
without paying more attention to 
her amazed protest than if it had 
been the mewing of a cat. 

Follette's heart was full to burst- 
ing. It was too cruel of Gripard. 
Did he know, and was he victimiz- 
ing himself on purpose to spite 
her? How could he possibly 
know ? The fact was, he only 
guessed, and, in order to foil Fol- 
lette's little scheme, he was sacri- 
ficing himself with a heroism worthy 
of a better cause. 

Victor had spied on her many a 
time when she never suspected it, 
and knew that she and Jules often 
met in the forest after Mass on a 
Sunday, and he had given Gripard 
the hint that they were almost cer- 
tain to meet there to-day. 

"I will go and meet Jules, and 
thrash him, if you like, patron," 
said Victor; "but I'm afraid it 
will only make matters worse. 
Follette will hate me more than 
ever, and she will love Jules the 
better for being persecuted on ac- 
count of her." 

"Let the fellow alone," said Gri- 
pard. "I will see that he has his 
walk for nothing." 

So he was trudging along in the 
snow with poor Follette. The bells 
were ringing. Nearly everybody 
was in church, for Gripard's pro- 
gress was very slow, and they only 
met a few loiterers on the road, 
hurrying on to make up for lost 
time. 

Follette's brain was busy think- 
ing how she might escape after 
Mass and run off to the forest. 
Some neighbors might come to the 
rescue and offer him an arm, or 
perhaps a lift there were always a 
few carts from the* other side of 
the valley and he might be glad 



306 



Follette. 



to accept the offer. It struck her 
as odd that Victor was not there. 
But he had kept shyly aloof latter- 
ly, and perhaps it was out of kind- 
ness that he kept away this morn- 
ing. Oh ! what had put it into her 
uncle's head to corne out? 

When they arrived at the church 
it was crowded. There was a move- 
ment of surprise amongst the con- 
gregation on beholding Gripard ; 
nods and smiles greeted him and 
Follette. The miser had no friends, 
but he was not unpopular. He 
never wronged anybody, and he was 
a man who always spoke the truth. 

Follette led him up to Jeanne's 
prie-dieu her uncle clutching her 
still with a hard grip, as if he fear- 
ed she was going to escape and, 
after settling him comfortably, she 
was turning to find a seat for her- 
self when he pulled her by the 
sleeve and pointed to the ground 
by his side. It flashed through 
Follette now like a certainty that 
he knew she wanted to meet Jules, 
and had come to prevent it. She 
knelt down where he bid her, and 
where she dared not even steal a 
glance round the church to see if 
by chance Jules might have come 
here to Mass on his last Sunday. 
She swallowed her tears and made 
believe to say her prayers. 

Gripard made no pretence of 
saying his, but sat there, leaning 
on the knob of his stick, alternate- 
ly watching Follette and staring 
about to make sure if any one else 
was watching her.- When Mass 
was over he seized her arm with 
the same hard grip and went hob- 
bling on to the door. 

Victor was there waiting for 
them. 

" Take my arm, patron. It's a 
solider crutch than Follette's no 
disrespect to her," he said good- 
humoredly. 



" Nay, nay, the petiote does very 
well; she's just the right height," 
said Gripard querulously, motion- 
ing him away. 

Victor gave Follette a look full 
of meaning. She was more and 
more mystified. Gripard stopped 
to exchange good-morrows on the 
Place. Neighbors were chaffing 
him on his devotion and congratu- 
lating him on his good health. 

" Health ! Every bone in my 
body is aching. I believe there's 
rats in them," said Gripard ; but he 
seemed in no hurry to get home, in 
spite of the rats. 

" You ought to be rubbed," said 
Mme. Bibot. " Poor Bibot got 
great relief from it ; many and 
many's the time I've rubbed him 
till the arms dropped out of me." 

"You're looking finely all the 
same, M. Gripard," said Mme. Ta- 
rac; "it's my belief you're sham- 
ming, and we'll have you taking a 
wife one of these days !" (Tarac 
was just Gripard's age, and thirty 
years older than his wife.) 

" You talk like a fool," was the 
polite rejoinder. 

" May be ; but for acting like a 
fool there's no fool like an old 
one," retorted Mme. Tarac. 

" Ay. Tarac's a proof of that," 
said Gripard. Upon which tl 
company laughed, and Mme. Tarac 
walked off in high dudgeon. 

Follette felt they were all in con- 
spiracy to keep her waiting there. 

"You will catch your death of 
cold standing in the snow, uncle," 
she said as quietly as she could, 
but inwardly exasperated. 

"Thou art right, petiote; let us 
go," replied Gripard, and he hob- 
bled on. 

Follette dared not attempt to 
hurry him, but every step seemed 
a mile to her. The An gel us bell 
was clanging high up in the air. 



Follette. 



307 






Children were making snowballs 
and pelting one another, the mis- 
siles and their laughter exploding 
simultaneously ; but the fun was 
loudest when some daring young- 
ster took a sly shot at an elder, 
who turned round and rated the 
bold little company with very big 
words that hit nobody, but excited 
the merriment of the passers-by. 
Skaters were scudding along on the 
frozen path ways; lovers were pairing 
off for their Sunday stroll. Every 
one was gay and happy except Fol- 
lette. 

Jeanne saw them coming up the 
road, and came out to meet them 
at the door. 

"A nice trick to play us !" she 
exclaimed as Gripard came limp- 
ing on. 

" Make me a bowl of hot soup," 
said Gripard. " Sabre de bois ! how 
my bones do ache." 

Follette took off his hat and 
coat and settled him into his chair. 
"What fly bit you to go out 
such a morning?" said Jeanne. "I 
shouldn't wonder if you got your 
death. Follette, blow up the fire 
and put the kettle on." 

Jeanne went to the cupboard, 
but uttered an exclamation of dis- 
may on opening a certain box. 

"There isn't a grain of barley! 
Did you go about it yesterday, 
child ?" 

" No ; I thought there was 
plen " 

" You had no business to think ; 
you should have done as you were 
told," said Jeanne, cutting her 
short. 

Follette had been told nothing, 
and there was plenty of barley, as 
she would have said ; but this was 
only a ruse de guerre on Jeanne's 
part, and Follette, with a prisoner's 
instinct, was going to seize the 
chance it offered. 



"I'll run off and get some," she 
said, hurrying out. 

" Let the barley bide," called out 
Gripard ; " Victor will go for it when 
he comes in. I want the little one 
to rub my leg. Oh! la-la, I wish 
the devil had the rheumatism !" 

" I'll rub you," said Jeanne ; " but 
I want the " 

" Then want it," snapped Gripard. 
"I'd as soon have a brick scrap- 
ing me as feel your horny hand 
on my leg. Let the little one come 
and rub me." 

There was no escape. Follette 
knelt down beside him, and began 
to rub his bony limb with her soft 
young hand, her heart swelling all 
the time in a conflict of tender, re- 
bellious, and angry thoughts. He 
kept her at it till her arm ached 
and her back was stiff with stoop- 
ing. Then he told her to rest a bit ; 
he found the warm friction very 
comforting, but she must not tire 
herself by keeping at it too long. 
What a fool Jeanne was not to have 
thought of it before ! Mme. Bibot 
was right : hand-rubbing was very 
soothing to the bones. 

The afternoon was spent rubbing 
Gripard's leg and resting to begin 
again at it. Follette felt certain 
that the whole day's misery was a 
settled plan, got up to torment and 
thwart her, and that even the pain 
in his leg was a spiteful invention 
of her uncle's, for she could see he 
was suffering badly from his arm. 
At last he let her go, and she went 
up to her room, and took off her 
Sunday gown and kerchief, and sat 
down by the window, glad to be 
alone and away from her uncle's 
cruel, peering eyes, and even from 
Jeanne's glances of vexation and 
pity. 

Follette pitied herself with all her 
heart, for she felt very miserable. 



Follette. 



The prospect of seeing Jules had 
so lit up the week that, now it had 
vanished, it was as if a lamp had 
gone out and left her in the dark. 
But she was more sorry for Jules 
than for herself. She knew he had 
waited for her as long as there was 
a possibility of her coming, and then 
he had gone away disappointed, 
perhaps hurt, perhaps mistrustful. 
He had told her laughingly that 
she would come to like Victor bet- 
ter when there was no one else 
to make love to her. The words 
came back to her like a sting. 
Who knows ? He might have 
thought there was no saying what 
he might not have thought. And she 
had no way of explaining anything. 
She did not know how to write. 
How bitterly she regretted this, 
and how she reproached Gripard 
for not having let her go to the vil- 
lage school like other children ! 
There was no one even she could 
send with a message. If Victor 
had been true she might have ask- 
ed him ; he could write, and he oft- 
en ha,d business that took him into 
Cotor. But she was afraid of Victor. 
Jules believed he was a sneak, and 
so did Jeanne. She dared not 
trust Victor. Follette sat down on 
the foot of her little bed, and, with 
hands folded in her lap, listened to 
the Vesper bells, and looked out 
towards the forest, and bethought 
her how strange it was that, ever 
since this great joy of loving and 
knowing that she was loved had 
come into her life, she had known 
no peace, only fear and contradic- 
tion. But she could bear it all, 
and make no complaint, if only she 
might see Jules once before he 
went away, or at any rate send him 
a message. As this idea of a mes- 
senger again occurred to her she 
saw something approaching in the 
distance from the other side of the 



bridge. It was Nicol, advancing 
with his peculiar hopping, halting 
gait, shouldering his hump at every 
step. Follette bethought her at 
once that she would send the dwarf 
with a message. 

" I will trust him," she said to 
herself; " he is fond of Jules, and 
he hates Victor." 

Jeanne's voice calling to her 
woke her from these meditations, 
and, jumping up, she ran down 
stairs. 

Her face bore no trace of her 
recent heart-ache, for she had not 
been crying, and this prospect of 
Nicol as a deliverer had lit up the 
darkness suddenly, so that her eyes 
shone with an excitement that might 
have passed for joy. 

Gripard was in a good humor. 
He was elated by the success of 
his little scheme, although it had 
cost him dear ; and now that the 
continued rubbing had driven the 
rats out of his leg, he smoked 
away comfortably, and his wizened 
features wore an air of cunning 
and amusement as he listened to 
something Victor was telling him. 

"The patron says you have as 
good as cured him," said Victor 
when Follette entered the kitchen, 
and, kneeling down, began to rub 
away again at the leg; "but I tell 
him you ought to make him pay 
for it. That's only fair. Come, 
Follette, strike your bargain while 
you have the whip in your hand." 

"Diable! diable ! what's this?" 
said Gripard, removing his pipe 
and surveying Victor with pretend- 
ed wrath. " Art thou going to set 
the pefciote on to such tricks as 
that ? I'm to pay for the use of 
her arms, eh ? Parbleu ! I'd bet- 
ter have back the rats." 

"Don't give in, Follette," said 
Victor; "nail the patron to it. If 
he doesn't give] in [we'll whistle 



Follette. 



309 



back the rats. Come, shall we 
make it twenty-five centimes an 
operation ?" 

"Sabre de bois !" shouted Gri- 
pard, pulling his cap violently 
round his head and bringing down 
his stick with, a tremendous thump. 

Jeanne had come clacking out 
from the scullery at all this noise, 
and stood, with arms a-kimbo, 
laughing till she shook. 

"Say twenty centimes, petiote," 
she said, " and a pot de vin when 
the last rat is gone." 

"Good! Let it be twenty cen- 
times and the pot de vin" said 
Follette, ready enough to fall in 
with a joke that amused her uncle. 

" Tut, tut ! A doctor that would 
bargain with a patient like that 
would be dubbed a quack," said 
Gripard. " It would ruin his 
character. Don't mind them, pe- 
tiote; they're at some mischief, the 
pair of them. I see it in Victor's 
eye. Rub away, and trust me for 
the fees. There are ten centimes 
for a denier adieu. Voyons /" 

Victor and Jeanne cried out in- 
dignantly, but Follette pocketed 
the paltry fee, with the remark that 
she was not proud, and ten cen- 
times was better than nothing. 

" Thou shalt go to the fair, 
and have a present to buy some- 
thing pretty," said Gripard, as 
Follette's warm hand sent the 
blood coursing through his frigid 
old veins. 

" Thank you, uncle ; but I don't 
want to go to the fair," she re- 
plied. 

" Nonsense ! I was joking the 
other day when I said thou 
shouldst not go. The rheumatism 
made me cross. Thou must not 
bear a grudge to tliy old uncle for 
that," said Gripard, pinching her 
ear. " Victor will take care of 
thee, and Mme. Bibot will give thee 



a lift home. Thou shalt go and 
have a merry day of it." 

Follette made no reply, but went 
on rubbing as if her arm were a 
pump-handle worked by machinery. 
She had made up her mind that 
she would not go to the fair. She 
was not going to be chaperoned 
by Victor, and she would not dance 
with him ; but there was no need 
to say so now and put Gripard in 
a rage. It was such a mercy to 
have him in a good humor ! Fol- 
lette could not understand why he 
had all of a sudden become so 
amiable, making jokes, and throw- 
ing away two sous, and pinching 
her ear. It seemed almost as un- 
natural as if a dog had taken to 
singing comic songs. But, what- 
ever the cause might be, it was a 
relief, and Follette was thankful 
for it. 

Nicol took the miller's horse to 
water every morning, so Follette 
knew where to find him. Many a 
time when making her hasty toilet 
she had watched him from her 
window, half in pity, half in dis- 
gust, as the great gray horse came 
plodding on to the river's edge 
with the grotesque figure of tfre 
dwarf perched on his back like a 
goblin. But when she met Nicol 
he only saw the pity, and he was 
grateful for it. He knew that more 
people than the gamins mocked 
him and fancied there was some- 
thing uncanny about him thought 
it unlucky to meet him at new 
moon and believed that he had an 
evil eye. Nicol pretended to laugh 
at it all, but in secret he winced 
under it, and it kept alive in him 
that vindictive spirit which so often 
goes along with physical deformity. 
But if he was keen to resent an in- 
jury he was just as quick to feel a 
kindness, and would go even far- 



3io 



Follette. 



ther to prove his gratitude than to 
gratify his revenge. Nobody made 
a confidant of him, and yet some- 
how he came to know everybody's 
secrets ; and sometimes he would 
use this knowledge to serve his 
purpose with a cunning that foster- 
ed the vague belief in his impish 
character. Follette had never 
laughed at him, and more than 
once she had hunted away the 
children when they threw stones at 
him Nicol remembered this. He 
knew, too, that Jules Valdory loved 
Follette, and Jules had often stood 
up for him and cried shame on 
Victor Bart for beating him. He 
loved Jules and he hated Victor 
Bart. 

"Good-morning, Nicol," said 
Follette, going near to the edge of 
the stream, where the big horse 
stood splashing the water with his 
shaggy hoofs. 

" Good-morning, Mam'selle Fol- 
lette," said Nicol, brightening as he 
looked at her. 

" Nicol, I have a secret to tell 
you." 

" Nicol finds out most secrets 
for himself," said the hunchback, 
with a knowing nod. 
% " And he keeps them ? " said Fol- 
lette. 

"That depends. If a friend 
wants them no." 

" Nicol, I want you to take a 
message for me to Color," said Fol- 
lette confidentially. 

" To Jules Valdory ? I'll take it." 

She evinced no surprise at this 
cool reply, but continued in the 
same friendly tone : ** Tell him it 
was not my fault yesterday. Gri- 
pard kept me at home all day. Tell 
him I was very sorry; and give him 
this for me," she added, taking a 
tiny box from her pocket and 
handing it to Nicol. 

" It's not money or money's 



worth ?" said the dwarf, turning the 
box in his hand. 

" No, it's not. It's nothing," said 
Follette. 

"Nothing?" said Nicol, with a 
twinkle in his eye. 

" As good as nothing at all ; it's 
only a bit of hair." 

"Your own hair, Mam'selle Fol- 
lette?" 

" What matter whose it is ? " 

"Oh! but yes. If it was M. 
Gripard's or Victor Bart's Nicol 
would not take it." 

Follette burst out laughing. 

"You needn't be afraid. It's 
my hair, since you must know, and 
I want you to give it to Jules. And 
tell him I won't go to the fair; tell 
him I will never go till he comes 
back. And he's to mind and write 
to Jeanne as soon as ever he gets to 
Paris. And be sure, Nicol, and tell 
him why I didn't go to say good-by 
yesterday." 

"I will tell him," said Nicol. 
thrusting the box into the pocket 
of his ragged little coat. "But he 
knows all about it. Victor Bart 
went to meet him at the cross-roads 
yesterday." 

" Victor went to meet him ! Did 
they fight ?" 

" Pshaw ! Pas si bete !" retorted 
Nicol, with a shrug of contempt. 
"Victor is too fond of himself to 
fight a big strong fellow like Jules!" 

" What brought him to the forest, 
do you know ?" 

Nicol put his forefinger to the 
side of his nose, and, accompany- 
ing the gesture with a wink, " What 
brings the cat where there's a chance 
of a bird ?" he said. " But never 
you fear, Mam'selle Follette. Vic- 
tor Bart is a son of the devil, and 
he's sure to come to an evil end." 

There was such a gleam of devil- 
ish hatred in the dwarf's eye as he 
uttered this comforting prophecy 






Follette. 



that for the first time Follette felt 
afraid of him. The fear got into 
her face, and Nicol saw it. 

11 Don't be afraid of poor Nicol, 
Mam'selle Follette. No one shall 
ever harm you while he can hinder 
it. Nicol is no fool, but he's not 
the devil either, for he never re- 
turns evil for good." 

The big horse plunged his head 
into the water up to the shoulders, 
and then drew it up and shook 
himself, sending a shower-bath out 
of his mane towards Follette. She 
leaped aside, laughing, and with a 
pleasant " Bon jour, Nicol, a re- 
voir !" ran home. 

She was happier after this, and 
went about her work with a lighten- 
ed heart that day. Gripard, who 
watched her closely, noticed the 
change and hugged himself. Trust 
him to manage a woman ! In a 
month the petiote would have for- 
gotten Jules and be ready to marry 
Victor. It was a mercy Jules was 
going. Every tiling was turning out 
in the most natural way according 
to Gripard's wishes. But Follette 
must go to the fair. The fair, as 
long as Gripard remembered it, was 
the grand opportunity for young 
men on matrimony intent. The 



crowd made a solitude for lovers 
to whisper sweet nothings in one 
another's ears, and coo and blush 
unobserved. Then there was the 
dance. Gripard's hard features 
softened into something like a smile 
as he recalled the days when he 
led out a certain blue-eyed dam- 
sel on the green, and footed it to 
the ring of the merry castagnettes. 
Many a doubtful suit he had known 
lost and won to the sound of the 
castagnettes. Victor must lead out 
the petiote, and the prettiest girls 
on the mountain-side should be 
jealous of her. 

" I will give him a crown, and he 
shall treat herto cakesandaribbon," 
said Gripard to himself. " Diable ! 
I am growing young in my old age, 
plotting for those youngsters." 

But he was plotting without one 
of the youngsters, who had a will as 
strong as his own. He had yet to 
find out the stubborn strength of 
resistance that lurked in that deli- 
cate little chin with its childlike 
dimple, in that generous, rosy mouth 
with its tender curves. He could 
not read these signs, but he was 
soon .to discover the power of en- 
durance and indomitable firmness 
they revealed. 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



312 



Pombal. 



POMBAL. 



" EL MATADOR DOS PADRES." 



I; IN one of the principal squares 
of Lisbon may be seen the statue 
of King Joseph Emmanuel, son of 
John V., King of Portugal. At 
the foot of the statue is represent- 
ed his Minister of State, Don Se- 
bastian Carvalho y Melho, Count 
d'Oeyras, Marquis de Pombal. 

The relative position of the fig- 
ures ought to have been reversed. 
The minister was the tyrant of the 
monarch, as well as the scourge of 
his subjects. In the present no- 
tice we shall limit ourselves to giv- 
ing an account of the manner in 
which the Marquis de Pombal 
earned his title of " Slayer of the 
Fathers," after enumerating the 
causes of his enmity against tli 
Company of Jesus. 

Pombal, who was a "philoso- 
phic " atheist and an encourager 
of the Calvin ists, had certain rea- 
sons of private ambition for wish- 
ing to introduce Protestantism in- 
to Portugal. While pretending out- 
wardly to be the enemy of the 
English, he was secretly doing all 
in his power to bring about a mar- 
riage between the Princess de Be- 
ira and the Duke of Cumberland 
a marriage which would have 
eventually entitled the latter to the 
crown of Braganza. Like the rest 
of the Portuguese, the Jesuit Fa- 
thers were naturally opposed to 
English and Protestant domination 
in their own country. They were 
confessors to all the royal family, 
and Pombal regarded them as the 
chief obstacle in the way of his de- 
signs an offence which he never 
forgave them. 

Nor was this the only cause of 



his bitterness against the order. 
It is a well-known axiom that a 
man hates those whom he has 
wronged. Pombal had carried 
ruin and devastation into the flour- 
ishing missions of the Jesuit Fa- 
thers in Uruguay, and, in order to 
obtain possession of a pretended 
gold-mine which, he asserted, was 
worked by the Jesuits, he had ef- 
fected the violent expulsion of 
thirty thousand Christians from 
Panama. Accordingly, he never 
pardoned them either the terrible 
misery which he had brought upon 
the earthly paradise of their poor 
Indians, or the non-existence of the 
gold-mine. 

The old Portuguese nobility also 
were held by him in almost as 
much detestation as the Jesuits; 
and, by a series of manoeuvres as 
secret as they were diabolical, he 
contrived to bring about the de- 
struction of the former in such a 
manner as to entail that of the lat- 
ter. 

At the time of becoming prime 
minister Pombal, then fifty years 
of age, had spent his life in an in- 
cessant and not always successful 
struggle of ambition. On coming 
into power he drew upon himself 
the displeasure of the nobles by 
his utter disregard of* many re- 
spected customs and habits of 
thought, and by publicly marrying, 
in the face of her peers, a lady of 
"blue blood" (sangre azitl). Hav- 
ing, on this account, to bear a cer- 
tain amount of contempt on their 
part, he remembered it and plan- 
ned a fearful revenge. 

Under the pretence that lie was 



PombaL 



313 



in danger of assassination he made 
King Joseph sign an extraordin- 
ary decree, ''On the event of a 
minister of state being assassinat- 
ed," and then charged the senator 
Gonzales Cordeiro to obtain " con- 
tinual and unlimited informations." 
The number of prisons was imme- 
diately trebled ; and even then 
there was not room for the pris- 
oners. Forty years before Paris, 
Lisbon had her "Reign of Terror." 
Spies swarmed in every part of 
the city, anxious to secure the re- 
ward promised to every discovery 
of a person " wishing " to assassi- 
nate the prime minister. 

The Portuguese nobility had made 
the great mistake of despising their 
enemy. They had not taken into 
consideration his character, which 
combined the stealthiness of the 
tiger-cat, the ferocity of the hyena, 
and the ability and cruelty of a 
demon. Nothing that served his 
purpose came amiss. Decrees, li- 
bels, search-warrants, arrests, pro- 
scriptions, confiscations, and even 
riots all did duty. His talents 
were immense; and, because he 
fought against the church, the En- 
cyclopaedists of France compliment- 
ed him for being the partisan of 
" generous ideas." 

In spite of his pretended alarm 
De Pombal was in no danger 
of assassination, and at the end 
of four years, his fantastic decree 
having produced a plentiful har- 
vest of arbitrary arrests, accom- 
panied by condemnations to im- 
prisonment, exile, spoliation, and 
death, the paid spies somewhat re- 
laxed in their activity and the re- 
maining nobles were beginning to 
breathe again, when an attempt, 
real or pretended, was made on the 
life of the king. 

On September 3, 1758, King Jo- 
seph was returning from the man- 



sion of the Tavora family, not in 
his own carriage, but in that of a 
member of the secondary nobility, 
Antonio Tejeira, when two pistol- 
shots were fired by an unseen hand, 
slightly wounding the king in the 
right arm. 

It was two years since the at- 
tempted assassination of Louis XV. 
by Damiens. Against all proof 
and common sense alike, the Jesu- 
its had been accused of having in- 
stigated the act.* Here was a 
splendid opportunity for Pombal 
also to accuse them of being the 
agents who armed this unknown 
hand. Towards the men whom he 
had arrested in the midst of their 
career of triumphant self-devotion 
beyond the seas, whom he had pil- 
laged and persecuted in every pos- 
sible manner, he felt himself so 
guilty that nothing would satisfy 
him short of their extermination. 
This he now resolved to bring 
about by means which should in 
the first place enable him to wreak 
his vengeance on certain families 
of exalted rank whom as yet he 
had been unable to touch ; hence 
the impenetrable cloud of silence 
and secrecy which for some months 
enshrouded his proceedings. 

It was, however, no easy matter 
to implicate the Jesuits, who were 
confessors to all the royal family, 
and who could not be supposed 
to gain any possible advantage by 
such an attempt. Many persons 
believed that the pistol was fired 
at the king by mistake, being pro- 
bably intended for the owner of 
the carriage in which he happened 
to be. There is, however, reason 
to suppose that it was otherwise. 



* Even Voltaire (see letter of March 3, 1763) 
writes : '* I have never spared the Jesuits, but I 
should rouse all posterity in their favor if I accus- 
ed them of a ciime of which Europe and Damizns. 
himself have cleared them. Were I to do so I 
should be hut a base echo of the Jansenists." 



Pombal. 



The familiars only of the palace 
of Alcantara were aware that the 
king paid frequent visits to a noble 
mansion which, embowered in spa- 
cious gardens, overlooked the Ta- 
gus. The master of this dwelling 
was the aged Marquis de Tavora, 
one of the highest of the old Portu- 
guese nobility. One of his daugh- 
ters had been refused in marriage to 
PombaFs eldest son. Other noble 
families had in like manner declin- 
ed his advances. All these refu- 
sals were carefully borne in mind. 

It was rumored at court that the 
king paid an unbecoming amount 
of attention to the young and beau- 
tiful Dona Teresa de Tavora, wife 
of the eldest son of the marquis. 
In this case, according to the code 
of the hidalgos, the insulted hus- 
band was bound to avenge himself, 
were it even on the person of his 
king. 

And it is probable that he did 
so. The exception made in favor 
of the young marchesa, in the midst 
of the atrocious cruelties inflicted 
on her family, goes to prove at 
the same time both the injury and 
the attempted vengeance. There is 
proof of another and characteris- 
tic kind in the remarkable interest 
shown by the French ambassador, 
at the express order of the dissolute 
court of Louis XV., to the young 
wife, who was safe and sound, while 
it did not in the least trouble itself 
about her husband, whether guilty 
or not, tortured in the depths of a 
dungeon, nor the innocent father, 
nor the admirable mother, put to 
death after long torments. 

During three months, however, 
Pombal made no sign. It was his 
habit first to lull his intended vic- 
tims to repose, the more surely to 
pounce upon them. 

On December 12, after sunset, 
numerous detachments of horse- 



guards passed through the city, 
while troops of infantry were post- 
ed in all the streets of the Quarter 
of the Nobles. Lisbon asked itself 
what festivities were going to take 
place ; the affair of the pistol-shot 
was well-nigh forgotten. About 
seven o'clock in the evening a few 
persons, followed by a regiment of 
soldiers, arrived before the princi- 
pal entrance of the palace De Ta- 
vora, every place of egress being 
silently surrounded. They knock- 
ed in the king's name, and at the 
same moment the torches were 
lighted. 

Many a time had the king knock- 
ed at the door of that knightly and 
hospitable dwelling. He was kind- 
hearted, although pitiably weak, 
and there is no reason to suppose 
that he knew anything of what was 
passing at that hour. 

The doors being opened at the 
summons, those without entered 
and spread themselves over the 
whole house, taking prisoner every 
human being found in it, master 
and servant, young and old, and 
carrying off all this assemblage to 
the new prison built by Pombal be- 
neath the College of San Antonio. 

Pombal was a great builder of 
prisons. The number of his vic- 
tims demanded considerable ac- 
commodation, for at one particular 
time in Lisbon he had more than 
four thousand prisoners of state, 
and this in a capital of (at that 
period) one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand inhabitants. 

Dona Eleanora, . the Dowager 
Marchesa de Tavora, was separat- 
ed from her children. Masters and 
servants, men and women, disap- 
peared as if the earth had swallow- 
ed them up. In letters of the time 
we find that Pombal was enraged 
on discovering that some poor ame- 
liorations had been made in the 



Pombal. 



dreadful state of the captives by 
the pity of subalterns. 

Besides the De Tavora family a 
large number of hidalgos had also 
been arrested and thrown into dun- 
geons that same night. Among 
them was the greatest noble of Por- 
tugal, Don Jose de Mascarenhas y 
Lancastre, Duke of Aveiro and 
cousin to Dona Eleanora. Seve- 
ral of the Jesuit fathers, amongst 
whom was the confessor of the 
Prince Don Pedro, Father Hya- 
cinth da Costa, were also suddenly 
carried off to prison. 

All Lisbon was paralyzed with 
terror. A hand of iron weighed 
upon the city. In the streets noth- 
ing but mercenary soldiers were to 
be seen, and the king no longer 
went out of his palace. Whoever 
dared to express doubt as to the 
guilt of the arrested persons, or 
the least pity for them, was summa- 
rily arrested also. According to 
the laws of Portugal accused per- 
sons had a right to be judged by 
their peers. Pombal deified his 
victims the benefit of this right. 
He created a tribunal composed of 
creatures of his own, and entirely 
devoid of legal authority. This 
tribunal he named the "Court of 
Mistrust," and over it he appoint- 
ed himself president. 

As it was not yet, apparently, so 
much a question of the Jesuits as 
of the nobility, the French Ency- 
clopaedists were somewhat offended 
at these monstrosities, and we hear 
of the " bad effect " produced in 
the philosophic world of Paris by 
the frightful vagaries of Pombal, 
whom, nevertheless, it was desirous 
to excuse as far as possible, on ac- 
count of his u generous ideas." 

Not content with presiding, Pom- 
bal took upon himself the u exami- 
nation " and " instruction " of the 
cases. It was he who gave the 



verdict and pronounced the sen- 
tence, which still exists, written by 
his own hand. 

And how was the examination 
conducted ? By intimidation of 
every kind, shamelessly employed, 
by "testimony invented," and wit- 
nesses forced by torture to assent 
to accusations which they were 
never allowed to retract, and thus 
furnishing a reason for a judicial 
carnage the attendant horrors of 
which are, perhaps, unparalleled in 
the history of any civilized nation. 

The Tavora family, as well as 
the other accused, remained silent 
under the fearful torments to which 
they were subjected, with the sole 
exception of the Duke d'Aveiro, 
who, in the extremity of agony, 
half dead as he was, and not know- 
ing what he said, assented to what- 
ever was put in his mouth, and thus 
accused his fellow-prisoners and 
the Jesuits. 

Pombal, on hearing this, uttered 
an exclamation of ferocious joy. 
He had obtained what he wanted. 
What this implied we shall see 
further on. 

No sooner had the unfortunate 
Duke d'Aveiro recovered his senses 
than, learning what he had done, 
he retracted, declaring that excess 
of torment alone had wrenched 
from him accusations against per- 
sons who were innocent. It is 
needless to say that his earnest en- 
treaties had no effect in inducing 
Pombal to allow his retractation. 
Sentence of death was pronounced 
against the De Tavora family, their 
relations and friends, as well as all 
their numerous domestics and de- 
pendants, on January 12, 1759. 

Pombal, fearing the popular in- 
dignation, had the scaffold prepared 
by night, outside the city, in the 
Plaza of Belem, which was occupied 
by two regiments of mercenaries. 



Pombal. 



The platform, lighted by torches, 
rose eighteen feet from the ground. 
The square and the river side were 
so thronged with soldiers that the 
spectators took refuge on the Ta- 
gus, where from hundreds of boats 
and other craft arose a mingled 
murmur of groans and curses. 

Thus passed the night of Janu- 
ary 13. 

With the first gray sign of dawn 
arrived the numerous domestics of 
the Duke d'Aveiro. These were 
all bound to stakes at one corner 
of the scaffold and burnt alive. 
Then followed the March esa Elea- 
nora de Tavora, alone ; a rope 
round her neck, a crucifix in her 
hand, and her garments torn into 
rags by the torture. Pombal was 
there ; for his Memoirs give, with 
a sort of infernal satisfaction, the 
full details of which he was an 
eye-witness on this night. 

With calm dignity Dona Elea- 
nora mounted the scaffold, pressing 
to her heart the image of her God. 
The executioner approaching to 
bind her feet, she said to him gen- 
tly : " Man, I pray you not to forget 
who I am. Do not touch me ex- 
cept to kill me." 

The man knelt down before her 
(Pombal himself relates it). Dona 
Eleanora was of those races who 
leave no service, even the last, 
without its recompense. Drawing 
her ring from her finger, she held 
it out to him, saying : " Every work 
deserves its reward. This is all I 
have, and I give it you that you 
may do your duty well." The exe- 
cutioner rose and did his duty. 

After this first noble blood had 
reddened the block the aged Mar- 
quis de Tavora, Dona Eleanora 's 
husband, was beheaded, and next 
the husband of that Dona Teresa 
who had brought death and de- 
struction on the noble house into 



which she had been welcomed as a 
beloved daughter. Then followed 
the other sons of Dona Eleanora 
the youngest of whom was not 
twenty years old her daughters, 
and her son-in-law ; then the 
long file of officers and servants of 
her household, who died in their 
torments like brave men and Chris- 
tians. 

Last of all, his garments nothing 
but tatters, came the Duke d'Aveiro, 
whose racked limbs could scarcely 
support him. He was fastened on 
the wheel; and for nearly an hour 
he struggled with this ghastly in- 
strument of death, which slowly 
crushed his bones, while the cla 
mor of his appalling agony could 
be heard even in Lisbon. 

The butchery at last consum- 
mated, the scaffold with all that 
was upon it was set on fire, and 
crumbled, with the half-burnt 
corpses, into the Tagus. 

After what has been related it 
matters little to know that all the 
friends and relations of these vic- 
tims were kept in prison, their 
palaces and mansions razed to the 
ground, and the very sites they had 
occupied sown with salt. 

The arms of the De Tavora and 
their so-called " accomplices " were 
effaced in the Hall of the Knights at 
Cintra, where their escutcheons still 
remain veiled with black, like th 
portrait of Faliero in the Ducal Pa 
lace at Venice. 

This last fact is remarkable, be- 
cause the iniquitous judgment of 
January 12, 1759, lias for long 
years past been annulled. Pom- 
bal lived long enough to feel even 
in this world the hand of God. 
All his victims were rehabilitated 
during his lifetime by decree of 
the High Court, solemnly given on 
April 7, 1781 ; and by this same de 
cree Pombal was disgraced. 






Pombal. 



317 



But at the time of which we are 
speaking this tardy and insufficient 
retribution was far off. It was not 
to be hoped for during the lifetime 
of Joseph, who never shook off his 
tyrant's yoke. 

Of the two special objects of his 
hatred Pombal had as yet, however, 
only paralyzed one, the other, which 
was the principal, having hitherto 
escaped him ; but the massacre of 
the hidalgos had been made to 
serve as a stepping-stone to the de- 
struction of those whom he hated 
yet more deeply, * and which gain- 
ed him the title of El Matador dos 
Padres (the priest-killer). 

Having extorted from the Duke 
d'Aveiro an accusation against the 
Jesuits, he at once signed an order 
to incarcerate ten, among whom 
were the provincial of Portugal, 
Enriquez ; Father Malagrida, the di- 
rector of Dona Eleanora; Oliviera, 
confessor of Maria, Duchess of Bra- 
ganza, and even the king's own 
confessor, Father Jose Morel'ra. 

The second bound of the tiger 
was in the night (always the night) 
of February 16, when all the houses 
of the order in Portugal, colleges as 
well as dwellings, were at one and 
the same time surrounded by sol- 
diers, so that all the Jesuits in 
the kingdom awoke to find them- 
selves prisoners. En masse, and 
without distinction, all were ac- 
cused of being concerned in a plot 
against the life of the king. To 
give an idea of the slavery in which 
the king lived it suffices to say 
that neither he nor the queen could 
obtain permission to see Father 
Jose Morei'ra, for whom they both 
had the warmest affection. 

* Mme. de Grammont, the sister of M. de 
Choiseul (the minister, by the way, who was later 
so closely to imitate Pombal, although in a less san- 
guinary persecution of the order), one day asked 
the Spanish ambassador to the court of France : 

JBst-ct que l grand marquis du pet't pays a 
toujours son Jhuite a che-val sur lejiez /"' 



Besides this general accusation, 
the greater part of the fathers were 
charged with having been the pri- 
vate advisers and friends of the 
conspirators, and to have fomented 
disloyalty and discontent both in 
the confessional and the intercourse 
of daily life. 

On June 28, after the fathers 
had for six months been crowded 
together in the prisons, new and 
old, and subjected to the most dis- 
graceful treatment, Pombal launch- 
ed against them a decree of gen- 
eral proscription. Others before 
him had known how to turn im- 
prisonment into a means of slow 
and deadly torture, but it was left 
to him to bring this cowardly 
weapon to such perfection that, out 
of the well-nigh ten thousand* vic- 
tims incarcerated in his dungeons, 
only eight hundred emaciated be- 
ings ever came forth alive. 

Historians have preserved some 
of the letters written by these 
captives, who were more worthy 
of commiseration than the sufferers 
in the Piombi at Venice. One of 
these letters, from Father Laurence 
Kaulen, who signs himself " the 
prisoner of Jesus Christ," is dated 
from the prison or fortress of San 
Juliano at Lisbon, October 12, 
1766 i.e., the seventh year of his 
imprisonment. It was, he says, 
" written in the depth of a dark 
and pestilential dungeon, where the 
water filtered through the walls, 
rotting the poor garments of the 
captives and leaving them almost 
without covering; the jailer being 
a man of extreme hardness of heart, 
who sought only to increase the 
wretchedness of his prisoners, al- 
ready worn out by prolonged suf- 
ferings." They were, he adds, '' of- 



* The official number returned at the inquiry in- 
stituted by Queen Maria on the revision of the at- 
tainders was 9,640. 



318 



Fombal. 



fered liberty and every kind of 
good treatment, on condition of 
their abjuring the Company of 
Jesus."* It is needless to say that 
not one was found who would do 
so. 

In these dungeons of San Ju- 
liano where not only every solace 
but every necessary was denied 
them, except just so much prison 
bread as would keep them from 
dying at once of starvation, with- 
out allaying the pangs of hunger 
there were 27 fathers of the pro- 
vince of Goa, i of Malabar, 10 of 
Portugal, 9 of Brazil, 23 of Mara- 
gnon, 10 of Japan, and 12 of China : 
92 in all, 37 of whom died during 
their imprisonment. Three French 
Jesuits who were among the captives 
were demanded not, of course, 
by the government of M. de Choi- 
seul, but by Queen Marie Leczin- 
ska in person. 

The number of Jesuit fathers 
who died in Pombal's prisons, or 
were shipped off, crowded into the 
holds of unseaworthy vessels, to 
perish by water, amounts to more 
than seven hundred. More than 
two thousand were thrown into 
trading vessels, without provisions, 
to be landed on the coast of Italy, 
after the decree of proscription was 
issued ; and this was done only be- 
cause the prisons were full to over- 
flowing. 

In vain did the pope, Clement 
XIII., protest against these iniqui- 
ties. Pombal's answer was inso- 
lently to send back the papal am- 
bassador and confiscate all the 
property of the Jesuits (1761). 

In this noble army of martyrs 
and confessors one figure in par- 
ticular stands out with exceptional 

* This touching letter is given at length in the 
Journal de la Litterature et des Arts, published 
by the Protestant Christoph de Murr. It pro- 
duced a deep and painful impression in Europe, and 
preceded by a short interval the fall of Jfombal. 



glory that of Father Gabriel Mala- 
grida, one of the greatest mission- 
aries Portugal had produced. He 
was seventy-three years old, forty 
of which he had spent in winning 
souls to God in heathen lands. 
When the courtiers of King John 
V. once asked him "what right he 
had to disturb the peace of the poor 
Indians with ideas of a world to 
come," he answered, " The right 
which Jesus gave me in dying for 
them." 

He had won thousands to the 
faith, and still thirsted to win more. 
He had suffered well-nigh all that 
a man can suffer. Protestant 
teachers had hunted him with dogs 
through the forests ; savages had 
repeatedly bound and tortured 
him ; again and again had he joy- 
fully intoned what he believed to 
be his hymn of death, only to find 
himself spared to work and preach 
and suffer afresh. The body of this 
valiant soldier of Jesus was cover- 
ed with the scars of his glorious 
confessorship; he had wrought 
miracles like St. Francis Xavier, h 
had converted whole countri 
and the fame of his sanctity ha 
reached Europe from the distan 
scene of his apostolate. 

In 1749, King John V. desirin 
his presence to aid him in makin 
a good death, he was recalled b 
his superiors from the Americ 
missions. At that time Pombal's 
success was not equal to his ambi 
tion. He was jealous of the warm 
attachment of the old king to 
Father Malagrida, and it was aid 
that his implacable hatred against 
him then began. Pope Benedict 
XIV. said of King John : " Happy 
king ! who has had the hand of an 
apostle to uphold him in his last 
hour." 

Father Malagrida returned to 
his forests on the accession of Jo- 



Pombal. 



319 



sepb Emmanuel, and at the same 
time Pombal came into power. 
He had for some time been minis- 
ter of state when the queen-mother, 
the widow of John V., desired also 
to have the aid of the saintly fa- 
ther on her death-bed, and her 
son, King Joseph, commanded his 
recall. 

Pombal trembled. His war 
against the Jesuit Fathers, and the 
devastation of their flourishing 
missions, had already begun, under 
the leadership of his worthy brother, 
in the colonies ; and he had reason 
to dread the testimony which the 
holy missionary might bring against 
his emissaries and their work. He 
endeavored to hinder his being re- ' 
called, but failed, and from that 
moment resolved upon his destruc- 
tion. 

Historians mention' that on seve- 
ral occasions when his intrepid 
zeal had brought him face to face 
with death Gabriel Malagrida had 
said, with the certainty of an in- 
spired prophet : " God has pro- 
mised me that I should not fall 
beneath the blows of the heathen. 
I shall have the supreme happiness 
of the supreme ignominy. I shall 
die in a Christian land, surround- 
ed by Christians, who will applaud 
my execution." 

Pombal knew of this prophecy. 
One day, when conversing with his 
brother, Paul Mendoza Carvalho, 
the instrument of his spoliations in 
Maragnon, he said, laughing : " The 
reverend father shall have his 
wish !" And he began that work of 
darkness which appears to belong 
to a demon rather than a man 
the long, sustained, and infernal 
scheme by means of which a saint, 
a heroic propagator of the faith, a 
prophet held in veneration by the 
Vicar of Christ himself, and en- 
dowed in a distinguished manner 



with Heaven's choicest gifts, was to 
be seemingly transformed into a 
despicable being, shamefully fallen 
and disgraced, unworthy of the 
priesthood, a 'heretic, a regicide, a 
corrupter, an impostor, and the 
dupe of vile and senseless illusions 
which could only be suggested by 
the spirit of darkness. 

First, contrary to all probability, 
Malagrida was declared to be im- 
plicated in the "conspiracy" of 
the De Tavora family. This was 
but a pretext for closing upon him 
the door of a dungeon. Once bur- 
ied in that darkness, it matters 
not to detail the abominable cruel- 
ties practised upon him at twenty 
feet under ground. During two 
years the aged saint was the prop- 
erty, the thing, of Pombal, who was 
far more scientific than the wild 
Indians in the matter of tortures. 

Is it possible to believe that God 
would permit this grand and lofty 
spirit, which had known the lan- 
guage of Heaven, to be driven by 
torments into a madness that would 
impel him to write he who lay in 
complete darkness, without pen or 
paper or ink write, with his torn 
and paralyzed fingers, two large 
volumes of blasphemies which be- 
lied his faith, his life, the death he 
was dying, his whole self? 

And these two books of which 
Pombal declared him to be the 
author where were they? Why 
were they never produced ? How 
is it that no one has ever seen 
them, and that nothing has ever 
been known of them but the titles, 
The Reign of Antichrist, and the. 
Life of the Blessed St. Anne, dictat- 
ed by Jesus and his Holy Mother, 
and the collection of so-called Ex- 
tracts produced by Pombal, and 
which are extravagant in their utter 
wickedness and absurdity? 

Is it easier to believe in two vol- 



320 



PombaL 



umes of blasphemies said to be 
the work of a saint, and which do 
not exist, or to believe in " ex- 
tracts " fabricated by Pombal, the 
perpetrator of so many falsehoods, 
and who on one occasion pushed 
his audacity to the length of fabri- 
cating a pretended bull of Pope 
Clement XIII. ? 

The said " extracts "were never- 
theless masterly manufactures in 
their way, and served their purpose 
marvellously. Throughout Portu- 
gal there arose a cry of derision 
and contemptuous disgust against 
the very man whom Portugal had 
well-nigh worshipped ; and when 
Pombal laid the heap of stupio^ 
blasphemies before the Tribunal 
of the Inquisition all- Lisbon ap- 
plauded. The Tribunal of the In- 
quisition, however, refused to give 
judgment, because it saw clearly 
through the fraud. The grand in- 
quisitor was a brother of the king. 
This was no hindrance to Pombal, 
who was more powerful than the 
king's brother, since his talons 
strangled the king. He simply 
deprived the grand inquisitor of 
his office, and installed his own 
brother, Paul Mendoza Carvalho, 
in his place. 

To this new chief the requisite 
pontifical institution was, naturally, 
lacking. This circumstance, again, 
was not allowed to stand in the 
way. Pombal, playing pope for the 
occasion, himself conferred the in- 
stitution, and all went on wheels. 

" To be first strangled, and then 
burnt by the executioner, so that 
even the tomb shall not preserve 
his ashes" this was the sentence 
pronounced by the manufactured 
inquisitor-general. 

On the evening of September 
21, in presence of the whole popu- 
lation of Lisbon, solemnly con- 
voked for the occasion, the holy 



confessor of the faith was brought 
forth, his hands tightly bound, 
a bandage over his mouth, and 
his person enveloped in the gro- 
tesque and hideous figures of 
flames and demons which Pombal 
had found in the garrets of the In- 
quisition, where the dust of long 
years had been accumulating upon 
them, and of which he now availed 
himself the better to provoke the 
yells and insults of the multitude. 
Thus, in the paraphernalia of a 
heretic of the middle ages, exhum- 
ed by an atheistic philosopher, 
Father Gabriel Malagrida appeared 
upon the scaffold. 

Had he the appearance of a man 
stricken by mental alienation ? Was 
there any fear, any folly or de- 
gradation, perceptible in the coun- 
tenance or bearing of the con- 
demned? 

Far from it. The numerous ac- 
counts which remain all testify to 
the venerable serenity of this holy 
martyr. His pale and emaciated 
visage beamed with the peaceful 
joy of one who was about to realize 
the fulfilment of his ardent long- 
ings. At the moment before dying 
he made an effort to bless the peo- 
ple, and a light so visible surround- 
ed his head that the exclamation, 
"A miracle!" ran through the 
crowds, struck with religious awe. 
His last words on quitting his 
dungeon, before they gagged him, 
had been to pardon his murderer. 

Clement XIII., on hearing the 
account of his death, said : " He 
is a martyr at the feet of Jesus 
Christ." 

And Pombal? Pombal sent to 
prison those whom he had heard 
murmur the word "miracle," and 
remained absolute master of Lis- 
bon, which the Queen of France 
justly called "the city of dun- 
geons." 



Pouibal. 



321 



On the death of Joseph, in 
1777, a great cry arose against his 
minister. He was driven from the 
city, and the prisons were opened, 
yielding up the hapless beings, so 
long buried in a living death, from 
the depths of darkness in which 
so many innocent victims had lan- 
guished out their last agony. 

Pombal, disgraced and execrated, 
died at the castle bearing his name, 
and, in spite of the entreaties of his 
son, refusing the last sacraments. 
For fifty years his body remained 
without sepulture. The inhabitants 
of the little town of Pombal would 
not suffer it to be buried in their 
church, and the Marquis de Villa- 
nueva, his successor as minister of 
state, refused to allow it to be 
transported to Lisbon, where, in 
the days of his greatness, he had 
erected for himself a sumptuous 
tomb. The corpse was simply en- 
closed in a coffin, and remained, 
covered with a pall, in the convent 
of the Franciscans at Pombal. 

In conclusion we must mention 
a singular coincidence. In 1829, 
on the official return of the Jesuit 
Fathers into Portugal, Father Del- 
vatix was charged with their re- 
installation, which took place with 
the eager concurrence of the gov- 
ernment and the population. He 
set out, honorably escorted, from 
Lisbon, and commenced his jour- 



ney by the diocese of Coimbra. 
But we will quote his own words in 
the written report to his superior: 

" Pombal is the first population 
of the diocese of Coimbra after 
leaving Lisbon. Now, to all the 
parishes that we were to pass 
through the bishop had sent or- 
ders for our triumphal reception. 
In order, therefore, to escape the 
ovation, I hastened to the convent 
of the Franciscans, and there cele- 
brated Mass. It is impossible to 
express what I felt while offer- 
ing the Victim of Propitiation, the 
Lamb who on the cross prayed 
for his murderers, for the repose 
of Don Sebastian Carvalho, Mar- 
quis de Pombal, cor pore prase nte ! 

"For fifty years, then, he has 
been waiting, on his way to a tomb, 
for the return of the Company of 
Jesus from the exile to which he 
had so harshly condemned it, and 
whose return he himself had fore- 
told. 

" And whilst I was fulfilling this 
religious duty all the town and 
neighborhood were astir with the 
triumphal reception which we were 
compelled to accept, or rather to 
endure. All the bells were ring- 
ing, and the prior came in proces- 
sion to fetch our fathers and con- 
duct them to the church, which 
was brilliantly illuminated. It was 
like a dream." 



VOL. XXX. 21 



322 



'Uie Votive CJiurcli of I>ron. 



THE VOTIVE CHURCH OF BROU. 

Fortune, itifortune, firt ui;e. 



ON our way from Macon to 
Geneva we stopped at Bourg to 
visit the celebrated church of Brou, 
erected by the illustrious Mar- 
garet of Austria, aunt of the 
Emperor Charles V., in fulfilment 
of a vow made by her mother-in- 
law, Margaret of Bourbon. 

The province of Bresse, to which 
Bourg belongs, is covered with an- 
cient remains. There are Celtic 
monuments, Roman encampments 
and roads, the ruins of a temple at 
Isernore, and feudal towers and 
castles here and there, interesting 
to archaeologists, and dear to the 
poet and romancer from their asso- 
ciation with brave knights of the 
olden time ; but the object of sur- 
passing attraction is certainly the 
church of Brou, one of the most 
beautiful as well as best preserved 
Christian monuments in France. 

Bourg is agreeably situated on 
the left bank of the Reyssouse, on 
a slight eminence looking off at the 
east over a pleasant undulating ba- 
sin shut in by the hills of Rever- 
mont. To the north the eye fol- 
lows the sinuosities of the river 
through fertile meadows that reach 
to the very Saone. In the town it- 
self there are but few remains of 
the middle ages. The old walls 
are mostly demolished and the 
moats turned into gardens. The 
church of the Dominicans was built 
by Amedee VIII., Count of Savoy 
(1416-1434), to whom Bourg is 
also indebted for an. order of nuns 
popularly known as the Hirondelles 
de Carenie (perhaps because they 
take to penance so cheerfully), whose 



first directress, nnmed Colette, has 
been beatified. But the most im- 
portant monument in the town is 
the church of Notre Dame, which 
dates from the time of the chival- 
rous Amedee V. (1285-1323), who 
added Bresse to his estates by mar- 
rying Sibyl, daughter and sole 
heiress of Guy, lord of the land. 
We attended an early service in 
this grim old church. It was Whit- 
sunday morning, and children stood 
around the entrance selling reed- 
like crosses, such as the young St. 
John the Baptist is represented 
with, at a sou each. All the people 
in the church held these crosses, 
like palms, in their hands. After 
being blessed by the priest they 
are taken home to insert in the 
fields and gardens to draw a bless- 
ing upon their crops. The build- 
ing was crowded, but so absorbed 
were the people in their devotions 
that it was quiet and peaceful as 
the Cenacle. There was a certain 
solemn grandeur in the gray walls 
and lofty arches that gave it, though 
without any pretensions to beauty, 
a charm no modern edifice possess- 
es, rich as it may be in ornamenta- 
tion. We cannot enter the most 
commonplace church of the middle 
ages without emotion. The heart, 
if not the eye, finds a moral beauty 
in a place sanctified by the devo- 
tion of centuries, and we wish 
these old aisles, these gray columns, 
these blackened arches, and these 
tarnished altars could tell us what 
whispered secrets they have guard- 
ed all these years. Like us, each 
generation has brought here its 






The Votive CJnirch of Brou. 



323 



own joy and anguish, and found in 
some of these secluded chapels 
wherewith to allay the one and 
temper the other. 

The office over, we went in 
search of the church of Brou, 
which is a mile and a half east of 
Bourg, in the country. On the 
way we met crowds of people has- 
tening into town for High Mass, 
most of them with wooden crosses 
in their hands. We were greatly 
struck with the peculiar head-dress 
of the women a parasol-like hat, 
with lace streamers and border, 
half veiling the face, giving the 
wearer an oriental look. It is cer- 
tainly a most becoming coiffure, and 
as we passed a knot of country wo- 
men, all wearing these canopies, 
running up to a point like a man- 
darin's umbrella, as if to protect 
them from the possible inclemen- 
cies of the weather, we could not 
help fancying that, if they did not 
really belong to the Celestial Em- 
pire, they might, at least, be the 
fair subjects of the king of Ava, 
one of whose sonorous titles is said 
to be Lord of the Twenty-four 
Umbrellas! A fairer kingdom 
could not be desired, were these a 
sample of it. 

We soon came to the church of 
Brou, which stands in a large green, 
where cows and goats were leisure- 
ly browsing as if in their own pas- 
ture. We were at once struck by 
the freshness of the dazzling white 
walls after more than three centu- 
ries, the light traceries of the win- 
dows, and the faade wrought into 
endless pinnacles, crockets, gables, 
and canopies. The principal en- 
trance is through a broad, elliptical 
archway guarded by numerous 
saints that have stood here, wit- 
nesses of the truth, amid all the 
vicissitudes of the kingdom, em- 
pire, and republic, without losing 



anything of the eternal beatitude 
on their faces. We paused a mo- 
ment to catch something of their 
serenity and repose, and then has- 
tened into the church for the ser- 
vice. The bell was ringing in the 
gleaming white tower, and there 
was only time to glance at the nave 
as we passed along. We saw it 
was not tarnished and time-worn 
. like the churches at Bourg, but fair 
as a bride, though built over tombs 
and stained Avith a widow's tears. 
Passing through a door in the rich 
rood-loft, we found ourselves in the 
choir, which is completely shut in by 
high walls, like a church Avithin a 
church. It is, in fact, a mortuary 
chapel, or chantry. Carved stalls of 
black oak are ranged against the 
Avails, and between them and the 
high altar are the three superb 
tombs whicli give celebrity to the 
church. At the right is that of 
Margaret of Bourbon, whose vow 
led to its erection ; at the left 
that of Margaret of Austria; and 
between them lies PhilibertleBeau, 
Duke of Savoy, husband of one 
and son of the other. These tombs 
were now resplendent in the jewel-- 
led light of the immense eastern 
windows around the apsis, which 
threw their rich purples and crim- 
sons, like SL regal mantle, over the 
recumbent statues. The tall can-- 
dies on the altar were already 
lighted, and we went into a chapel, 
on the Gospel side and knelt down 
close beside the tomb of Margaret 
of Austria, where AVC could see the 
movements in the choir and join 
in the service. 

The old AuguStinian convent 
connected Avith the church is now 
used as the theological seminary of 
the diocese of Belley, and the stu- 
dents in white robes came slowly 
into the choir in a long file, and 
bowed their heads nearly to the 



3 2 4 



TJie Votive Church of Brou. 



ground as they successively made 
their genuflections before the altar. 
The whole function was conducted 
with remarkable solemnity. Who 
ever becomes accustomed to the 
wonderful effect in such churches 
of the burning of the lights, the 
smoke of the incense, the myste- 
rious movements of the priest, the 
chant of the Gospel, the attitudes 
of the surrounding clergy standing 
with closed hands as if in love and 
veneration ? There were only two 
or three persons present besides 
the clergy, who were completely 
wrapped in their devotions. The 
subdeacon carried the missal from 
side to side with a reverence quite 
oriental, almost touching the sa- 
cred volume with his forehead. 
Great clouds of incense veiled the 
Host at the elevation, after which 
the students sang high and clear: 
O sahttaris Hoslia! It was like a 
clarion at the coming of the Lord ! 
After Mass they went group by 
group into the oratory of Margaret 
of Austria, which had been arrang- 
ed like a grotto for the Month of 
Mary. All light was excluded but 
that of the lamps and tapers around 
the Madonna, and ferns and flowers 
gave it an odor of the fields and 
woods. The shepherds of Bethle- 
hem would not have felt out of 
place in so rural an oratory any 
more than the peasant of Bresse so 
devoutly telling his beads right be- 
fore Our Lady. At noon the stu- 
dents all came into the choir again 
to say the Angelus, and, encircling 
the tomb of Philibert le Beau in 
their broad, white-winged robes, 
they sang with .great expression a 
noon-tide hymn to the Virgin. We 
were then left alone in the church, 
and spent several hours in examin- 
ing it at our leisure and recalling 
*-its touching history. 

The place where the church of 



Brou now stands was covered with 
a dense forest in the year 927, 
when St. Gerard, the twerty-fifth 
bishop of Macon, resigned his see 
in order to retire from the world. 
He came to Bresse and built a cell 
in the depths of the wild wood. 
But he could not escape from the 
fame of his sanctity. So large a 
number of cells sprang up around 
his hermitage that he was soon 
obliged to organize a community, 
to which he gave the rule of St. 
Benedict. This monastic estab- 
lishment flourished several centu- 
ries, but had utterly declined by 
the latter part of the fifteenth cen- 
tury. The place, however, contin- 
ued to be regarded with veneration 
on account of its holy memories, 
and was chosen by Margaret of 
Bourbon as the site of her votive 
church. This princess was, by her 
father, a descendant of St. Louis 
of France. Her mother was the 
daughter of Jean sans Peur, Duke 
of Burgundy. She married Philip 
II., Duke of Savoy, who, while hunt- 
ing on his estates in Bresse in 1480, 
was thrown from his horse and his 
life seriously endangered by the 
consequences. The pious duchess, 
in her alarm, had recourse to 
prayer, and made a vow, if his life 
were spared, to build a church and 
Benedictine monastery at Brou. 
The duke recovered, but Margaret 
died three years after without hav- 
ing been able to fulfil her vo\v. 
She left it as a sacred legacy to 
her husband and infant son. The 
duke gave an annual sum to the 
existing church' till he could ac- 
complish her wish, but he, too, died 
without fulfilling his intentions. 
He renewed the vow, however, in 
his will, and bequeathed the obli- 
gation to his son. Philibert, sur- 
named le Beau from the beauty 
of his person, was now seven- 



I 



The Votive Church of Bron. 



325 



teen years of age. He had been She accordingly embarked for that 
brought up at the court of France, country, but while in the British 



where he was a great favorite on 
account of his amiable disposition 
and brilliant parts. He was skill- 
ed, too, in the use of arms, and, 



Channel a terrible tempest sprang 
up, which so endangered the safety 
of the fleet that for a time all 
hope was lost. The princess, how- 



notwithstanding his youth, accom- ever, did not lose her wit or pre- 
panied his father in the expedition sence of mind. She called for ink 
of Charles VIII. to Naples, where and paper, and wrote the following 
he gave proofs of valor. His first distich : 
wife having died young, he married 
Margaret of Austria, whose memory 
is still so dear to the province. 

Margaret of Austria was the 
daughter of the Emperor Maximil- 
ian and Mary of Burgundy, only casket, which she fastened to her 
daughter of Charles the Bold. She arm, that she might be recognized 



" Cy git Margot, la gentille demoiselle, 
Qui cut deux maris, et si mourut pucelle." 

1 Here lies Margaret high-born maid, 
Who had two husbands and died unwed. 1 ' 

She put the lines in her jewel- 



was born in 1480, and was only 
three years old when affianced, if 
not married, to the Dauphin of 
France, afterwards Charles VIII. 
The ceremony took place in the 
chateau of Blois, where she was 
left to be educated with all the 
care due to her birth and the posi- 
tion she was to occupy. But po- 
litical motives induced Charles to 
marry Anne of Brittany, then be- 
trothed to the Emperor Maximilian, 
and a double dispensation was ob- 
tained from Rome to dissolve the 
engagements already made. Mar- 
garet accordingly returned to her 
father at Brussels. Though per- 
sonal motives had nothing to do 



should her body be found. The 
storm, however, happily abated, and 
Margaret arrived safely at Burgos, 
where she was met by her affianced 
bridegroom, to whom she was secure- 
ly married by the primate of Spain. 
But the following year she became 
a widow, and afterwards lost her in- 
fant son, in consequence of which 
she returned to the Netherlands. 
Several great princes now became 
her suitors, from whom she chose 
Philibert le Beau, Duke of Savoy. 
The town of Bourg expressed great 
joy at this marriage, and, when visit- 
ed by Philibert and Margaret, had 
medals struck in their honor and 
plays performed in the open air 



with the affair, the proud spirit of among others, the expedition of 
Margaret was humiliated. It is Hercules and Jason in search of 
said that finding the wine poor one the golden fleece, acted before the 
day at dinner, she inquired whence mansion of Laurent de Gorrevod, 

Governor of Bresse. 



it came, and, on being told it was 
from France, replied : u I am not 
astonished; oaths are good for 
nothing in that country."* Her 
hand was now sought by several 
princes, and in 1497 she was be- 
trothed to Don Juan, the only son 
of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. 

* The wit of Margaret's reply turns on the simi- 
larity of the words seruients (oaths) and sarments 
(grape-vines). 



But the ill fortune that seemed 
to have pursued the princess did 
not leave her long in the enjoyment 
of her new happiness. The duke, 
one day after the heat and fatigue 
of the chase, stopped for a luncheon 
beside a spring not far from the 
banks of the Rhone. The coolness 
of tiie place brought on an attack 
of pleurisy, and he died September 



326 



The Votive Church of Brou. 



10, 1504, in the chateau of Pont 
d'Ain, in the very chamber where 
he was born little over twenty-four 
years before. Margaret had him 
buried in the church of Brou beside 
his mother, Margaret of Bourbon. 
From this time a profound melan- 
choly took possession of her heart. 
She chose for her device : 

Fortune^ inf or tune, fort une, 

as if all changes, whether for good 
or ill, would henceforth be indif- 
ferent to her. She renounced all 
new ties and resolved to devote 
herself to the happiness of* her 
people. During the minority of 
Charles V. she was the regent of 
the Netherlands, which office she 
filled with great prudence and 
ability. Under her rule agricul- 
ture and trade prospered. She pa- 
tronized artists and learned men. 
Jean Molinet was her librarian and 
Cornelius Agrippa her historian. 
She even cultivated literature her- 
self, and has left works in prose 
and verse. One of her poems thus 
echoes the deep melancholy of her 
soul: 

" recurs desoles, par toutes nations, 
Deuil rassembles et lamentations, 
l j lus ne querez rharmonieuse lyre, 
Liesse, ebas et consolation : 
Laissez aller plaintes, pleurs, passions, 
Et m'aidez tous a croitre mon martyre, 
Cceurs de'sole's !" 

which, literally rendered, thus runs : 

'' Hearts bereft in every nation. 
Full of mourning, lamentation, 
Seek no more the soothing lyre, 
Joy, diversion, consolation: 
Leave your sighing, tears, and passion. 
Help me bear my sufferings dire, 
Hearts bereft !" 

Besides being one of the most 
accomplished princesses of the time, 
Margaret was devoted to the in- 
terests of religion, and zealous in 
promoting the splendor of divine 
worship. Cardinal Granvelle was 
her confidential adviser, and to her 
he was indebted for his cardinal's 



hat. She took a leading part in 
the league of Cambrai and in the 
treaty of peace called la Paix des 
Dames. As dowager of Philibert 
le Beau she still held rule over 
Bresse, and she resolved to execute 
at once the vow of Margaret of 
Bourbon. In 1506 she obtained a 
brief from Pope Julius II. authoriz- 
ing her to build the church tinder 
the invocation of St. Nicholas of 
Tolentino,and an adjoining monas- 
tery for Augustinian friars instead 
of Benedictine monks, according to 
the original vow. Margaret had 
particular devotion to St. Nicholas 
of Tolentino a saint who often re- 
gretted he could only offer tears to 
his Saviour in return for the blood 
shed on the cross and her venera- 
tion seems to have been shared by 
the people of Bourg, where he has 
been regarded as a benefactor ever 
since the terrible pestilence of 1629, 
when the authorities vowed to make 
an annual procession on his festival. 
This was kept up till the Revo- 
lution, and re-established in 1824. 
The pains de St. Nicolas are bless- 
ed on these occasions. This saint 
is one of those generally invoked 
in time of pestilence and calamity. 
A beautiful legend tells how, when 
Cordova was visited by the plague 
in 1602, a statue of St. Nicholas 
was carried through the streets in 
solemn procession, and, meeting a 
large crucifix borne in the opposite 
direction, the saint raised his arms 
supplicatingly, and the Christ loosed 
his hands from the cross and bent 
down to embrace him, from which 
hour the plague was stayed a scene 
that has been celebrated in art. 

Margaret expressed great satis- 
faction at the brief from Rome, 
and had it publicly proclaimed at 
Bourg. She likewise announced to 
all Europe her intention of build- 
ing a church at Brou, and in- 



T/ie Votive Church of Brou. 



327 



vited competent artists to take part 
in the work. A great number re- 
sponded to. her appeal in France, 
Italy, the Netherlands, and Ger- 
many. The edifice was begun in 
1511, and completed in twenty-five 
years. The chief architect was 
Andre Columban, of Dijon. It is 
related that, after laboring a time 
on the church, he perceived that 
the sum agreed upon for its com- 
pletion would be insufficient, and 
secretly fled to a hermitage in 
Franche Comte, where he lived 
five or six months in solitude. 
The town and country were search- 
ed for him in vain, and Philip of 
Chartres was appointed to carry on 
the work in his stead. But finally, 
regretting the step he had taken, 
Columban returned privately to 
Brou in the garb of a hermit. He 
had the mortification of seeing that 
his plans had been changed, and 
what had been done was in an in- 
ferior manner. While, therefore, 
the workmen were at dinner, he 
entered and effaced all the plans 
and substituted his own. The work- 
men were amazed. This went on 
for some days, when complaint was 
made to Laurent de Gorrevod that 
the work had been thrown into con- 
fusion. A watchman was appoint- 
ed, who detected Columban and 
led him before the governor. The 
architect confessed everything, and 
was not only reinstated in his of- 
fice, but his means were increased. 
The whole expense of the build- 
ing amounted to two hundred 
and twenty thousand gold crowns, 
equivalent to about four hundred 
thousand dollars a small sum for 
so superb a church. But wages 
were low at that time, and the ma- 
terials, chiefly from the ducal forests 
and quarries, only cost the labor of 
procuring them. The white stone 
of which it is built was only three 



leagues off. The alabaster was also 
from Bresse. The bricks and tiles 
were made at Brou. The oak for 
the stalls came from the neighbor- 
ing forests. The white marble, 
however, was from Carrara, and 
the black from Burgundy. 

The church of Brou is of the 
later Gothic style. In front are 
three gables, the central one the 
highest, beneath which is the grand 
entrance a door having two com- 
partments, with a statue of St. Ni- 
cholas of Tolentino between them, 
and St. Peter and St. Paul at the 
sides. Above is our Saviour, before 
whom kneel Philibert le Beau and 
the Princess Margaret, 'attended by 
their patron saints. Still higher 
up is a large statue of St. Andrew, 
protector of the order of the Gold- 
en Fleece, leaning on his cross 
said to be the likeness of Columban, 
the architect. The emblazonry 
and ciphers, as well as the flow- 
ers and foliage around the niches, 
doorways, and gallery, are wrought 
with great delicacy. The coats of 
arms were for the most part effaced 
at the Revolution, but the emblems 
of religion were respected. With- 
in we are struck by the majesty of 
the church. The proportions are 
good, and there is a lightness of 
effect in the architecture that is in 
harmony with the whiteness of the 
stone and the delicacy of the or- 
naments. And yet the pillars of 
the nave are seven feet in diame- 
ter. All the keystones of the arch- 
es bear some device, such as the 
arms of Philibert and Margaret, or 
their ciphers interlaced with lacs 
d'amour. On others are carved two 
ragged staffs, saltire-wise, and a 
flint with three flames beneath 
the cognizances of the dominant 
parties in France at the time of 
Charles VI. The Duke of Orleans* 
who was then regent, assumed two- 



328 



The Votive Church of Brou. 



knotty staffs en santoir, with the 
motto, Je Venvie, referring to the 
stout blows he was meditating 
against the Duke of Burgundy. The 
latter took a flint with the motto, 
Ante ferit quant ftanuna inicat it 
strikes before it flashes an omi- 
nous device. Perhaps lie had al- 
ready planned the assassination of 
Louis of, Orleans. 

The church is in the form of a 
Latin cross the most beautiful and 
significant of all forms, lifting, as 
it does, its supplicating arms per- 
petually to heaven like a ceaseless 
prayer. How many such immense 
crosses there are on the earth with 
their continual appeal, staying the 
doom of Sodom ! The peculiar 
inflection of the axis of the church 
is said to have reference to the 
body of Christ in the sepulchre. 

We paused at the entrance to dip 
cur fingers in the black marble ba- 
sin containing the holy water, and 
read the mournful device of the 
thrice-widowed Margaret graven 
around the brim : 

Fortune, in fortune, fort une. 

The rood-loft, of soft white stone, 
wrought all over with flowers, gar- 
lands, and emblems, looks like a 
rich bridal veil suspended here, as 
a votive offering, to screen the tomb 
in which lies buried a lost happi- 
ness. Among the saints standing 
on the^loft, twenty-four feet above 
the pavement, is St. Nicholas of 
Tolentino, shedding tears, not of 
earthly woe, but of a diviner grief, 
gazing f\p at the pale image of 
Christ. On one of the pillars of 
this rood-loft is graven a heart be- 
neath a coat of arms. The inscrip- 
tion is no longer legible, but it once 
ran thus: "Here lies the heart of 
the high and puissant lord, Claude 
<le Chalant, styled of Chateau- 
Vieux, in his life-time Seigneur of 



Verzon and Arbent, Baron of Cu- 
zance, Ricbefort, and Mornay, who 
departed this life in the adjoining 
house, July 22, 1551. Pray God 
for his soul." It is said this epi- 
taph was erased by a duke of Sa- 
voy, who, on reading it, drew his 
poignard fiercely across it, exclaim- 
ing : " I fancy there is no other 
high and puissant lord in these do- 
mains but myself!" This was pro- 
bably Emmanuel Philibert, surnam- 
ed Tete de Fer, one of the proudest 
princes of the house of Savoy. 

The three tombs of the choir 
stand amid black oak stalls that 
line the walls like rare old hang- 
ings covered with prophets and 
saints and many a holy emblem. 
They are of pure white marble 
from the Carrara mountains, resting 
on black bases from Burgundy. 
That of Margaret of Bourbon is 
under a Gothic canopy against the 
wall. She lies on the top in her 
ducal mantle and coronet, her hands 
crossed on her breast and her face 
turned towards the tomb of her son. 
At her feet is crouched a greyhound 
looking wistfully up, as if expecting 
her to awake. Several genii hold 
shields on which are graven her 
arms, or her cipher interwoven 
with that of her husband. Around 
the tomb are statues of SS. Marga- 
ret, Catherine, Agnes, and Andrew. 
The latter saint, so frequently met 
with in this church, was regard- 
ed with special veneration by the 
house of Burgundy. Philippe le 
Bon had at great cost obtained 
a portion of the cross on which St. 
Andrew was martyred, and made it 
the badge of his glorious order. 
But the most beautiful features of 
the duchess' tomb are the figures 
eplorc'es standing around her, deep- 
ly hooded, their pale, contracted fa- 
ces expressing the most profound 
grief. 



The Votive Church of Brou. 



329 



Directly before the steps of the 
high altar, on a line with the tomb 
of Margaret of Bourbon, is that of 
Philibert le Bean. A fine, recum- 
bent statue represents him as alive, 
in all the manly beauty that gave 
him his name. He is clothed in 
armor with the insignia of his rank 
the ducal crown on his head, and 
the collar of the Annonciade on 
his neck with its mysterious de- 
vice, F. E. R. T., surrounded by 
lacs d* amour, thus interpreted by 
the learned historian of the church 
of Brou : Fide et Religione tenemur 
Faith and religion let us main- 
tain though generally supposed 
to refer to the memorable victory 
of Amedee V. over the Turks before 
the island of Rhodes in 1310, and 

I to mean : Fortitudo cjus Rliodum 
tcnuit By his valor he saved 
Rhodes. This device, so dear to 
the house of Savoy, is everywhere 
graven on the tomb of Philibert le 
Beau, as well as his cipher inter- 
woven with that of his wife. Six 
genii surround the recumbent prince 
in attitudes of sorrow, holding his 
sword, helmet, shield, device, and 
huge iron-barred gauntlets. His 
hands, folded palm to palm, are 
turned toward his mother, but his 
face toward the tomb of his wife. 
At his feet is a mild-looking lion 
whose ferocity is spent. Twelve 
wrought pillars support the upper 
part of the tomb, where, as on a 
//'/ de parade, sleeps the duke, noble 
as a demi-god. Beneath, as under 
a canopy, he lies dead, wrapped in 
his winding-sheet, his face livid, 
his body lifeless. Death is repre- 
sented here with horrid truthful- 
ness. You fear to touch the statue 
as you would a corpse. The quali- 
ty of the marble and the obscurity 
of the sepulchral recess contri- 
bute to the effect. Around stand 
ten sibyls ancient prophetesses 



who saw the truth "as in a glass 
darkly." 

The tomb of Margaret of Austria 
is supported by four columns amid 
a throng of saints St. Peter with 
his key, St. John the Baptist with 
his lamb, the Magdalen with her 
vase, St. Margaret with the dragon 
under her feet, St. Barbara with 
her tower, St. Agatha with the for- 
ceps and a palm, and St. Nicholas 
of Tolentino with the resplendent 
star that shot through the heavens 
before his birth. This tomb has 
also a double representation of the 
princess. Above she is alive, 
dressed in robes of state, her dra- 
pery rich, her features and hands 
beautiful. A sleeping greyhound 
is stretched at her feet, and around 
her are genii bearing her arms and 
sad device : Fortune, infortune, 
fort nne. Below she is crown less, 
her head bare, her waving hair 
falls around her shoulders, a long 
robe clings to her form, her face is 
pallid, and her feet are bare. On 
the left foot is the wound said to 
have caused her death. It is re- 
lated that Margaret of Austria, 
when about to leave Mechlin for 
Brou, desired some water to be 
brought her one morning before 
she rose. The attendant accident- 
ally let fall the glass goblet, which 
broke into a thousand pieces. One 
fell unperceived into the princess* 
slipper and wounded her foot when 
she put it on. Gangrene took 
place, and it was found necessary 
to amputate the foot. She ac- 
cordingly regulated all her world- 
ly affairs and received the sacra- 
ments. The physicians gave her 
opium to deaden the pain, but the 
dose was so great that she never 
woke again. 

The death of Margaret of Aus- 
tria took place on St. Andrew's 
day, 1530, in the fifty-first year of 



330 



The Votive Church of Bron. 



her age. She had remained faith- 
ful to the memory of Philibert, re- 
fusing all offers of marriage, among 
others from the king of England 
and Ladishuis of Hungary. She 
ordered by her will twelve hun- 
dred livres to be distributed among 
the poor after her death, and fifty 
livres apiece to one hundred girls 
of Bresse and Burgundy as a mar- 
riage portion. She ordered her 
body to be buried beside her last 
husband's at Brou, and founded 
anniversary Masses for the repose 
of her soul. Her heart was depos- 
ited in the chapel of the Annonci- 
ade convent at Bruges, which she 
had founded not far from the tomb 
of her mother, Mary of Burgundy. 
Two hundred poor people, dressed 
at her expense a glorious cortege 
each with a wax torch of three 
pounds weight, accompanied her 
remains some distance from Mech- 
lin, and a like number met them 
near Bourg and did not leave them 
during the three days of her obse- 
quies. The Emperor Charles V. 
sent deputies to attend the funeral, 
which was conducted with great 
pomp, and was exceedingly affect- 
ing from the affluence of the poorer 
classes, by whom she was much re- 
gretted. 

Margaret left her unfinished 
church to the care of Charles V., 
her nephew and heir, but he by no 
means fulfilled all her intentions 
respecting it. It was too far dis- 
tant, perhaps, for him to take great 
interest in it. He had the high 
altar erected, and gave it a paint- 
ing, now in a side chapel, of St. 
Augustine and his mother and St. 
Nicholas of Tolentino. It bears 
the following inscription: "The 
invincible Emperor Charles V., heir 
of the most serene lady, Marga- 
ret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy 
and Countess of Burgundy, gave 



this picture in 1574 to the high 
altar of the church she founded 
and chose as the place of her buri- 
al, by the instrumentality of the 
most glorious Antoine Perrenot, 
Cardinal Granvelle, Viceroy of Na- 
ples." 

On the Gospel side of the altar 
is the chapel of Margaret of Aus- 
tria, consecrated to the mystery of 
the Assumption. It is now sepa- 
rated from the choir by her tomb. 
Over the altar is a magnificent re- 
redos of alabaster, seventeen feet 
high and twelve broad, with sunken 
Gothic recesses, where are carved 
all the mysteries of the Virgin's 
life with fairy-like delicacy. It is 
surmounted by an alabaster statue 
of the Madonna between St. Mar- 
garet and St. Mary Magdalen. Be- 
neath are SS. Andrew and Philip. 
The chapel is lined with marble 
stalls, with the princess' arms and 
the ciphers P. M. (Philibert and 
Margaret) on the panels. In the 
stained-glass window is the corona- 
tion of the Virgin, with Philibert 
and Margaret in rich robes below, 
presented by their patron saints. 
A relief over the window depicts 
Christ in a triumphal chariot drawn 
by the four symbolic animals, de- 
noting the Evangelists, attended by 
the four Doctors of the church. 
Before him are Adam and Eve, and 
the mother of the Machabees with 
her seven sons. Behind the cha- 
riot are the apostles, martyrs, and 
saints of the New Law, with the 
inscription : " Christ triumphant 
over death, after establishing peace 
on earth and opening heaven to 
the righteous, is led in triumph by 
angels amid songs of joy and grati- 
tude." Everything in this chapel 
of the dead tends to exalt the soul 
and fill it with a holy joy. 

Behind the princess' chapel is 
her private oratory, with a large 



T/ie Votive Church of Brou. 



331 



, fireplace, and a squint in the wall 
through which she could see the 
altar of the Assumption as well as 
the high altar in the choir. Be- 
hind this is the chapel of the dukes 
of Pont de Vaux, founded by Lau- 
rent de Gorievod, who was distin- 
guished for his birth, his valor, and 
the dignities to which he attained. 
He was the governor of Charles V., 
and subsequently his chamberlain, 
and was his deputy at the confer- 
ence of Toledo concerning the de- 
liverance of Francis I. He was 
Grand Master of Spain, Knight of 
the Golden Fleece, Marshal of 
Burgundy, Governor of Bresse, 
Grand Equerry of Savoy, Prince 
of the Holy Empire, Duke of Nola, 
and first Count of Pont de Vaux, 
which Louis XIII. afterward erect- 
ed into a duchy. All these re- 
sounding titles seem like successive 
blasts from the trump of human 
glory, that sound melancholy enough 
at the tomb, where earthly great- 
ness avails so little. Margaret of 
Austria honored him with her spe- 
cial confidence, and to him she en- 
trusted the erection of the church 
of Brou, in which she allowed him 
to build a. chapel as the burial-place 
of himself and his family. He 
died at Barcelona, but his body 
was brought to Brou for burial, and 
a fine tomb of bronze erected to 
his memory, which was convert- 
ed into cannon at the Revolution. 
The corresponding chapel on the 
opposite side of the church is that 
of Margaret's chaplain, the Abbe 
de Montecut, remarkable for the 
beauty of the windows. 

The apsis of the church is com- 
pletely filled with five immense 
windows, in which are emblazoned 
the arms of Margaret and her an- 
cestors, and those of the house of 
Savoy and their alliances. These 
coats of arms, about seventy in 



all, are richly colored, and form a 
brilliant page of heraldry very in- 
teresting to study. At first they 
would seem to savor too much of 
worldly pride for the house of God, 
but they may be regarded as a tri- 
bute of earthly grandeur to Him to 
whom power alone belongs. When 
we first saw them in the golden 
morning sunlight, they looked like 
emblazonries of heavenly illumina- 
tion mingled with the insignia of 
all that is grandest on earth. The 
central window represents Christ 
appearing to his Mother and the 
holy women after the resurrection. 
In the next, at the right, is Phili- 
bert kneeling before the risen Sa- 
viour, with his patron saint beside 
him. In the one at the left is 
Margaret of Austria attended by 
St. Margaret. In the arms on 
Philibert's side can be traced his 
descent from St. Louis of France. 
On Margaret's they extend, through 
her father, back to Rudolph I. of 
Hapsburg. 

Everywhere around the church 
are to be seen Margaret's initials 
interlaced with her husband's by 
lacs cT amour, and the melancholy 
refrain of her motto : 



Fortune, 



t unt. 



The windows, arches, stalls, tombs, 
and marble basins all bear them. 
The motto has been variously in- 
terpreted. Some regard infortune 
as a verb, and it was so used in 
former times. According to this 
it would signify: "Fortune has 
brought me great misfortune." But 
it is more commonly believed to 
mean : Good fortune or misfor- 
tune, it is all the same, which every 
one stranded hopelessly on a sor- 
rowful shore must feel the force of. 
Life has nothing more to offer. 

The church of Brou has suffered 
more or less from the casualties of 



332 



The Votive Church of Brou. 



time and political events. During 
the siege of Bourg in the reign of 
Henry II. (1557) the roof was 
stripped of 5,676 pounds of lead 
chiefly used for carrying off the 
water. This was a serious calam- 
ity in a country where rains are so 
frequent as in Bresse. When the 
Revolution broke out the church 
doors were securely fastened, and 
the assailants contented themselves 
with destroying all the emblems of 
nobility on the exterior. The nave 
was subsequently used as a place 
of storage for hay, straw, etc., for 
the army of the Alps; and this, 
which might seem to be ruinous, 
really secured the safety of the 
building. The hay was an effec- 
tual barrier that protected the choir 
and tombs. By the time it was 
cleared the public mind was calm- 
ed. The adjoining monastery was 
converted into barracks, and used 
as a prison for priests and monks 
who would not violate their con- 
science. Then the cavalry was 
placed here, and the cloisters divid- 
ed into stables to the utter de- 
struction of their beauty. In the 
time of Charles X. the whole es- 
tablishment was restored to the 
church. 

In 1856 the vault containing the 
remains of Philibert le Beau and 
the two Margarets was opened. 
The duke's coffin, solidly enclosed 
in lead, had resisted the action of 
time, and was not opened ; but those 
of the princesses were so fallen to 
decay that their remains had to be 
transferred to new coffins. This 
was done with great care by a phy- 
sician in presence of a committee 
of distinguished gentlemen. The 
bodies had originally been enclos- 
ed in cowhide. It was found that 
Margaret of Austria had been bur- 
ied in the holy habit of the Annon- 
ciade nuns. Only a few bones 



scarcely one entire remained of 
the high and puissante Margaret of 
Austria, the daughter of an empe- 
ror, dauphiness of France, dowager 
princess of Spain, duchess of Savoy, 
and sovereign lady of Bres?e. The 
motto she chose seemed to sum up 
the history of her life, from which 
earthly happiness appeared to fly. 
Her first expectations are disap- 
pointed ; the throne of Ferdinand 
and Isabella, which she hoped to 
occupy with Don Juan, eludes her 
grasp; the handsome Philibert of 
Savoy dies : her very remains are 
now reduced to dust in the tomb. 
Yes, standing beside it, we may well 
echo her weary sigh : 

Fortune, infortune,fcrt une, 

But her memory has been fortu- 
nate in Bresse, where it is still 
cherished. For nearly three hun- 
dred years the voice of prayer 
daily rose around her tomb, and 
after a short interruption has been 
resumed, let us hope, never to cease 
again. 

When the remains of the two 
duchesses were transferred to new 
coffins it was resolved to perform 
a solemn funeral service. The 
chapel of Margaret of Austria was 
hung with black and converted into 
a chapelle ardente. Here the three 
coffins were borne by the clergy 
amid solemn chants, surrounded by 
torches. From the church tower 
floated the colors of France, Aus- 
tria, and Sardinia. The inside of 
the church was draped in mourn- 
ing, and around were displayed the 
arms of France, Burgundy, and Sa- 
voy. The oriflamme of St. Denis 
was suspended in the mortuary 
chapel. A solemn Mass of Re- 
quiem was performed, attended by 
all the dignitaries of the depart- 
ment and an immense crowd of ail 



The Votive Church of Brou. 



ranks. The governments of France 
and Sardinia were represented. 
This was probably the most bril- 
liant assemblage that had been wit- 
nessed at Brou since the day the 
representatives of Charles V. ac- 
companied the remains of Margaret 
of Austria to her tomb more than 
three hundred years before. The 
bishop of Belley made a touching 
eulogy. Regimental music accom- 
panied the services, to the sound of 
which all that remained of Philibert 
le Beau and the two duchesses of 
Savoy were once more lowered into 
the tomb. 

As we turned away from the fair 
church of Brou that encloses the 
sepulchre of Margaret of Austria, 
we remembered one other tomb 
where lies buried the hope of the 
vast empire of Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella the exquisite white marble 
tomb of Don Juan, Margaret's first 
husband (or second), in the stern 
granite church of the Dominicans 
on the rock-strewn moorland near 
Avila, in Spain moorland, church, 
and tomb all lonely, desolate, and 
infinitely touching. 

In front of the church of Brou 
is an immense sun-dial, elliptical 
in form, about thirty-three feet by 
twenty-six, composed of twenty-four 
stone cubes set in the ground, on 
which are graven in Roman charac- 
ters the twenty-four hours of the 
day in two series of twelve hours 
each. On the meridian in the cen- 
tre are graven the months of the 
year. There is no style, or hand, 
to the dial. The person who wishes 
to ascertain the hour stands on the 
letter indicating the month, and 
the shadow he forms approximate- 
ly indicates the time. This curi- 
ous dial was constructed at the 
time the church was built, but be- 
came so injured in the course of 
centuries as to require renewing, 



333 

and the astronomer Lalande re- 
stored it at his own expense. 

On returning to Bourg we again 
went to the church of Notre Dame 
a fine building whose grave sim- 
plicity is the more striking after 
the elaborate decorations of that 
at Brou. It stands on the site of 
an ancient chapel which contained 
a miraculous Madonna venerated 
from time immemorial, as it still is, 
especially on Lady-day, the patron - 
al festival of the town. In the mid- 
dle ages it was a place of pilgrimage, 
and among other illustrious pilgrims 
it boasts of was Aymon, Count of 
Savoy, in 1342. He was afflicted 
with a serious disease that resisted 
all the efforts of medical science, 
and he resolved to have recourse 
solely to heaven. But let us quote 
the naive chronicle that gives the 
result : 

" Now there befell Count Aymon a 
grievous malady, and to obtain grace 
and solace therefor he set forth from 
his castle at Chambery in great devotion 
and humility to visit the blessed remains 
of Monsieur Sainct Claude, and offer to 
God and his glorious Mother, and the 
said holy body, a wax light to burn day 
and night before the tomb of Monsieur 
Sainct Claude. His devotions accom- 
plished, he returned therefrom to his 
castle at Chambery. But after a certain 
time, finding himself not healed of his 
malady, he conceived in his heart a 
singular devotion, and registered a vow 
to go and make an offering to God and 
his glorious Mother in the church of his 
good town of Bourg in Bres^e. On the 
Vigil of the Assumption of Our Lady he 
reached the church of Bourg, and per- 
formed his devotions with great humili- 
ty, vowing and promising to offer in 
honor of God and Our Lady two can- 
dles to burn perpetually, day and night, 
before the image of the most high and 
glorious Mother of God established and 
honored in the said town. And after 
registering his vow and offering his de- 
votions, the said count was healed and 
cured in all points of his malady ; and 
continuing to persevere in his singular 
devotion, and rendering thanks to God 



334 



Fanny Kcmblcs Girlhood. 



and his glorious Mother, he ordered the 
day of the Assumption of Our Lady to 
be kept in this church with special so- 
lemnity in remembrance of the favor 
done him, and a solemn Mass to be sung 
by the priests of the church, in the midst 
ol which Mass a sermon was to be de- 
livered on the grace obtained by those 
who have recourse to the glorious Virgin 
Mary with all their heart the sermon to 
be made with the face turned towards 
the image of the glorious Virgin. For 
this day's commemoration and remem- 
brance he gave them in perpetuity the 
sum of ten florins a year. And now the 
Count Aymon was cured and had peace 
in the land, he blessed God and set 
himself to lead a good and holy life." 



The foundation of Count Aymon 
was punctually paid down to 1790, 
when the source of the revenue was 
alienated by the government. But 
it is something to see an offering 
of gratitude perpetuated over four 
hundred }ears, and no one can 
look without emotion at the vene- 
rable image before which the Count 
of Savoy paid his humble vows, 
and set up his wax tapers to burn 
so many centuries, and the annual 



sermon on Our Lady's grace was 
delivered. 

In the sacristy of Notre Dame 
de Bourg is a beautiful painting of 
the Flemish school that formerly 
belonged to the church of Brou. 
It represents our Saviour falling 
under the weight of his cross, and 
Margaret of Austria, as Veronica, 
richly clad, and with a look of 
earnest compassion on her noble 
face, offering him a veil to wipe 
the sweat and dust from his brow. 
Beside her is painted her emblem 
the marguerite, or daisy. The 
painting is on a panel formerly 
belonging to a triptych. Another 
depicts the Last Supper with some 
princes of the house of Savoy as 
the don atari. 

This painting is a touching me- 
morial of Margaret's piety. It was 
in the presence of the Divine Suf- 
ferer she learned to bear her own 
woes so heroically, and to rise 
above the fluctuations of fortune 
so truly that she could sincerely 
say: 

Fortune* inf or tune, fort une. 



FANNY KEMBLE'S GIRLHOOD. 



FANNY KEMBLE, or Mrs. Pierce 
Butler, the " Old Woman " whose 
"Gossip" has amused many in the 
pages of the Atlantic Monthly, but 
whose complete Records of a Girl- 
hood have only appeared in print in 
1879, did not quite answer to t'he 
conventional notion of an actress. 
She was neither "fast "nor " Bohe- 
mian," but a very good example of 
the old-fashioned English type of 
girl, healthy, fearless, frank and wo- 
manly, full of common sense not- 
withstanding certain natural and 



excusable vagaries, and thorough- 
ly true and straightforward. The 
poetical and abstract side of her 
art was dear to her, but the un- 
reality which is the most incon- 
veniently prominent attribute of 
the stage marred her pleasure in 
her profession a profession she 
never grew to love and glory in. 
Her talent as an actress must have 
been altogether a secondary thing 
in her individuality ; besides which, 
"her aunt's genius suggested com- 
parisons necessarily to the disad- 



Fanny Kembles Girlhood. 



335 



vantage of the younger woman. 
Apart, however, from a profession 
in which she took as a family in- 
heritance a good, if not a supreme, 
rank, she was a gifted woman. 
One of her characteristics, a thing 
in which she stands apart from most 
of her sex, was a keen sense of hu- 
mor joined to great animal spirits. 
In one of her letters to Mrs. Jame- 
son she thus assails the hitter's 
opinion that humor is of necessity, 
and in its very essence, vulgar : 
" I think humor is very often close- 
ly allied to poetry; not only a 
large element in highly poetic 
minds, which surely refutes your 
position, but kindred to the high- 
est and deepest order of imagina- 
tion, and frequently eminently fan- 
ciful and graceful in its peculiar 
manifestations." Her autobiogra- 
phy reads more like a man's than a 
woman's, and chiefly on this ac- 
count : that while her judgments are 
womanly, and her fancies peculiar- 
ly so, there is a vigor of physical 
enjoyment, an absence of morbid 
narrowness or conventionality, and 
a tendency to make the best of 
things which are opposed to the 
ordinary female delight in triviali- 
ies. A good deal of this buoyant 
isposition she owed to her French 
other, the granddaughter of a 
wiss farmer, the child-actress with 
horn George IV. amused himself by 
utting her under a huge glass bell 
tended to cover a large group of 
resden china ; the clever cordon- 
bleu whose savory cookery outvied 
even her acting talents ; the lover of 
fishing and country life, for which 
she had as many capabilities as she 
had attraction for it. Fanny Kem- 
ble was a fearless horsewoman, too, 
and much given to country pursuits 
and love of fine scenery, though 
fate was against her in shutting her 
up for the greater part of her 



youth in large cities nnd dingy 
streets. To her love of indepen- 
dence and desire to wield influ- 
ence to have "a mass of people 
under your control, subject to your 
influence, and receiving your im- 
pressions " * to her pride in human 
achievements and admiration of 
power in the shape of discovery, 
invention, and mechanics (witness 
her ecstasies over the Thames 
Tunnel, George Stephenson, and 
the first railroad from Liverpool to 
Manchester), to her appreciation of 
the nobility, gravity, and complete- 
ness of the character of Shak- 
spere's Portia, she added more com- 
monplace traits. She was fonder 
of dancing than even the generality 
of girls, and she had a penchant for 
luxury, or what she calls " silver- 
fork existence," which her circum- 
stances excused, but which seems 
incongruous in a woman so full of 
an ideal of self-dependence. Her 
stage career was exceptional in its 
ease as to minor details ; she had 
no early struggles to attain a posi- 
tion (this also implies that she had 
no regular training), and was as 
well shielded from all that was 
disagreeable or dangerous as if 
she had been a duchess' daughter. 
Her name and appearance floated 
her artistic capabilities enough to 
make her the fashion at once, and 
as a dramatic author she had also 
singular success ; so that from the 



* She once told Lady Byron, who was herself an 
enthusiast and fond of making disciples to her views, 
that she often wished, during her readings, to say 
somethingyV0;/z herself to her audience ; but that, 
on wondering what she u might, could, would, or 
should have said to them from herself, she never 
could think of anything but two words, ' Be good,' 
which, as a preface to the reading of one of Shak- 
spere's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor, for 
instance might have startled them. Often and 
strongly as the temptation recurred to her. she never 
could think of anything better worth saying to her 
audience, and she had some hope that sometimes in 
the course of her reading she said it effectually 
without shocking them by a departure from her 
proper calling. ..." 



336 



Fanny Kemble s GirlJiood. 



moment she appeared on the stage 
her family suffered no more priva- 
tions. She herself was able to af- 
ford every possible luxury, and to 
provide for her brothers' careers 
and her parents' comforts ; but the 
unlucky suits and entanglements 
which the possession of Covent 
Garden Theatre had entailed upon 
her famous uncle, John Kemble, 
crippled the efforts of her father, 
and eventually led to his being 
obliged to make his home, as John 
Kemble had done, out of England. 
She tells her own story in so bright 
and genial a way that it is defraud- 
ing the reader to condense or para- 
phrase it any further. Of her 
school-life she remembers rather 
the wild escapades than the desul- 
tory knowledge she picked up, as 
when she tells of her roof-walking 
adventure at Boulogne and her 
teacher's exasperated exclamation 
(in French) of "It must be that 
devil of a KembJe." At an Eng- 
lish school kept by her aunts she 
first riiet her cousin, Horace Twiss, 
afterwards an author and states- 
man prominent in the history of 
the Reform Bill ; at a Paris school 
she came across Rio, the French 
art critic, one of the knot of re- 
markable men celebrated in the 
Re tit d'nnc Sceur, and himself a 
striking figure, whose stature, com- 
manding aspect, and " powerful 
black eyes " struck the young girl's 
fancy. She lived a good deal with 
a couple of the Parisian bourgeoi- 
sie, and compares their life and sur- 
roundings, as she remembers them 
at that time, to the faithful and 
minute pictures of such interiors 
by Balzac ; a wedding in the family 
being the occasion for mirth of a 
sort different to one's stereotyped 
ideas of French stiffness in dofnes- 
tic affairs. The old custom of the 
distribution of the jarretiere dc la 



uiarie'e was enforced, the garter be- 
ing " a white satin ribbon, tied at a 
discreet height above the bride's 
ankle, and removed thence by the 
groomsman and cut into pieces, for 
which an animated scramble took 
place among the male guests, each 
one who obtained a piece of the 
white favor immediately fastening 
it in his buttonhole." The school- 
girls acted little plays of a milk- 
and-water type, but in her holidays 
Fanny Kemble's father took her to 
real plays, one of which, Les An- 
glaises pour Rirc, was a caricature 
of the English female tourists of 
that day, not utterly inapplicable 
even yet to the average of Conti- 
nental travellers: 

"Coal-scuttle poke bonnets, shori and 
scanty skirts, large splay feet arrayed in 
indescribable shoes and boots, short- 
waisted, tight-fitting spencers, colors that 
not only ' swore ' at each other, but 
caused all beholders to swear at them 
these were the outward and visible signs 
of the British fair of that day. To these 
were added, in this representation of 
them by these French appreciators of 
their attractions, a mode of speech in 
which the most ludicrous French, in the 
most barbarous accent, was uttered in 
alternate bursts of loud abruptness and 
languishing drawl. Sudden, grotesque 
playfulness was succeeded by equally 
sudden and grotesque bashfulness ; now 
an eager intrepidity of wild enthusiasm, 
defying all decorum, and then a sour, 
severe reserve, full of angry and terrified 
suspicion of imaginary improprieties. 
Tittering shyness, all giggle-goggle and 
blush; stony and stolid stupidity, im- 
penetrable to a ray of perception ; awk- 
ward, angular postures and gestures, and 
jerking, saltatory motions ; Brobdignag 
strides and straddles, and kittenish fro- 
lics and friskings ; sharp, shrill little 
whinnying squeals and squeaks, follow- 
ed by lengthened, sepulchral 'oh's' 
all formed together such an irresistibly 
ludicrous picture as made Les Ang!aiscs 
potir Rire of Poitier and Brunet (two of 
the foremost ac'.ors in Paris) one of the 
most comical pieces of acting I have seen 
in all my life.'' 



I 



Fanny Kemble s Girlhood. 



337 



The Kembles were all above the 
average in oneway or other; the 
men, whether actors or not, having 
a hereditary taste for philology, 
though none of them spoke foreign 
languages easily. Fanny's brother 
John whose Spanish experiences 
as a volunteer in General Torrijos' 
ill-fated insurrection in 1830 caus- 
ed his father so much anxiety and 
mortification, and whose utopian- 
ism was so very unpractical and 
unsatisfactory, flying in the face of 
respectability, and of the succes- 
sive expectations of church prefer- 
ment and legal honors, as well as of 
steady conventional life, which the 
elder Kemble had formed for him 
settled down subsequently into a 
quiet student at Hanover, where he 
married a German wife, became 
the intimate friend of the Grimms 
and curator of the Royal Museum, 
and published works on Anglo- 
Saxon. It is interesting to follow 
the hints given of his and his fel- 
low-volunteers' careers. Archdea- 
con Trench, equally a philologist, 
was of the Spanish party, though 
his "early crusade . . . did not 
militate against the well-deserved 
distinction he has achieved in the 
high calling to which he devoted 
himself." John Kemble, eager and 
studious as he was, disappointed 
his father by leaving Cambridge 
without taking his degree, and go- 
ing to Heidelberg, which English- 
men at that time did not frequent, 
as is a good deal the fashion at pre- 
sent. He was, like most men who 
made their mark later, and like 
many who never came into public 
notice at all, an ardent, sincere, 
but subversive reformer, seeing 
only the theoretical side of things, 
a follower of Mill and Bentham, 
an opponent of privilege under all 
shapes, a democrat, a radical, a utili- 
tarian. In later life all this exu- 
VOL. xxx. 22 



berance of feeling left a deposit of 
genuine worth, and John Kemble 
became a man noted for sympathy 
with every noble object, but who 
devoted himself chiefly to unobtru- 
sive acts of practical kindness to 
those within his reach. Still his 
father was never fairly reconciled 
to his change of plans, for, as his 
sister says, " when a man has made 
up his mind that his son is to be 
lord chancellor of England he finds 
it hardly an equivalent that he 
should be one of the first Anglo- 
Saxon scholars in Europe." Young 
Kemble's school and college con- 
temporaries formed a somewhat 
remarkable group, and the Kem- 
bles' house in Gerard Street, Soho 
(now a wholesale lamp manufac- 
tory), one of the old, handsome, 
neglected houses common in un- 
fashionable neighborhoods, full of 
carved staircases, coved ceilings, 
crooked passages, and architectu- 
ral surprises in general, was one of 
the gathering-places of the eager, 
impulsive youths. Arthur Hallam, 
the hereof "In Memoriam," Al- 
fred Tennyson and his brothers, 
Frederick Maurice, John Sterling 
who, Miss Kemble says, was " by 
far the most brilliant and striking 
in his conversation," but whose 
life " was sufficiently prolonged to 
disprove this estimate of his pow- 
ers," yet who so impressed those 
he left behind as to have become 
the subject of two most interesting 
biographies, one by Julius Hare 
and the other by Carlyle Richard 
Trench, the future philologist, Wil- 
liam Donne, the Romillys, the 
Malkins one a distinguished law- 
yer and Indian judge, another the 
earliest Alpine explorer, and whose 
enthusiasm was not limited to mere 
pedestrianism, but included botany 
and the novel human interests sug- 
gested by visits to hitherto un- 



338 



Fanny " Kemble s Girlhood. 



known valleys William Thackeray, 
and Richard Monckton Milnes, the 
poet (now Lord Hough ton), were 
some of the Kembles' most intimate 
acquaintances. A little later Fan- 
ny Kemble began to make friends 
of her own, chief among whom was 
a very remarkable woman, whom 
she introduces to the reader under 
the initials of H. S., and her letters 
to whom form the chief ground- 
work of her autobiography. 

** She had been intimate from her 
childhood in my Uncle (John) Kemble's 
house, and retained ... an affectionate 
kindness for his widow, whom she was 
now visiting. . . . The device of her fam- 
ily is Haut et Bon : it was her descrip- 
tion. She was about thirty years old 
when I first met her [here follows a mi- 
nute description of her person]. Nobili- 
ty, intelligence, and tenderness were her 
predominating qualities, and her person, 
manner, and countenance habitually ex- 
pressed them. Her intellect was of a 
very uncommon order ; her habits of 
thought and reading were profoundly 
speculative ; she delighted in metaphy- 
sical subjects of the greatest difficulty 
and abstract questions of the most labo- 
rious solution. On such subjects she 
incessantly exercised her remarkably 
keen powers of analysis and investiga- 
tion, and no doubt cultivated and 
strengthened her peculiar mental facul- 
ties and tendencies by the perpetual pro- 
cesses of metaphysical reasoning which 
she pursued." 

This line of study, however, did 
not impair her distinguishing love 
of truth and straightforwardness, 
which she shared with her young 
friend ; and even in her outward ap- 
pearance she was singularly devoid 
of the usual woman's aptitude to 
give up one's own comfort to the 
necessities of fashion, for she is de- 
scribed as wearing her chestnut 
hair in thick, short, clustering curls, 
and as being 

" Eccentric in many things. . . . Her 
boots, not positively masculine articles, 
were nevertheless made 'by a man's 



bootmaker, and there was only one place 
in London where they could be made 
sufficiently ugly to suit her. . . . Her 
whole attire, peculiar (and very ugly I 
thought it) as it was, was so by malice 
prepense on her part. And whereas the 
general result would have suggested a 
total disregard of the vanities of dress, 
no Quaker coquette was ever more jeal- 
ous of the peculiar texture of the fabrics 
she wore. . . . She wore no colors, . . . 
and her dress, bare and bald of every 
ornament, was literally only a covering 
for her body ; but it was difficult to find 
cashmere fine enough for her scanty 
skirts, or cloth perfect enough for her 
short spencers, or lawn clear and exqui- 
site enough for her curious collars and 
cuffs of immaculate freshness." * 

Her home was in Ireland, not 
far from Dublin Ardgillan Castle, 
standing on a cliff above the pic- 
turesque fishing village of Skerries, 
with the Morne Mountains in the 
distance. The song of." The Two 
Lives " f gives a description of the 
dell, completely sheltered from the 
sea and thick with trees, with a 
spring answering " with its tiny 
tinkle the muffled voice of the 
ocean breaking on the shore be- 
yond," where Fanny Kemble, on her 
visit to her friend, 

" Sat and devised, as the old word was, 

* Apropos of eccentricity in dress a trait not so 
uncommon in correct England as the rigid etiquette 
of some circles seems to imply Miss Kemble tells a 
pleasant story of some old maiden ladies, one of 
them her godmother, who lived in a picturesque 
oak-panelled and staircased house in Stafford, and 
kept up the old fashion of a nine-o'clock supper, 
which, extraordinarily abundant and delicate as were 
all the meals, was yet the most elaborate of all : 
" One of the sisters, going out one day, called to the 
servant who was closing the door behind her, l Tell 
the cook not to forget the sally luns [a species of 
muffin] for tea, well greased on both sides, and we'll 
put on our cotton gowns to eat them. 1 The mis- 
tress of this household was sixty, large, tall, and fat, 
habitually dressed in a white linen cambric gown, 
plain and tight as a bag, . . . finished at the throat 
with a school-boy's plaited frill, which stood up 
around her heavy falling cheeks by the help of a 
white muslin or black silk cravat. Her head was 
very nearly bald, and the thin,lhort gray hair lay 
in distant streaks upon her skull, white and shiny 
as an ostrich egg, which (when she went out) she 
covered with a man's straw or beaver hat." 

t By an anonymous author. It treats allegori- 
cally of two paths, represented by the peaceful, shel- 
tered beauty of the dell and the " magic of ocean," 
" murmuring loud and strong." 






Fanny Kemble s Girlhood. 



339 



I 



of things in heaven and things in earth, 
and things above heaven and things be- 
low earth, and things quite beyond our- 
selves, till we were well-nigh beside 
ourselves ; and it was not the fault of 
my metaphysical friend, but of my utter 
inability to keep pace with her mental 
processes, if our argument did not in- 
clude every point of that which Milton 
has assigned to the forlorn disputants 
of his infernal regions." 

A later friend was Mrs. Jameson, 
then just married, whose 

" Various and numerous gifts and ac- 
quirements were exercised, developed, 
and constantly increased by a life of the 
most indefatigable literary study, re- 
search, and labor. . . . Her face, which 
was habitually refined and spirituelle in 
its expression, was capable of a mar- 
vellous power of concentrated feeling 
such as is seldom seen on any wo- 
man's face, and is peculiarly rare on the 
countenance of a fair, small, delicate- 
ly-featured woman, all whose person- 
al characteristics were essentially femi- 
nine." 

Through Mrs. Jameson Miss 
Kemble came in contact with Lady 
Byron, whom she presents to the 
reader in a very interesting aspect, 
and with a character, while not 
cold or unsympathetic, much su- 
perior, even intellectually, to her 
husband. She was devoted to the 
good and improvement of her sex, 
and looked upon the experiment of 
opening new careers to women in 
a way equally removed from social 
prejudice and from undue partisan- 
ship. It is true that, with these 
determined principles, she was out- 
wardly quiet and reserved, 

" With a manner habitually deliberate 
and measured, a low, subdued voice and 
rather diffident hesitation in expressing 
herself; and she certainly conveyed the 
impression of natural reticence and cau- 
tion. But so far from ever appearing to 
me to justify the description often given 
of her, of a person of exceptionally cold, 
hard, measured intellect and character, 
she always struck me as a woman capa- 



ble of profound and fervid enthusiasm, 
with a mind of rather a romantic and 
visionary order." 

On the occasion of a new and 
cheap edition of Byron's works be- 
ing published, which was likely to 
spread chiefly among the young 
clejks and shop-keeper class of read- 
ers, for whom Lady Byron " de- 
precated extremely the pernicious 
influence it was calculated to pro- 
duce," she seriously thought of writ- 
ing a notice of the author, to be ap- 
pended by way of preface to the 
book, to modify or lessen the effect 
she dreaded. " Nobody," she said 
to Miss Kemble, " knew him as I 
did (this certainly was not the 
general impression upon the sub- 
ject); nobody knew as well as I the 
causes that made him what he was ; 
nobody, I think, is so capable of 
doing justice to him, and therefore 
of counteracting the injustice he 
does to himself, and the injury he 
might do to others, in some of his 
writings." She did not eventually 
carry out this project. That Miss 
Kemble herself, when scarcely eigh- 
teen, should have so clearly dis- 
cerned the evil influence exercised 
on her mind by the reading of By- 
ron, chiefly "Cain" and "Man- 
fred," as to give up reading any 
more of his poems until, after two 
years' abstention, she " broke through 
the thraldom of that powerful spell, 
and all the noble beauty of those 
poems remained thenceforth di- 
vested of the power of wild excite- 
ment," goes to show the amount of 
self-control she possessed in early 
youth. Her estimate of the influ- 
ence of Byron, written, of course, 
many years later, and embodying 
deliberate reflections formed by her 
varied experience and her peculiar- 
ly sharpened powers of observation, 
seems, though perhaps not original, 
at any rate very sensible. He was, 



340 



Fanny Kemble s Girlhood. 



she says, only a sort of quintes- 
sence, an intensified, individual ex- 
tract of the thought and feeling of 
his contemporaries, another vehi- 
cle, like Goethe, Alfieri, and Cha- 
teaubriand,* " each with his pecu- 
liar national and individual accent," 
for the utterance of the same mind. 

" The mine whence they drew their 
metal was the civilized humanity of the 
nineteenth century. ... It took all the 
ages that preceded it to make the blasd 
age, and Byron, pre-eminently, to speak 
its mind in English. . . . Doubtless, by 
grace of his free-will, a man may wring 
every drop of sap out of his own soul 
and help his fellows like-minded with 
himself to do the same ; but the ever- 
lasting spirit of truth renews the vital- 
ity of the world, and while Byron was 
growling and howling, and Shelley was 
denying and defying, Scott was telling, 
and Wordsworth singing, things beauti- 
ful and good, and new and true." 

During a long visit to her aunt, 
Mrs. Henry Siddons, in Edinburgh, 
Fanny Kemble made the acquaint- 
ance of Sir Walter Scott and be- 
came intimate with the Combes-^ 
George Combe, the lawyer and phre- 
nologist, whose domestic affairs, she 
jestingly remarks, were none the 
less troublesome because the ser- 
vants' " bumps " were manipulated 
and examined before the engage- 
ments were made; and Andrew 
Combe, the physician, whose cha- 
racter, quite as earnest, was also 
more lovable than his brother's. 
She recalls another acquaintance, 
more typical and therefore interest- 
ing, of a sort of which one seldom 
hears in connection with classical 
Edinburgh. This was a fishwife of 
Newhaven, a fishing village within 
reach of a walk from the city, and 
whom she first met at her cottage, 

* Alfieri, however, through the circumstances of 
his position, redeemed his pessimism by patriotism, 
while Goethe, though fully as heathen, was less 
ambiguous in his profession of cynicism than Byron. 
Chateaubriand was so utterly different from 
either that comparison is difficult. 



" Combing a magnificent curtain of 
fair hair that fell over her ample shoul- 
ders and bosom and almost swept the 
ground. She was seated on a low stool, 
but looked tall as well as large, and her 
foam-fresh complexion and gray-green 
eyes might have become Venus Anadyo- 
mene herself, turned into a Scotch fish- 
wife of five-and-thirty." Her eldest boy 
" was a fair-haired, fresh-faced young 
giant, of his mother's strain, and, like 
her, looked as if he had come of the 
Northern vikings or some of the Nibe- 
lungen-Lied heroes. She was a splen- 
did specimen of her tribe, climbing the 
steep Edinburgh streets with bare white 
feet, the heavy fish-basket at her back, 
hardly stooping her broad shoulders, 
her florid face sheltered and softened, in 
spite of its massiveness, into something 
like delicacy by the transparent shadow 
of the white handkerchief tied hoodwise 
over her fair hair." 

As became such a woman, she 
was very proud of her fine children, 
of whom there were eleven, the last 
promising to equal the eldest, even 
when only an "infant Hercules," 
as Miss Kemble (rather too con- 
ventionally) calls him. Mrs. Henry 
Siddons, for whom her niece en- 
tertained one of those adoring 
friendships not uncommon in very 
young girls, was especially an ear- 
nest, conscientious woman, not a 
particularly good actress, but, hav- 
ing been left a young widow, with 
the management of the theatre for 
her children's chief support, she 
fulfilled all the duties this entailed 
in a spirit of Christian unselfishness 
and considerateness. In her house 
" religion was never directly made 
a subject of inculcation, but God's 
service took the daily and hourly 
form of the conscientious discharge 
of duty, unselfish, tender affection 
towards each other, and kindly 
Christian charity towards all." 
When hearing of the " technical " 
requirements which some good, sin- 
cere people mistake as the sine qua 
non of so-called religion, the fact 






Fanny Kembles Girlliood. 



341 






of her aunt's " serene, courageous 
self-devotion, when during a danger- 
ous illness of her youngest daugh- 
ter she would ... go to the the* 
tre and discharge duties never very 
attractive, and rendered distasteful 
then by cruel anxiety, but her neg- 
lect of which would have injured 
the interests of her brother, her 
fellow-actors, and all the poor peo- 
ple employed in the theatre, and 
been a direct infringement of her 
obligations to them," recurred to 
Miss Kemble's mind as a truer in- 
stance of religious conviction and 
of its habitual influence in the di- 
rection of faithfulness to duty than 
most loudly" professing Christians " 
could point out. Fanny Kemble's 
own sense of religion, undeveloped 
in very early youth, became later 
on of a very healthy type; senti- 
mentality never entered into it, 
and she clearly saw her own defi- 
ciencies wherever they existed and 
were backed up by pet weaknesses 
of her lower nature. Once she says: 

*' I always feel afraid of theological or 
controversial writings, and yet the faith 
that shrinks from being touched lest it 
should totter is certainly not on the right 
foundation. I suppose we ought, on the 
contrary, to examine thoroughly the 
reason of the faith that is in us. Declin- 
ing reading upon religious subjects may 
be prudent, but it may be indolence, 
cowardice, or lack of due interest in the 
matter." 

On the other hand, an examina- 
tion of a kind necessarily resulting 
in disintegration or self-torment 
she sensibly condemned, as when 
she writes to her friend, H. S. : 
" You appear to me always to wish 
to submit your faith to a process 
which breaks your apparatus and 
leaves you very much dissatisfied, 
with your faith still a simple ele- 
ment in you, in spite of your en- 
deavors to analyze or decompose 

spiritual 



convictions the intuitions of our 
souls that lie upon their surface 
like direct reflections from heaven, 
distinct and beautiful enough for 
reverent contemplation, but a cu- 
rious search into whose nature 
would, at any rate temporarily, 
blur, and dissipate, and destroy . . ." 
our only steadfastly-grounded faith ; 
and spite of the apparent senti- 
mentality of this judgment, most 
people can recall a feeling, vague 
or otherwise, which answers to this, 
and is generally the product of 
early associations and impressions 
rather than the direct, easily-word- 
ed result of regular theological 
teaching; and it is in this fellow- 
ship of souls that the church finds 
the secret bond that makes so many, 
apparently lost sheep, really of the 
" household of the faith." 

Another of the Kembles, Mrs. 
Siddons' sister, Mrs. Whitelock, who 
lived a large part of her life in the 
United States, and took rank here 
as one of the best actresses in the 
early part of the century, was an 
eccentric and lovable woman, but 
considered by her family as some- 
thing of a social dead-weight : 

" She really seemed like a living paro- 
dy or caricature of all the Kembles. . . . 
She had the deep, sonorous voice and 
extremely distinct utterance of her fami- 
ly, and an extraordinary vehemence of 
gesture and expression quite unlike 
[them], . . . and which made her con- 
versation like that of people in old plays 
and novels ; for she would slap her thigh 
in emphatic enforcement of her state- 
ments, which were apt to be upon an 
incredibly large scale, not unfrequently 
prefacing them with the exclamation, 
' I declare to God !' or ' I wish I may 
die !' . . . My father used to call her 
Queen Bess (her name was Elizabeth), 
declaring that her manners were like 
those of that royal ^//-gentlewoman. But 
she was a simple-hearted, sweet-temper- 
ed woman, whose harmless peculiarities 
did not prevent us all being fond of 
her." 



342 



Fanny Kemble s Girlhood. 



This single-minded woman, " gro- 
tesque in her manner and ap- 
pearance," was " a severe thorn 
in the side of her conventionally 
irreproachable " sister-in-law, Mrs. 
John Kemble, a shrewd, fashion- 
able, worldly, and, though not super- 
ficially vulgar, yet scarcely a high- 
bred woman. On the approach of 
some coroneted carriage she would 
observe pointedly to her visitor : 
" * Mrs. Whitelock, there is an ekki- 
pageS * " ' I see it, ma'am,' replied 
the undaunted Mrs. Whitelock, 
screwing up her mouth and twirl- 
ing her thumbs in a peculiarly em- 
phatic way, to which she was ad- 
dicted in moments of crisis." And 
the woman of the world would ra- 
ther deny herself the pleasure of 
receiving titled visitors than risk 
presenting to her fine friends the 
" flounced white muslin apron and 
towering Pamela cap " of her 
" amazingly odd companion." This 
unconscious exhibition of the so- 
cial " cloven foot " brings to mind 
the comical answer Fanny Kem- 
ble's Aunt Ball (Adelaide De 
Camp) made, upon her first arrival 
in New York, on the abundance of 
heraldic devices which Mr. Kem- 
ble noticed on the panels of private 
carriages. '* I wonder what they 
do for arms." "Use legs," said 
Ball promptly. 

Among her professional friends 
Miss Kemble singles out a few of 
the best-known actors, and gives 
little incidental sketches of them 
with a dash of her own criticism 
to season them. Charles Young, 
"that most kindly good man " and 
devoted to children, 

" Was a universal favorite in the best 
London society and pleasant country- 
houses, where his zeal for country sports, 

* Such was at that time (1827) the received pro- 
nunciation of the word equipage in good London 
society, also "pettikits" for petticoats, "divle" 
for devil, " Lunnon " for London. 



his knowledge of, and fondness for, hor- 
ses, his capital equestrianism and inex- 
haustible fund of humor, made him as po- 
pular with the men as his sweet, genial 
|emper, good breeding, musical accom- 
plishments, and infinite drollery did with 
the women." 

His physical appearance was 
eminently fitted for tragic parts, 
while his mental qualifications 
would have tended to make him 
a comedian 

" Ludicrous stories, personal mimic- 
ry, the most admirable imitation of na- 
tional accent, a power of grimace that 
equalled Grimaldi (a famous clown), and 
the most irresistibly comical way of re- 
suming, in the midst of the broadest buf- 
foonery, the stately dignity of his own 
naturalfcountenance, voice, and manner. 
... It would be difficult to say what his 
best performances were, for he had never 
either fire, passion, or tenderness, but 
never wanted propriety, dignity, and a 
certain stately grace. Sir Pertinax Mc- 
Sycophant and lago were the best things 
I ever saw him act, probably because 
the sardonic element in both of them 
gave partial scope to his humorous 
vein." 

His son, the Rev. Julian Young, 
later on a friend of Miss Kemble's,. 
inherited all the comic perceptions 
and tendencies of the actor ; the 
writer has met him at his War- 
wickshire rectory and at various 
parties in the neighborhood where 
his stories were reckoned as in- 
dispensable and prominent a part 
of the entertainment as the cook's 
most wonderful dishes. It was be- 
lieved that he kept a note-book to 
remind him in whose company he 
had told such and such an anec- 
dote ; and, as a fact, he seldom re- 
peated himself. His mother, Julia 
Grimani, was of an old Venetian 
noble family, impoverished and 
thrown on its own resources, and 
her marriage was a beautiful but 
brief romance, the memory of which 
remained always fresh in the faith- 






Fanny Kemble s Girlhood. 



343 



ful mind of her husband. We learn 
little that is new of Charles Ma- 
thews, whose amusing autobiogra- 
phy, supplemented by Dickens' edi- 
torship,* has recently been pub- 
lished. 

, . . " He has been unrivalled," she 
says, "in the sparkling vivacity of his 
performance of a whole range of parts 
in which nobody has approached the 
finish, refinement, and spirit of his act- 
ing ; . . . the broadest farce never betray- 
ed him into either coarseness or vulgari- 
ty. . . No member of the French Thea- 
tre was ever at once a more finished and 
a more delightfully amusing and natural 
actor." 

Of Charles Kean whose "rant- 
ing " has often been sharply criti- 
cised, and whose stage-tricks, as 
they appeared to the writer, were 
certainly the very reverse of a na- 
tural expression either of horror, 
command, heroic energy, or any 
other of the usual ingredients of a 
tragedy the author was an admirer 
and disciple, in this instance dis- 
agreeing with her father, whose con- 
ception of Kean's parts was con- 
stitutionally antagonistic to the vio- 
lence inseparable from Kean's de- 
lineations of them. She thought 
him a genius because he had power 
and took his hearers by storm : 

"Some of the things he did," she ac- 
knowledges, " appeared on reflection 
questionable to myjudgment and open to 
criticism ; but while under the influence 
of his amazing power of passion it is 
impossible to reason, analyze, or do 
anything but surrender one's self to his 
forcible appeals to one's emotions. He 
entirely divested Shylock of all poetry 
or elevation, but invested it with a con- 

* A criticism in the Nation of October 9 on this 
book seems somewhat pedantic, arguing to the effect 
that the career of the actor would have been of great- 
er interest than that of the architect, which takes up 
two-thirds of the volume. An actor's career, to be 
embodied in a valuable literary record, requires so 
much detail of a dry and technical sort that it would 
be a far less popular subject than the delightful 
medley of fun, adventure, and home-life which has 
been given the public under the name of the Life 
of Charles Mathews. 



centrated ferocity that made one's blood 
curdle. He seemed to me to combine 
the supernatural malice of a fiend with 
the base reality of the meanest humanity. 
His passion is prosaic, but all the more 
intensely terrible for that very reason." 

She thought less of his Richard 
III., because he lacked the innate 
majesty necessary for a royal villain. 
In a very detailed analysis of his 
stage qualifications, in which her 
very praise of Kean " begs the 
question," she acknowledges that 
as an artist he lacked the more 
delicate, mental intuitions neces- 
sary to perfection in his calling, 
but she thought his " power " the 
" first element of greatness." It is 
essentially the judgment of a very 
young observer. 

Mrs. Kemble was the chief critic 
of Fanny's own theatrical perfor- 
mances, and her judgment the chief 
director of her daughter's concep- 
tions of her various parts. The 
comic perception Miss Kemble in- 
herited from her, and, though it 
was developed, as she thinks, only 
in later life, it appears palpable to 
the reader in her correspondence 
as a young girl. Her later sum- 
ming up of the comparative merits 
of comedy and tragedy is worth 
giving : 

"Except in broad farce, where, the 
principal ingredient being humor, ani- 
mal spirits and a grotesque imagination, 
which are of no particular age, come 
strongly into play, comedy appears to 
me decidedly a more mature and com- 
plete result of dramatic training than 
tragedy. The effect of the latter may be 
tolerably achieved by force of natural 
gifts, aided but little by study, but a hne 
comedian must be a fine artist ; his work 
is intellectual, and not emotional. . . . 
Tact, discretion, fine taste are quite in- 
dispensable. ... He must be a more 
complete actor than a great tragedian 
need be. ... A highly educated perfec- 
tion is requisite for the actor who, in a 
brilliant and polished representation of 
the follies of society, produces by fine 



344 



F. ni-iy Kembles Girlhood. 



and delicate and powerful delineations 
the picture of the vices and ridicules 
of a highly artificial civilization. Good 
company itself is not unapt to be very 
good acting of high comedy, while tra- 
gedy, which underlies all life, if by chance 
it rises to the smooth surface of polite 
social intercourse, agitates and disturbs 
it, and produces even in that uncongenial 
sphere the rarely-heard discord of a na- 
tural condition and natural expression 
of natural feeling." 

But the charm and interest of 
Miss Kemble's recollections lie 
rather in their social than in their 
technical and professional side. 
This is apt to be the case with wo- 
men of any profession, and, though 
a less dignified characteristic than 
acute powers of criticism might be, 
it is a more natural one and com- 
mands the sympathy of the multi- 
tude of the obscure. One often 
finds the biography of an average 
man more full of human interest 
than a record of the public deeds 
of a far more important person ; and 
of such persons it is only the pri- 
vate life which stirs genuine in- 
terest, when it is told with anything 
like simplicity. Thus the picture 
of Belzoni, the Egyptian traveller, 
and his house at Craven Hill, near 
London, is worth all the disquisi- 
tions one could make on his labors 
and writings : "... our colossal 
friend " looking down upon the 
Kemble children from the other 
side of the six-foot wall that sepa- 
rated their gardens ; and Mme. Bel- 
zoni, " who used to receive us in 
rooms full of strange spoils . . . from 
the East," and who " sometimes 
smoked a long Turkish pipe, and 
generally wore a dark blue caftan, 
with a white turban on her head." 
Another Italian, not so celebrated, 
was among the girls' friends Bia- 
gioli, their Italian master, a contem- 
porary and associate of Ugo Fos- 
colo, and a Dantesque scholar; his 



remarkable appearance, high fore- 
head, long, grizzled hair, wild, melan- 
choly eyes, and severe and sad ex- 
pression, being as correctly repro- 
duced for the reader as they were 
impressed on the memory of the 
writer. 

Weber was also among the Kem- 
ble coterie at the time his Der 
Freischiitz was played at, and his 
Oberon composed expressly for, Co- 
vent Garden. His immense tem- 
porary popularity hardly seemed to 
him a counterpoise for the personal 
impression his insignificant figure 
and sharp, ugly, sickly face too pal- 
pably made on his acquaintances; 
and when London forgot him and 
ran wild over Rossini and his light, 
sparkling musical fancies, the joy- 
less life of the German composer 
was still further embittered. Again, 
the lack of sensitiveness not only 
of the public, but of many public 
singers themselves, to the intrinsic 
beauty and fitness of his music, 
apart from their effect and outward 
influence, was a sore point, and 
justly stirred the indignant con- 
tempt of a thorough artist. It is 
mentioned that the melody known 
as Weber's Waltz, said to have been 
his last composition, found after 
his death under his pillow, was not 
his, but a tribute to his memory 
by a younger German composer, 
Reichardt, or Ries. The Procters 
the parents of Adelaide Procter, 
whom the author knew as a little 
girl were familiar acquaintances, 
and so was Theodore Hook, the wit, 
whose cleverness, unlike Sydney 
Smith's, was almost always cruel, 
and sometimes verged on brutality. 
Her associates were of all ranks 
from artists to dukes, and her visits 
to country-houses weave into her 
book an element of high life in its 
best aspects ; for she seems seldom 
to have met with dull and common- 






Fanny Kembles Girlhood. 



345 



place people. The Dacres should 
be especially mentioned, as they 
were an exceptional couple. Lord 
Dacre (who inherited his title from 
his mother) had, as Mr. Brand, stu- 
died in Germany, and based his phi- 
losophy on a thorough examination 
of Kant's system ; and these studies 
had, if Miss Kemble may be taken 
as an authority on this subject, "en- 
larged and elevated his mind far be- 
yond the usual level and scope of the 
English country gentleman's brain, 
and freed him from the peculiarly 
narrow class prejudices which it 
harbors." In his youth he had 
been on the point of going to 
Canada to found a model colony, 
where Acadia was to revive again 
and all the errors of the Old World 
were to be avoided His mother's 
death put a stop to his project, but 
he did his best to promote so- 
cial and political reform at home. 
*' He was an enlightened liberal . . . 
in every domain of human thought, 
and a great reader, wiffi a wide 
range of foreign as well as English 
literary knowledge. He had ex- 
quisite taste, was a fine connoisseur 
and critic in matters of art, and 
was the kindliest natured and man- 
nered man alive." His wife, be- 
sides beauty, charm of manner, so- 
cial tact, and various accomplish- 
ments, had also individual mental 
characteristics that singled her out 
from the crowd of amiable women ; 
her drawing and painting, chiefly 
of animals, had nearly as much 
vigor as Rosa Bonheur's " But the 
most striking demonstrations of her 
genius were the groups of horses 
which Lady Dacre modelled from 
nature; . . . it is hardly possible to 
see anything more graceful and 
spirited, truer at once to nature 
and the finest art, than these com- 
positions, faithful in the minutest 
details of execution, and highly 



poetical in their entire conception." 
She was also an unusually fine 
Italian scholar, and her 

"English version of Petrarch's son- 
nets is one of the most remarkable for 
fidelity, beauty, and the grace and sweet- 
ness with which she has achieved the 
difficult feat of following in English the 
precise form of the complicated and 
peculiar Italian prosody. . . . Had she 
lived in Italy in the sixteenth century 
her name would be among the noted 
names of that great artistic era ; but as 
she was an Englishwoman of the nine- 
teenth, in spite of her intellectual cul- 
ture and accomplishments, she was only 
an exceedingly clever, amiable, kind 
lady of fashionable London society." 

Naturally the guests of such 
hosts numbered among them all 
the most earnest, clever, and worthy 
men of the liberal party and many 
others of no party, few of them su- 
perior, but some equal, to Lord 
Dacre himself. Lord Melbourne, 
Lord Grey, Lord Russell, Sydney 
Smith were among these, and the 
talk and general atmosphere of the 
place was on a higher level than 
in average country-houses, however 
pleasant and hospitable. The Sheri- 
dans and their beautiful married 
daughters, Mrs. Norton, Lady Duf- 
ferin, and the Duchess of Somerset, 
were among the Kembles' closest 
acquaintances, and their frank va- 
nity and self-approval seems quite 
condoned by their pleasant, cheer- 
ful ways and cordial manners, not 
to speak of their inimitable wit, es- 
pecially Mrs. Norton's, and delicate 
appreciation of talent in others. It 
is a curious circumstance that the 
then obscure young Mr. Cunard, of 
New Brunswick, owed much of his 
success to the influence of Mrs. 
Norton, who brought him into easy 
and intimate relations with Lord 
Lansdowne, Lord Normanby, and 
other cabinet ministers who were 
likely to be of use to him in his 



34^ 



Fanny Kemble's Girlhood. 



project of an ocean steamship line. 
Of a very different type was an- 
other foreigner who crossed Miss 
Kemble's path at this time Ram- 
inohun Roy, the Hindoo reformer, 
scholar, and philosopher, who origi- 
nated a new sect in India neither 
Christian, heathen, nor Jewish, but 
a mixture of all three.* Sir Thomas 
Lawrence, the painter, and friend 
and admirer of Mrs. Siddons, was 
naturally a familiar acquaintance of 
Miss Kemble, who gives a view of 
his character unknown to the gene- 
ration who have only heard of him 
as an artist. He was one of those 
morbidly sensitive men whose man- 
ner to women was unfortunately 
courteous without any ill inten- 
tions on his part. As a portrait- 
painter he was negligent and un- 
punctual, often leaving his best 
works unfinished, having received 
their price beforehand; and as an 
artist he deferred to the false and 
bad taste 

"which, from the deeper source of de- 
graded morality, spread a taint over all 
matters of art under the vicious influ- 
ence of the ' first gentleman of Europe.' 
. . . The defect of many of Lawrence's 
female portraits was a sort of artificial, 
sentimental elegantism ; . . . several of 
his men's portraits are in a simple and 
robust style of art, worthy of the highest 
admiration. He had a remarkable gift 
of producing likenesses at once striking 
and favorable, and of always seizing the 
finest expression of which a face was 
capable." 

Perverted as his taste was, he 
still had an ideal, and said that 
he had once been "haunted by 
the wish to paint a blush, that 
most enchanting ' incident ' in the 
expression of a .woman's face, but 
after being driven nearly wild with 

* Long before I knew who he was the face of 
Rammohun Roy was familiar to me through a marble 
bust of him in my grandfather's dining-room. He 
was much /?/*</ by the Low-Church party early in 
this century, and hence the acquaintance. 



the ineffectual endeavor, had had 
to renounce it, never, of course, he 
said, achieving anything but a red 
face" Henry Greville, the bro- 
ther of Charles Greville, the author 
of the famous Memoirs, receives a 
large share of attention at Miss 
Kemble's hands ; Mme. Pauline 
Craven, in her recent Souvenirs of 
England and Italy, borrows some of 
the sketches of him and the Bridge- 
water House society from the pages 
of these Records, and sings the 
praises of the young exquisite, 
whose nature was, however, so much 
more genial and kindly than that 
of his scandal-loving brother. The 
fact that his life of idleness, ease, 
and luxury had not spoilt his heart 
is worthy of notice as an excep- 
tional one, for his social qualities, 
savoring somewhat of Horace Wai- 
pole's historical finicalness, were 
not more conspicuous than " his 
unwearied serviceableness to his 
friends, and his generous liberality 
towards all whom he could help 
either with his interest, his trouble, 
or his purse." Speaking of his life 
of idleness, it is only fair to add 
that he was at one time in diplo- 
macy a not very arduous occupa- 
tion, and one that seldom has a 
rightful claim to be called a pro- 
fession, but which, in his case, be- 
came at least a means of enlarging 
the field of his kindnesses to others. 
A contrast to this figure, whom 
she unconsciously sketches in a 
very minute manner, is that of an 
old cottager of ninety-seven whom 
she knew well, whose " quaint wis- 
dom " often deeply struck her, as 
she confesses, and whose rose-cov- 
ered cottage, though associated in 
her mind with a good deal of that 
sentimental and aesthetic patriotism 
that English rural scenes, seen 
comfortably from a social vantage- 
point as pleasant and characteris- 






Fanny Kemble s Girlhood. 



347 



tic pictures, are apt to excite, nev- 
ertheless must have stirred some 
deeper and truer chords in the 
heart of a woman so genuinely na- 
tural as Fanny Kemble. 

"The last time I saw that old man," 
she says, " I sat with him under his 
porch on a bright sunny evening, talk- 
ing, laughing, winding wreaths round 
his hat, and singing to him. . . . He was 
a remarkable old man ; . . . there was 
a strong and vivid remnant of mind in 
him surviving the contest with ninety 
and odd years of existence ; his manner 
was quaint and rustic without a tinge of 
vulgarity " ; 

an attribute which Miss Kemble 
might have known, had she had 
either experience of genuine coun- 
trymen or reflected upon the mat- 
ter theoretically, is essentially a 
city institution, and even in city 
life, as she afterwards remarked 
herself, belongs to the English 
trading classes ; for she says " an 
artisan is apt to be a gentleman 
compared to the clerk and small 
shopkeeper." At Bristol, where she 
was once playing, she fell in love 
with 

" A bewitching old country dame 
whose market-stock might have sat, 
with her in the middle of it, for its 
picture the veal and poultry so white 
and delicate-looking, the bacon like 
striped pink and white ribbons, the but- 
ter so golden, fresh, and sweet, in a 
great basket trimmed round with bunch- 
es of white jasmine. . . . The good lady 
told us she had just come up from the 
farm, and that the next time she came 
she would bring us some home-made 
bread, and that she was going back to 
brew and bake. She looked so tidy and 
rural, and her various avocations sound- 
ed so pleasant as she spoke of them, 
that I felt greatly tempted to beg her to 
let me go with her to the farm, which I 
am sure must be an enchanting place. 
. . . And while the sun shone I think I 
should like a female farmer's life amaz- 
ingly." 

Years after, on her husband's 



Georgia plantation, with a neglect- 
ed herd of slaves5whom she per- 
severingly strove to improve and 
benefit, Mrs. Pierce Butler had 
enough of the realism of country 
life ; and even the modified rough- 
ness of an English farm would 
have been, as she knew, a sore 
trial to the girl who so frankly con- 
fessed her natural attraction for 
"fine people." Here is another 
pretty picture such as Hawthorne 
(and most of his Northern country- 
men) never tire of : 

" One or two cottages by the roadside, 
half smothered in vine and honeysuckle, 
. . . were certainly the poor dwellings of 
very poor people, but there was nothing 
unsightly, repulsive, or squalid about 
them ; on the contrary, a look of order, 
of tidy neatness about the little houses 
that added the peculiarly English ele- 
ment of comfort and cleanliness to the 
picturesqueness of their fragrant festoons 
of flowery drapery. . . . The little plots 
of flower-garden one mass of rich color ; 
the tiny strips of kitchen-garden, well 
stocked and trimly kept, beside it ; the 
thriving, fruitful orchard. . . . And be- 
yond the rich, cultivated land rolling its 
waving corn-fields, already tawny and 
sunburnt, in mellow contrast with the 
smooth, green pasturages with their 
deep-shadowed trees and bordering 
lines of ivied hawthorn hedgerows. . . . 
A lovely landscape that sang aloud of 
plenty, industry, and thrift." 

But, what is still better than a 
picture, she gives an animated 
scene which reminds one of Bert 
Jonson and Elizabeth a living 
" bit of ancientry " technically 
called a " rush-bearing " : 

" At a certain period of the year, gen- 
erally the beginning of autumn, it was 
formerly the wont in some parts of Lan- 
cashire to go round with sundry rustic 
mummeries to all the churches and strew 
them with rushes. The religious inten- 
tion of the custom has passed away, but 
a pretty rural procession still keeps up 
the memory of it hereabouts. First came 
an immense wagon piled with rushes in 
a slack-like form, on the top of which 



348 



Fanny Kemble s Girlhood. 



sat two men holding two huge nosegays. 
This was drawn by a team of Lord 

W 's finest farm-horses, covered with 

scarlet cloths, and decked with ribbons, 
bells, and flowers. After this came twelve 
country lads and lasses, dancing the real 
old morris-dance with their handker- 
chiefs flying. . . . After them followed a 
very good village band, and then a 
species of flowery canopy, under which 
walked a man and woman covered with 
finery, who, Lord W told me, repre- 
sented Adam and Eve. The procession 
closed with a fool, fantastically dressed 
out, and carrying the classical bladder at 
the end of his stick." 

Fanny Kemble did not come to 
the country which was to become 
hers by marriage with any feelings 
of pleasant expectation, and a short 
sentence she does not shrink from 
printing is decidedly uncompli- 
mentary in its double meaning: 
" The foreboding with which I left 
my own country was justified by 
the event. My dear aunt died, 
and I married, in America ; and 
neither of us ever had a home 
again in England." Disposed as 
she was to pick out the worst fea- 
tures of the New World, her de- 
scriptions of the places she visited 
as an actress contain a good deal 
of sarcasm, mingled with admira- 
tion wrung from her by her truth- 
fulness and her growing knowledge 
and appreciation of the conditions 
and the people that surrounded 
her. She characterizes the New 
York city fathers in 1832 as " not 
very rich, and economical and 
careful of the public money, . . . 
leaving New York ill paved, ill 
lighted, and indifferently supplied 
with a good many necessaries and 
luxuries of modern civilization " 
a judgment she supplements by a 
note written fifty-six years later, to 
this effect : "Times are altered. . . . 
New York is neither ill paved nor 
ill lighted ; the municipality is rich, 
but neither economical, careful, nor 



honest in dealing with public mo- 
neys." Every detail of domestic life 
hours of meals, the women's looks 
and dresses come in for a share of 
attention, and are curiously and cri- 
tically compared with English ways 
and people, as is the fashion of every 
English traveller in this country, 
till the iteration has become tire- 
some; but the summer climate, the 
clear atmosphere, the grand scen- 
ery, the quick surprise of the burst- 
ing of spring after a long winter, the 
unrivalled sunsets of America our 
author unstintingly admires, and 
condenses her praise in Channing's 
striking phrase when discussing 
the relative merits of England and 
America: " The earth is yours, but 
the heavens are ours." The fre- 
quent fires and the noisy volun- 
teers of " hook-and-ladder " com- 
panies excited her pleasurably, and 
the abundance of flowers and fruits 
(she landed early in September) 
delighted as well as astonished her, 
especially the displays of wreaths 
and devices at funerals; while as 10 
her own room, it was daily crowd- 
ed with bouquets such as the mil- 
lionaires or princes of England 
seldom indulged in. Philadelphia 
she liked better than New York, 
because of its " dull, sober, mel- 
low hue," more agreeable than the 
latter's " glaring newness " ; but its 
public, which " has high preten- 
sions to considerable critical judg- 
ment and literary and dramatic 
taste, and scouts the idea of being 
led by the opinion of New York," 
only provokes the reflection that 
" it is rather tiresome that fools are 
cut upon the same pattern all the 
world over. What is the profit of 
travelling?" She was certainly 
then in a cynical mood, but she 
eventually married a Philadelphian. 
Baltimore, " as far as I have seen 
it," she says, struck her as "a large, 



Fanny Kcmble s Girlhood. 



349 



rambling, red-brick village on the 
outskirts of one of our manufactur- 
ing towns, Birmingham or Man- 
chester. ... It is growing daily 
and hourly, but " its great gaps and 
vacancies in the middle of the 
streets, patches of gravelly ground, 
parcels of meadow-land, etc., " at 
present give it an untidy, unfinish- 
ed, straggling appearance." The 
Catons and Carrolls, however, 
struck her as " like old-fashioned 
English folk"; and of the pretty 
women for which Baltimore was 
famous, and whose faces make them, 
even in Miss Kemble's eyes, " the 
prettiest creatures she had ever 
seen," she has the characteristically 
English estimate to add that " they 
are short and thin, and have no 
figures at all, either in height or 
breadth, and pinch their waists and 
feet most cruelly, which certainly, 
considering how small they are 
by nature, is a work of supereroga- 
tion. . . ." 

Boston in 1833 she calls 

" One of the pleasantest towns imagina- 
ble ; ... it is built upon three hills, which 
give it a singular, picturesque appear- 
ance. . . . The houses are many of them 
of fine granite, and have an air of wealth 
and solidity unlike anything we have 
seen elsewhere in this country. Many 
of the streets are planted with trees, 
chiefly fine horse-chestnuts, which were 
in full leaf and blossom when we came 
away (this was the latter end of May), 
and which harmonize beautifully with 
the gray color and solid, handsome style 
of the houses. . . . The country all 



round the neighborhood of Boston is 
charming, the rides I took in every di- 
rection lovely. . . ." 

Years after this, when the new 
parts of Boston were built, she 
thought the city even further im- 
proved, and compares " the vistas 
of the fine streets looking towards 
Dorchester Heights, and those end- 
ing in the blue waters of the bay and 
Charles River," to both Florence 
and Venice, u under a sky as rich 
and more pellucid than that of 
Italy." Her frame of mind about 
America gradually improved, and 
she speaks of the " glorious Hud- 
son," with its thick woods and 
varied foliage, with enthusiasm, and 
closes the letter in which this eulo- 
gium occurs with a word of grati- 
tude : 

" This is a ' brave new world ' more 
ways than one, and we are every way 
bound to like it, for our labor has been 
most amply rewarded in its most impor- 
tant result money ; and the universal 
kindness which has everywhere met us 
ever since we first came to this country 
ought to repay us even for the pain and 
sorrow of leaving England." 

Her subsequent home on the 
Hudson was long a centre of New 
York society in summer, and drew to 
it the best men in every profession, 
the most charming women, and the 
pleasantest foreign visitors ; while 
its neighborhood to West Point 
gave its life an element of gayety 
inseparable from the society of 
soldiers. 



350 Pur gat or io. 



PURGATORIO. 

TRANSLATED BY T. W. PARSONS. 

Dante and Virgil have here reached the second circle of Purgatory, the pavement and side of which 
are of livid stone. Here the envious purify their sin by being clothed in vile haircloth garments, having 
dieir eyelids sewed up with iron wire, and leaning one on the shoulders of the other, and all of them 
against the rocks of the mountain. There are heard voices of invisible spirits in the air recalling deeds 
of charity and love virtues the opposite to the sin of envy. Dante draws near, asking about their condi- 
tion, and the Siennese Sapia replies and reveals herself to him, detailing the sin of envy she had com- 
mitted. 

CANTO THIRTEENTH. 

WE at the summit of the ladder stood, 
Where now a second cut the mountain breaks ; 

That mount which turneth evil unto good. 
Here a like cornice round the hillside takes 

Its winding passage like the former one ; 
Save that its arc a quicker curving makes. 

No shade is seen there, sculpture there is none : 
As the smooth bank, so does the path appear 

Of the same livid color as the stone. 

If to inquire we wait for people here, 

The Poet reasoned, our election might 
Have more delay than we desire, I fear. 

Then steadfast on the sun he fixed his sight ; 
Making one side the centre of his move, 

And turning round his left side towards the right, 
And saying : " O sweet light that shin'st above 

The world to warm it, in whom I confide, 
Entering on this new way, our leader be ! 

Even such as one up here would have his guide : 
If no distraction turn our eyes from thee, 

Thy rays through life must ever lead us on." 
Now as on earth is reckoned for a mile, 

We for about such distance here had gone, 
In what our prompt will made a little while ; 

And towards us flying, although not in sight, 
Spirits were heard who did in gentle style 

Unto the table of Love's feast invite. 
And the first voice that passed us as it flew, 

In a loud tone exclaimed : " They have no wine "; 
And still repeating that, behind us drew. 

And ere that voice in distance died, the sign 
Was of another passing spirit heard, 

Crying : " I am Orestes "; then it sped 
Even as the other, passing with this word. 
* O Father ! speak, what sounds are these ? ' I said : 



Pur gat or io. 351 

And, straightway with my question, hark! a third, 

Saying : " Love those men who have done you wrong." 
And the good Master said : Here envy's sin 

Is scourged, and so the lashes of the thong 
Are drawn from Love, their penance to begin. 

The bridle of a counter-strain will be ; 
That also thou wilt hear, I judge, ere long, 

Before thou reach the Pass of Pardon. See ! 
Through the air yonder, fix thy gaze, and keep : 

Thou wilt discern some sitting side by side, 
Each by himself, along the craggy steep. 

Then straining more my vision, I descried 
Shadows with mantles of like dolorous hue 

As the stone was. And as we nearer came, 
I heard them calling : " Mary, pray for us ! 

Michael and Peter," every saint by name. 
1 doubt if walketh among living men 

A man so hard that had not felt his heart 
With pity pierced at what I witnessed then. 

For when more nearly I approached that part 
Where of their action perfect view was had, 

Mine eyes wept so that no more tears remained. 



They seemed to me in haircloth vilely clad ; 

Each with his shoulder the next form sustained, 
And all behind were propped against the bank. 

So the poor blind, in want of everything, 
Stand at the pardon-crosses in a rank, 

Asking an alms ; and one his head doth bring 
Down o'er his fellow's head beside his cheek, 

That pity sooner in the breast may spring 
Of passers, not more from the words they speak 

Than from their look alike soliciting. 
And as no sunbeam comes to their dead sight, 

So to the shades of whom I speak the sun 
In heaven yields largess never of its light ; 

For a steel wire the dids of every one 
Runs through, their visual organ stitching tight. 

A falcon's eyelids in like mode are seeled, 
Lest he prove haggard. But methought it mean, 

While they so plainly were to me revealed, 
To walk among them so, myself unseen. 

I turned to my sage counsel. He full well 
Knew what it was the silent man would say, 

And waited not for me my wish to tell, 
But said : 'Brief then, speak wisely as you may/ 

Virgil on that side of the cornice kept 
Where one might fall, no girdle going round 

Of outer bank such slip to intercept : 



352 Pur gat or io. 

Against the bank which formed the inner bound 

Ranged the doomed shadows, through the horrible seam 
Squeezing forth tears until their cheeks were drowned. 

' O people certain to behold that beam,' 
Turning I said, 'which is your one desire 

So may heaven's grace resolve the scum with speed 
Of your soiled conscience, that through natures higher 

The river of your mind, from envy freed, 
May flow pellucid tell me, for to me 

Right gracious it will seem, gracious and dear, 
If among you a soul there chance to be 

Who is Italian ; haply if I hear 
It may be well for him.' * O brother mine ! 

We all are citizens (one beyond where 
We stood replied) of one true city : thou 

Mean'st, lived in Italy a pilgrim there.' 

This voice to hear a little onward now 

I moved, and marked one spirit by her mien 
Expecting something : if you ask me, how ? 

Like a blind person she upraised her chin. 
* Spirit who conquerest thyself to climb, 

If thou be that one which replied, I said, 
Make known to me what in the former lime 

Thy place or name was.' This response was made : 
' I from Sienna came, and go with these, 

Purging my life of sin and weeping so, 
To Him whom soon to pardon may it please ! 

Sapient indeed I never was, although 
Sapla called among the Siennese ; 

And far more joyful at another's woe 
Was I than at my own good fortune glad. 

And lest thou deem that I deceive thee, know 
From mine own lips what a fool's mind I had, 

Descending now the archway of my life. 
While mine own citizens near Colle's hill 

Were with their adversaries joined in strife, 
I prayed my God to do his dreadful will. 

Routed, they took the bitter pass of flight ; 
In turn of battle I beheld the chase, 

And felt a rapture making all joy light, 
So that I lifted insolent my face, 

Crying to God : No more I dread thy might. 
Like the poor blackbird for a little shine, 

My peace with God I sought at life's extreme, 
Nor yet were partly paid this debt of mine, 

Had it not been that, as I truly deem, 
Pier Pettinaio, in his orisons 

Remembering me in charity, did grieve. 



Civil' zing by Force. 

But who art them that our conditions 
Questioning go'st breathing, as I believe, 

And with eyes open so thy language runs? ' 

' Mine eyes like yours might here be sealed,' I said 

* Not long, however, for these orbs of mine 

Not much through envy erred. Far greater dread 
My soul suspendeth of their doom who pine 

Under the torment of the laden tread ; 
Even now their penance weighs me more than thine.' 

And she to me : ' Who hither was thy guide 
Up among us, if thou return expect ? ' 

' The one with me who speaks not,' I replied, 

* And I am living ; therefore, spirit elect, 

If thou wouldst have me move my mortal tread 
In thy behalf, prefer me thy request.' 

' Oh ! this to hear is wonderful, 'she said : 

* So strange God's love for thee is plainly exprest. 

Then help me by thy prayers ; and I entreat 
By what thou most desirest, if soe'er 

Thou feel the Tuscan soil beneath thy feet, 
Report me rightly to my kindred there. 

Thou shalt see them among that empty race 
Who put their trust in Talamone's dream, 

With greater loss of hope and more disgrace 
Than when they hunted for Diana's stream ; 

But worse loss yet their admirals must face.' 



353 



CIVILIZING BY FORCE. 



THE recent Zulu campaign has 
suggested this question : Is it civil- 
ized to civilize by force ? Obvious- 
ly there must arise one correlative 
question before this question in chief 
can be solved : Who has decided 
that a particular nation is civilized, 
or wherein consist the proofs of its 
civilization ? The question, What 
do you mean by being civilized ? 
has never been answered in" any 
catechism. No philosopher could 
define civilization. No critical 
thinker would venture to construct 
a formula which, defining what 
civilization certainly is, would ex- 
voi. xxx. 23 



elude speculation as to what it may 
be. If you say that civilization 
includes religion, includes natura 
culture or education, includes re- 
fined modes of living, personal and 
social, and includes also political 
perfectibility, you will have every 
one down on you with his private 
conceptions as to what is the most 
civilizing of religions, the most civ- 
ilizing of cultures or educations, of 
codes of manners, domestic and so- 
cial, and of political theories or in- 
stitutions. The word civilized is 
now as far from a dogmatic inter- 
pretation as it was when Adam 



354 



Civilizing by Force. 



first reluctantly assumed a toilet, or 
when Laban veiled Leah to deceive 
Jacob. We have got so far as to 
agree upon certain proprieties of 
public morals, upon certain canons 
of public justice and public fitness ; 
but as to what must necessarily be 
included in, and what must neces- 
sarily be excluded from, the total 
sum of the requisites of civilization 
not even any two Christian sove- 
reigns would quite agree. 

There is a sort of consensus of 
impression that the" world may be 
divided into the civilized, the half- 
civilized, and the barbarous; yet 
no nation would consent to be 
classified on such a point by any 
arbiter who denied to it the first 
place. Every standard of civiliza- 
tion must be arbitrary. Cetewayo 
might plead that if Napoleon I. 
who tried to force one code of laws 
on half Europe discouraged mar- 
riage before the age of twenty-five, 
it could not possibly be barbarous 
to slightly extend the time of single- 
ness, or make every man fight first 
and marry afterwards. If Cete- 
wayo is " barbarous "Napoleon was 
"half-civilized " an estimate which 
Napoleon did not adopt. Again, 
the king of the Zulus might rea- 
sonably urge supposing that he 
were given to writing "articles," a 
pursuit which he may possibly cher- 
ish in his enforced leisure that if 
European civilization is chiefly de- 
monstrated by standing armies, by 
.horrible engines of destruction and 
manslaughter, and by " diplomatic 
scoundrelism of the deepest dye," 
it is fastidious or hypercritical to 
object to Zulu politics, or to Zulu 
social ethics, and also toilet. And, 
once more, he might urge that if 
that great civilizer, the English 
Times, openly excused foreign in- 
vasion on the ground of interest, and 
throned British greed as a lofty 



principle, it must be pardonable to 
defend himself and his imperfectly 
clad subjects against a civilization 
which is simply burglary made im- 
perial. The whole thing is but a 
question of degree. Principle is 
much the same on all sides. A 
" scientific frontier " is a graceful 
imperial euphemism for taking what 
you want but have no right to. A 
man who breaks down his neigh- 
bor's garden-wall, and rebuilds it 
further off at his own expense, is 
only desirous of obtaining a scienti- 
fic frontier, and deeply regrets his 
neighbor's injury. Selfishness is 
only culpable when it hurts one's 
self, but is always pardonable in 
the proportion of self-profit. This 
is diplomatic morality. The civili- 
zation of powerful states is their ag- 
grandizement. Russia took this 
view in regard to Turkey. She 
stole from Turkey in the name 
of civilization. The czar was 
too great to be called a robber. 
He was the Christian appropria- 
tor of Moslem lands. Being civil- 
ized that is, in his own opin- 
ion he might do what he liked 
for the half-civilized. Civilization 
calls robbery annexation. Naboth's 
vineyard might not be taken by 
the half-civilized, but the civilized 
may take all that they can get. 
For " civilized " read " big standing 
armies." Civilization is made to 
mean > essentially, material force. 
There may be trifling, refined dis- 
tinctions between civilized and half- 
civilized, or between half-civiliz- 
ed and positively barbarous ; but 
Krupp guns, Martini rifles, "na- 
tional prestige," are the true cre- 
dentials of the claim to be civilized. 
Theoretically Christian states re- 
spect justice, and even practically 
they can sometimes afford to do so. 
The British government behaved 
well to the Maories in New Zea- 



Civilizing by Force. 



355 



land in leaving them in possession 
of their own lands ; though the 
Maories had a habit of eating or 
else enslaving the enemies they 
were so fortunate as to conquer 
which we do not know that Cete- 
wayo ever did. And so, too, it 
may be said that some of the Eng- 
lish Puritans in New England, as 
well as certain of the colonists in 
Pennsylvania, did purchase some 
of the lands from the " savages," 
though they had a charter from 
their sovereign to possess the lands, 
and to make themselves at home as 
best they could. There is gene- 
rally a leavening of the conduct of 
the u civilized " by certain profess- 
ed principles of justice, and by oc- 
casional, fitful indulgence in its 
practice. But so far as example is 
concerned, it cannot be said that 
civilized races stand out pre-emi- 
nently from the uncivilized ; nor, 
indeed, in some points, from bar- 
barians. Let us take a recent sad 
illustration of a mistaken concep- 
tion of civilization. We would al- 
lude respectfully to the death of 
Prince Louis Napoleon in his un- 
happy personal hostilities with the 
Zulus. Too young, perhaps, to be 
discriminate in magnanimity; grand- 
ly brave, but not equally judicious, 
he joined a campaign against the 
" barbarous " Zulus, with whom, 
however, he had no personal quar- 
rel. He wanted " to see fighting," 
to have experience of a campaign, 
to gain the glory which was a tra- 
dition of his race. So, sword in 
hand, he went to Africa ; and there, 
fighting as a brave lad, he fell 
proudly -a youthful victim to a 
mistaken civilization. Now, was it 
civilized, for the sake of his own 
personal glory, to fire one single 
shot against the Zulus ? He, poor 
lad, was simply the victim of his 
traditions, the heir of a race which 



made the glory of human life to 
consist in cutting throats and rob- 
bing lands. He was the princely 
scion of imperial civilization. His 
grand-uncle had made many scien- 
tific frontiers, though his last 
St. Helena was too narrow. His 
father wanted the Rhine as a fron- 
tier ; but Chiselhurst was the last 
frontier he enjoyed. The Prince 
Imperial hoped to rule " glorious " 
Frenchmen ; but there is a little 
stone placed in Zululand where he 
fell. It is an awful story of a false 
civilization. From the little house 
in Corsica where the first Napo- 
leon was born, to the stone memo- 
rial in Zululand where the "fourth " 
Napoleon fell, there was one bitter 
historical satire on civilization. 

If from civilization in politics we 
turn, for edification, to civilization 
in religious and social grooves, it 
cannot be said that " modern 
thought " has helped to increase 
our self-respect or increased our 
moral right to civilize others. Po- 
litically we may be excused for be- 
ihg half civilized, because other 
nations make it hard for us to 
sheathe the sword, and because 
diplomatists try day and night to 
outwit us ; but at least religiously 
and socially we might aspire to 
such standards as would show the 
world that we appreciate civiliza- 
tion. We are not speaking of any 
nation in particular, but of all na- 
tions which now claim to be civi- 
lized. In the noble work of Balmes 
on the comparative effects on civi- 
lization of the old and the new 
Christianity that is, of Catholicism 
and Protestantism he shows that 
a fallacious theory of civilization 
has produced a thousand sham 
" progresses " and sham " enlighten- 
ments." It is perfectly true that 
education (which has been assisted 
by the art of printing), and also 



356 



Civilizing by Force. 



knowledge of countries (which has 
been assisted by the " locomotive "), 
have both made mighty strides 
since the Reformation; but be- 
tween the spread of information 
and the advance of civilization 
there is no sort of necessary con- 
nection. We should assume that 
civilkation should be judged of in 
three aspects : the unity and the 
power of religion, the (sufficient) 
material comforts of the masses, 
and the interchange and harmony 
of different classes. Now, what has 
Protestantism, *or the new civiliza- 
tion, done for religious unity and 
power ? We need not stay a mo- 
ment to reply. What has Protes- 
tantism, or the new civilization, 
done for the material good of the 
masses? Well, in England and in 
Germany, the two most Protestant 
nations, but especially in wealthy, 
commercial England, the masses in 
the great towns have no more ma- 
terial comfort, no more home happi- 
ness, refinement or culture, than 
have the masses in Bagdad or Can- 
ton. At the least they are as little 1 
blessed as they can be. Last October 
a sermon was preached in Westmin- 
ster Abbey, by an Anglican clergy- 
man of some dignity, in which it 
was stated that in no country was 
there such " humiliating and debas- 
ing pauperism" as in prosperous 
and Protestant England. And the 
Daily Telegraph very candidly ad- 
mitted : " It is to our national Pro- 
testantism we owe our national pau- 
perism." So much for the civili- 
zation of the masses. And as to 
our third point the interchange 
and harmony of different classes 
k may he said that the modern 
ideas of " society " include, pri- 
marily, the separation of classes to 
a degree which \\ould disgrace 
kk barbarous " countries. So that, 
speaking widely, we may say that 



the new civilization has not only 
not improved the human race, but 
has, religiously, socially, ethically, 
restored to it some touches of the 
" barbarous." The mere fact that 
individuals are above convention- 
al principles, and act bravely, con- 
scientiously, charitably, does not 
affect the u universal" in which 
the " particular " is not included 
the " universal " being loss of civi- 
lization. 

The question, " Is it civilized to 
civilize by force ?" can only be ap- 
proached after some sort of agree- 
ment as to who are the " civilized " 
or the "uncivilized." The "un- 
civilized " might be disposed to re- 
ply, " Who made you a ruler or a 
judge over us ?" They might say : 
** Your civilization has not improv- 
ed you in the course of centuries; 
on the contrary, you are more sel- 
fish, more material." They might 
point if they were well acquaint- 
ed with such subjects to the com- 
parative effects of a Catholic civili- 
zation and of a civilization which 
has taken its place, in such coun- 
tries as have been brought under 
the double influence, in the course 
of tke last three hundred years. 
We do not propose to go into such 
an immense and profound subject 
as that which has been argued on 
the one side by M. de Laveleye 
and on the other by Bishop Spald- 
ing and the Baron de Haulleville : 
the subject of the direct and of the 
indirect influence of supernatural 
upon natural civilization. It would 
take a volume to outline such 
controversy. We are content with 
the general admission of the im- 
mense majority of writers, of tra- 
vellers, of politicians, of Protestant 
clergymen, that the world has lost 
faith, lias lost contentment and 
harmony, by the introduction of 
the new civilization. And it is on 



Civilising by Force. 



357 






this ground that we must take 
the side of the " uncivilized " and 
the "barbarous" in their repug- 
nance to be civilized by the great 
Powers, whose civilization is but 
selfishness with materialism, and 
is at the best veiled by a sham 
Christianity. If we were asked 
what is the true type of a civilizer 
in these days of brutal rifle-shoot- 
ing and annexation, we should 
point, to the Roman Propaganda, 
which has done more for the ma- 
terial benefit as well as for the in- 
tellectual culture of a score of " un- 
c^vilized " races than have all the 
monarchs and diplomatists put to- 
gether since Columbus first saw 
the New World. 

It is not lawful, say Catholic 
theologians, that any nation or 
civil prince shall use force to com- 
pel a nation to receive missionaries 
or to listen to the teachers of Chris- 
tianity. To use physical force 
there must be the right of jurisdic- 
tion ; but even where that jurisdic- 
tion is admitted no Catholic prince 
would be justified in using force, 
though he would be justified in 
using moral influence. If in coun- 
tries where no " foreigner "is allow- 
ed to travel and this is still the 
case in Japan, though with cer- 
tain modifications of privilege 
Christian missionaries choose to 
jeopardize their lives, they do so 
in the martyr-spirit of true mis- 
sionaries, but under the condition 
that they use solely moral force. 
It will be said that they can only 
use moral force, since they neces- 
sarily carry their lives in their 
hands ; but the principle is the same, 
that they would not be justified in 
an appeal to arms, assuming that 
they had an army at their back. 
Now, if it be a principle that no 
prince may use physical force to 
introduce a better religion into any 



country be that country his own 
or another prince's it must also 
be a principle that he may not use 
physical force, to introduce better 
politics, better government. Yet 
since there must be a point where 
national, barbarous usages would 
excuse, and even compel, foreign 
interference such, for example, as 
eating foreigners or horribly using 
them, or even practising abomina- 
ble cruelties towards the natives 
the question must arise, Who is to 
be the arbiter as to the exact point 
where the duty of interference 
becomes established ? We should 
wish to reply that the head of the 
church is that arbiter ; but we 
should be met with " heretical " 
rejoinder. Still, an arbiter there 
must be, or any prince may make 
a pretext of the existence of grave 
abuses to enter and to appropriate 
another country. There is noth- 
ing more easy than to " get up " a 
good case for the justification of for- 
eign intervention. The "Bulgari- 
an atrocities " were but the outcome 
of a prolonged system of inciting 
vexed Moslems to revenge them- 
selves. And then came the follow- 
ing plausible argument : "Bulgari- 
an Moslems have murdered Chris- 
tians ; Russia is a great Christian 
power ; therefore Russia may ap- 
propriate Bulgaria." This was 
the mendacious pretext of a recent 
war. But did the Russians or the 
Bulgarians do most injury ? Was 
the war or were the atrocities most 
injurious ? We know the answer 
now ; but the question at the time 
was not submitted to moral arbiters, 
but was solved solely by the cut- 
throats and the plunderers. Here is 
an example of the dire consequence 
of repudiating the moral force 'of 
the central power of Christendom. 
And from that repudiation has 
sprung the enfeeblement of moral 



358 



Civilizing by Force. 



principles, and therefore of the 
political morals of the age. Poli- 
tics and morals being dissociated by 
diplomatists, equally in theory and 
in fact because diplomatists re- 
ject a divine arbiter it follows that 
diplomatists have to create their 
own morals, which is the same 
thing with saying that they have 
none at all. 

How can it be civilized to civil- 
ize by force, when there is not one 
civilized nation in the world ? 
Partly civilized, partly pagan or 
materialized, " Christian " govern- 
ments are only half Christian. 
Now, to affirm that the barest 
modicum of civilization, as demon- 
strated by frock-coats and silver 
forks, or by representative parlia- 
ments and a police force, or by 
going to church on a Sunday when 
it is a fine day, can constitute the 
divine, moral right to force such a 
civilization on other countries is 
like maintaining the principle that 
a man may enter his neighbor's 
house to impose on him his own 
superior views of life. It is not, 
say theologians, until you have ex- 
hausted moral effort that you may 
proceed to convert the hardened 
by gunpowder. But what is the 
use of moral effort without exam- 
ple? Is there anything in the ex- 
ample of France or Germany, of 
England, of Italy, of Russia, which 
is calculated to impress the abori- 
gines of pagan lands with the di- 
vine superiority of Christianity ? 
And since it is Christianity which 
is always pleaded as that majes- 
tic, refining influence which " emol- 
lit mores, nee sinit esse feros," 
how shall the unchristian races be 
brought to recognize the emollience 
which is demonstrated by force 
plus diplomacy ? " Ingenuas didi- 
cisse fideliter artes " has reference 
to the precision of pointing a Mar- 



tini and to the astuteness of out- 
witting a weaker rival. India 
knows how she was civilized, and 
so do some parts of Southern Af- 
rica. Yet the application of force 
would not be necessarily inconsis- 
tent with the principle of civilizing 
by example. Unhappily the Eng- 
lish in India, like the Cromwellians 
in Ireland, and the Russians in 
Turkey and everywhere else, have 
not combined the divine spirit of 
Christianity with their system of 
civilizing by force. They have 
done their best to make Christian- 
ity odious. As to the modern 
Turk, his conception of Christian- 
ity must be that it is the religion 
of demons. All that he has ever 
been made to see of it save only 
in the bright example of the Catho- 
lic few has been that it is the pre- 
text for injustice and rapine, for in- 
citing to murderand rebellion. And 
much the same has to be said about 
India. Burke said of India that 
the occupation by the English had 
not instilled one single virtue into 
the natives. It had, however, in- 
stilled many vices. And so, again, 
it must be asked : Can it be said 
of Americans that they have civil- 
ized the American tribes nearly so 
much as they have cheated or mur- 
dered them? The sole exception 
that is, on a large scale to the 
deteriorating influence of modern 
civilizers has been the fruit of tin 
labors of the Catholic missionaries, 
who have civilized by force of ex- 
ample. Here, indeed, is the one 
true civilization. Where merchan- 
dise or territory has been the pri- 
mary object of civilizing a coveted 
country, that country has been 
only rendered more u material " 
though chiefly to the advantage of 
the civilizers ; but where Catholic 
missionaries have been the unsel- 
fish pioneers they have done a 



Civilizing by Force. 



359 



good which not even " civilization " 
could undo. 

We arrive, then, at the conclu- 
sion that to civilize by force is, in 
modern senses, a contradiction in 
terms. In the vulgar sense of civi- 
lization which is the silver fork 
and the police force we may admit 
many of the pleas of modern civil- 
izers ; but in the higher and deep- 
er sense of the Christian faith we 
must both ridicule and condemn 
the affectation. The whole world 
at this day might have been Chris- 
tian, if Christian states had not 
apostatized. For what is it but 
apostasy to break that Christian 
unity which alone can present a 
divine front to the unbelieving ? 
In T. W. Marshall's work on 
Christian Missions the author shows 
that the chief mission of mo- 
dern civilizers has been to throw 
up obstacles in the way of the 
world's conversion. He elaborate- 
ly proves (by the testimony of ad- 
versaries) that for every one pagan 
convert to Christianity a thousand 
pagans have been hardened by 
their civilizers. This is chiefly be- 
cause outside the Catholic Church 
there can be no divine unity as to 
principles. But it is also because 
materialism and heresy go hand- in- 
hand to preach a broken Gospel ; 
whereas the Catholic missionary, 



while preaching the whole Gospel* 
does so in the spirit of self-sacrifice. 
As to any hope of profoundly civ- 
ilizing barbarous races, or races 
which, thougli not barbarous, are 
not Christian, by a half-system of 
broken truths and selfish policy, 
such a delusion is as irrational as 
to imagine that an ascetic can be 
inspired with enthusiasm by a vo- 
luptuary. Make the sum of civili- 
zation to consist in lively com- 
merce, with decorous manners, car- 
peted rooms, and daily papers, and 
there is no reason why most of the 
big nations should not aspire to 
be benefactors by the sword ; but 
adopt the Catholic ideal of the 
Roman Propaganda, and there is 
not one nation which thoroughly 
realizes it. And we do not see 
how, with the beam in our own eye, 
we can claim the right to force the 
beams out of others' eyes. We 
think it better to drop the cant of 
superiority, and to say plainly we 
want to aggrandize our nation. 
This, at least, would be truthful, 
if not chivalrous. To civilize in 
the highest sense is that divine, 
eternal purpose which was cradled 
in the stable at Bethlehem ; but 
modern civilization suggests less of 
redemption than it does of the 
" thirty pieces of silver." 



36o 



De Veres Legends of the Saxon Saints. 



DE VERB'S LEGENDS OF THE SAXON SAINTS. * 



THE title of Aubrey de Vere's 
latest book of poems is modestly 
misleading. The Legends are far 
more than legends. They at once 
picture and illustrate a period, dim, 
indeed, and far away in the mists 
of history, but very real and of 
vast importance on after-time. The 
verse in which they are told cor- 
responds with the subjects chosen. 
It is at times sweet and tender, at 
times heroic and strong. The quaint 
old Chronicle of the Venerable 
Bede, written twelve centuries ago, 
where fact is often interlined with 
legend, furnishes the ground-work 
of the poems. The period of the 
Legends is the seventh century. It 
was towards the close of that cen- 
tury that Bede wrote his history. 
Paganism still disputed the sway 
with Christianity for the possession 
of what we now call England, but 
what was then the Heptarchy ;. that 
is to say, a number of petty in- 
dependent kingdoms as jealous of 
their boundaries and nationalities 
as are France and Germany to-day. 
Although when Bede lived and 
flourished Christianity had made 
great headway in the land, it was 
still a comparatively new growth 
on Anglo-Saxon soil. Christian 
and pagan were in constant con- 
tact, often in conflict ; and the air 
was full of legend as the land was 
of heroic and barbaric lives. 

" St. Augustine," says Mr. de 
Vere, " landed in the Isle of Thanet 
A.D. 597, and Bede died A.D. 735. 
The intervening period, that of his 
Chronicle, is the golden age of 



* Legends of the Saxon Saints. By Aubrey de 
Vere. London : C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1879. (For 
sale by The Catholic Publication Society Co.) 



Anglo-Saxon sanctity. Notwith- 
standing some twenty or thirty years 
of pagan reaction, it was a time of 
rapid though not uninterrupted 
progress, and one of an interest 
the more touching when contrast- 
ed with the calamities which fol- 
lowed so soon. Between the death 
of Bede and the first Danish in- 
vasion were eighty years, largely 
years of decline, moral and reli- 
gious. Then followed eighty years 
of retribution, those of the earlier 
Danish wars, till with the triumph 
of Alfred, England's greatest king, 
came the Christian restoration. 
Once more periods of relaxed 
morals and sacrilegious princes 
alternated with intervals of reform ; 
again and again the Northmen ovgr- 
swept the land. The four hundred 
and sixty years of Anglo-Saxon 
Christianity constituted a period of 
memorable achievements and sad 
vicissitudes ; but that period in- 
cluded more than a hundred years 
of high sanctity, belonging for the 
most part to the seventh century 
a century to England as glorious 
as was the thirteenth to mediaeval 
Europe." , 

Such is the period which the 
poet has chosen to depict. His 
pictures are taken from the lives 
of the men, Christian and pagan, 
who lived then and wrought, and 
whose stories are sketched in the 
meagre outlines of Bede's history. 
Those dry bones the poet has taken 
and quickened by the power of his 
fancy, but with such realistic art 
that as we read we live and move 
and breathe in a world remote. We 
are no longer in the England that 
we know, but the England that 



De Veres Legends of the Saxon Saints. 



! 



came to us in far-off yet delightful 
glimpses as we lisped our early his- 
tory, when all the world was young 
and more full of legend than Vene- 
rable Bede himself. The very lan- 
guage partakes of this early grace 
and simple but expressive beauty. 
Take, for instance, the opening of 
the poem that describes the intro- 
duction of Christianity into the 
island: "King Ethelbert of Kent 
and St. Augustine." 

" Far through the forest depths of Thanet's isle, 
That never yet had heard the woodman's axe, 
Rang the glad clarion on the May-day morn, 
Blent with the cry of hounds. The rising sun 
Flamed on tjie forests' dewy jewelry, 
While, under rising mists, a host with plumes 
Rode down a broad oak alley t' wards the sea." 

We are at once transplanted 
from the present to the past. We 
tread the Saxon forest, see the 
royal host, and are prepared natu- 
rally for Old-World sights and 
scenes : for the stag-hunt, the feast 
and the song a pagan song, but 
pagan of the North, harsh, strenuous, 
and rugged, not of the refined and 
musical South. " Attend!" sings 
one : 

" Three years gone by, 
Sailing with Hakon on Norwegian fiords, 
We fought ttye 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 clashedtheir clubs all 

day, 
Till sank the sun : then laughed the white peaks 

forth, 
And reeled, methought, above the reeling waves !" 

Here is another picture, by an- 
other chief, of Northern pagan life 
told at the feast : 

" A Norland chief dies well ! 
His bier is raised upon his stateliest ship ; 
Piled with his arms ; his lovers and his friends 
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." 

Gustave Dore's poetic pencil 



might find a congenial subject in 
either of these pictures ; there are 
many such, as an off-set to the 
coming of the Christian monks- 
sent by Gregory, with Augustine at 
their head. 

" In raiment white, circling a rocky point, 
O'er sands still glistening with a tide far-ebbed. 
On drew, preceded by a silver Cross, 
A long 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 meeting of Augustine and 
Ethelbert, and Augustine's discourse 
to the pagan king and his court r 
we leave to the reader's enjoyment, 
quoting only one keen, prophetic 
passage imaging the England that 
we know an England lying under 
a darker shadow than obscured it 
even in its pagan days, for sins 
against light are darker far than 
densest ignorance. The " man of 
God " is gazing on Thanet's shore, 
" gold-tinged, with sunset spray to 
crimson turned in league-long cres- 
cent." And musing of the future, 
he says : 

" 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 passion ruled /" 

No poet is gentler with humanity 
than De Vere ; yet does no scorn 
bite as his, where he cares to use 
it. And surely nothing is there 
more deserving of a true man's 
scorn than a great race lost to, and 
despising even, its own great past 
and history, and traditions and 
highest gifts. Such a race is that 
photographed in the two cruelly 
true lines that we have italicized. 

The characteristics of De Vere's 
poetry are so well known to most 
of our readers, and have been so 
frequently dwelt upon in this maga- 



362 



De Veres Legends of the Saxon Saints. 



.zine, that it will be unnecessary to 
dilate upon them now. We pur- 
pose instead culling a passage here 
and there, so as to let the poet 
speak for himself in one of the 
most delightful volumes for which 
English literature has yet to thank 
him. The difficulty with him, now 
as always, is one of selection ; for 
this poet is not a mere word maker. 
All that he does has purpose and 
is of high worth. It would be 
hard indeed to point out a passage 
in these Legends that has no special 
place and might be omitted with- 
out sacrifice. This is praise that 
can be accorded to few of our mo- 
dern English poets, certainly not 
to Wordsworth, whom De Vere so 
much, and we do not deny so 
rightly, admires. 

Perhaps few poets in any lan- 
guage have ever so truly present- 
ed the virginal delicacy of fair 
Christian .purity and chastity as Au- 
brey de Vere. Few also can so 
strongly picture what are called 
the pagan virtues in their highest 
form and in their Teachings after 
truth. The noble Hephestion, in 
Alexander the Great, is an instance 
of what we mean. Indeed, such a 
character makes one fall in love 
with the paganism that could give 
rise to it. The truth is, Hephestion 
is not a pagan at all, but a true 
child of God, born among pagans 
in a pagan time, yet who really re- 
sponds to the higher aspirations of 
his God-given nature, and thus be- 
comes a pure "law unto himself." 
In " Odin, the Man " we have an- 
other such in the present volume. 
He has not the gentle character 
of Hephestion. He is a monarch 
vanquished by Roman arms, and 
who, according to the legend, led 
his people from Mount Ararat in- 
to the bleak North, to be there 
nursed, amid heroic hardships, in- 



to God's avenging race for the de- 
struction of the corrupt and cor- 
rupting empire of Rome. This 
is the man whom Northern legend 
deified. He is brought on the 
scene immediately after his de- 
feat and while Pompey is in pur- 
suit of him. The very verse 
breathes noble fury and pants with 
the hot breathing of a warrior fresh 
from a hard-fought field. Here is 
the future he holds out for his peo- 
ple : 

11 Increase is tardy in that icy clime, 

For Death is there the awful nurse of Life : 

Death rocks the cot. Why meet *ve there no 

wolf 
Save those huge-limbed ? Because weak wolf-cubs 

die. 
'Tis thus with man ; 'tis thus with all things 

strong : 

Rise higher on thy Northern hills, my fine ! 
That Southern Palm shall dwindle. 

I want no Nations ! 

A Race I fashion, playing not at States : 
I take the race of Man , the breed that lifts 
Alone its brow to heaven : I change that race 
From clay to stone, from stone to adamant, 
Through slow abrasion, such as leaves sea-shelves 
Lustrous at last and smooth To 6e, not have, 
A man to be ; no heritage to clasp 
Save that which simple manhood, at its will, 
Or conquers or reconquers, held meanwhile 
In trust for Virtue ; this alone is greatness." 

More strenuous Saxon than this 
we rarely see; the very words are 
rock-hewn and smite like bolts. 
The picture of the great pagan 
leader, reaching up to the truth 
from sucfi fragments of it as have 
come to him and from the aspira- 
tions of his own noble nature, i: 
sublime. All his thoughts are foi 
his people, that they may be valoi 
ous and great, virtuous and true. 



" Above the mountain summits of Man's hope 

There spreads, I know, a land illimitable, 

The table-land of Virtue trial-proved. 

Whereon one day the nations of the world 

Shall race like emulous gods. A greater God, 

Served by our sires, a God unknown to Rome, 

Above that shining level sits, high-towered : 

Millions of Spirits wing his flaming light, 

And fiery winds among his tresses play ; 

When comes that hour which judges Gods and men, 

That God shall plague the Gods that filched his 

name, 
And cleanse the Peoples." 



De Veres Legends of the Saxon Saints. 



363 



And here is Odin's beautiful fare- 
well to Ararat : 

" Farewell, Ararat ! 

How many an evening, still and bright as this, 
In childhood, youth, or manhood's sorrowing years, 
Have I not watched the sunset hanging red 
Upon thy hoary brow ! Farewell for ever ! 
A legend haunts thee that the race of man 
In earliest days, a sad and storm-tossed few, 
From thy wan heights descended, making way 
Into a ruined world. A storm-tossed race, 
But not self pitying, once again thou seest 
Into a world all ruin making way 
Whither they know not, yet without a fear. 
This hour lo, there, they pass yon valley's verge ! 
In sable weeds that pilgrimage moves on, 
Moves slowly like thy shadow, Ararat, 
That eastward creeps. Phantom of glory dead ! 
Image of greatness that disdains to die ! 
Move Northward thou ! Whate'er thy fates de- 
creed, 

At least that shadow shall be shadow of man, 
And not of beast gold-weighted ! On, thou Night 
Cast by my heart ! Thou too shalt meet thy 



There are other pagans, how- 
ever, who are drawn in what to 
most readers will appear more 
natural colors : with all their in- 
nate ferocity and hatred of Chris- 
tianity. There is fierce old Pen- 
da, for instance, King of Mercia, as 
resolute an old pagan as the devil 
could wish for, yet not without 
some grains of magnanimity in his 
nature. If he hated Christ he 
hated a liar more. The Christian 
star, under the penitent Oswy, is in 
the ascendant. Penda sends his 
son, Peada, on an embassy to Os- 
wy's court. Peada is converted 
to Christianity. When Penda hears 
:he news he takes grim resolve : 

A Christian, say'st thou ? Let him serve his 
Christ ! 

man whom ever most I scorned is he 
Who vows him to the service of some god, 
et breaks his laws ; for that man walks a lie. 
ly son shall live and after me shall reign : 
Jorthumbria's realm shall die !" 

He means to keep his word, and, 
was apparently the custom in 
those earlier days, he s\vore dread- 
ful oaths and prepared him for the 
fray. 

" ' Man nor child,' 
He sware, ' henceforth shall tread Northumbrian 

soil, 

Nor hart nor hind : I spare the creeping worm : 
My scavenger is he.' " 



But the bravest of us sometimes 
count without our host, and so it 
happened to Penda. Oswy fails to 
turn the Mercian's wrath aside, and 
prepares to defend his kingdom 
against the united hosts of Penda 
and his allies. The description of 
the battle is too good not to give 
entire : 

" Windwaed field 

Heard, distant still, that multitudinous foe 
Trampling the darksome ways. With pallid face 
Morning beheld their standards, raven black 
Penda had thus decreed, before him sending 
Northumbria's sentence. On a hill, thick set 
Stood Oswy's army, small, yet strong in faith, 
A wedge-like phalanx, fenced by rocks and woods ; 
A river in its front. 

An hour ere noon, 

That river passed, in thunder met the hosts ; 
But Penda, straitened by that hilly tract, 
Could wield but half his force. Sequent as waves, 
On rushed they : Oswy's phalanx like a cliff 
Successively down dashed them. Day went by : 
At last the clouds dispersed : the westering sun 
Glared on the spent eyes of those Mercian ranks 
Which in their blindness each the other smote, 
Or, trapped by hidden pitfalls, fell on stakes, 
And died blaspheming. I ittle help that day 
Gat they from Cambria. She on Heaven-Field 

height 

Had felt her death-wound, slow albeit to die. 
The apostate Ethelwald in panic fled : 
The East Anglians followed. Swollen by recent 

rains 

And choked with dead, the river burst its bound. 
And raced along the devastated plain 
Till cry of drowning horse and shriek of man 
Rang far and farther o'er that sea of death, 
A battle-field but late. This way and that 
Briton or Mercian where he might escaped 
Through flood or forest. Penda scorned to fly : 
Thrice with extended arms he met and cursed 
The fugitives on-rushing. As they passed 
He flung his crowned helm into the wave, 
And bit his brazen shield, above its rim 
Levelling a look that smote with chill like death 
Their hearts that saw it. Yet one moment more 
He sat like statue on some sculptured horse 
With upraised hand, close-clenched, denouncing 

Heaven: 

Then burst his mighty heart. As stone he fell 
Dead on the plain." 

Perhaps a finer description even 
than this is that of the battle be- 
tween King Oswald's little band 
and the forces of Cadvvallon, Prince 
of Cambria : 

" The sun uprose : 

Ere long the battle joined. Three dreadful hours 
Doubtful the issue hung. Fierce Cambria's sons, 
With chief and clan, with harper and with harp, 
Though terrible yet mirthful in their mood, 
Rushed to their sport. Who mocked their hope 

that day ? 
Did Angels help the just ? Their falling blood, 



364 



De Veres Legends of the Saxon Saints. 



Say, leaped it up once more, each drop a man 

Their phalanx to replenish ? Backward driven, 

Again that multitudinous foe returned 

With clangor dire ; futile, again fell back 

Down dashed, like hailstone showers from palace 

halls 

Where princes feast secure. Astonishment 
Smote them at last. Through all those serried 

ranks, 

Compact so late, sudden confusions ran 
Like lines divergent through a film of ice, 
Stamped on by armed heel, or rifts on plains 
Prescient of earthquake underground. Their chiefs 
Sounded the charge : in vain ; Distrust, Dismay, 
111 Gods, the darkness lorded of that hour : 
Panic to madness turned. Cadwallon sole 
From squadron on to squadron speeding still 
As on a winged steed his snow-white hair 
Behind him blown, a mace in either hand 
Stayed while he might the inevitable rout ; 
Then sought his death, and found. Some fated 

Power, 
Mightier than man's, that hour dragged back his 

hosts 

Agahist their will and his ; as when the moon, 
Shrouded herself, drags back the great sea-tides, 
That needs must follow her receding wheels 
Though wind and wave gainsay them, breakers wan 
Thundering indignant down nocturnal shores, 
And city-brimming floods against their will 
Down drawn to river-mouths." 

Such was the stubborn material 
with which the mild Gospel of 
Christ had to contend, and out of 
which it was to fashion the race 
that Odin had imagined and pray- 
ed for. The sword was needed as 
well as prayer against foes of this 
kind, who knew and respected no 
law of right save might. Even 
their conversion was often of a 
doubtful quality. An amusing in- 
stance is given in the story of 
" How St. Cuthbert kept his Pen- 
tecost at Carlisle." In the saint's 
visitations he comes across " a 
Jute devout," and we will let the 
" Jute devout " tell his own story 
of spiritual hardship and wrong : 

u Southward once more 

Returning, scarce a bow-shot from the woods 
There rode to him a mighty thane, one-eyed, 
With warriors circled, on a jet-black horse, 
Barbaric shape and huge, yet frank as fieice, 
Who thus made boast : k A Jute devout am I ! 
What raised that convent pile on yonder rock ? 
This hand ! I wrenched the hillside from a foe 
By force, and gave it to thy Christian monks 
To spite yet more those Angles ! Island Saint, 
Unprofitable have I found thy Faith ! 
Behold those priests, thy thralls, are savage men, 
Unrighteous, ruthless! For a sin of mine 
They laid on me a hundred days of fast ! 
A man am I keen-witted ; friend and liege 
I summoned, showed my wrong, and ended thus : 



1 Sirs, ye are ninety-nine, the hundredth I ; 
I counsel that we share this fast among us ! 
To-morrow from the dawn to evening's star 
No food as bulky as a spider's tongue 
Shall pass our lips ; and thus in one day's time 
My hundred days of fast shall stand fulfilled.' 
Wrathful they rose, and sware by Peter's keys 
That fight they would, albeit 'gainst Peter's self ; 
But fast they would not save for personal sins. 
Signal I made : then backward rolled the gates, 
And, captured thus, they fasted without thanks, 
Cancelling my debt a hundred days in one ! 
Beseech you, Father, chide your priests who breed 
Contention thus 'mid friends !' The saint replied, 
* Penance is irksome, Thane : to 'scape its scourge 
Ways there are various ; and the easiest this. 
Keep far from mortal sin.' " 

This whole poem of St. Cuthbert 
is peculiarly sweet and attractive. 
The poet has contrived to throw 
into the happiest combination and 
contrast an extremely simple and 
honest humanity united with the 
highest sanctity illumined by that 
light which is from above. It is 
the longest of the Legends, and per- 
haps the most interesting. The 
saint's life is given from his youth 
up to his death ; a number of char- 
acters and of Old-World scenes 
are introduced in the most natural 
manner possible, yet the entire 
story does not occupy more than 
thirty-two pages. We cannot re- 
sist the temptation of tracing, by 
a hint or a line here and there, the 
growth of this great character, who 
to those who read this poem will 
ever after live in their memory as 
Aubrey de Vere has drawn him : 

" St. Cuthbert, yet a youth, for many a year 
Walked up and down the green Northumbrian 

vales 
Well loving God and man." 

We are told how rumor went that 

" When all night 

He knelt upon the frosty hills in prayer, 
The hare would couch her by his naked feet 
And warm them with her fur." 

This is almost a companion pic 
ture to that of Ceadmon among his 
kine : 

" Then strode he to his cow-house in the mead,. 
Displeased though meek. 

Hearing his step, the kine 

Turned round their horned fronts ; and angry 
thoughts 



: 



De Veres Legends of the Saxon Saints. 



365 



Went from him as a vapor. Straw he brought, 
And strewed their beds ; and they, contented well, 
Laid down ere long their great bulks, breathing 

deep 

Amid the glimmering moonlight. He, with head 
Propped on a favorite heifer's snowy flank, 
Rested, his deer skin o'er him drawn. Hard days 
Bring slumber soon. His latest thought was this : 
' Though witless things we are. my kine and I, 
Yet God it was who made us.' " 

Thus has it ever been. No men 
i.j.ve truer sympathy with nature 
and God's creatures than the saints 
of God, who see God always and 
everywhere. So Cuthbert, " t man- 
hood grown," dwelt in Lindisfarne, 
where, year by year, he 

4% Paced its shores by night, and blent his hymns 
With din of waves." 

Thus twelve years passed, and 
then God's mandate fell on him 
and " drave him forth a hermit into 
solitudes more stern." He went to 
Fame, 

" A little rocky islet nigh, 
Where man till then had never dared to dwell, 
By dreadful rumors scared." 

But God was everywhere to God's 
servant, and nearest where men 
were farthest removed. There 

" He saw by day 

The clouds on-sailing, and by night the stars ; 
And heard the eternal waters. Thus recluse 
The man lived on in vision still of God 
Through contemplation known : and as the shades 
Each other chase all day o'er steadfast hills, 
Even so, athwart that Vision unremoved, 
For ever rushed the tumults of this world, 
Man's fleeting life ; the rise and fall of states. 
While changeless measured change." 

To him in his retreat mourners 
and " sinners bound by Satan " 
come, and at his touch " their 
hains fell from them light as sum- 
mer dust." Age creeps upon him 
there, "by fasts outworn, yet ever 
young at heart." At last comes 
King Egfrid in state, and calls him, 
compels him rather, into the see of 
Northumbria. The wise ones won- 
dered at the call, knowing not that 

" Simpleness 

Is sacred soil, and sown with royal seed, 
The heroic seed and saintly." 

As so often has happened in the 



\ 
I 



history of the church, this simple 
and holy recluse, who had lived a 
life of contemplation and prayer, 
proved a great bishop. He ruled 
in the church wisely and well, with- 
outeverlosingaparticle of his native 
simplicity ; for God worked in his 
faithful servant. He was the father 
of his people, as well as the guide 
and teacher of them and of his 
clergy. All flocked to him " wher- 
e'er he faced." 

u Rejoiced he was 
To see .them, hear them, touch them ; wearied 

never : 

Whate'er they said delighted still he heard : 
The rise and fall of empires touched him less, 
The book rich-blazoned, or the high-towered 

church : 
' We have,' he said, ' God's children, and their 

God: 
The rest is fancy's work.' " 

And his people loved him, " the 
more because, so great and wise, 
he stumbled oft in trifles." He 
spoke to them in parables, as our 
Lord spoke, and some of the para- 
bles are given, as indeed we might 
imagine the saint giving them. 
Once three maidens came to him, 
"lovely as Truth," and smiling put 
the question, "What life, of lives 
that women lead, is best ?" He an- 
swers : " Three ; for each of these is 
best " : the maiden's, especially she 
who is God's priestess his alone ; 
the Christian wife ; and the Chris- 
tian widow. We can only here 
give one, that appeals to the largest 
number of women's hearts : 

" The Christian Wife comes next : 
She drinks a deeper draught of life ; round her 
In ampler sweep its sympathies extend : 
A n in/art's cry has knocked against her heart, 
Evoking thence that human love wherein 
Self-love hath least. Through infant eyes n 

spirit 

Hath looked ufion her, crying, ' / am thine ! 
Creature from God dependent yet on thee !' 
Thenceforth she knows how greatness blends with 

weakness ; 

Reverence, thenceforth, with pity linked, reveals 
To her the pathos of the life of man, 
A thing divine, and yet at every pore 
Bleeding from crowned brows, A heart thus 

large 

Hath room for many sorrows. What of that ? 
Its sorrow is its doivry^s noblest part. 



366 



De Veres Legends of the Saxon Saints. 



She bears it not alone. Such griefs, so shared- 
Sickness, and fear, and vigils lone and long- 
Waken her heart to love sublimer far 
Than ecstasies of youth could comprehend ; 
Lift her perchance to heights serene as those 
The ascetic treadeth.' " 

If the dignity and nobleness and 
high office of Christian wifehood 
have ever been painted in truer 
and finer lines than these we should 
be happy to see them. Something 
greater than a poet even, or per- 
haps it is truer to say the very 
highest poetry, speaks here: that 
poetry that appeals to all humanity 
alike and deifies what it touches. 
No wonder that to men listening to 
such discourse 

" The erroneous Past 

Lay like a shrivelled scroll before their feet ; 
And sweet as some immeasurable rose 
Expanding leaf on leaf, varying yet one, 
The Everlasting Present round them glowed. 
Dead was desire, and dead not less was fear 
The fear of change of death." 

Readers will get but a faint 
idea of the manifold beauties of 
this volume even from the extracts 
we have given. There are four- 
teen legends in all, and we have 
only quoted from two or three, not 
for any superior excellence in them 
over the others. A line is suffi- 
cient to betray the true poet, as 
Giotto's circle revealed the great 
artist. Throughout this volume 
run numberless lines and touches 
that are at once the truest inspira- 
tion and the highest art, which we 
take to be the perfection of poet- 
ry. None but a master-hand can 
fashion lines that themselves are 
poems. We select a few here and 
there, almost at haphazard. Thus 
Odin says of his anguish when 
" the one flower of his life " fell to 
his foot : 

" It dashed me on the iron side of life : 
I woke a man." 

Augustine almost opens heaven 
when he describes " the Almighty, 
All-compassionate," 



41 Down drawn from distance infinite to man 
By the Infinite of Love." 

Here is a fine image : the saint 
is speaking of the future primates 
of England : 

41 From their fronts 

Stubborned with marble from St. Peter's Rock 
The sunrise of far centuries forth shall flame." 



storm is grandly fore- 



A coming 
shadowed : 

44 Through the clouds 
A panic-stricken moon stumbled and fled, 
And wildjy on the waters blast on blast 
Ridged their dark floor." 

And here breaks the dawn : 

" The matin star shook on the umbered wave ; 
Along the east there lay a pallid streak, 
That streak which preludes dawn." 

Queen Bertha is drawn " riding 
through the April gleams " 

41 With face so lit by love 
Its lustre smote the beggar as she passed, 
And changed his sigh to song." 

"Truth and love," says Heida 
the Prophetess, 

" Are gifts too great to give themselves for naught ; 
Exacting Gods." 

Ceadmon's song is all wonderful 
and clear though mystic. How 
beautifully is the thought of crea- 
tion expressed. At the words " Let 
there be light!" 

41 Lo! 

On the void deep came down the seal of God 
And stamped immortal form." 

What a fine picture is this of King 
Oswy : 

44 A man in prime, with brow 
Less youthful than his years. Exile long past, 
Or deepening thought of one disastrous deed. 
Had left a shadow in his eyes. The strength 
Of passion held in check looked lordly forth 
From head and hand ; tawny his beard ; his hi 
Thick curled and dense. Alert the monarch : 
Half-turned, like one on horseback set that he 
And he alone, the advancing tramp of war." 

There are many such portraits 
in the poems. Before the king 
and his court and Hilda's sister- 
hood Ceadmon sings " his lordly 
music " 

41 The void abyss at God's command forth-flinging 
Creation like a thought : where night had reigned 
The universe of God." 



De Veres Legends of the Saxon Saints. 



367 



And in Lent, "tremulous and pale, 
he told of Calvary," and of that 
Passion which, 

' A river of bale, from guilty age to age 
Along the astonied shores of common life 
Annual makes way, the history of the world, 
Not of one day, one people." 

St. Catherine is presented as 

"That Alexandrian with the sunlike eyes." 

Surrounded by the pagan sages, 

" Slight and tall, 

'Mid them, keen- eyed the wingless creature stood 
Like daughter of the sun on earth new-lit.'' 

The poet, speaking of Ceadmon's 
song before Hilda and the court, 
says : " In part those noble listen- 
ers made that song." 

" Their flashing eyes, their hands, their heaving 

breasts, 

Tumult self-stilled, and mute, expectant trance, 
'Twas these that gave their bard his twofold 

might 

That might denied to poets later born 
Who, singing to soft brains and hearts ice-hard, 
Applauded or contemned, alike roll round 
A vainly-seeking eye, and, famished, drop 
A hand clay-cold upon the unechoing shell, 
Missing their inspiration's human half." 

How sadly true is this ! High 
thoughts find faint echoes in these 
days of " soft brains and hearts ice- 
hard." They are quenched in the 
tumult of the petty strifes that vex 
the world. Men are deaf to inspi- 
ration. The poets are deserted for 
the ledger, and the prophets for 
the rise and fall of stocks. " Quo- 
tations " nowadays mean the ex- 
change reports, and the finest quali- 
ties of the mind are turned to an 
ardent study of commercial statis- 
tics. The daily newspaper is the 
organ of inspiration, and the novel 
the refuge from boredom in leisure 
moments. The poets have felt the 
downward drag of the times, and, 
instead of resisting, have yielded to 
it. The best liked are those who 
have most degraded their divine 
gift, and for the heroic passion of 
old have given us animality. They 
have gone back to paganism, with- 
out acquiring the grace and spirit- 
uality and tender beauty that the 



higher pagan poets possessed. Our 
poets, like our painters and sculp- 
tors, have not the art to veil gross- 
ness. They pour out the reekings 
of befouled imaginations, and call 
it poetry and art. 

Amid such singers a voice like 
De Vere's breaks like a blast of 
war or a vision of a prophet. 
He summons to high and heroic 
thoughts and deeds. Base passion 
he brushes by as the soiled thing 
that it is. The others revel in it. 
His eye is lit with the light of hea- 
ven, while his heart is full of the 
great struggle of human life up- 
wards. He sings to souls immortal, 
not to the children of a day. His 
poems may be searched through 
and through, and not an impure 
thought or unchaste line he found 
in them. Can this be said of any 
other living English poet ? He 
began with the lyre; he is ending 
with the harp, the instrument of 
bards and of the prophet-king. 
His early sweetness is blending 
with the heroic, and the depth 
that was once cold and obscure is 
warming into light and life. His 
vision widens as his purpose be- 
comes clearer, and no English poet 
to-day can utter thoughts at once so 
comprehensive and deep and enno- 
bling as Aubrey de Vere. We have 
given a few instances in the present 
notice. Those who take up these 
Legends will find them teeming with 
thoughts to arrest the attention and 
with passages of surpassing beauty. 

" Contrast strange," says Ken- 
walk, 

" These Christians with the pagan races round ! 
Something those pagans see not these have seen : 
Something those pagans hear not these have heard : 
Doubtless there's much in common. What of that ? 
'Tis thus 'twixt man and dog ; yet knows the dog 
His master walks in worlds by him not shared ." 

Thus we contrast De Vere with 
the more popular poets of the 
period. 



The Relation of CJmrch Architecture to the Plastic Arts. 



THE RELATION OF CHURCH ARCHITECTURE TO THE 

PLASTIC ARTS.* 



IT was once said by an obser- 
vant bishop that the tower of St. 
Stephen's in Vienna was a Sursum 
Corda done in stone. This striking 
phrase may be applied to church 
architecture, as it ought to be. It 
is this art which in the dusky naves 
and lightsome choirs of our Ro- 
manesque and Gothic cathedrals 
helps us to gather together and 
elevate our wandering thoughts. 
To this beautiful art, the mother 
and forerunner of the plastic arts, al- 
so belongs the task of expressing a 
high ideal, of awakening the Chris- 
tian consciousness, of setting before 
us unity in variety, and the harmo- 
ny of creation according to the in- 
terpretation of Christianity. The 
Jewish Church, with its knowledge 
and fear of the Almighty as its 
head, though forbidden to make 
an image of him and scarcely al- 
lowed to pronounce his name, yet 
possessed a temple. Christianity 
has changed these relations. The 
Sursum Corda is only the introduc- 
tion to the Preface which, in the 
course of the ecclesiastical year, 
not only presents to us the belief of 
the unity of God in the Trinity, 
but likewise the whole history of 
the Saviour, through a long succes- 
sion of scenes from his life and 
that of his church. Architecture 
alone cannot cover 'this ground; 
and though, in her many symboli- 
cal branches, she may foreshadow 
something of all these mysteries, 
the house of God, if it is to be a 



* An article by L. yon Fiihrich, Vienna, in a 
monthly publication entitled Historico-political 
Papers for Catholic Germany^ edited by Edmund 
Jorg and Franz Binder, Munich, Literary and Ar- 
tistic Institute. 1879. Vol. Ixxxiv., No. i. 



perfect and artistic expression of 
Christian doctrine, requires the 
presence of the plastic arts, not as 
an ornament, but as an essential 
development and amplification of 
the keynote indicated by the ar- 
chitectural forms. Were we to con- 
tent ourselves with the vague Sur- 
sum Corda suggested to us by the 
proportions of beautiful churches, 
we should be retrograding in mat- 
ters of art, much as in religion one 
may fall back from church doc- 
trine to deism. In the best peri- 
od of art, when many artists were 
at once architects, sculptors, and 
painters, it was understood as a 
matter of course that all the arts, 
in order to produce healthy and 
truthful work, must advance and 
develop equally side by side. 

After the loss of the ideal of 
family life in common, by which we 
mean the styles which sprang from 
the various manifestations of Chris- 
tian unity and from the variety 
of its phases of organic life, error 
and confusion fell upon the higher 
fields of art. Thence resulted the 
supplanting of this simple style by 
an unnatural mannerism, which ap- 
peared the worse for ils tendency 
to adorn, by its trivial conceits, 
those subjects which more earnest 
ages had handled with reverence 
and holy fear. Painters clothed 
the limbs of their half-naked figures 
with fluttering, ragged drapery ; 
sculptors tried their hand at clouds, 
waterfalls, and sunbeams; and 
both outstripped with their ope- 
ratic allegories and apotheoses the 
eccentricity of forms of constru< 
tive art, which contemporary archi- 



The Relation of Church Architecture to the Plastic Arts. 369 



tccts had already rendered as un- 
certain as possible. 

Painting in the' worst rococo pe- 
riod exercised an overwhelming do- 
mination in this new field, while 
a so-called element of picturesque- 
ness was infused into sculpture and 
architecture ; but though this pro- 
minence of a degenerate but active 
art was prejudicial to its sister-arts, 
especially architecture, its possi- 
bility was still a proof, in spite of 
all errors and confusions, of the in- 
herent link between all arts, and 
formed a blurred memorial of the 
tradition of art-unity. This spirit, 
obscured and rendered well-nigh 
unrecognizable, was not wholly lost, 
and the feeling yet remained that a 
building shorn of significant image- 
ry was like the earth-world, beauti- 
ful indeed and vast, but shorn of 
the human world, that measure of 
all things, and capable of " think- 
ing out once more the great thought 
of creation." There yet remained 
a glimmer of the feeling that in 
art, as in the creation of man, the 
breath of life is needful for the 
outer building of the body, and 
that tins u spirit," manifested by 
means of the plastic arts, lights up 
the features of the body. It was 
impossible for the latter to wear 
their rightft.il expression and take 
their proper part while their mis- 
tress was busy with affected con- 
ceits and playful trivialities. The 
penance had to be borne in the 
shape of the bald period of " clas- 
sicism " a cooling of the spirit of 
art and of the relations between 
the arts. Then followed a period 
of self-satisfaction on the part of the 
masters of painting, who practically 
had learnt their art from the painters 
of the contorted and grotesque, but 
who, while they acknowledged their 
technical power, nevertheless re- 
jected their frivolous mannerism. 
VOL. xxx. 24 



But the bond which united the 
arts was loosened, if not broken, 
and needed to be renewed an in- 
tention typified by the saying of 
Cornelius, " Not the arts, but Art." 
Rome was the centre where these 
artist-reformers gathered together, 
where their object and aspirations 
found expression, and where the 
first frescoes of the new school tes- 
tified to the new-found union of ar- 
chitecture and painting. But mo- 
dern Italy had no appreciation of 
the earnestness of these efforts, and 
even on the hard soil of the German 
fatherland they found but a cold re- 
ception, in spite of the strong and 
generous help of a public-spirited 
king.* 

If it was a bold undertaking,, 
made in sober earnest, to discover 
a new style of architecture, the men 
who undertook it had no preten- 
sions to invention, and aimed chief- 
ly at rebuilding their own artistic 
principles on the lines of eternal 
moral principles. They fondly hop- 
ed that, by so doing, a style would 
arise of itself, naturally based upon 
the models and experience of their 
forefathers, minus their weakness 
or mistakes an art-language of the 
present expressed with all the free- 
dom that a choice of many and in- 
creased vehicles of thought must 
needs give. Earnestness and de- 
votedness, however, are not char- 
acteristics of our age. Whence 
could art-certainty come, or ex- 
press itself boldly in a new style,, 
when certainty was nowhere to be 
found in life ? And yet one could 
not do without its shadow, har- 
mony, without which all art dis- 
appears. 

To arouse a movement towards 
depth and earnestness in painting, 
which has been called the most ab- 
stract of all visible expressions of 

* King Louis of Bavaria, 



3/o The Rtlation of Church Architecture to tJie Plastic Arts. 



art, it was desirable to cause a cor- 
responding movement to take place 
in architecture, the least abstract of 
the beautiful arts, as a contempo- 
rary architect has christened it. 
In this lies the key to a succession 
of developments. As long as unity 
of life is not ours we can have no 
individual, style; and unity of life 
we shall never have without seek- 
ing it 'with all our hearts. Thus 
we build, as it were, according to 
the dictionary, in all styles, making 
them our own in all their details, 
studying their characteristics with 
minute carefulness and keen obser- 
vation, ticketing them in our maps 
and compendiums, and choosing our 
"properties " impartially according 
to the style, Gothic, Greek, Arabic, 
or Renaissance, which we wish to 
imitate. Such a system, as soon as 
it is accepted as a normal and per- 
manent one, must lead to yet great- 
er monotony and uniformity. What 
seems an embarras de richesscs is 
only the baldest poverty of re- 
source. It is worth notice that the 
knell of art, as such, should have 
coincided with the rise of our mo- 
dern " art-industries." Art, once 
extolled by literature as an inde- 
pendent deity, sinks into the com- 
monplace when, instead of uphold- 
ing her own high standard and 
dignifying the smaller details of 
life, she becomes the handmaid of 
luxury, and, surrendering her mis- 
sion, allows her highest forms to 
fall into the meaningless and the 
trivial. 

It will be asked if our greatest 
painters, even Cornelius himself, 
have not worked for, and interest- 
ed themselves in, the creation of 
an artistic spirit as connected with 
commerce. By all means ; but 
they drew their forms from the 
idea, while we have lost the idea in 
our dalliance with fantastic forms, 



some of which we have copied 
from those of our forerunners, but 
applied not only- to fitting but to 
incongruous and ridiculous uses. 
Should the glitter of show-shops, 
lit up by thousands of torches and 
full of changing color, make us for- 
get the beauty of the eternal stars ? 
We are gone astray in endless con- 
ceits. 

When the old Pinakothek at 
Munich was in course of building, 
Klenze had appropriated about a 
hundred thousand gulden for silk 
hangings for the walls of the pic- 
ture-galleries; whereupon Cornelius, 
in a memoir addressed to the king, 
expressed himself thus: "The art 
of paindng is set aside and neg- 
lected for these enormous develop- 
ments of luxury ; and yet, modest 
as the artist's estimate of himself 
may be, he can confidently assert 
that his works will last and will 
be looked upon with pleasure and 
profit long after all silk hangings 
are in rags, and gilding faded and 
blackened." He was right in quot- 
ing the saying of the Greeks, "We 
set no value on gold and glitter, 
but only on wisdom and art." 
This was a serious appeal to the 
pride of architecture ; but Cornelius 
acknowledged that the decoration 
of the Loggte, to be in keeping 
with their object, must be of a 
light and arabesque-like character. 
"But," says he, "everything really 
light, cheerful, and fanciful must 
have its root in the fullest depth 
of feeling and of fancy, and even 
in the ripest and gravest experience 
of earnest thought. Lightness 
treatment must be so only in aj 
p'earance ; and if it is not to be 
merely superficial, and thereby sink 
to the level of worthless and com- 
monplace decoration, it must 
the matured outcome of a life dec 
cated to all that is holiest ai 



The Relation of Church Architecture to the Plastic Arts. 371 



greatest in art. . . . Only the painter 
of the * Stanze ' could have conceiv- 
ed the Loggte. . If we give our- 
selves up too early to a specious 
lightness I believe I can correctly 
foretell that things will be produc- 
ed flat, shallow, unstable in color, 
false in proportion, like the so-call- 
ed continuation of the Loggie by the 
Zuccheris, which we can only look 
upon with disgust and contempt." 

These truths were too strong to be 
borne by the spirit of the times, 
and the noble master was once 
more obliged to take to the wan- 
derer's staff; but he had prophesied 
only too wisely. It is well for him 
that he is not present to see what 
in his eyes was the core of all art 
its spirit and meaning banished 
under the name of the pedantic ; to 
see the plastic arts cavalierly treat- 
ed as " decorative arts," especially 
in the province of monumental and 
memorial buildings ; to see in the 
sreat centres of modern culture 

ft 

thousands of buildings devoted to 
the most earnest and serious ob- 
jects, buildings on which monoliths 
of granite and marble and giant 
capitals are lavished, but. where, 
when it comes to sculptured figures, - 
the contractors debate the possi- 
bility of terra-cotta mouldings and 
other deceptive substitutes ; and to 
see how, when the frescoing of a 
large church is in question, a con- 
tract is given to a decorative paint- 
er only, with discretion to find a 
" hand " to do the secondary figure- 
work. Such are the practical re- 
sults of the principle that the plas- 
tic arts have no higher aim than 
the fmishing-off and adornment of 
architecture. We can understand 
this principle if the spirit of our 
age be right in looking upon art as 
a refined form of luxury and act- 
ing as an idle play-goer now de- 
lighting in this spectacle, now in 



that while from the reality thus 
travestied for his amusement he 
would recoil with displeasure ; but 
we cannot understand it when it 
seeks to justify itself as an element 
of church architecture. 

The inherent importance and 
power of imagery is proved by the 
very prohibition against it in the 
Mosaic law and the adoration of 
images in the gentile world. When 
the " fulness of time " was come, 
and God became a visible, tangi- 
ble brother of mankind, the relation 
of art to the perfected worship of 
God changed also. Imagery came 
forward and took precedence even 
of the art of oratory, for the " Word 
was made flesh " and " we saw its 
beauty." Then was the most per- 
fectly beautiful Image introduced 
into the great shrine of the world, 
born into it exactly at the right 
time and place, placed there by 
the Almighty Artist who fashioned 
Adam's body, the all-powerful Arch- 
itect who grounded the foundations 
of the world. But even before he 
built the shrine of the earth he 
had the Image in his mind, for he 
is himself the Image, and for it 
only he adorned the earth with all 
her grace and beauty. This belief 
seems to us to lie at the root of 
any Christian conception of im- 
agery. 

The yearning of the early church 
for an authentic image of the Sa- 
viour and his Mother found expres- 
sion in the tradition that St. Luke 
had preserved their features in a 
portrait. How quickly the fear of 
idolatry disappears with the com- 
mandment not only not to make 
an image of God, but not even to 
bring the Eternal into comparison 
with anything human by so much 
as the breath of his awful name ! 
How quickly this reticence is ex- 
changed for the veneration of im- 



372 The Relation of Church Architecture to the Plastic' Arts. 



ages, thus giving to the plastic arts 
a dignity such as never fell to the 
lot of any other form of creative 
art ! The Christian enthusiasm for 
images gave the church hosts of 
martyrs during the century of per- 
secution, following the controversy 
on the subject, which disturbed 
the erring church of Byzantium. 
Again, in the Western schism and 
disruption images had fully their 
share. The church was so convinc- 
ed of the importance of the doc- 
trine of image-veneration that she 
summoned an oecumenical council 
to decide the question. She even 
dispenses, in cases of necessity, 
with the need of a consecrated 
place for the celebration of her 
mysteries, but never with the pre- 
sence of a crucifix upon the altar. 

Is it likely that all this should 
have happened, and still happen, 
concerning a thing simply within 
the province of " important decora- 
tion"? How did such a peculiar 
and pernicious error ever get foot- 
hold within the domain of sacred 
art ? How, in the sight of the de- 
cay of profane art into, mere luxu- 
ry, could this error become a cloak 
for " correctness of style " ? 

The awakening of the historical 
and critical spirit in the beginning 
of this century made rapid strides 
as connected with science and art. 
In the latter field the influence of 
the romantic school of poetry, and 
even of Goethe himself, fostered 
many a seed of enthusiasm for 
" Old-German " art. Gothic archi- 
tecture, embodied in so many me- 
morials of ancient fame, fired all 
hearts with the poetic and patriotic 
suggestions of its peculiar style of 
beauty. The same spirit was kin- 
dled in painting by the woodcuts of 
Albert Diirer and the marvellous 
collection of pictures which Bois- 
seree's exile and wanderings gave 



him the opportunity to make. It 
was chiefly through painters that 
the impulse first spread which 
aimed at reviving among their con- 
temporaries the old-fashioned earn- 
estness of thought and singleness 
of purpose; and this effort it was 
which after a while called forth the 
bitter taunt of Goethe, that they 
were trying to resuscitate medie- 
valism by a narrow and cramped 
mannerism. It is true that the 
lesser minds in the wake of this 
movement were easily mistaken, 
and sometimes sought, in the mere 
imitation of archaic forms and 
childish details, to make up for the 
noble simplicity and ancient earn- 
estness which eluded their feeble 
search ; but the master-minds never 
forgot, and always loudly proclaim- 
ed, that the same principles that 
gave broad power to Raphael and 
rugged strength to Diirer entailed 
the taking up of their own duty 
as evident at present the duty of 
building for themselves, out of their 
own individual consciousness, on 
the old time-honored foundations. 
While with genuine enthusiasm 
they studied the wonders of the 
old world of art, and sought to 
probe its secrets to their very roots, 
they rightly held that a servile 
copying of its outward forms was a 
profanation, although such a fool- 
ish habit of " swearing by the mas- 
ter's dictum " had existe*d at all 
times as an art disease. But as in 
science it is not those disciples 
who most rigidly adhere to their 
master's mode of speech who con- 
trive most to further and dissemi- 
nate his teaching, so it is with art. 
" The letter killeth, but the spirit 
quickeneth." 

This is perhaps best illustrated 
by the fossil art of the Greek church 
compared with the progressive, liv- 
ing art of the church of the world. 



The Relation of Church Architecture to the Plastic Arts. 373 



It is true that every free motion 
is threatened by a thousand dan- 
gers and subject to a thousand 
errors. It is not surprising that 
every earnest artist, every Christian 
who strives to enter into the spirit 
of the church, should be shocked 
at the senseless decoration, the 
meaningless deformities with which 
our grand cathedrals have been 
overlaid during the last hundred 
years. But from this extreme 
sprang a reaction equally far from 
truth, a cold, bald " correctness of 
style " which, in its way, stands on 
a level with the elaborate correct- 
ness of costume which our modern 
painters cultivate, and lay the more 
stress on the further removed they 
are from being able to infuse vital, 
creative power into their works. It 
is very much open to question if it 
was a wise course to pursue, to 
banish from our churches, almost 
without exception, the works of the 
three last centuries, which our fore- 
fathers have created in a truly de- 
votional spirit, and in sight of which 
they have wept and prayed. No 
one would not rejoice to see re- 
moved from a Gothic building an 
awkward urn or barrel-shaped monu- 
ment, the walled up-windows, re- 
stored to their shape and use, once 
more filled with " storied " panes, 
all foolish baubles swept out of the 
house of God, and the traces of the 
simplicity and greatness of olden 
times sought out and carefully, lov- 
ingly renewed. Yet our venerable 
cathedrals are something more than 
mere monuments. We do not keep 
them up or restore them, like, for 
instance, an ancient triumphal arch, 
merely for the sake of their histo- 
rical and aesthetic interest. They 
are living witnesses of a holy wor- 
ship that gathers the present genera- 
tion under their roofs, and resem- 
ble a venerable patriarch who binds 



together the present and the past, 
and, while belonging rather to the 
old time than the new, is yet en- 
riched by the experience of the lat- 
ter. We ought to consider future 
generations, and be careful how we 
disturb, in the name of devotion, 
memorials that may be instructive 
to them ; for it should never be for- 
gotten that history is the great 
architect, and that her influence in 
many of our old cathedrals is so in- 
woven into the original plan that 
to " restore " certain parts would 
be to disturb the harmony of the 
whole. 

The study of the arts belonging 
to past ages has never been so fully 
pursued, so minutely accurate and, 
as it were, so objective, as it has 
become in our day. We live in a 
gathering, classifying epoch, distin- 
guished by the possession of more 
than common means with which to 
work towards the above end. The 
study of history is of the greatest 
importance for the development of 
the future, and will, it is to be hoped, 
bear more abundant fruits than it 
has ever done hitherto. But he 
who has experienced, though it be 
but slightly, what it is to try to im- 
press upon his neighbor what he 
has himself felt and thought will 
acknowledge how difficult the task 
will be, and how great the trans- 
formation, to deliver to the coming 
generation the spirit and individ- 
uality of the present. Ho\v much 
more when it is a matter of recon- 
structing the past ! The effort often 
does but provide opportunity for 
the success of sceptics, to whom 
history and being are alike objects 
of doubt. 

Is it otherwise in the field of art ? 
Must it not be otherwise in archi- 
tecture, where all goes by rule and 
measure and everything is sharply 
defined, and, through architecture, 



374 The Relation of Church Architecture to the Plastic Arts. 



the foundation-art, in the other arts 
also ? Whoever believes this falls 
into a mistake which is more strik- 
ing the more closely the copyist 
adheres to the spirit of the ancient 
forms ; in other words, a new and 
well-proportioned building in a 
style of past ages is the least artifi- 
cial work, while the sham increases 
when in either sculpture or paint- 
ing, but more especially the latter, 
the chief stress is laid on an archa- 
ic realism of detail. Ecclesiastical 
art is a prayer, and one who exer- 
cises his genius with this conviction 
can perhaps follow literally in his 
forefathers' steps as long as he 
works with compass and rule; but 
it becomes impossible the moment 
he takes brush or pencil in hand. 
Fancy Fra Angelico, who painted 
his pictures kneeling, having such 
a thought or consciousness in the 
background, and what havoc it 
would work in all his beautiful 
creations, leaving a taint of unre- 
ality and pretentiousness on all he 
did. Such an after-intention must 
needs have disturbed the harmony 
of his work. 

Quite otherwise is it with the 
artist whose heart has steeped it- 
self in the same childlike devotion 
and manly earnestness that belong- 
ed to the old masters, but which 
yields new blossoms in its new dis- 
ciple. His works will be like the 
old ones, but with a living difference 
the more vigor of present life they 
embody, and the louder they speak 
to the present generation in a fa- 
miliar as well as forcible tongue. 

No doubt much reverence is 
needful in the matter of the re- 
storation of old, time-honored build- 
ings, and even in the action of their 
most reverent lovers much remains 
to be desired. In following close- 
ly the plan of the old builders a 
delicate artistic perception is im- 



peratively necessary, and, even apart 
from what the harmony of the whole 
demands, it will " restore " with 
greater modesty (especially where 
mere ornament is in question) the 
more penetrated it is with reverence 
for the old gray walls. 

Most cathedrals are incomplete 
as regards images. Where the ideal 
link between the original builder 
and the decorator from whom cen- 
turies divide him is broken or in- 
terrupted, it will be the mission of 
the latter to give expression to the 
ideas of the master, or, where these 
are hidden from him, at least to 
reproduce such thoughts as filial 
piety, as of a child unwilling to 
wake his slumbering father, would 
suggest. But, whatever pains we 
take to imitate the old, we shall 
never get the old to look anything 
but old, or the new anything but 
new. The greater the effort at 
outward assimilation the more 
force does the ideal lose in the 
eyes of contemporary opinion 
without the end being reached 
i.e*, to make the new part a homo- 
geneous growth of the old building. 

The real object, however, re- 
mains, and this is not to set up a 
faultless but dead image of what 
our forerunners created, but to 
hold up before the present genera- 
tion, not according to its tastes but 
according to its necessities, and in 
its own tongue, the ideal that in- 
spired the old masters, but is still 
living, higher than any of its mani- 
festations, the counterpart of Him 
who is with us all days, and the 
spirit of which we are bound to 
carry out with our whole soul an 
all our resources. For this reason 
it is a truer ideal which prompted 
men in past ages to have themselves 
painted, with their own costumes 
and the signs of their calling, in 
scenes representing sacred "history 



The Relation of Church Architecture to t/ic Plastic Arts. 375 



or the lives of the saints, than that 
which bids us paint Abraham in 
the correct costume of a nomad 
sheik, or, lacking as we do the naive 
boldness of a past age, affect the 
forms of a certain century of the 
Christian era, and thereby relegate 
artistically and correctly into the 
past the forms of saints and apos- 
tles. Such an effort would have 
been impossible to a believing age. 
But when we turn from the forced 
disruption of the old understand- 
ing between the past and the pre- 
sent, and consider the question of 
new works of the constructive and 
plastic arts, we cannot, without great 
disadvantage to each, look upon 
each as a separate whole, but must 
compare their mutual relations. 
Architecture naturally takes the first 
place. She fashions, with arduous 
labor, the hardest materials of na- 
ture into expressions of the freedom 
of thought. Perhaps in the very ar- 
duousness of the undertaking lurks 
the temptation to let her freer and 
lighter sisters feel her power. Her 
power is obvious, but, in art as in 
justice, the principle that " might 
is right " is a dangerous one. In 
her highest uses architecture no 
doubt does more than merely sup- 
ply surfaces for the plastic arts ; 
but, on the other hand, neither is 
image- work a mere decoration of 
architectural surfaces. Painting, it 
is true, if it aims at keeping its 
place, must accommodate itself to 
this keynote of the architecture ; but 
if the keynote wilfully, and for the 
sake of technical architectural pu- 
rism, hinders the expression of the 
ideal that underlies all art, archi- 
tecture itself remains the greatest 
loser. 

How goes it with the relations 
between music and poetry? Is 
the text which the music accom- 



panies deemed the ornament of the 
latter? Or, on the contrary, is the 
music merely the ornament of the 
words ? Music is no mere gar- 
ment of the latter, but is intimate- 
ly associated with it, as body and 
soul blend together in the creation 
of a higher life. If it were other- 
wise how could composers often 
breathe life into such feeble words 
as we see chosen? The . plastic 
arts seem, as it were, the eyes and 
voices of architecture. Its soul is 
the idea which finds expression in 
both forms, but the influence of the 
plastic arts is further-reaching than 
that of architecture. If art is but 
the representation of the spiritu- 
al through the material, it follows 
that for the perfection of a harmo- 
nious whole it will be necessary to 
determine beforehand what share 
the plastic arts are to have in any 
given church-building, and to con- 
sider as soon as the ground-plan 
is made what spaces are to be re- 
served for them, and, according to 
the importance of the material, 
what the dimensions and the pla- 
ces assigned to them shall be. 
And this in order to make as easy 
as possible a task already serious 
and severe, requiring in the artist 
no less humility than aptitude, and 
strictly confining him not only to 
necessities of form and rule, but 
also to the relative necessity of har- 
monizing his work with the gene- 
ral tone of the building. 

Let no one, therefore, be too 
eager to lay down hard and fast 
rules which, looking only to the 
noble Gothic style of building, ex- 
clude or cramp the development of 
the plastic arts. The one is not 
subordinate to the other, but co- 
ordinate, and the true end of art 
should be to establish perfect har- 
mony between them. 



376 



A Novel Deft rice of Protestantism. 



A NOVEL DEFENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 



UNREST AMONG PROTESTANTS. 

THERE are published every no\v 
and then in the periodicals and 
revspapers of the different Protes- 
tant denominations articles which 
show unmistakable signs of an 
element of unrest at work in their 
adherents concerning their anoma- 
lous position in the Christian world. 
The constantly increasing divisions 
among them as denominations, and 
between individuals of the same 
denomination, and the many symp- 
toms of defection of faith in their 
ranks, in our day, are also marks 
of a fatal disease too plain not to 
occupy the attention and thoughts 
of serious-minded Protestants who 
look beyond the present, have at 
heart the good of mankind, and 
are actuated by a sincere love for 
Christ. 'With this class should be 
ranked Rev. J. W. Santee, D.I)., 
who is the author of an article, re- 
markable in some respects, on this 
subject in the October number of 
the Reformed Quarterly Review, 
entitled "The Church of Christ, 
with Reference to Special Periods 
in her Development." 

Its author evidently has emanci- 
pated -himself to an unusual de- 
gree from the common traditional 
Protestant prejudices against the 
Catholic Church ; and this deliver- 
ance is most likely due to his hav- 
ing ventured, in his search after 
truth, beyond the narrow limitations 
of his sectarian training. It ap- 
pears that the day has gone by, 
among the more enlightened of the 
Protestant community, when it was 
considered the proper thing, in 
speaking of the Catholic Church, 



to denounce the pope as Anti- 
christ, her hierarchy as an usurpa- 
tion, and her worship as idolatrous. 
The truth is, the schoolmaster has 
been abroad among the more re- 
cent Protestants, and there are 
scholars among even their more 
popular sects who are no longer 
content with the idea that Chris- 
tianity began in Wittenberg A-D. 
1619 or thereabouts, or that the 
science of theology was first taught 
by Martin Luther and John Calvin, 
neither of whom was distinguished 
either for his theological knowledge 
or training. It is, therefore, with 
no little interest that the attentive 
observer of the different religious 
phases of human nature reads the 
productions of this class of scho- 
lars, written in explanation and de- 
fence of the abnormal attitude of 
Protestantism considered as a de- 
velopment of Christianity. It is 
with this view that we lay before 
our readers, with some current re- 
marks of our own, Dr. Santee's 
clever article. 

PREFATORY. 

With the consciousness, that In 
may be treading on forbiddei 
ground, and lest he should impl 
cate others in the responsibility 
what he is about to say, Dr. Santee 
introduces his subject by the fol- 
lowing statement : 

" The author of this article desires to 
say, at the outset, that he alone is re- 
sponsible for the statements made and 
for the sentiments expressed, and n<> 
blame whatever is to rest on the institu- 
tion in which he studied, nor on the edi- 
tor or publisher of this Review. What 
is here written is not done hastily, bin. 
is the result of patient research in the 



A Novel Defence of Protestantism. 



377 



course of his studies. Of one thing the 
author is fully convinced, that much of 
what has been written and said has been 
one-sided, ;md truth has been made to suf- 
fer. In the great controversy between 
Romanism on the one side and Protes- 
tantism on the other, this is clearly appar- 
ent. As an example, in our histories of 
this great movement very little account 
is made of the case as presented by Rom- 
ish historians, and our histories neces- 
sarily become one-sided and unreliable. 
D'Aubigne furnishes an instance in 
point. Truth is of more account than 
either side, and for that we should ever 
be concerned. Between these two sides, 
Romanism and Protestantism, we hold 
decidedly to the latter, and do so on the 
principle of development, believing that 
it is an advance on the former ; but no- 
thing is to be gained for truth by deny- 
ing and ignoring all the claims which 
Romanism truthfully can make. It is 
too late in the day to deny its claims, 
and to say that it is a system only of 
falsehood and deception. On the other 
hand, the truth is that Romanism stands 
proudly in history as one of its might- 
iest .factors, and by it society, in the 
middle ages, was saved from anarchy 
and confusion, and trat through the in- 
fluence of the church on society civ- 
ilization originated. The power of the 
church was exerted and made itself felt 
on society, in what is called the dark 
ages, with such splendid results. But 
history never stands still. Its living 
force is unceasingly going on. The 
golden thread which history had been 
drawing out over its pathway reaches on- 
ward and higher, the living factor or 
principle develops to higher stages and 
forms, so that what suited one period is 
unsuited for another ; and in this way 
one age or period is preparatory to an- 
other and higher, the present making 
room for the coming, so that the mea- 
sure of one age cannot be the measure 
for the succeeding one. In the great 
stream of history from the beginning, 
that which is sacred forms the principal ; 
this continued from age to age, while 
other powers, playing an important part 
for the time, passed off and were forgot- 
ten. It is so in every age : hislory de- 
velops in the interest of the sacred: this 
must continue, for the kingdom of Christ 
is founded upon a rock, and the gates 
of hell shall never prevail against her. 
Such is the lesson of the past." 



To the mind of a casual reader 
of the above the question might 
easily arise, Granting the truth of 
what is said of the Catholic Church, 
how will the writer justify the re- 
jection of her authority ? It would 
be giving the learned author more 
credit for the virtue of simplicity 
than he would be willing to ask to 
suppose that this difficulty was not 
clearly before his mind when he 
planned and wrote his thesis. He 
evidently had it in view from the 
start, and laid out the special line 
of his defence purposely to justify 
this revolt, and justify it more satis- 
factorily and successfully than had 
hitherto been done. The germ of 
his defence lies here: "But history 
never stands still. Its living force 
is incessantly going on," etc. It 
is this false idea of history which 
is the ground-plan and essential 
thought of the whole essay. Not 
God's church in history, but history 
in God's church, is the great factor. 
The development of this idea is the 
whole aim and burden of his task. 
The human depends not on the 
divine for its development and pro- 
gress, but the divine depends on 
the human for its form, growth, and 
triumph. With the pseudo-scien- 
tists and false philosophers of our 
day, he separates effects from their 
causes and reverses the universal 
law of all life. The universe is not 
the creation of Almighty God, but 
the result, according to Haeckel, of 
the evolution of matter. God is 
not the self-existent, infinite being, 
but the result, according to Strauss, 
of the wish of man. The church is 
not the creation of Christ, but the 
result, according to Dr. Santee, of 
" the needs " and " exigencies " of 
different periods in history. These, 
not Christ, are the architects and 
builders of the Christian Church. 
Doubtless Dr. Santee would in- 



A Novel Defence of Protestantism. 



dignantly reject these conclusions, 
and quote against them his own 
\yords on the church ; but he will 
allow us to say that his idea of the 
church is very one-sided, and his 
language on the subject at least in- 
distinct, if not equivocal. And not- 
withstanding this denial, we shall 
see, before the end, that his pre- 
mises not only, cover these conclu- 
sions, but that, in following them 
out in his attempt to save Protes- 
tantism, he will be compelled to 
extinguish Christianity. We give 
his own words, under his own head- 
ing, on the 

" IDEA OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

"In the Creed of Christendom one 
article of faith is, ' I believe in the Holy 
Catholic Church.' * The salvation or re- 
demption of the race does not lie so 
much in the form of individual belief or 
confession as it does in scheme or plan 
from Heaven, wrought out in history 
and here appropriated by the individual, 
and the living power thereof made his 
own. ^T his plan is the church of Christ, 
the body of the Lord, and in history, is 
the outward manifestation of his undying 
life and power. Into contact with it the 
individual life must come to be made a 
new creature. So the apostle, ' Christ 
in us' ; ' When Christ who is our life*' 
etc.; 'I live, yet not I,' etc. 'By the 
kingdom of heaven, or of God, he un- 
derstood generally that divine order of 
things which he had come to establish. 
It was a kingdom not of this world, 
though in the world, to which, as a king- 
dom revolted from God and ruled by 
Satan, his own stood directly opposed. 
And so he answered the question of the 
Pharisees, when the kingdom of God 
would come, that it was already in the 
midst of them ; its first germs and be- 
ginnings, that is, v/ere already present 
in the persons of himself and his disci- 
ples. . . . This kingdom, moreover, 



*NOTE OF THE AUTHOR. It is surprisingly 
strange that among Christian professors the word 
' Catholic 11 should give offence. It is erased by 
denominational orders from the Creed, and scouted 
by Popery-haters, in ignorance, it would seem, of 
its meaning and .significance, as one holy, univer- 
sal body. 



embraces, in the words of Jesus, heaven 
and earth, and the whole course of human 
history from his time onwards. He re- 
presented the growth and spread of his 
kingdom under the images of the seed 
developing till it bore Fruit an hundred- 
fold, and of the little mustard-seed grow- 
ing up into a lofty, overshadowing tree ; 
a flock of sheep with its shepherd, whose 
voice it knows ; a family, with its master, 
its men-servants and women-servants ; a 
town, a nation, a kingdom, whose king 
he was himself; these are the images by 
which he exhibited the organic coherence 
of his church, the power and authority 
belonging in this his kingdom to him- 
self and his representatives' (Dollinger, 
pp. 27, 28). We see what the church is ; 
that it is not of man, but for him ; not 
of earth, but from Heaven. The church 
is a heavenly institute coming to men 
sordid and sinful, and that, while the 
divine is the golden thread running in 
the deepest part of this ever-widening 
current, there is also the human, another 
important factor in carrying forward to- 
wards the end this wonderful work of 
God. In all church history we see these 
factors, and the divine, above all 'other 
forces, guarding the truth and assuring 
order, so that this kingdom is never left 
to itself. ' I am with you always.'" 

There is much that is true in 
this passage; and if this one truth 
had been kept steadily in view, that 
" in all church history we see these 
factors [the divine and the human], 
and the divine, above all other 
forces, guarding the truth and as- 
suring order," the doctor would 
have escaped all error. But Dr. 
Santee immediately takes his de- 
parture from it, and moves, most 
cautiously in the beginning, towards 
his objective point, applying his 
ideas of history in the first instance 
to the episcopate of the church. 
At this stage of his argument he 
modestly declines to decide wheth- 
er the episcopate is of divine ori- 
gin or not. It suffices to know 
that " the period needed it, and 
the exigencies of the times called 
for it," and behold! there Avas in 






A Novel Defence of Protestantism. 



379 



the Christian Church the evolution 
of the episcopate. This is the in- 
teresting historical sketch of the 
process by which this evolution 
was effected : 

" THE NECESSITY FOR CENTRALIZATION. 

" It is easily seen that in any age so 
peculiar as that in which Christianity 
appeared and began to develop a strong 
arm was needed to uphold and continue 
it amidst the fierce opposition arrayed 
against it. It came into the midst of a 
violent, selfish, sinful people, and there- 
fore, in the beginning, we have much of 
the supernatural in connection with it. 
As it came from Heaven, it at once ap- 
pealed to the divine, and so certified to 
its claims. This is especially set forth 
in the Acts of the Apostles and early 
Christianity. It had to take root in or- 
der to grow, and hence this divine care. 
In its progress of expansion it also en- 
countered opposition within itself, and 
this form of opposition at times threat- 
ened disastrously. The opposition which 
it encountered from without and from 
within, overcome always by virtue of 
the inherent, divine power in the church, 
formed a standing miracle and an ar- 
gument in favor of its claims. In the 
Acts of the Apostles we have the begin- 
ning of organization. It is not left to 
caprice or to individual will. When 
the difficulty which arose as to the ad- 
mission of the Gentiles into this king- 
dom came to be adjusted, we find a 
body, a power, organized with James at 
the head,* which determined the ques- 
tion and rendered judgment. And that 
was the law it was final. And so after- 
wards particular men and places, be- 
cause of position and influence, became 
centres towards which the eyes of the 
faithful were directed, and the judgment 
which was delivered by them, as a gen- 
eral thing, was respected and obeyed. 
It was felt that there should be a centre, 
a head, to which the participators could 
look and around which they could come, 
and thus, with an enthusiasm common 
to them, carry forward the great work. 
In this period there is this peculiarity 
already : that according to its needs it 
developed a form in and by which it 
could best carry forward this great in- 

* NOTE OF THE REVIEWER. With Peter at the 
head . 



terest. It demanded a centre, and to- 
wards that the history tended until it had 
fulfilled its mission. 

" Whatever may have been the origin 
of this centre in what is known as the 
episcopate, whether it is of apostolic 
origin or not, it is more to our purpose 
to see that the period needed it, that the 
exigencies of the times called for it, that 
needs, both from without and from with- 
in, demanded it, and that the power to 
confer authority and dispense the grace 
in this kingdom was comprehended 
more in its own bosom, and from thence 
conferred upon those called to the va- 
rious offices in the church." * 

If the episcopate can be account- 
ed for on these grounds, why not 
apply the same process to evolve 
the Papacy, the supremacy of the 
see of Rome? This is what our 
consistent ecclesiastical evolutionist 
now attempts. His theory exacts 
of him the ignoring altogether the 
express promises of Christ, record- 
ed in the New Testament, referring 
to the person and office of his apos- 
tle Peter, as well as the historical 
testimony of the belief and the 
practice of the early church as wit- 
nessed by the writings of the Fa- 
thers*. Yet this is less irrational 
than what is commonly held by his 
brethren ; hence from its stand- 
point his vision is more clear and 
his horizon more extensive, and, 
with certain candor and courage, 
he describes to them what he sees. 
Barring his false theory, his de- 
scription of the middle ages is un- 
usually fair, considering the quar- 
ter from which it comes. Here is 
what he says : 

"THE FULL ESTABLISHMENT OF THIS EC- 
CLESIASTICAL POWER. 

"The life of the church is ever the 
same. As our human life, always the 

* NOTE OF THE AUTHOR. That there is a suc- 
cession from the commencement down in this liv- 
ing current is apparent, from which authority is 
transmitted, but not as held by Episcopalians. 
Their theory of apostolic succession is clearly un- 
tenable, as the history- of Anglicanism conclusively 
shows." 



380 



A Novel Defence of Protestantism. 



same, may be affected at times by foreign 
elements, bringing disorder and interfer- 
ing with its development, but by proper 
care will again right itself, so the life of 
the church. It may meet with opposi- 
tion and be threatened, but the golden 
cord remains intact and unbroken. In 
the development of this power tending 
to centralization we are met by the same 
fact. The general current is ever pre- 
served sure ; the guiding power of the 
Holy Ghost continues here the same, and 
keeps safe the golden thread, and, though 
apparently out of view and deep down in 
the current, it is sure and abiding. In 
this early period, as in all others, there 
is much of the human. In these seats 
of the church, as special centres, where 
the episcopate had become established, 
there was an attractive force, and in the 
course of time these seats obtained an 
influence and power over others less 
favored which were commanding. And 
in this way, gradually, the power of the 
episcopate extended and became estab- 
lished and made itself felt, and thus by 
degrees arrogated to itself powers and 
functions which originally did not belong 
to it nor were claimed by it. It might 
be an interesting question how at first 
the claims between these seats originat- 
ed, and how one after another grew into 
favor and prominence. As one after an- 
other, for various reasons, gained ascen- 
dency, others became obedient, untjl we 
find this whole ecclesiastical order fully 
and firmly established at Rome and cen- 
tred in the person of the bishop there. 
It continued over a long time, involved 
a violent struggle, took in special ques- 
tions and claims ; and now power and 
authority are centred there, and what 
comes from thence carries with it weight. 
This is the form which the development 
of this kingdom took during this period 
no doubt the best form and it is not as- 
serted that the validity of its acts nor the 
perpetuity of this kingdom depended on 
the persons occupying these seats, for 
some of the occupants were sordid, sel- 
fish men, unworthy of the place. Not- 
withstanding that, the kingdom of Christ 
was here, in this form and in their hands 
as instruments, developing itself, guided 
and taken care of by the Holy Ghost 
guarding this precious deposit. We see 
the part which the human took in mak- 
ing the history of this period, and we are 
enabled to notice the working of these 
two forces, the divine and human, side 



by side. Power is now centralized, and 
from the chair of St. Peter proceeds an 
authority as from none other. This may 
seem strange, but without question the: 
spirit of the age required it, its needs 
demanded it. This becomes clear in tilt- 
subsequent history. 

" "Whatever questions may attach to 
this man at Rome, whatever powers and 
prerogatives he claimed, it ascertain that 
his influence was great and reached far 
and near. That much is clear. As to 
spiritual authority, and even to his su- 
premacy, there is indeed much confusion 
for a long period of time, and there was 
no clear utterance as to this unity over 
this formative period until the time of 
Leo I. (461), who advanced his ' claim 
to be primate of the whole church.' ' In 
him the Papacy became flesh and blood.' 
Even with his iron will and superior at- 
tainments and talents and other ability 
needed, it was no easy task to win this 
claim. He encountered opposition from 
various sides, and the primary idea of 
the Papacy, vast and extensive in its 
proportions as conceived by this clear- 
headed and shrewd servant of the king- 
dom, was not in his day, nor has it been 
to this time, realized. One thing, how- 
ever, is now clear : the kingdom of Christ, 
developing over these centuries, because 
of inward and outward necessities, has 
now a visible centre of unity, in which 
resided power and authority, all of which 
were needed for the ages succeeding. 
This spirit of centralizing, creating a 
centre of unity, was of incalculable ser- 
vice for this and the succeeding periods. 
Without question it was the best form, 
in the then existing- condition of society, 
which could be had for the development 
of the life of the kingdom of Christ. It 
assisted in determining and fixing vital 
principles, settled points in doctrine, and 
assisted in setting forth clearly and dis- 
tinctly what, in principle, had been at 
hand long before a regain fidci, as the 
sign in and by which to conquer. Tin- 
influence of this man at Rome, both in 
the spiritual and secular, was extensive, 
and in him, as the centre of unity, one- 
peculiar characteristic of this period, 
have the exponent of power wherewith 
to meet the various forms of opposition 
to the life of the church both from within 
and from without. Though the kingdom 
of Christ, the church, had been counte- 
nanced by the secular power, other forms 
of opposition from the world liad been 



A Novel Defence of Protestantism. 



381 



preparing. During the pontificate of 
Leo I. great good came to the church 
and the state by means of his influence. 
On two different occasions the city of 
Rome was saved from its enemies through 
his own personal influence. The opposi- 
tion which the kingdom of Christ was 
called to encounter came from Northern 
Europe when the vast hordes of uncivil- 
ized and unchristianized barbarians were 
let loose arid came pouring down over 
the fairest portions of the continent, over- 
turning and destroying everything in 
their course. What a grand field for the 
display of the power and force of the 
church ; what a glorious problem to 
Christianize and civilize these untutored, 
uncultured sons of the forest ! Upon the 
solution of this problem the church en- 
tered, and out of these raw and rough 
children, ignorant of the Gospel of Christ, 
without civilization, the church made 
obedient and faithful subjects, not by the 
sword, but by the power of the Gospel of 
Christ. In these peac'-ful contests we 
see the strength and glory of this king- 
dom, civilizing and Christianizing these 
savage hordes ; and .to do this splendid 
work we also see the part that was acted 
by this man at Rome, the centre of unity. 
There is perhaps no more splendid page 
in history than that covering this period, 
and what has heretofore been regarded 
as dark and gloomy, characterized as 
' the dark ages,' now stands out as bright ; 
and by the power and activity of the 
church the wilderness of the North was 
transformed into a paradise, and out of 
the uncivilized masses order was brought, 
and civilization took the place where 
confusion and barbarism before reigned. 
This was effected through the instru- 
mentality of the man at Rome, in whom 
power was centralized, by whom monas- 
teries, abbeys, and ecclesiastical orders 
were founded, and which proved of such 
immense benefit to the people. 

" What monuments this kingdom of 
Christ reared during this period ! All 
honor to the church of the middle ages ! 
The monuments of this spirited age are 
still seen throughout middle and north- 
ern Europe. And is it not a fact that 
precisely for such a work in the condi- 
tion of society this period had been pre- 
paring measures and means wherewith 
to do it? How strong the power of the 
church now ; how this power was cen- 
tralized and consolidated and establish- 
ed firmly, as upon a rock ! And ere 



long this power was to be, tested. In 
the course of time the secular power ac- 
quired strength and began to encroach 
upon the rights of the church. When 
the emperors attempted to intermeddle 
with affairs pertaining to the church, is 
it not clear that a strong central power, 
having gathered around itself force over 
the ages already, alone was able to cope 
with such formidable opposition and 
defeat it? It seems that it gathered 
strength, that it became vigorous and 
powerful for this period, putting on its 
strength, and as a strong man began to 
deal its ponderous blows. The question 
now was not whether such a pope should 
be sustained over against such an em- 
peror or ruler, but rather this : Shall the 
kingdom of Christ take care of its own 
interests and have the kingdom of the 
world subject, or shall the state rule the 
church? That was the question, and 
the answer can be neither doubtful nor 
indistinct. The guiding hand in all 
church history comes distinctly to view 
in this period, and that golden thread, 
however hidden at times, is here also, 
remaining untarnished and unbroken. 
When the man at Rome in the chair of 
St. Peter asserted his power and demon- 
strated it by placing his heel on the neck 
of his opponent, or ordering him to 
remain exposed, barefooted, on pa*n 
of penalty, we have only the principle 
that right, truth, light, and justice yea, 
rather, that the kingdom of Christ, the 
church of Christ can never yield to the 
power of the world ; that she must rule, 
and not be ruled ; that she must triumph 
over all forms of opposition, and that 
the secular must become obedient to the 
ecclesiastical. Who now could calcu- 
late the untold injury to light and truth, 
to the ecclesia of Christ, had the con- 
tests in which the emperors and the 
popes were engaged terminated differ- 
ently? No; whatever may have been 
the character of the popes, all honor to 
them for their heroic stand, and for their 
unflinching devotion to right and their 
noble allegiance to the kingdom of 
Christ, in which they were permitted to 
be such grand actors. With their vast 
influence they accomplished great good 
for the people, and did much to save 
society from anarchy and confusion. 
We have no confidence in the theory 
that they were sworn enemies of the 
rights of the people and of light. 
Through them, as instruments under the 



382 



A Novel Defence of Protestantism. 



guiding hand of the great King of kings, 
we have civilization, and the splendid 
results coming with it." 

The beneficent influence of the 
Papacy in Christianizing and civi- 
lizing Europe is well known to 
Catholic readers, for they have not 
been as by a conspiracy shut out 
from true history; but these candid 
acknowledgments of our enlighten- 
ed author will awaken, if we be 
not mistaken, a nest of Protestant 
hornets, and set tliem buzzing about 
his ears, provided all sincere con- 
viction in the truth of Protestan- 
tism has not departed, and there is 
strength enough left to make them 
stir. A, generation ago the hon- 
est confession of such unpalatable 
truths to his fellow-Protestants 
would have surely cost the reve- 
rend doctor his ecclesiastical head. 

Had Dr. Santee taken for his 
subject the human side of the 
church of Christ, and endeavored 
to show how Christ, in building his 
church, framed her government and 
appointed her officers in view of 
the needs and exigencies which 
would arise in the course of her di- 
vine mission in the world ; and, in 
proof of this, brought forth the 
facts and arguments bearing on 
this point in his present article, he 
would have made a valuable con- 
tribution to the philosophy of his- 
tory. This was not his aim, and 
he takes particular care emphati- 
cally to inform his readers that as 
against Romanism he is decidedly 
a Protestant ; hence he does not 
purpose to prove that there is a 
human element in the action of the 
church, and show what that is, but 
to substitute the human for the di- 
vine element in the church, so far 
as this will enable 'him to justify, in 
his own mind at least, the religious 
revolution inaugurated in the six- 
teenth century by Martin Luther. 



It is the unavoidable task of every 
one since the day of Pentecost who 
would set up a new Christianity to 
get rid the best way he can of one 
or more, or all, so far as they clash 
with his design, of the divine claims 
of the Catholic Church. But this 
enterprise is more easily attempted 
than satisfactorily accomplished. 
For when Christ promised in these 
words, " Lo ! I am with you always, 
even unto the end of the world," 
Christ identified himself with the 
perpetuity of the Catholic Church. 
When Christ declared that " the 
gates of hell shall not prevail 
against the church " Christ bade 
defiance to all the powers of dark- 
ness, the designs of men, and the 
kingdoms of this world to over- 
throw, defeat, or even hinder the 
work which he had committed to 
her charge and commanded her to 
do. For the church is Christ's 
body, as St. Paul teaches, and 
Christ is her soul and life, and 
through her instrumentality he 
continues the work of the redemp- 
tion of mankind as really and truly 
to-day in this world as when, in the 
body born of the Virgin Mary, he 
trod upon this earth in Palestine 
nineteen centuries ago. Christ and 
his church are one, as the soul 
and the body united make one per- 
sonality; and, therefore, he who wars 
against the church wars against 
Christ, and he who conquers her 
conquers him. 

But the success of Dr. Santee's 
theory exacts this achievement, and 
what he has built up by the aid of 
the " needs " and " exigencies " of 
history it is now his task to pull 
down. He sets about it thus : 
After showing from Catholic au- 
thorities the need of reform of 
abuses in the church, he gives a 
sketch of the middle ages down to 
the sixteenth centurv : 



A Novel Defence of Protestantism. 



383 



" CONDITION OF SOCIETY. 

"As already said, over the middle 
ages the kingdom of Christ was a living 
power ; its golden thread continued un- 
broken ; and when we take into con- 
sideration the condition of society, the 
wonder is, not that excesses and short- 
comings appeared, but that society was 
not hopelessly ruined. 'Let us call to 
mind,' says Balmes in his Protestantism 
compared wit/i Catholicity, p. 32, ' the 
events which had taken place in the 
midst of Europe : the dissolution of the 
decrepit and corrupt empire of Rome ; 
the irruption and inundation of Northern 
barbarians; their fluctuations, their wars, 
sometimes with each other, and some- 
times with the conquered nations, and 
that for so many ages ; the establishment 
and absolute reign of feudalism, with all 
its inconveniences, its evils, its troubles 
and disasters ; the invasion of the Sara- 
cens, and their dominion over a large 
portion of Europe ; now let any reflect- 
ing man ask himself whether such revo- 
lutions must not of necessity produce 
ignorance, corruption of morals, and the 
relaxation of all discipline. How could 
the ecclesiastical society escape being 
deeply affected by this dissolution, this 
destruction of the civil society? Could 
she help participating in the evils of the 
horrible state of chaos into which Europe 
was then plunged?' That sad conse- 
quences growing out of such a condi- 
tion of society and threatening its over- 
throw were averted is owing to the 
kingdom of Christ having these heroic 
men at Rome, who were not afraid to 
grapple with the enemies of the church 
in the persons of the unscrupulous and 
selfish emperors and rulers. 

"After the conversion of the Northern 
hordes many of the barbarian chieftains 
of the North, having embraced Christian- 
ity, became the friends and benefactors 
of the church. They munificently en- 
dowed the bishoprics and subsequently 
the monasteries ; they allotted to them 
large and rich domains ; they erected 
palaces and castles for the bishops, and 
extensive cloisters for the monks of St. 
Benedict and for other religious orders 
which sprang up at a later period. . . . 
All classes vied with one another in 
munificence toward the church and to- 
ward her ministers. Splendid churches, 
spacious hospitals, and palatial colleges 
and universities sprang up all over Eu- 



rope. Many of these noble edifices still 
remain, and they are even at this day the 
admiration of the world, which, with all 
its boasted progress, could scarcely pro- 
duce anything to equal, certainly nothing 
to surpass, them in grandeur. . . . Others 
have been diverted from their original 
destination, and have become the pala- 
ces of worldly pride and pomp instead 
of asylums for the poor of Christ.' And 
now what a grand prize in this untold 
treasure for the selfish and covetous ! 
And one design of the selfish emperors 
and rulers was to obtain control and 
management of these immense seats and 
their revenues. To do this they sought 
to 'thrust their own creatures into the 
principal vacant sees and abbeys. The 
chief merit of the candidate, in their 
eyes, was his courtly subserviency. In 
carrying out this wicked scheme for en- 
slaving the church, and virtually ruining 
it by foisting into its high places un- 
worthy ministers, they encountered fre- 
quent and sturdy opposition from the 
bishops and abbots ; but whether these 
resisted the usurpation or not, the popes 
were sure to stand forth on such occa- 
sions as the uncompromising champions 
of the freedom and purity of election 
and the independence of the church. 
From this sprang many, if not most, of 
the protracted struggles between the 
popes and the German emperors during 
the middle ages.' And who will deny 
this? With all this the thread of history, 
the divine cord is unbroken, though at 
times apparently deep- in the current. 
In this place falls the long and protract- 
ed controversy on investitures, waged 
between the popes and the emperors. 
'A custom has long prevailed, especial- 
ly in the empire (German), that on the 
decease of the prelates of the church trie- 
ring and pastoral crosier were sent to 
the lord emperor. Afterwards the em- 
peror, selecting one- of his own familiars 
or chaplains, and investing him with tlic 
insignia, sent him to the vacant church 
without waiting for the election by the 
clergy.' Again : ' At this time the 
church had not a free election ; but when- 
ever any one of the bishops had entered 
upon the way of all flesh, immediately 
the captains of that city transmitted to 
the palace the ring and pastoral staff; 
and thus the king or emperor, after con 
suiting his council, selected a suitable- 
pastor for the widowed flock.' In cases 
like these it will not be difficult to de- 



A Novel Defence of Protestantism. 



termine as to who was right. Tills con- 
test, as is well remarked, ' was one be- 
tween moral principle and brute force, 
between reason and passion, between 
morals and licentiousness, between re- 
ligion and incipient infidelity. Gregory 
VII. was driven from Rome by the forces 
of Henry IV., and he died an exile at 
Salerno, in Southern Italy.' In a passage 
from one of his epistles occurs the fol- 
lowing : ' I would rather undergo death 
. lor your salvation than obtain the whole 
world to your spiritual ruin. For I fear 
God, and therefore value but little the 
pride and pleasures of the world.' Is it 
any wonder that .disorders came into 
this kingdom? And who can fail to see 
the preparation for the wonderful up- 
heaval in the following age? Let this 
be well understood : that the source of 
the trouble during the stormy period 
preceding the Reformation lay chiefly in 
the fact of the studied and persistent op- 
position and ' the settled policy of the 
German emperors, and subsequently the 
French kings, to throw every possible 
obstacle in the way of the appointment 
of good, disinterested, and zealous bish- 
ops. They thwarted the popes at almost 
every step in the continued and earnest 
endeavors of the latter to secure good 
pastors to the vacant sees.' What a 
slumbering volcano is here at hand pre- 
paring for an eruption ! Let an occasion 
arise, and these embers may soon be 
tanned into a flame, and a state of things 
created threatening the peace of all Eu- 
rope. Far back, in this way, we find the 
sources of the movement now coming. 
It was not the work of a day, did not 
fall directly from heaven, and all that 
was needed was a spirit who would 
throw himself in the foreground a spiri- 
tual Cromwell and whom the selfish 
rulers, avariciously grasping after the 
goods of the church, could use for their 
purposes." 



"THE REFORMATION PERIOD. 

"On the loth of November, 1483, Mai- 
lin Luther was born. Of his youth it is 
said by D'Aubigne'that as soon as he 
was old enough to receive instruction 
his parents endeavored to communicate 
to him the knowledge of God, to train 
him in his fear, and to form him to the 
practice of the Christian virtues. He 
was taught the heads of the catechism, 
the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' 
Creed, the Lord's Prayer, some hymn?, 
some forms of prayer, a Latin grammar, 
etc.' Pretty good training this, and 
mmhy of Protestant imitation. lie was 
none of the best boys, for while at 
school at Mansfield 'his master flogged 
him fifteen times in one day.' He said 
himself: ' My parents treated me cruelly, 
so that I became very timid ; one day, 
for a mere trifle, my mother whipped me 
till the blood came.' Me received a 
good education, and was a man of fair 
talents. He was studious, and through 
him, to a great extent, the studies of men 
were turned into another direction from 
what they had been, and in this way 
' the Reformation brought a revival of re- 
ligious feeling, and resulted, by a reac- 
tionary influence, in a great quickening 
of religious zeal within the Catholic 
Church ' (Fisher's Hist, of Ref.} * 

" It is said by D'Aubigne ' that he re- 
ceived ordination with trembling at his 
own umvorthiness.' He was scrupulous 
to a fault; he was zealous and Devoted 
traits worthy in any man. The imme- 
diate cause which brought Luther into 
public notice was an attack which he 
made on a notorious character who had 
been entrusted with the preaching of 
the indulgences a man of the Domini- v 



*NOTE OF THE AUTHOR. It is said that, 
while in the University of Erfurth, Luther one 
day found a Bible, which he eagerly read, and 
it was only after he had entered the convent of 
the Augustinians at Erfurth that he ''found an- 
other Bible, fastened by a chain." So there 
were Bibles in that day, too. What shall be 
said to this bit of history, when Protestant histo- 
rians tell us that "the press had been half a cen- 
tury in operation, and that at least twenty differ- 
ent editions of the whole Latin Bible were printed 
in Germany only before Luther was born " ? And 
' I may remark that before that event there was a 
printing-press at work in this very town of Erfurth, 
where more than twenty years after he is said to 
have made his discovery. . . . Besides the multi- 
Very palatable, truths concernino- * ude of , 3V *, ss - cop j cs ;" ot >' et fallen into disuse,///* 

., J ..} tress had issued fifty different editions of the 



This ''spiritual Cromwell" ap- 
pears on the stage of history in the 
person of a German, by name Mar- 
tin Luther. Dr. Santee tells his 
Protestant brethren some homely 
but wholesome, though perhaps not 



the life and character of Luther, 
a sketch of what he calls 



j n whole Latin Bible, to say nothing of Psalters, New 
Testaments, or other parts" (Maitland's The 
Dark Ages). 



A Novel Defence of Protestantism. 



385 



can Order. Whether it was a matter of 
jealousy on the part of Luther who was 
naturally vain and conceited or not, in 
the then condition of society, with a mind 
not specially in love with the see of Rome, 
and having standing behind him the 
selfish and avaricious emperor, he made 
the attack with every promise of success. 
The fact that jealousy existed may be in- 
ferred when it is asserted ' that the prin- 
cipal members of his order were his 
warmest advocates, while of the Domini- 
cans the principal members were his op- 
ponents.* 

" At the commencement of this history 
Leo X. occupied the papal chair. He 
must have been a man of extraordinary 
attainment?, a man of taste and of ele- 
vated, enlightened views, and who at 
this time was concerned in beautifying 
and adorning the capital, calling about 
him the best talent in art, science, litera- 
ture, etc., so that when this trouble in 
Germany took place and was reported to 
him he remarked, smiling, ' that it was 
all a monkish squabble originating in 
jealousy.' It proved, however, no small 
squabble for the pope or for the church. 
With Luther there was no plan ; he evi- 
dently had no fixed purpose as to what 
was to be done, and as he entered on 
his task 'he trembled to find himself 
alone against the whole church.' He 
had no desire to break with the pope, for 
on the 3Oth of May, 1518, he wrote to 
Pope Leo X. thus : ' Most holy father, I 
throw myself at the feet of your Holiness, 
and submit myself to you with all that I 
have and all that I am. Destroy my 
cause or espouse it ; pronounce either 
for or against me ; take my life or re- 
store it, as you please ; I will receive 
your voice as that of Christ himself, who 
presides and speaks through you. If I 
have deserved death I refuse not to die; 
the earth is the Lord's and the fulness 
thereof. May he be praised for ever and 
ever ! May he maintain you to all eter- 
nity ! Amen.' But besides him there 
were other actors who became conspicu- 
ous as the work progressed ; these were 
the avaricious emperors and rulers. ' It 
is a striking incident, and yet illustrative 
of the spirit of the age, that the Emperor 
Maximilian sent word to the Elector 
Frederick of Saxony to take good care of 
Luther we might have need of him 
some time or other' (Fisher's Hist, of 
Ref., p. 49). A great prize-was at stake 
the immense wealth of the church. What 

VOL. XXX. 25 



did men like these emperors and electors 
care for the kingdom of Christ, who we;* 
interfering with her dearest interests an J 
rights continually, and who stood ready 
to use these men to further their selfish 
ends? In this wise the way was prepar- 
ed; one cord after another was weaken- 
ed and broken, until at last this whole 
field in which the church had won such 
splendid victories became lost to the 
pope, and continues so until this day. 
Having thrown off at last the authority 
of the see of Rome and asserted inde- 
pendence of thought and freedom in re- 
ligious worship, the gate was opened 
which let loose this ever-restless spirit ; 
and it is a singular fact that before Lu- 
ther and his co-laborers closed their eyes 
on their work this work had divided into 
two great Confessions, and these imme- 
diately began to subdivide from thence 
on, with no prospect of reaching an end, 
or which the shrewdest calculus can de- 
termine when that will be.* 

" In making an estimate of Luther, 
who was the principal champion of this 
movement, history furnishes no evidence 
that he was a saint (neither his co-labor- 
ers) or that he was better than those who 
stood opposed to him.f It required no 

* NOTE OF THE AUTHOR. "The first fifty 
years that followed on the outbreak of the Re- 
formation witnessed incessant wranglings, disputes, 
and mutual anathematizings between the several 
Protestant parties ; first between Luther an.l 
Zwinglius, next between the rigid Lutherans and 
the Crypto-Calvinists, and so on. When, after 
long intrigues and tedious negotiations, the Chan- 
cellor of Tubingen, James Andrea, succeeded, 
about the year 1586, in obtaining acceptance 
for the so-called Formulary of Concord, the 
theological strife receded from the arena of public 
life into the school ; and for the whole century that 
followed the Protestant Church was distinguished 
for a narrow-minded, polemical scholasticism and 
a self-willed, contentious theology. The Lutheran 
orthodoxy, in particular, degenerated more and 
more into a dry, spiritless, mechanical formalism, 
without religious feeling, warmth, and unction. 
. . . The Protestant orthodoxy, having suc- 
ceeded by anathemas and persecution in reducing 
to temporary silence the first commotions of the 
yet impotent rationalism, sank into soft repose on 
its pillow. But in the midst of German Protes- 
tantism an alliance had been formed, which at first 
appeared to be of little danger, nay, to be even ad- 
vantageous, but which soon overthrew the whole 
scaffolding of doctrine that the old Protestant or- 
thodoxy had raised up, and precipitated Protestant 
theology into that course which has in the present 
day led it entirely to subvert all the dogmas of 
Christianity and totally to change the original 
views of the Reformers " (Der Protestantism ;.<.,- 
in Seiner selbst Aujlffsung, von Einem Protestan- 
ten. Schaff hausen, 1843, pp. 291-3.) 

t NOTE OF THE AUTHOR. " Whoever siij : 
that the Reformers were exempt from grave fanit^ 



A Novel Defence of Protestantism. 



extraordinary men to commence the 
work ; the age had been prepared and 
now was ready. In his intercourse with 
his opponents, Catholics and now Pro- 
testants, he was coarse and often vulgar.* 
Melanchthon deplored his furious out- 
bursts of temper : ' I tremble when I 
think of 1 the passions of Luther; they 
,yield not in violence to the passions of 
Hercules.' An exceedingly interesting 
part of his life is that when he fell into 
the snare of the woman he afterwards 
married ; and Erasmus had some very 
ugly things to say reflecting seriously on 
liis moral character. No wonder that 
his love-scenes became nauseating to 
Melanchthon and his best friends. His 
Tisch Reden, much of which is worthy, 
contain too much that is discreditable, 
undignified, and downright shameful. 
Associated as he was with selfish men,f 
who had an eye not on this kingdom or 
its advancement, but on its wealth, the 
work went on ; and now commenced the 
secularizing of property and diverting it 
from the legitimate use for which it had 
been set apart. Those immense trea- 
sures, some lasting to this day, passed 
beyond the reach of the pope, and had 
to do service otherwise and in other 
ways than originally designed. That 
same spirit, vandal-like, lies at the root 
of the English Reformation under Henry 
VIII. These are facts, and, as Protes- 
tants, let us be just to history." 

That was a strange way to re- 
form abuses in the church : to 
open her doors to political " ru- 
lers avariciously grasping after her 
goods !" But some folk have 

and infirmities must either be ignorant of their 
history or have studied it under the influence of a 
partisan bias " (Fisher, Hist, of the Ref., Preface, 
page 8). 

* NOTE OF THE AUTHOR. U In confirmation 
let any one turn to the famous Tisch Reden, 
of 1,350 pages, collected and published by those 
who were his intimate friends. It is curious how 
he talks on nearly every subject thus: "May 

the name of the Pope be .' ' If I thought that 

God did not hear my prayer I would address 
the devil.' ' I owe more to my dear Catharine and 
Philip than to God himself.' * God has made many 
mistakes. I would have given him good advice, 
had I assisted at the creation. I would have made 
.the sun shine incessantly ; the day would have 
been without end," and so on ad nauseam. 

t NOTE OF THE AUTHOR. As an illustration take 
the case of the Landgrave of Hesse, one of the 
strong defenders and supporters of the Reforma- 
tion, a wretched bigamist by consent, as the ori- 
ginal document testifies. 



strange ideas as to how room is to 
be made in the church for "a high- 
er stage of development of the life 
and power of the wonderful king- 
dom of God." Protestantism has 
from its start looked for and sought 
support from political rulers in its 
war against the church, conscious 
that it lacks the vitality and 
strength to take root in a people 
where it received no such support 
from the state. Hence "the ' Con- 
fession of Augsburg,' which has 
also been called the 'peace of re- 
ligion at Augsburg,' proclaimed 
the monstrous principle, contrary 
also to the liberty of conscience 
which it sought to establish, that 
subjects were to follow the religion 
of their territorial chief cujus regio 
ejus religio. " When a prince or a 
free town, or an immediate noble, 
adopted the Reformed creed, his 
subjects were obliged to do the 
same, or to migrate and sell their 
property." * 

CONCLUSION. 

The following sentence contains 
the gist of Dr. Santee's whole ar- 
gument, and sums up his conclu- 
sions : 

" The kingdom has developed beyond 
the Papacy, and to make transitions to 
Rome is going backward, and giving up 
the very idea of development, surren- 
dering so much of truth. God is in his- 
tory, the Lord is in his church ; he takes 
care of his own, and that golden thread 
will ever be unbroken, but extends on- 
ward. He will bring order out of con- 
fusion." 

" The kingdom has developed be- 
yond the Papacy." The mistake 
in this assertion consists in suppos- 
ing that the mode of exercising 
the papal authority of the church 
was identical with the authority. 
The authority is always the same, 

* Baron Hiibner's Life of Sixlits V. p. 39. 



A Novel Defence of Protestantism. 



and never varies, because it is di- 
vine, Christ-given ; but its exercise 
varies according to the " needs 
and exigencies" of the times. 
Thus, the authority was exercised 
in the earliest period of the church 
in face of martyrdom, or in the 
Catacombs, or in later times in ex- 
ile, and was extended, by the com- 
mon consent of Christendom, large- 
ly into the domain of politics ; and 
in our day it has been restricted, 
and possesses scarcely any politi- 
cal or temporal status. And yet in 
no period in the history of the 
church has the divine right of the 
papal authority been so unreserv- 
edly acknowledged by so many 
souls, and so widely exercised, as at 
the present day, when the author 
under review would have us be- 
lieve that " the strength of the Pa- 
pacy is decreasing rapidly." But 
his theory of the natural evolution 
of the government of the church 
of Christ exacts the extinction of 
the Papacy, and he is bound to 
play the part of its executioner 
and kill the pope, if he can. The 
attempt is rash, and he ought to 
take the warning conveyed by the 
words of M. Thiers, that those who 
partake of such food are sure to 
die of it : Lc Pape ! qui en mange, 
i'n ineurt. 

" To make transitions to Rome 
is to go backwards." Not if the 
going away from Rome was turn- 
ing one's back upon God's holy 
church. To retrace a misstep is 
not a backward but a forward 
movement. And Protestantism was 
not an effort after a higher stage of 
Christian life, but the emancipation 
of the passions of men, under the 
pretext of the liberty of the Gospel, 
from the wholesome restraints of 
God's holy law. Hence thousands, 
and among the best, the brightest, 
and most enlightened of Protes- 



tants, convinced of this, have revers- 
ed the movement of the religious re- 
volution of the sixteenth century 
by making the transition to Rome. 

"Transition to Rome . . . is giv- 
ing up the idea of development." 
Indeed ! How is it, then, that one 
of the most distinguished scholars 
of this century, Cardinal Newman, 
gives as the motive for his transi- 
tion to Rome that Rome was a de- 
velopment of Christianity and Pro- 
testantism was not? Has Dr. San- 
tee read Cardinal Newman's Essay 
on Development of Christian Doc- 
trine ? If not, he should ; and'if he 
finds it not convincing its refu- 
tation would be a task worthy of 
his pen. Protestantism, looked at 
either from a historical or philoso- 
phical stand-point, was not a devel- 
opment of Christianity, but a revolt 
against Christianity. 

" Transition to Rome . . . is sur- 
rendering so much truth." Is it? 
But what Christian truth has Pro- 
testantism on which it speaks with 
unfaltering voice ? Not one. Put 
all its negations together, and not a 
single revealed truth of Christianity 
remains standing. Put all its af- 
firmations together, and you have 
nearly all the body of truths of 
the Catholic faith. If Protestan- 
tism be right in its denials, then 
there is not a word of truth in 
Christianity ; and if it be true in 
its beliefs, then Catholicity is Chris- 
tianity. The transition to Rome 
is not the surrender of any one 
Christian truth, but the road to 
that centre which in its divine 
unity embraces all truth. 

" God is in history, the Lord is in 
the church." Undoubtedly ; but so 
to interpret history and explain the 
church as to place " God in his- 
tory " in antagonism to " the Lord 
in the church, "as the article in the 
Reformed Quarterly. Review does, is, . 



388 



A Novel Dejence of Protestantism. 



to say the least and in the mildest 
way, very absurd. 

" The Lord takes care of his own, 
and that golden thread will ever be 
unbroken, but extends onwards." 
The idea that " the golden thread " 
by which we suppose the author 
means the divine life 'and unity of 
the church will repiain "unbrok- 
en " and " intact," which are oft-re- 
peated expressions from his pen, 
is a great truth, looking at the 
church on her divine side, but also 
.a great error if you look at the 
church on the human side. For 
what, is the Christian Church ? 
The Christian Church is a creation 
of Christ. Its nature is the same 
as Christ's, constituted of two es- 
sential elements, the divine and the 
human. On the divine side she is 
one, holy, indestructible, " a glori- 
ous church, without spot or wrin- 
.kle or any such thing, but holy and 
without blemish"; "the pillar and 
ground of truth "; always perfect 
and always beautiful. Such is the 
divine side of the church. What, 
.now, is her human side ? The hu- 
man side of the church is consti- 
tuted by her members, men, wo- 
men, children, with their ignorance, 
.weaknesses, propensities to sin. 
;Her popes, bishops, priests, and 
.people are not superhuman beings 
dropped down from the skies into 
her lap, but just such beings as we 
.are, and liable to sin and to lose 
the grace of God. Hence the church, 
on the divine side, is always perfect ; 
on the human side always imper- 
fect. Now, one may attack the 
church, but never prevail against 
her ; one may separate from the 
church, but not break her unity, for 
Christ is her life and her unity is 
divine. So far Dr. Santee is cor- 
rect. But it is quite another mat- 
ter to apply this to the human side 
of the diur.ch. Her members may 
disobey her authority, as the so-call- 



ed Reformers did in the sixteenth 
century, and separate from her ; and 
though her divine life and unity re- 
mained intact and unbroken, so 
far as she was concerned, it was not 
so with them, for Christ taught that 
" he that heareth not the church, let 
him be to thee as a heathen and a 
publican" that is, he who know- 
ingly refuses to hear the church 
wilfully turns his back upon God 
and his apostle teaches that 
" dissensions " and " sects " are not 
the work of the Spirit but " of the 
flesh," and " that they who do 
such things shall not obtain the 
kingdom of God." So much for 
the instigators and abettors of the 
Protestant movement three centu- 
ries ago. It is otherwise with 
those who have been born in sepa- 
ration from the church; they do not 
partake of this sin until they see 
the guilt of its originators and pro- 
moters. They may be until then 
in a state of grace, for they are not 
deprived of all its channels, nor the 
principal one, which is baptism ; 
and therefore the golden thread of 
divine life in such souls is " unbro- 
ken," and they are really and truly 
in the church, notwithstanding they 
know her not, and may, in their 
ignorance, oppose and persecute 
her, for all who are united to God 
through the grace of Christ are 
members of the Catholic Church. 

"The Lord will bring order out 
of confusion." Certainly he will, 
but it is quite a different point to 
make him, as the drift of the argu- 
ment of this article does, the author 
of confusion. It is not the grace 
of God that has led the sheep of 
Christ's flock astray from the shep- 
herd whom he has appointed to feed 
and take care of them, and when- 
ever they are willing to return and 
hear his voice Christ will lead them 
back to his flock, and " there shall 
be one fold and one shepherd." 






Mount Metier ay and the Blackwater, or Irish Rhine. 389 



MOUNT MELLERAY 



AND THE BLACKWATER, OR IRISH 
RHINE. 



" Oh ! I'll sing to-night of a fairy-land, in the lap of Ocean set, 
And of all the lands I've travelled o'er 'tis the loveliest I have met ; 
Where the willows weep, and the roses sleep, and the balmy breezes blow, 
In that dear old land, that sweet old land, where the beautiful rivers flow." 



THERE is hardly a spot in Ire- 
land over which the hand of Nature 
has not spread some charm of 
beauty. There are some spots, 
however, which seem to have cen- 
tred in themselves a more than 
usual share of Nature's charms; and 
very distinguished among these is 
the vale of the Blackwater, espe- 
cially that part of it between Yough- 
al and Lismore. The Blackwater 
is fitly styled the Irish Rhine; for, 
besides the beauty and grandeur of 
its natural scenery, it is dotted with 
the ruins of abbey and castle, that 
speak of saint and hero whose 
ashes have long since been min- 
gled in the peace and silence of the 
tomb. It must have been among 
such scenes as line the shores of 
the Blackwater that the charming 
Irish girl, " Mary of the Nation," 
was dwelling when she wrote: "I 
often wonder what kind of a coun- 
try God intends for our home, 
since he gave us this for our exile." 
The beauty of the Blackwater may, 
perhaps, account in some measure 
for the longevity of the people liv- 
ing near, for we may naturally sup- 
pose they are loath to bid a lasting 
farewell to a scene so fair. Dro- 
mana Castle, which occupies one of 
the loveliest situations on the banks 
of this beautiful river, is remark- 
able as the birth-place of the Coun- 
tess of Desmond, who lived to the 
good old age of one hundred and 
forty years, and then didn't die at 
all but was killed by a fall from a 



cherry-tree a pertinent warning to 
all Irish ladies at her time of life 
to give up their wild practice of 
climbing cherry-trees. I myself 
met, not far from the banks of the 
Blackwater, an old man who said 
he fought among the men of '98 at 
the battle of Vinegar Hill, where 
he was shot in the hand; and he 
showed me the hand, which bore 
very evident marks of a gunshot 
wound. He said he was one hun- 
dred and seven years of age, and I 
have no reason in the world to 
doubt his word. The day I met 
him was Sunday, and he was re- 
turning home up the mountain-side 
after having attended Mass at the 
church of the monastery. From 
his manner and appearance he 
might easily pass for a man of sixty, 
even in Ireland. The guest-mas- 
ter of Mt. Melleray, in whose com- 
pany I was at the time, knew the 
old man well, but did not cast the 
slightest suspicion on his honesty 
and truthfulness. On the way 
down the mountain he told me the 
old man was never known to have 
been a day sick in his life ; that the 
nearest approach to sickness was a 
little fainting-spell which came on 
him not long ago while hearing 
Mass at the monastery, and the 
thing was so unusual that he 
thought his last hour had come. 

On an island in the Blackwater, 
about a mile above Youghal, are 
the ruins of a castle built by the 
Knights Templars, and of an abbey 



390 Mount Melleray and the Blackwater, or Irish Rhine. 



founded by St. Molanfide in the 
year 501. 

The bones of one of Strongbow's 
companions, Raymond le Gros, are 
said to lie buried in the monastery ; 
but it is a very small matter to any 
Irishman whether they are buried 
there or not. 

Lismore, situated some twenty 
miles above the mouth of the 
Blackwater, is a pretty town, clean 
and well built. In other days it 
was the site of one of Ireland's 
most famous universities. Here 
in former times, when Ireland prov- 
ed by glorious results how capable 
she was of governing her own peo- 
ple, some five thousand scholars 
sat and learned at the feet of Irish 
masters. Alfred the Great, the fa- 
ther of English liberty a man 
whose name and fame would do 
honor to any age or any country, 
and who did so much to shed a 
halo of glory round one of the 
most barbarous periods of English 
history was once a pupil in the 
University of Lismore. No trace 
of the university remains. The 
place where it once stood, and 
where the glad shout of the Irish 
student once resounded, is now oc- 
cupied by the silent and stately 
castle of the Duke of Devonshire. 
The castle is a splendid specimen 
of the feudal Gothic, and from its 
princely halls and lofty towers 
some of the most extended and 
loveliest views of the Blackwater 
scenery may be obtained. 

One of the towers, which bears 
his name, was the resting-place of 
King James II., who, according to 
the testimony of an Irish lady, 
could outrun any man born in Ire- 
land. Another tower is named 
after King John, who here presid- 
ed over the first English parlia- 
ment ever held in Ireland. It were 
well for Ireland had the English 



Jameses and Johns no towers 
named after them in her land, and 
if they themselves had never set 
foot on the banks of her beautiful 
rivers. 

Part of this Castle of Lismore is 
said to be of great antiquity, but 
those who wish to read a detailed 
description of the building can do 
so by consulting Black's Guide to 
Ireland. As for me, there is little 
about the castle round which mem- 
ory loves to linger. Its beauty is 
like that of the mausoleum erected 
above the remains of a great man ; 
and hardly that, for the mausoleum 
may have some connection with 
the fame and the history of him 
who sleeps beneath it ; but, so far as 
I know, this grand ducal castle has 
no connection with the greatness 
it covers. Besides, its very exist- 
ence is a sad commentary on Eng- 
lish misrule in Ireland. It is a 
real " banquet-hall deserted," and 
one might easily imagine it was 
built as the haunt for the spirits of 
the old professors and monks who 
once made the name of Lismore 
glorious among the nations of Eu- 
rope. When I saw it a few months 
ago its sole occupant was one ser- 
vant; and the very thought of it is 
enough to make one wish that all 
the dukes and duchesses were gone 
out from its castle halls for ever, 
and the castle itself made what it 
ought to be a real Irish univer- 
sity. 

But let us turn aside from dukes 
and castle halls to view a scene 
more pleasing to Irish and Catho- 
lic hearts. 

Seven miles away from the Cas- 
tle of Lismore, and nestling at the 
feet of the Knockmealdown Moun- 
tains, is the far-famed Abbey of 
Mt. Melleray. The name of Mt. 
Melleray was familiar to me, hav- 
ing often heard it spoken of by an 



Mount Metier ay and the Blackwatcr, or Irish Rhine. 391 



old and much-esteemed companion 
of college days, who had spent 
some time in the school attached 
to the monastery. By the way, I 
met in this same school a bright 
young Irish-American lad all the 
way from St. Teresa's parish, New 
York City. 

According to Black's Guide, Mt. 
Melleray is chiefly remarkable as 
the abode of a community of monks 
living under a very severe rule. 
They sleep, it says, only five or six 
hours; and though the community 
is chiefly of native Irish, it was 
made up originally of some French 
Cistercians whom the revolution 
of 1830 forced to quit France. 
Neither of these statements is cor- 
rect. The monks are allowed seven 
or eight hours of sleep out of the 
twenty-four, and the Cistercian 
monks who were banished from 
France by the revolution of 1830, 
and who settled at Melleray, were 
all either Irish or English. 

A drive of seven miles on an Irish 
jaunting-car brought me from Lis- 
more through Cappoquin to Mt. 
Melleray. A monk with a sweet 
smile, and a face as rosy and bright 
as a young boy's, met me at the 
door and bade me welcome. As no 
one is supposed to visit Melleray 
save for the good of his soul, 1 told 
the good monk who received me 
that I had come to make a few days' 
retreat. I was immediately con- 
ducted to a good-sized room, neat- 
ly carpeted, in what is termed the 
guest-house. The furniture of the 
room consisted of a bed, a few 
chairs, a table, and some pious 
books. At supper-time I found 
some twenty guests assembled in 
the dining-room. This assembly is 
constantly changing from day to day, 
new guests coming in, old ones go- 
ing away. There is always spirit- 
ual reading going on during the 



meal, because, as already stated, 
all are supposed to be on retreat 
during their stay at the monastery. 
The quality of food given to guests 
is plain and plentiful, but in no way 
sumptuous. An opportunity for re- 
treat is here afforded to all classes 
of persons. There are lodging- 
houses outside the monastery, where 
women can secure comfortable 
quarters, while they can make all 
the spiritual exercises of retreat in 
the church attached to the monas- 
tery. Men, whether lay or cleri- 
cal, are received within the enclo- 
sure and lodged in the guest-house, 
which really forms part of the mon- 
astery itself. The church and mon- 
astery are not very remarkable in 
an architectural point of view, and 
were built, evidently, more with an 
idea to utility than beauty and 
show. The interior of the church, 
besides the space occupied by the 
stalls of the community, and which 
forms the choir proper, affords 
ample room for a large number of 
visitors. Only men, however, are 
admitted into this part of the church, 
though I think there is a gallery 
from which ladies may take a look 
in and be edified. 

During the first few days*of my 
stay at Melleray I saw little of the 
place, except the garden, my own 
room, and the church. From the 
garden of the monastery, itself a 
lovely spot, there is a very exten- 
sive view of the surrounding coun- 
try, which for beauty is almost in- 
comparable. All around you are 
the green fields and hills, dotted 
with pretty cottages, where, only for 
the labor and example of the monks, 
nothing save the wild mountain 
heather could be seen. A few 
miles away is the Blackwater, slow- 
ly winding its way onwards to the 
sea amid scenes teeming with love- 
liness and rich in history and story; 



3Q2 Mount Melleray and the Blackivatcr, or Irish RJiinc. 



l>ack of you are the wild Knock- 
mealdown Mountains, lifting their 
heathery heads heavenward, from 
which, if you have courage enough 
to climb them, you may look out 
over the broad Atlantic, whose 
waves, as they break on the rocky 
Irish coast, " clap their broad hands 
for glee," proud that nature has ac- 
corded them the privilege of keep- 
ing guard round a land so fair. 

All persons staying at the mon- 
astery are expected to attend the 
High Mass which is sung every 
day, and the chanting of the office 
in choir, except that part of it 
which is said during the night. 
The music in use at Melleray is 
the very plainest of plain chant. 
One can recognize in it no "proud 
swellings," no soft harmonies, no 
sweet murmurabulations nothing, 
in fact, but the plain chant, with 
here and there an occasional nasal 
accompaniment; for not all the 
Irish monks are good singers, and 
more is the pity, because all seem 
very anxious to sing. It seems that 
the abbot, in order to aid their good 
will, procured an organ some time 
ago, which is now used to keep the 
monks in tune; but the organ itself 
appears to be rather wheezy and 
all its notes set in sharps. How- 
ever, being neither a musician nor 
a good singer myself, the poor sing- 
ing of some of the old monks did 
not much trouble me, especially as 
I knew they were thinking of God, 
and not of what this one or that 
thought of their singing. 

The main altar in the church is 
very beautiful, and back of it is a 
fine stained-glass window with a 
charming picture of Our Blessed 
Lady holding our divine Lord upon 
her lap, and a bright-faced angel 
on either side. There was a sweet, 
motherly look on the face of Our 
Blessed Lady which won my heart. 



1 could sit and look at that win- 
ning face,' which spoke of God and 
heaven, for hours and hours with- 
out wishing to do anything else. 
No office seemed long while I could 
sit and gaze on that beautiful pic- 
ture. This is a sad kind of a world 
at best, and the longer we live and 
the more experience we get the 
more this truth grows upon us. 
This is a world whose sunshine 
suddenly changes to gloom, even 
while we are basking in it ; a world 
where fond ties are formed to be 
some day rudely snapped asunder. 
Still, I think if, after all theups and 
downs, the hours of sunshine and 
the days of gloom, we may one day 
come to see in heaven that Mother's 
face, which we know is a thousand 
times more beautiful there than the 
highest art can paint it here; if 
we may be allowed some day to 
kneel at that Lady's feet in the land 
where her Son is King, and she in- 
deed is Queen, and have the joy of 
feeling her warm hand laid with a 
mother's blessing on our head, and 
be allowed to hear from her own 
mouth the sweet welcome home 
with which she greets her children, 
then will every cloud be dispelled 
from our heart, and naught but the 
joy of eternal sunshine remain. 

A very remarkable character 
among the monks of Mt. Melleray 
is Father Paul, a great confessor 
for the ladies. Father Paul looks 
like one who, having been dead 
and buried, got permission to come 
back to earth in order to preach of 
death and the grave by look and 
word to -others. Why he is so 
popular with the ladies I am sure 
I don't know, unless it comes from 
the fact that this fair portion of 
humanity is apt to go from one ex- 
treme to the other. The man, 
however, who caught my eye and 
won my heart was Father Alphon- 



Mount Mellcray and the Bletckiuatcr, or Irish Rhine. 



393 



sus, a really wonderful fellow. We 
took to one another immensely 
from the start, on the ground, I 
suppose, that nature has wisely es- 
tablished a mutual sympathy be- 
tween strength on the one hand 
and weakness on the other. Fa- 
ther Alphonsus must be well ad- 
vanced in years, but his age sits 
lightly on him. He looks like the 
pictures one sees of the high-priest 
Melchisedech ; and when he looks 
straight at you, and gives his leath- 
ern belt a twitch with one hand 
while he rubs down his gray beard 
with the other, he makes you feel 
like saying to him : " Lead on, O 
father ! Whithersoever thou shalt 
go I will go; thy people shall be 
my people." Father Alphonsus had 
been in America, and in New York; 
and this fact, of course, served to 
cement the bond between us. He 
was once pastor of a church in the 
West Indies, but an earthquake 
walked in to see him one day, and 
in going out it shook his little 
church all to pieces; and this, of 
course, forced him to corne to New 
York, the fame of whose charity 
has gone abroad among the na- 
tions. He afterwards returned to 
his native land, where he became a 
canon, and pastor of one of the 
most important parishes in the 
metropolitan city of Dublin. Fi- 
nally he made up his mind to hide 
himself away in . the monastery of 
La Trappe, and to exchange the 
high old name of Butler for simple 
Father Alphonsus ; still, he carries 
the martial air of his name and 
race even under the monkish cowl. 
It would be well worth a person's 
while to go from here to Mt. Melle- 
ray for the sake of meeting such a 
man as Father Alphonsus. 

As my health was poor, Father 
Alphonsus thought it would be un- 
wise for me to make anything like 



a protracted retreat, so he told me 
to knock about and read some in- 
teresting book. The guest-master, 
Father Maurice, a most amiable 
man, took me all through the mon- 
astery, the various work-shops at- 
tached, and the schools. There 
are two schools, one for the poor 
children of the neighborhood, the 
other a classic boarding-school for 
boys. In this latter school I met 
my young friend from New York. 
The lodging-house for students at- 
tending this school is the hand- 
somest building in the whole 
neighborhood, and is situated at 
the entrance of a beautiful avenue 
leading up to the monastery. The 
charge for board and tuition is 
very small, being only something 
over a hundred dollars per year. 
I heard the exact sum stated, but 
have forgotten it. 

The monks are variously em- 
ployed, some in or about the mon- 
astery, some in teaching, some 
working on the farm ; and any one 
who wishes to find the idle and 
lazy monk so often spoken of and 
written about will search Melleray 
in vain, for no such character lives 
there. 

There are about seven hundred 
acres of land attached to the mon- 
astery, for which the monks pay 
w4iat in Ireland is called a nominal 
rent ; though it seems to me that 
when the labor of the monks, which 
has changed the barren heath into 
a fertile farm, is taken into ac- 
count, the annual rent about five 
hundred dollars is not so very 
nominal after all. I went on pur- 
pose to see some land which was 
under the process of reclaiming, 
and my honest opinion is that no 
Yankee farmer would take such 
land, even if offered a hundred 
dollars premium for every acre of 
it he succeeded in bringing under 



394 Mount Me Her ay and ike Blackwatcr, or Irish Rhine. 



cultivation. It must take years of 
labor and patient waiting before 
such land as I saw can be made 
productive. Yet I think Father 
Maurice told me that what I saw 
was some of the best of the land as 
it came into their possession. When 
the place was given to the monks 
there were about seven acres un- 
der cultivation ; the remainder was 
wild, mountain heather. Not only 
have the monks reclaimed their 
own land from wildness and bar- 
renness, but their example and 
success have been the means of 
reclaiming the land round about 
them ; so that, instead of being 
charged a rent, they ought to re- 
ceive a large percentage from the 
revenues accruing from every acre 
of reclaimed land. 'However, they 
make no complaint, but, on the 
contrary, seem thankful and grate- 
ful for what they have received, 
and show no disposition to take 
credit to themselves for what they 
give. No poor person comes to 
their door and goes away empty 
'and hungry. Any man can enter 
their guest-house, and be fed and 
cared for during two weeks, and 
when he goes away he may give 
something for the support of the' 
monastery or not as he pleases ; 
and if he gives nothing he hears 
no word of complaint about it. *I 
was told of a wealthy Englishman 
who, having heard of this, could not 
believe his ears, and so resolved to 
try by his own experience if such 
were really the case. Year after 
year lie came to Melleray, remain- 
ed the full time, and went his way, 
paying nothing, until at last, fully 
satisfied that the generous hospi- 
tality of the monks was a reality as 
well as a name, he sent them a 
bountiful donation to aid them to 
continue it. 

The monks themselves, by their 



rule, are allowed only one meal in 
the day; but this rule may be modi- 
fied in favor of those who are weak 
and sickly. Their meals do not 
vary much in the quality of the vic- 
tuals, which always consist of bread 
and vegetables; and, from what I 
heard one of the monks at Melle- 
ray say, a man might just as well 
attempt to analyze a dish of Ameri- 
can " hash " as to judge of the kind 
of vegetables that go to make up 
the dinner of a Trappist monk, 
once they are served at table. It 
would seem as though everything 
is chopped up fine enough to pass 
through a sieve, and any bit of 
cabbage or other esculent refus- 
ing to go through that operation is 
rejected as unfit for a monk's pal- 
ate. On great feast-days, it seems, 
they get some little extra in the 
way of food. A friend of mine, 
who happened to be stopping at 
the monastery on the feast of St. 
Bernard, asked one of the fathers 
what they were going to have for 
dinner in honor of the great festi- 
val. " Besides our usual fare," he 
replied, " we will get a little bit of 
cheese about two inches square." 

Whatever may be said about the 
character of their diet, the monks, 
as a rule, seem to thrive upon it, 
and a healthier or happier-looking 
lot of men it would be very hard 
to find. They are so simple-mind- 
ed and innocent that, like children, 
a little thing makes them happy. 
Although they observe perpetual 
silence, except when employed in 
offices for the discharge of which 
talking is a necessity, still I am 
sure they have their own little 
jokes and quiet merriment among 
themselves, all of which they fully 
enjoy. 

They go to bed at seven o'clock 
in the evening, and rise at t\vo in 
the morning. In summer the hour 



Mount Mcllcray and the Blackwater, cr Irish RJiine. 395 



for retiring is eight in the evening, 
but the hour for rising is the same 
the whole year round. They are 
allowed to take a nap of about an 
hour during a certain part of the 
day. They sleep in a common 
dormitory, but each monk has a 
little apartment walled off for him- 
self. Their beds are made of 
planks, and over each bed is 
thrown a little straw mattress, 
which, perhaps, serves to delude 
the imagination with an* idea of 
softness. However, if Shakspere 
be any authority in the matter, it 
seems that soft couches and silken 
canopies are not the best incen- 
tives to sleep. 

" Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, 
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, 
And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slum- 
ber; 

Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, 
Under the canopies of costly state, 
And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody ?" 

In spite of their hard beds, the 
Trappist monks must sleep well, 
else they would not look so happy. 

The few days I expected to 
spend at Melleray were lengthen- 
ed out almost to a full week; and 
during that week I don't think 
I could have been happier in any 
other spot of earth than I was 
there. Towards the end of my 
stay I came across a history of 
the Cistercian Order ; and I am 
sorry I did not come across it 
sooner, as it might then have 
proved of more advantage, be- 
cause, as it was, I had hardly 
time to do more than read over the 
history of Melleray proper, and to 
make from it a few hurried ex- 
tracts. If the author of the Cis- 
tercian history whose name is 
likely written in the Book of Life, 
though it is not on the title-page 
of his work should happen to come 
across these extracts, I feel confi- 
dent he will not be displeased with 



the use I have made of them ; and 
if they prove as interesting to 
others as they did to me, then I 
shall be more than amply repaid 
for whatever little labor they have 
cost me. 

The primeval Melleray, which 
has given its name to all the others, 
is situated in Brittany near Chateau- 
briant, in the diocese of Nantes. 
The history of this first Melleray 
carries us back to the very middle 
of the middle ages those ages of 
great faith which produced so many 
great men and great works. How- 
ever, as we learn from the history 
of Meileray, great charity did not 
always accompany the great faith 
of those times. In the year 1145 
two religious were sent out from 
the monastery of Ponteron, near 
Angers, to select a site for the 
foundation of a new monastery. 
Tired and footsore with their jour- 
ney, these poor religious sought 
hospitality for the night in the vil- 
lage of Moisdon, but they sought 
it in vain. They received nothing 
but the cold shoulder from pastor 
and people, and were forced to seek 
among the beasts of the forest the 
shelter for the night which was de- 
nied them among a Christian and 
Catholic people. Finding in the 
forest the trunk of a hollow tree, 
they blessed it with a sweeter bene- 
diction than Sancho Panza ever be- 
stowed upon his blanket, for they 
knew it would cover them all over. 
Scrambling into the hollow trunk, 
they found their way impeded by a 
honeycomb; but you may be sure 
this did not long impede the two 
tired and hungry monks. Having 
satisfied their hunger, they rolled 
themselves up in the tree, blessing 
God, who had not only provided 
them with a bed and blankets of 
Nature's best make, but fed them 
besides with the sweetest meal they 



336 Mount Mellcray and the Blackivatcr* or Irish Rlnnc. 



had eaten for many a long day. 
This providential circumstance 
marked the place for the new mon- 
astery, and a house of hospitality 
was opened, where a daily lesson 
of hospitality was taught for many a 
year to the inhabitants of an inhos- 
pitable region. The name, Meil- 
leraie or Melleray, preserves the 
memory of the honey and the ho- 
neycomb which formed the welcome 
and dainty supper of the two poor 
religious who were so unkindly 
treated by their fellow-men. 

July 29, 1830, Charles X. was 
driven from the throne of France, 
and Louis Philippe, Duke of Or- 
leans, became regent of the em- 
pire. This change of government 
made Father Anthony, who first 
was abbot of St. Susan's, Lull- 
worth, in England, and who had 
transferred his community from St. 
Susan's back to Melleray, in France, 
anxious to embrace an offer from 
the Archbishop of Dublin to found 
a house of Cistercian monks in Ire- 
land. Father Vincent Ryan and 
Father Malachy were sent as the 
pioneers of this new Irish foun- 
dation. Father Vincent, however, 
found the establishment of a Trap- 
pist house in Ireland a more diffi- 
cult task than his good father 
abbot in France had anticipated. 
He succeeded at length in renting 
a place at Rathmore, in the Coun- 
ty Kerry, about twelve miles from 
the far-famed Lakes of Killarney. 
This foundation did not last, and 
was afterwards transferred to the 
present Mt. Melleray, in the County 
Waterford, not far from the banks 
of the Blackwater. The revolution 
of July shut out all hope of return 
to France, and made Father Vin- 
cent see that it was absolutely ne- 
cessary for himself and his breth- 
ren to seek some permanent foun- 
dation in his native land. In Au- 



gust, 183 1, the government suppress- 
ed the community of Melleray in 
France. It was declared, in virtue 
of an ordinance sanctioned by Na- 
poleon, that Melleray was an illegal 
and unconstitutional establishment. 
Ordinances which later govern- 
ments had abolished were brought 
into requisition to accomplish the 
entire destruction of the monastery. 
How much the general government 
was to blame for these proceedings 
I am unable to say, but certainly it 
would be hard to find a more un- 
manly and unjust persecution than 
that to which the poor monks of 
Melleray were at this time subject- 
ed in the highly civilized land of 
France. The conduct of Mr. Henry 
Newman, British consul at Nantes, 
forms the bright side in the dark 
picture of this persecution against 
the monks. Mr. Newman's be- 
havior throughout the history of 
this sad affair was all that could be 
expected from a Christian and a 
gentleman. No praise would be 
too much for the efforts he made to 
protect the monks, and save France 
the disgrace of expelling from her 
shores a community of innocent 
men ; and if his efforts were un- 
successful it was because no man 
can teach justice and discretion to 
a lot of unruly Frenchmen, once 
their blood is up. You might just 
as well try to teach the dynamite 
Irish patriots that violent talk and 
squibs will never upset the power 
of England. 

Sixty-four of the monks expelled 
from Melleray were conveyed to 
Ireland in a sloop-of-war provid- 
ed for the purpose by the French 
government. The monks them- 
selves chose Ireland as their desti- 
nation, and when they reached the 
Irish shore all except five or six 
went in a body to Father Vincent 
Ryan at Raihrnore. Father Vin- 



Mount Mclleray and the Blackivatcr, or Irish Rhine. 397 



cent gave those who wished for it 
leave to seek a home elsewhere, as 
he and his community were in 
very straitened circumstances ; but 
only a few availed themselves of 
this permission, the greater part 
preferring to stay with their breth- 
ren and share their fortune, such as 
it was or might be. 

Sir Richard Keane, a Protestant 
gentleman, had lately made over to 
Father Vincent about six hundred 
acres of barren mountain land near 
Cappoquin, in the County Water- 
ford. At present they (the monks) 
occupy about seven hundred acres. 
Probably in the beginning they 
paid a much smaller rent for the 
land than they do at present, as 
the Cistercian history states that 
the rent exacted by Sir Richard 
Keane was a mere nominal affair; 
but whatever it was in the begin- 
ning, we have seen that at present, 
all circumstances being taken into 
account, it is not so very nominal. 
In 1832 five lay brothers or con- 
vert brothers, as they are styled in 
Cistercian annals were sent to be- 
gin the enclosing and cultivation of 
this new tract of land. These 
brave monks came to the land 
pointed out to them, with nothing 
in their hands save, perhaps, a 
stout Irish blackthorn, and without 
either scrip or purse in their pock- 
et. They had neither camels nor 
tents, and their only protection 
against the inclemency of the 
weather was their faith and trust in 
Providence. However, they were 
in the midst of Irish charity, and 
cold indeed must be the heart that 
would fail to warm. About seven 
acres of the land allotted to the 
monks were under cultivation, and 
on this tract was a cottage occupied 
by a keeper of moorlands. This 
cottage Sir Richard gave the monks 
for their immediate use. The poor 



Irish people who prayed God-speed 
to the monks as they wended their 
way up the steep mountain-side 
might say with truth : " Silver and 
gold we have not ; but what God and 
nature have given us, and what our 
enemies have been unable to take 
from us, that is at your service." 
The poor Irish peasants had no 
money to give, but they could give 
their time and labor ; and these they 
did give with a heart and a half. 
Father Qualey, of Modeligo, heard 
of the coming of the monks, and 
uttered the battle-cry that goes to 
every Irish heart for " God and 
the cowled head!" and faster than 
you could count them three hun- 
dred able-bodied parishioners were 
at his side, as faithful and true to 
their parish priest as ever the Old 
Guard was to the first Napoleon. 
And here I may add that an Irish 
parish priest is not a man any 
guard need be ashamed to follow. 
Physically, intellectually, and mo- 
rally the Irish parish priests are 
fit to stand at the head of the Irish 
race. I was struck with admiration 
at what I may call the physical 
grandeur of the Irish clergy, and 
can only account for it in this way : 
that when an Irish mother wishes 
to offer a child to God and to the 
service of his altar, it is not a 
" sprishaun " she carries thither. 
She selects the flower of the flock 
as the only fit offering to be made 
to Him who gave his only-begotten 
Son for her sake. 

Not one of the three hundred 
men who followed Father Qualey 
but was animated to redoubled en- 
ergy by the word and example of 
their worthy pastor. The cry to 
arms was carried over every hill 
and echoed along the shores of the 
Blackwater, and soon Father Walsh, 
of Cappoquin, and his brave curate 
at the head of two thousand stal- 



3QS Mount Melleray and the Blackivatcr, or Irish Rhine. 



wart sons of toil, each bearing on 
his shoulder a spade or some other 
agricultural weapon, were seen 
inarching to the assistance of the 
monks whose brethren in the ages 
past and gone had shed such a 
halo of glory and sanctity round 
old Erin's Isle. No sooner was 
one body of men weary of the toil 
and labor for the monks than an- 
other body was at hand fresh and 
anxious to take their place. One 
party of laborers came from a vil- 
lage in the County Cork, sixteen 
miles away, They left home at 
seven o'clock in the evening, ar- 
rived at the monks' temporary cha- 
pel at three o'clock the next morn- 
ing, heard the first Mass, then set 
to work with a will, and continued 
at it till a late hour in the after- 
noon. Their day's work done, they 
set out on their return to their 
homes, where they arrived about 
the hour of midnight. As they en- 
tered the village from which they 
had started the day before they 
met another company just setting 
out for the monastery to do as they 
had done. In fact, the whole coun- 
try was up and doing, determin- 
ed that the monks should have a 
home once again in old Ireland, or 
else Irish spades should lose their 
virtue and Irish hands their cun- 
ning. No noble work for God or 
country was ever accomplished in 
Erin's land in the doing of which 
the daughters of Erin have not had 
a large share; and the settlement of 
a home for the monks at Mt. Mel- 
leray was no exception to this rule. 
In each company that came to 
clear away the rocks and barren 
heath from the land assigned to 
the Cistercian monks were many 
respectable farmers' wives and 
daughters; and many, doubtless, 
were the friendly contests between 
the aged matrons and the young 



girls as to who could do most in 
preparing a home for the monks 
who, they felt by some divine in- 
stinct, would be the means of 
bringing down blessings on them- 
selves and those they loved. 

Soon twenty-five acres of land 
were cleared and enclosed, and pre- 
pared for cultivation. A building 
20 by 119 feet, two stories high, 
was erected and made ready to 
receive the monks still to come. 
Soon the waste land round about 
the new monastery was purchas- 
ed and brought under cultivation, 
and property that hitherto had 
been of little or no value became 
the home and support of thousands 
of peaceful and industrious inhabi- 
tants. 

The dark spot on this sunny 
picture is the fact that the poor 
people, after having reclaimed the 
land from barrenness and waste, 
found that the landlord, instead of 
rewarding their labor, had doubled 
their rents. 

Mt. Melleray grew and prosper- 
ed, and was quickly raised to the 
dignity of an abbey, Father Vincent 
Ryan being appointed by Gregory 
XVI. the first mitred abbot, with 
jurisdiction entirely independent 
of the mother-house in France. 
Father Vincent was the first abbot 
consecrated in Ireland since the Re- 
formation spread its blight worse 
than the potato-blight over the 
land of St. Patrick. The consecra- 
tion of the new abbot took place 
in the private chapel of Dr. Abra- 
ham, Bishop of Waterford. on May 
17, 1835. The first stone of the 
building which now constitutes the 
abbey was laid by Sir Richard 
Keane on the feast of St. Bernard, 
August 20, 1833. The stone was 
blessed by Dr. Abraham in pre- 
sence of a large number of clergy, 
besides some twenty thousand lay 



Mount Mcllcray and the Blacku*atcr, cr Irish Rhine. 



399 






persons. It was occupied by the 
community in 1838, and Mass was 
celebrated in the church for the 
first time on October 21 of the 
same year. Father Vincent Ryan 
died December 9, 1845, at the age 
of fifty-seven, and in the thirty- 
fourth year of his religious profes- 
sion, leaving after him the reputa- 
tion of a kind and amiable superior. 
In 1838 Daniel O'Connell made 
ii retreat at Mt. Melleray. Lord 
Stuart de Decies, hearing O'Connell 
was at the abbey, called upon him ; 
but Dan refused to see him, on the 
ground that he was just then en- 
gaged with a greater Lord than any 
lord of earth. This circumstance 
was told me by one of the monks, 
who knew Dan well ; and the story 
is in keeping with the character of 
the man, who never allowed respect 
for persons to interfere with any 
duty to God or principle. O'Con- 
nell was one of those truly great 
men who, feeling that all their 
greatness comes from God, are not 
ashamed to confess that truth be- 
fore men. The greatest of living 
American orators, who speaks of 
O'Connell from personal knowledge 
of the man, has told us that he 
combined in himself all that was 
worth admiring in the eloquence 
of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Choate, 
and Everett. 

When O'Connell presented him- 
self at the bar of the British Par- 
liament and asked leave to plead 
his right to take his seat in that 
assembly, the leave was granted, 
not, likely, from any sense of justice 
or a willingness to admit the claim 
put forward, but from a curiosity 
to see the wild Irishman from 
Kerry, and to hear how his brogue 
would sound in the stronghold of 
English prejudice and religious hate. 
It was likely amid the derisive 
laughter of some and the incredu- 



lous gestures of others that O'Con- 
nell entered that hall where for 
three hundred years Protestant bi- 
gotry had sat as queen. He began 
and spoke as only O'Connell could 
speak. The Englishmen gazed at 
him and then at one another in 
utter astonishment, for they read 
in one another's eyes : 

" What ! is this your sample of 
the wild Irishman? Does this man 
belong to that race we have been 
taught to despise from our youth- 
up ? Surely never man spoke befoi e 
as this man speaks !" O'Connell 
seized and held up before their 
eyes that ugly monster of religious 
bigotry which for centuries had 
fattened on the blood and toil of 
oppressed millions, and, after prov- 
ing it deserving of death on a hun- 
dred counts, he strangled it in face 
of its friends, and then cast it at 
their feet a mangled and hideous 
corpse. But even its former friends 
refused to acknowledge the nasty 
thing or to grant it Christian bu- 
rial, and it was spurned from one 
to the other, until at last'the doors 
of Parliament were thrown wide 
open and the thing was kicked out, 
let us hope for ever, and Catholics 
were once again admitted to an as- 
sembly from which, whether Eng- 
lish or Irish, they had been exclud- 
ed for three centuries. 

After delivering that speech 
which battered down the accumu- 
lated prejudices of three hundred 
years, O'Connell retired into a 
corner of the apartment and began 
quietly to recite his beads. Yet 
this is the man whose name cer- 
tain would-be Irish patriots cannot 
mention without a slur or a sneer 
of contempt. Would to God there 
was one man, among all those who 
in our day put themselves forward 
as Irish patriots, like unto O'Con- 
nell ! 



400 



Apprenticeship Schools in France. 



In 1850 a filiation from Mt. Mel- 
leray was established near Du- 
buque, in the State of Iowa, un- 
der the name of Our Lady of La 
Trappe, New Melleray. 

This new foundation has already 
contributed two bishops to the 
hierarchy of the United States 
Smith and O'Gorman both of 
whom are now dead. A new branch 
from the Irish Melleray has been 
lately established near Roscrea, at 
a place in the King's County, Ire- 
land, under the title of Mt. St. 



Joseph. Ten thousand pounds 
about fifty thousand dollars were 
given towards the purchase of this 
new site by Sir Arthur Moore, mem- 
ber of Parliament for the County 
Tipperary. A considerable debt 
still remains to be paid, and a 
monastery and church are yet to 
be built ; but, notwithstanding, the 
monks have set to work trusting in 
God and the charity of their breth- 
ren, and surely the men who have 
made Mt. Melleray what it is to- 
day cannot fail at Mt. St. Joseph. 



APPRENTICESHIP SCHOOLS IN FRANCE.* 



AMONG the educational experi- 
ments made of late years in France 
two of the most successful and 
based on the largest scale are the 
Municipal School of Apprentices of 
La Villette (Paris) and the School 
of Watchmaking at Besancon, capi- 
tal of the department of Doubs, 
and centre of the watchmaking in- 
dustry in France. The Paris school 
prepares apprentices for various 
trades, the Besancon school for one 
only. Both are so organized that 
the hours given to study are balanc- 
ed by a large proportion of time 
devoted to hand-work and practi- 
cal instruction in it. 

The Ecole Municipale (TAppren- 
//V, founded in January, 1873, is a 
free school, chiefly due to the efforts 
of M. Greard, late director of pri- 
mary education for the department 
of the Seine, and at present vice- 
rector of the French Academy ; a 
man well known in connection with 
educational matters, and an advo- 



* Apprenticeship Schools in France, Silvanus 
P. Thompson. London : Hamilton, Adams & Co. 
1879. 



cate of technical education in any 
shape suitable to the local wants of 
any commune, parish, city, etc. All 
the municipal schools of Paris are 
free and organized on a very liberal 
scale; but this is also, to some ex- 
tent, self-supporting, since the ma- 
chinery, tools, furniture, etc., made 
by the pupils is either retained for 
the use of the school (unless, as some- 
times happens, the pupil buys his 
tools on leaving) or sold by the 
municipality to outsiders, the pro- 
ceeds, however, not going direct to 
the school, but to the municipal 
treasury. In 1878 four thousand 
francs' worth of such objects was 
sold, and a collection of models 
was furnished to a city school of 
apprenticeship just starting at Lille. 
In 1879 more than twelve thousand 
francs' worth of accessories has 
been made, and the sales increase 
each year as the permanent fittings 
cease to require addition or im- 
provement. The first expense was 
considerable, the buildings, altera- 
tions, and land (of which there is 
more than is needed) costing about 



Apprenticeship Schools in France. 



401 






600,000, and the outlay on school 
and workshop fittings having been 
over $50,000. This expense, how- 
ever, was not incurred at one time, 
the shops having been furnished 
piece by piece by the apprentices 
from the materials bought year by 
year. The necessary outfit of the 
metal-turning department largely 
exceeds that of the others, and up 
to last August the data of expenses 
attending the two new departments 
of locksmiths and makers of phi- 
losophical instruments had not been 
published. Salaries absorb over 
$5,000, and the purchase of raw 
materials about the same ; and, 
roughly estimated, the average 
yearly cost to the city of each pu- 
pil (there are 221 at present, though 
the number originally provided for 
was 175) comes to $250, while the 
average cost, calculated according 
to the capital invested in the land 
and buildings, etc., added to the 
annual outlay, is between $500 and 
600. 

The trades taught are those of 
a carpenter, wood-turner, pattern- 
maker, smith, fitter, metal-turner, 
locksmith, and maker of philosophi- 
cal instruments, the last two having 
been added in 1879. The appren- 
tices are admitted only between the 
ages of thirteen and sixteen, and 
such as have not obtained a certi- 
ficate attesting the completion of 
their elementary education are ad- 
mitted only after an examination 
of an equal standard of difficulty. 
The term is of three years, although 
no contract of apprenticeship is en- 
tered into, and includes not only 
general preparatory training, but 
full and practical initiation into the 
handicraft taught. The only money 
remuneration is a trifling fortnight- 
ly gratification of a few cents, in 
strict proportion to the satisfactori- 
ness of the pupil's work; and half 
VOL. xxx. 26 



of this is always retained for him 
in the school savings-bank. Mr. 
Thompson, who has personally 
studied the working of this school, 
and read a detailed account of it, 
and others like it, before the Politi- 
cal Economy Section of the British 
Association for the Advancement 
of Science, sitting at Sheffield, 
August, 1879, thus describes some 
of its characteristics : 

" An apprentice spends at first only 
five hours and a half per diem in the 
shops, and during his first year follows 
a fixed system of rotation first in the 
workshop for wood, then in the work- 
shop for metal. After trying his hand 
at carpentry for, say, six weeks, he will 
spend a couple of months in filing and 
chipping ; after that proceed to wood- 
turning, and so make the round of the 
various occupations in a preliminary way, 
picking up a general acquaintance with 
all of them, and executing, under careful 
direction, a course of preliminary exer- 
cises in each. His first year over, he 
makes his choice, and settles down to 
steady work at one department, his hand 
and head being alike benefited by the 
variety of experience he has had. Hence- 
forth the work which he executes will 
possess some intrinsic worth apart from 
the value it has had as a means of train- 
ing. . . . Henceforth, too, he spends a 
larger proportion of time in the work- 
shops. Apprentices of the third year 
give seven hours and a half to the shops 
and three hours to studies, general and 
technical. . . . All down one side of the. 
long workshop on the ground-floor an: 
ranged benches and vises for the ap- 
prentice fitters ; in the centre and at the 
nearer end the lathes for metal-turning, 
the planing-.machine, machines for drill- 
ing and punching, and a universal shap- 
ing-machine. Overhead runs the shaft- 
ing that brings the power from the motor, 
a semi-portable steam-engine of eleven 
horse-power, placed in an adjoining 
shed. It is managed by the apprentices 
themselves, the third year's pupils acting 
week-about as engineer, with a second- 
year's apprentice as stoker. At the far 
end of the room are the forges. . . . Two 
master-workmen suffice to superintend 
the fitters and metal-turners. . . . No 
piece of work does any pupil underta'c. 



402 



Apprenticeship Schools in France. 



which has not already been the subject 
first of a rough pencil-sketch with the 
dimensions scribbled upon it, and after- 
wards of a finished 'working-drawing' 
taken out to scale with ruler and com- 
passes. Each pupil has his drawing be- 
side him. His work, when finished, is 
noted down on the record, and his name 
is affixed to the article he has made, to- 
gether with other particulars such as, 
for example, the number of hours he has 
taken to complete it. The exercises he 
has to execute are chosen in accordance 
with a predetermined list, increasing in 
difficulty as his hand acquires practice. 
This gradual transition from the easiest 
to the most difficult tasks, so impossi- 
ble in the ordinary negligent and irregu- 
lar apprenticeship of the shops, is the 
surest way to excite in the budding ar- 
tisan the ambition to excel, and is the 
source of an enormous saving of time in 
his apprenticeship. . . . The greatest at- 
tention is paid to precision of work. 
Rules of thumb are absolutely forbidden ; 
the workman must do nothing without 
knowing why he does it. His tools 
must be made of a particular shape, their 
angles ground to a particular number of 
degrees not because such has always 
been the traditional practice of the shops, 
but because such and such a shape can 
he shown to give the greatest strength 
compatible with least material, or be- 
cause the particular angle prescribed is 
the one which experiment proves to be 
most effective for the work to which the 
tool is to be applied." 

Naturally, the spirit of enter- 
prise animates both masters and 
pupils, and the eager, workman-like 
pride might even lead to waste of 
time in trials of visionary improve- 
ments, did not the discretion of the 
director interfere ; but this depart- 
ment is fortunate in being under 
the management of a man M. 
Bocquet equally far from exagge- 
ration on the side of conservatism 
as on that of rashness, and who 
has taken advantage of this school 
as of a field in which to carry out 
many of the suggestions of Rou- 
leaux in his Treatise on Machi- 
nery. Several among the machines 
of the school workshop embody 



new inventions, especially a plan- 
ing-machine made by the appren- 
tices, with a novel automatic con- 
trivance for lifting the tool during 
the return ; also an ingenious ap- 
plication of the principle of the 
screw in a simple and safe piece of 
gearing to set some of the heavy 
lathes in action. The contempo- 
rary history of inventions is a part 
of the school-room training, and it 
even becomes a point of honor with 
the boys to inform themselves in- 
telligently and minutely of every 
instance of progress and improve- 
ment bearing upon their own branch 
of study. The workshop for wood 
illustrates the same spirit of tho- 
roughness, the work in every case 
being executed to scale from work- 
ing-drawings made by the pupils, 
each for himself. Great stress is 
laid upon the paramount import- 
ance of technical drawing, or, as 
Mr. Thompson appropriately calls 
it, industrial drawing, of which he 
says : 

- "... Let it be remembered that draw- 
ing is the language of the skilled con- 
structive industries just as essential to 
them as reading and writing are to gen- 
eral commerce. By the term drawing is 
meant not outline drawing, nor perspec- 
tive drawing, nor yet mechanical draw- 
ing (so-called), but that system of draw- 
ing which has been adopted as the most 
convenient for conveying to a workman 
the dimensions and form of an object he 
has to construct the system, in short, ac- 
cording to which the working-drawings 
of engineers are constructed, the theo- 
retical processes of which are known by 
the stilted and pedantic name of ortho- 
graphic projection. . . . Working-draw- 
ings, giving plan and elevation and per- 
haps one or more other views of an ob- 
ject, cannot be drawn except by a per- 
son who knows something of plane ge- 
ometry, something of solid geometry, 
something of model-drawing ; but they 
may be executed either precisely with 
ruler and compasses, or roughly, by the 
unaided hand, provided only that they 
shall unmistakably convey the relative 



Apprenticeship Schools in France. 



403 



I 



dimensions and positions of all portions 
of the object. . . . The success of the La 
\ r illette apprentices is largely due to the 
excellence of the system under which 
they are taught this the . . . universal 
language of skilled labor. . . . Their sys- 
tem is, in brief, as follows : The master 
first draws on the blackboard a rough 
working-drawing in free-hand ; . . . the 
pupils copy, also in free-hand. No such 
thing as a ruler and compasses is allow- 
ed. The master then ' figures' his sketch 
i.e., indicates its dimensions, curves, 
etc , by appropriate numbers written down 
on its various lines. The pupils 'figure' 
their sketches. The master then rubs 
out his sketch. The pupils retire to 
their own desks, take out ruler and com- 
passes, and from the dimensions marked 
on their sketches proceed to make out a 
finished working-drawing to scale. . . . 
Sometimes the procedure is changed, 
and the pupils are set to sketch a simple 
bit of machinery ; to measure it and fig- 
ure their sketches ; then to execute a 
finished drawing to scale. These details 
may seem trifling. On the contrary, the 
matter is of vital importance. Technttal 
education without education in technical 
drawing is a delusion and a sham." 

The school-room work has a bear- 
ing on each particular trade taught 
in the workshops, and the general 
culture not specially connected 
with a trade is on a level with, 
though it does not take up so much 
time as, that imparted in primary 
and in many secondary schools. 
There is a course of technology in 
very simple form, treating, in words 
as plain as the subject allows, of 
wood and iron and other materi- 
als, their nature, constitution, pro- 
perties, possibilities, defects, and 
cost ; of machines and their con- 
struction, use, limitations, of each 
part and its office the nuts, bolts, 
axles, etc., being described. Tools 
are treated of, practically but sci- 
entifically, and nothing is taught 
which is not explained ; conven- 
tion and dogmatism, such as form 
the ignorant slang of average shops, 
are carefully excluded, and a rea- 



son is given for each minute detail, 
while the pupils are even encourag- 
ed to object, discuss, and question. 
In the third year the course con- 
sists chiefly of lessons on steam- 
engines and machine tools. Every 
lecture is illustrated by black-board 
sketches, which each pupil repro- 
duces in his note-book; and these 
notes end by becoming a valuable 
work of reference, the object of fre- 
quent borrowing on the part of past 
scholars whose notes were less per- 
fect. Almost all branches of prac- 
tical scientific study are included 
in the general course. Chemistry 
takes an hour every week, which 
seems too little, considering the 
important connection between it 
and so many of the higher process- 
es of metal-working; mechanics,, 
descriptive geometry, and geome- 
trical drawing are prominent stu- 
dies a fact which explains itself; 
physics are taught by Amaury, of 
the National Observatory of Paris 
a man whose name is nearly as 
familiar outside his own country as 
within it; English is taught also, 
though of course not thoroughly, 
and rather for the sake of under- 
standing the medium through which 
the larger part of new inventions 
and improvements is announced 
and explained to the scientific 
world ; and though history and 
geography are not forgotten, the 
teaching in these branches may be 
considered the weak spot in the 
course of study. Mr. Thompson 
says that the neglect of these stu- 
dies occurs in almost all French 
schools, and perhaps it has some 
connection with the fact, so often 
commented upon, that the French, 
are emphatically a non-emigrating 
people. The law as connected with, 
industrial pursuits has a place on 
the programme of the school of La 
Villette, and a large library, both 



404 



Apprenticeship Schools in France. 



of technical and other works, is at 
the disposal of the pupils. M. 
G i card's work on Apprenticeship 
Schools, written while this speci- 
men was being organized, specifies 
some of the principles on which 
he intended it to be based, and 
which have controlled it ever since. 
Some of them, though sounding 
like axioms, have been seriously 
controverted by other educators 
as sincere, enthusiastic, and practi- 
cally experienced as M. Greard. 

"No premature admission ; the physi- 
cal strength no less than the mind of the 
child not admitting, before a certain age, 
of the serious education of apprentice- 
ship.* 

" No too considerable agglomeration 
of pupils, nothing being more demoral- 
izing. 

" No rapid specialization ; the hand 

: and the mind alike deriving unmixed 
gain from the generality of exercise. 
".No school fees, the institution being 

^.designed for the poorest classes ; but no 

. board or lodging provided, as the fam- 
ily ought to keep charge and have the 
honor of following the education of the 
child. (As the municipality has charge 

. of a lar,ge area, and distance must some- 
times become an impediment to procur- 

i ing a place for a boy in this school, no 
matter ; ho\v eager and fitted for it he may 
be, it seems as if this rule of non-provi- 
sion for bodily needs might be occasion- 
ally relaxed, and perhaps it actually is, 
in suitable instances.) 

" No exercises prolonged until body 
and mind are fatigued ; variety of exer- 
cises being one of the conditions indis- 
pensable for the well-balanced develop- 
ment of .the physical, intellectual, and 
moral powers of the apprentice. 

" No theoretical scientific teaching ; 
since the education of an apprenticeship 

*.Last year a writer in the Philadelphia Ledger 
a paper in which the question oi technical educa- 
tion was warmly discussed said : " When a boy or 
a girl has reached the age of thirteen the most valu- 
able time for the instruction of the hand, the eye, 
and the mind has passed, and the too prevalent no- 
tion that young persons should not be set to work 
until they can wield sledge-hammers or push jack- 
planes is an error." M. Salicis also, in a pamphlet 
on Primary Teaching and Apprenticeship, in- 
sists that the chief notions of a child about any trade 
are formed between the ages of six and twelve. 



school ought, if it is to be fruitful, to 
take as its starting-point not theories 
but facts, and ought to deal with those 
theories only whose practical applica- 
tion can be demonstrated." 

The subordination of theory to 
practice is a point in which it is 
easy to err on the side of over-cau- 
tion, thereby crippling the educa- 
tion desirable for a boy with any 
mechanical genius. The right pro- 
portion between theoretical and 
practical teaching varies almost 
with the capabilities of each pupil, 
and personal tact on the part of 
the teacher is needed to discern 
what proportion suits each, and 
how best to supplement in some 
cases the lack of a theoretical 
teaching not fitted for all scholars, 
or for which time is not provided 
in the general course. It is dan- 
gerous to lay down hard and fast 
rules with regard to the amount or 
the manner of teaching in any 
school whose professed object is 
to avoid the defects of ordinary 
schools. 

Havre and Douai both possess 
apprenticeship schools on much the 
same plan as the one just describ- 
ed, but both are older and small- 
er ; and Lille has just established 
a similar municipal school, whose 
statistics have not yet been made 
accessible. 

An institution of a like kind, 
though restricted to the teaching 
of one trade only, is the School of 
Watchmaking at Besan9on. Un- 
like those of Cluses and Macon, 
which are under government man- 
agement and aim at turning out 
foremen, mostly recruited from the 
middle classes, the school of Besan- 
con is under municipal rule and 
expressly intended for the educa- 
tion of apprentices of the artisan 
class. Fifteen thousand inhabi- 
tants of the city are employed ii 



Apprenticeship Schools in France. 



405 






the watchmaking business, and half 
a million of watches are annually 
produced in Besancon, supplying 
five-sixths of all that enter the 
home market, while the surplus 
has of late years superseded much 
of the Swiss trade in Switzerland 
itself. The school was founded in 
1860 for the accommodation, at first, 
of thirty-six pupils, the number 
having increased up to the present 
year to ninety. The conditions of 
admission are exactly like those at 
La Villette, and the education is 
free to town-boys ; but those from 
a distance pay a fee of $40 a year, 
and are boarded by the town-coun- 
cil at a neighboring lycce at the 
cost of ^ 1 20 a year. 

" There are several * scholarships,' 
founded respectively by the council- 
general of the department, by the local 
Masonic lodge, by the Watchmakers' 
Guild, and by several of the wealthier 
manufacturing houses of the district. 
These scholarships usually take the 
form of a gift of working tools. The 
complete course of instruction in the 
school lasts three years, but provision is 
made for specialists either to take a 
shorter course or to remain for a longer 
period in the school. The education is 
twofold, the apprentices having eight 
hours a day of manual exercises in the 
workshops of the school, and either two 
or three hours of school-teaching." 

It is the aim of this institution 
to enable young watchmakers to 
make a constant study of, and com- 
parison between, theory and the re- 
sults at which practice has arrived. 
Every detail of watchmaking is 
carefully and intelligently taught, 
hand-work being still prominent, 
though each new invention is used 
and applied. The school-room 
hours are devoted, besides the 
scientific teaching bearing directly 
on watchmaking, to French, arith- 
metic, algebra, book-keeping, and 
machinery-drawing, two hours a day 



being allotted to either the latter 
or to geometry. Olit of the thir- 
teen teachers, two are for drawing 
alone and seven are practical mas- 
ter-workmen. The city has profit- 
ed by the school, as nearly all its 
apprentices, including those from a 
distance, settle to work in Besan- 
on ; and since 1860 over four hun- 
dred pupils have gone through the 
course and found work at good 
wages within the city. The cost 
of this school is, of course, less than 
that of La Villette; the annual 
amount spent on salaries, materials, 
etc., is $5,000, nearly half of which 
is covered by a yearly grant from 
the city, and the rest by private 
subscriptions, the school-fees con- 
tributing but a trifling part. Mr. 
Thompson speaks thus of the re- 
sults of the experiment: 

The pupils " are more methodical and 
intelligent in their work, steadier in gen- 
eral conduct, have a far better grasp of 
the whole subject, and are pronounced 
to be much more competent than the 
average of workmen at executing re- 
pairs, since they have learned principles, 
and have not been kept doing one thing 
say polishing pivots all through the 
years of apprenticeship. They earn two 
francs a day,* on the average, imme- 
diately on leaving school a sum about 
equal to that of other apprentices when 
coming to the end of a four or five years' 
apprenticeship. The quality of their 
work is extremely good, excelling in 
precision and perfection of workman- 
ship two essentials in watchmaking. 
The unique and exquisite collection of 
typical studies executed by the pupils of 
this school will be vividly remembered 
by visitors to the Paris Exposition of 
1878. . . . The pupils on leaving school 
do not generally work as quickly as ap- 
prentices coming from the shop of a 
master, but speed of execution comes 
with time and practice. It is far better 
to make a good workman than a quick 
workman, especially if the latter gains 

* Not quite fifty cents. The rate of wages for all 
trades is very low in France. Belgium, and Germa- 
ny, while even in England it is not always half the 
rate of the United States. 



40 6 



Apprcnticesliip Schools in France. 



quickness by learning to make nothing 
but one small pi^:e from year's end to 
year's end." 

The Besarnpon trade in watches 
has increased within twelve years 
from three hundred thousand to 
five hundred thousand, and that in 
spite of the depression of 1870-71. 
Half a million francs' worth of 
watch-movements are annually ex- 
ported to Switzerland, and the re- 
port of the Swiss commission sit- 
ting at Bienne, canton of Berne, 
in December, 1876, says : " In ten 
years our exports to France have 
fallen from four millions of francs 
to one million four hundred thou- 
sand; . . . the French imports . . . 
have risen from three hundred and 
eighty thousand francs to one mil- 
lion six hundred thousand that is 
to say, they have quintupled'' The 
Geneva school of watchmaking, 
the oldest and once the only one, 
founded in 1824, was reorganized 
in 1843 ; but no others existed un- 
til after the French rivalry had 
grown formidable, when no less 
than six Swiss schools of a like kind 
sprang up, one after the other, be- 
tween 1863 and 1874. When Savoy 
was ceded to France, in 1863, Na- 
poleon III. reorganized the school 
of Cluses, dating from 1848; but, as 
has been said before, this school 
was intended only for the use of 
the middle classes. Paris is at 
present discussing a foundation of 
the Besan<pon kind, but its " Cham- 
ber of Watchmakers " has not come 
to a decision. Mr. Thompson says 
that, from personal intercourse with 
many of the foremost Parisian jew- 
ellers and goldsmiths, he learnt 
that a school on this plan is much 
needed for workmen in the pre- 
cious metals. Several houses have 
established free night-schools for 
drawing, designing, modelling, chis- 
elling, etc., for their apprentices, 



and the Syndical Chamber of Gold- 
smiths has opened a general night- 
school of the same description in 
the Rue St. Martin ; but these 
schools can tfo only partial good, 
and are not founded on a perma- 
nent basis. In London the Gold- 
smiths' Company has debated a 
project of the same sort, but no 
effect has been given to any of the 
suggestions offered. One school 
under proper management, and with 
sufficient funds as well as prestige 
from the permanent nature of its 
foundation and the weight of its 
founders, would be enough to train 
apprentices, in any of the capitals 
of the world, in the skilled work 
necessary to all branches of the 
goldsmith's and jeweller's art. The 
high price of the raw material 
would present some difficulty, but 
far less waste would occur than 
must be the case in the hap-hazard 
training of isolated apprentices in 
the various shops of jewellers, etc. 

A much older type of appren- 
ticeship school is the Paris Institu- 
tion de St. Nicolas, under the man- 
agement of the Christian Brothers. 
This was founded in 1827 by Mon- 
seigneur de Bervanger, and exists 
at present under hardly changed 
conditions. There are now almost 
a thousand boarders, two hundred 
and twenty of whom are appren- 
tices learning a trade in small 
workshops in the centre of the 
school precincts, let out to small 
shop-keepers, generally owners of 
some business in the city. They 
are called " patrons," and sign a 
formal contract of apprenticeship 
with the parents or guardians of 
their apprentices, who work nine 
hours a day under the supervision 
of the "patron " himself or a fore- 
man, two or three hours being de- 
voted to schooling und^r the tui- 
tion of the brothers. The latter 



Apprenticeship Schools in France. 



407 



have nothing to do with the tech- 
nical training of the boys, and only 
watch over the mutual behavior of 
the "patrons " and the apprentices, 
besides taking charge of the physi- 
cal comfort and moral education of 
the latter. The parents of each 
pupil pay $80 a year for his board 
and lodging, except in the case of 
boys who have entered under twelve 
years of age, for whom only $60 
are charged. The brothers' teach- 
ing is free, as also the manual in- 
struction, the proceeds of the ap- 
prentice's work being at the dispo- 
sal of the " patron." No pupil is 
admitted who cannot read and 
write. The term is for three or 
four years; if for four, the patron 
pays the fees for the fourth year, 
and occasional "gratifications " for 
good work are expected by the boys. 
The trades taught are at present 
fifteen : i, marble-masons; 2, book- 
binders ; 3, optical turners; 4, com- 
positors; 5, printers; 6, working 
clockmakers ; 7, makers of brass 
mountings for clocks; 8, makers of 
bronzes ; 9, makers of wind instru- 
ments ; 10, gilders ; n, carpenters ; 

1 2, portmanteau (or valise) makers; 

13, wood-carvers; 14, makers of 
philosophical instruments ; 15, map 
engravers on stone. For the last 
four of these occupations the term 
of apprenticeship is invariably four 
years ; for the rest, generally only 
three. On the whole, the work of 
all trades is done fairly well, in 
some very well, and pride is taken 
in their efficiency by both patrons 
and pupils ; but there is the inevita- 
ble drawback of an effort to make 
the work pay at the earliest possi- 
ble time, which leaves "no provi- 
sion for that very useful class of 
exercises which, though commer- 
cially unremunerative, are of the 
highest value as a means of train- 
ing the beginner." The methods 



of teaching are scarcely scientific ; 
traditional rules, left to the pupils' 
own wit to interpret, supersede in- 
telligent work carefully explained 
and illustrated, and working-draw- 
ings are hardly ever used. The 
system has many of the defects of a 
careless apprenticeship on the old 
plan, though provided with certain 
checks in the shape of the watch- 
ful care and moral influence of the 
brothers. The sanitary arrange- 
ments, under the care of the latter, 
are, says Mr. Thompson, " admira- 
ble." One of the brothers among 
the general body of whom there 
are more educated and thoughtful 
men than it is supposed, even in 
France, where they are better 
known than elsewhere has devis- 
ed an excellent system of teaching 
drawing and modelling ; but upon 
inquiry it was found that the study 
was restricted to " those who had 
need of it in their occupation," and 
was looked upon as an adjunct 
rather than a foundation. The 
map-engraving was particularly 
good, has won medals at the Paris, 
Vienna, and Philadelphia Exposi- 
tions, and is patronized by the 
French Minister of Public Edu- 
cation. " The wood-engravings, 
many of them also drawn on the 
wood by the apprentices themselves, 
are excellent, and would not dis- 
credit the (London) Graphic or 
the Illustrated News. " But not all 
the work is on this level ; some is 
even very poor ; the school-room 
teaching is unfortunately entirely 
severed from that of the shops. 
The boys, however, are generally 
steady and plodding, and able on 
leaving school to find immediate 
paying employment, and in time 
they rise to be small "patrons" 
themselves. St. Nicolas is self- 
supporting through the income 
from school-fees and the rent of the 



408 



Apprenticeship Schools in France. 



shops, plus a few trifling legacies, 
gifts, and subscriptions (in all $230,- 
ooo in 1878) ; but the brothers take 
no salaries and get only their liv- 
ing. A few other such schools ex- 
ist in Paris, the most efficient of 
which are the following orphana- 
ges : Our Lady of Refuge,* a school 
for ninety-five children, mostly 
young, of both sexes, with work- 
shops and boarding-houses for ap- 
prentices going out to work; or- 
phanage and professional schools 
of St. Mary's Providence, a techni- 
cal school for sixty boys and one 
hundred and twenty girls, teaching 
vellum-painting, artificial flower- 
making, dress and fan making, etc. 
(the boys' occupations are not spe- 
cified by Mr. Thompson) ; Orphan 
Apprentice Home, an industrial 
school for over two hundred or- 
phans and waifs, where the trades 
taught are printer, plaster-ornament 
maker, shoemaker, carpenter, lock- 
smith, and gardener. 

Another French type of appren- 
ticeship school is that kept up by 
large business houses for their own 
young men; one example will be 
enough, that of the printing firm 
of Chaix & Co., Paris, printers of 
the Indicateur railroad time-tables. 
This is on a comprehensive scale, 
and improves each year. It has 
existed for seventeen years, and has 
turned out over one hundred good 
workmen, most of them employed 
by the firm itself, but commanding 
equally good wages wherever they 
find employment. They are bound 
as apprentices for four years, and 
the employers guarantee to find 
them a place when their time is 
out. There are two branches, the 
printers and the compositors, the 
former working under foremen at 
the machines, the latter in a room 
separate from but overlooking the 

* Notre Dante Preservatrice. 



general workshop, where they see 
the business of the place, machinery, 
presses, etc., going on. The bust 
of the founder of the house, Napo- 
leon Chaix, stands at one end of 
the room, and above runs the fol- 
lowing motto in gilt characters 
along a cross-beam in the ceiling: 
" The house for each ; all for the 
house." The school-room seats 
forty apprentices. There are two 
hours' study a day, and three sepa- 
rate courses of study : one elemen- 
tary, for those whose previous edu- 
cation has been deficient ; second, a 
technical (the chief one), includ- 
ing typography, grammar, writing, 
" composition," reading and cor- 
recting proofs, the study of differ- 
ent founts of type, engraving on 
wood and steel, reading and " com- 
position " of Latin and Greek 
(without any attempt at grammar, 
or translation in those languages), 
and of English and German, with 
modified lessons in their grammar, 
and short exercises for translation ; 
lastly, a supplementary course, 
teaching the history of printing, 
mechanics and physics, the ele- 
ments of economics, and a few 
notions of applied chemistry, deal- 
ing chiefly with such matters as 
soda, carbon, turpentine, oils, and 
acids. A small money prize two 
cents is given each day for punc- 
tuality, and wages are given on a 
scale proportionate to the increas- 
ing value of the apprentices' work, 
the. compositors getting from ten 
cents to fifty a day, and the print- 
ers from fifteen to eighty. Their 
wages as workmen during the first 
year after their apprenticeship 
range from seventy-five cents to 
one dollar and fifty cents a day, 
and they also become participants 
in the bourses annually divided 
among the " attached " work-people 
of the house-/.*., those who, by 



Apprenticeship Schools in France. 



409 



; 



apprenticeship or by long service, 
become entitled to participation. 
Two hundred and fifty out of the 
seven hundred employed are, in 
this way, small share-holders, of 
whom more than half are past 
apprentices. A savings-bank and 
two insurances one against death 
and one against accidents or sick- 
ness are connected with the house, 
the proprietor contributing fifteen 
francs a year to the account of 
each apprentice who has savings in 
the bank, besides interest on the 
actual amount. In 1878 ten thou- 
sand dollars were thus distributed 
among the hands. The practical 
teaching is very thorough. The 
apprentice compositors, says Mr. 
Thompson, 

" Are set to work on chosen exercises 
suitable to their age and capacity, and 
such as to introduce successively to 
their notice all the various difficulties 
which they must overcome in order to 
understand their business and become 
thorough workmen. During the first 
year they are taught the generalities 
of typography, the different founts and 
faces of types, and the systems of spac- 
ing and setting lines. During the se- 
cond and third years they have to set up 
titles, tables, and to learn correcting 
proofs. In the fourth year they are 
put under the charge of the workmen 
who put the type into pages, and work in 
the principal shop." 

The statistics of tin's school have 
not been published, but that the 
experiment has proved remunera- 
tive as well as successful there is 
no doubt. The large encourage- 
ment in the shape of practical 
money-help to the men has much 
to do with the success of the 
r.chool ; but the heads of the firm, 
wise as they were in thus supple- 
menting the school advantages, 
nevertheless consider the teaching 
itself the main element of success, 
and certainly, in the long run, the 
most important to their own inte- 



rests. There is a larger number of 
schools on this plan i.e., under 
private and professional manage- 
ment than on any other through- 
out France ; and although Mr. 
Thompson, after comparison be- 
tween four different methods of 
technical instruction, all fairly il- 
lustrated in French schools of va- 
rious types, decides that the mu- 
nicipal workshop and school side 
by side, such as exist at La Villette 
and Besangon, is the apprentice- 
ship school of the future, and is 
adaptable to any country, there is 
little doubt that, for immediate pur- 
poses, schools in connection with 
large establishments are not only 
as desirable, but the plan is also 
more feasible. Municipalities move 
slowly and have many things to at- 
tend to ; and, unless in a town where 
one special industry is dominant, 
and the town council is recruited 
largely from one body of manu- 
facturers, the personal interest, 
which goad is the quickest to re- 
form and improvement, would be 
lacking; whereas each trade, or the 
larger firms engaged in it, has a 
direct interest in educating skilled 
workmen and competing with the 
influence of so-called socialist ideas, 
the growth of which is becoming a 
factor worthy of notice in every in- 
dustrial community. France con- 
tained at the close of 1878 two 
hundred and thirty-seven schools 
of the above description, some of 
them providing board, some not. 
Several Parisian jewellers have 
established private schools for their 
own work-people, where art is 
taught in a manner to enable an 
exceptionally clever boy to make 
this teaching a basis for an artistic 
education beyond the needs of a 
mere jeweller. A silk factory at 
Jnjtirieux, department of Ain, em- 
ploys four hundred and fifty girls, 



4io 



Apprenticeship Schools in France. 



and boards and teaches them, be- 
sides paying each from forty to 
sixty dollars a year ; a ribbon-weav- 
ing firm of old standing, MM. Col- 
combet, of St. Etienne, department 
of the Loire, employs three hundred 
and twenty girls, one hundred and 
forty of whom are apprentices, and 
provides day and night schools for 
boys and girls, as Well as dwellings 
for the work-people and their fami- 
lies, on the plan of the late Sir 
Titus Salt's model town of Saltaire, 
in England; and a cotton-spinning 
house, Thiriez & Son, at Lille, em- 
ploying fifteen hundred hands, of 
whom one-third are children, has not 
only regular schools for boys and 
girls, but a creche and a Kinder- 
garten, as well as a separate home 
for orphans, not to mention insur- 
ance clubs, a savings-bank, lecture 
and entertainment rooms, etc. We 
have no data to refer to, but be- 
lieve that a few cotton manufac- 
tories in the north of England have 
some arrangements of this nature, 
lecture-rooms, night-clubs and mo- 
del dwellings especially. Eng- 
land, however, is considerably be- 
hind France in any attempts at 
educating skilled workmen and 
women, and a distrust of things 
foreign, as well as the national feel- 
ing of resentment at interference, 
prevents the speedy adoption of 
any remedy, even experimental and 
temporary. The work which so- 
cialism clamors for the state to un- 
dertake can be at present done 
piecemeal and successfully by em- 
ployers themselves and any other 
men of good means who, whether as 
private individuals or members of 
a corporation, think prevention bet- 
ter than cure. Not long ago Mr. 
Gibson, president of the Trades- 
Union Congress during its annual 
meeting at Edinburgh, Scotland, 
spoke discouragingly, if not dis- 



paragingly, of the system of techni- 
cal education as a remedy for the 
low state of British manufactures 
in general and their reduced worth 
in the foreign market : 

"... It was quietly assumed," he 
said, " that some of these [foreign] coun- 
tries had an advantage over this [Eng- 
land] in their manufacturing industries. 
The ignorance of the British workman 
has always been regarded as an unknown 
quantity by his candid friends, and those 
gentlemen who advocated measures de- 
signed to instruct him with a technical 
knowledge of the trade he belonged to 
were desirous that the same opportuni- 
ties should be afforded him here as were, 
supplied on the Continent. In these 
schools diplomas were granted, and the 
advantages of having secured the educa- 
tion necessary to be in this position were 
stated to be that the services of those 
who obtained them were much sought 
after by employers, and that they were 
everywhere able to demand higher wages, 
because their work was of more value. 
He wished not to be misunderstood nor 
taken to mean anything that would im- 
ply an underrating of the importance 
and value of education of this kind to all 
workmen ; but it must be apparent to 
any one who had the slightest acquain- 
tance with the conditions of employ- 
ment of this class of men in Britain that 
this education, vouched for as it might 
be by however many diplomas, could not 
be relied upon to bring them promotion 
of any kind. In the railway services of 
the country, for instance, it was well 
known that engine-men and drivers, with 
the diploma of long experience, were 
too often suspended and dismissed for 
the most trivial faults, and sometimes 
no fault at all, in order that their wages 
might be reduced. The effect of this 
special knowledge in these countries 
[the United Kingdom] had not been felt 
in any part of our trade, and could not 
be ranked as one of the causes of its de- 
pression." 

These statements seem more 
dogmatic than precise, especially 
as, in the case of engine-drivers, it 
is not specified whether a real cer- 
tificate from a competent school or 
self-acquired practical knowledge 



Apprenticeship Schools in France. 



411 



is understood by the " diploma of 
long experience." That the im- 
provement in many Continental 
products has gradually pushed Bri- 
tish manufactures of a like kind out 
of. the market is not denied by 
English business men, and this im- 
provement could scarcely exist 
without some unusual generaliza- 
tion of technical knowledge and 
skill among the mass of workmen. 
It is at least worth while to try the 
working of the same tool in Eng- 
land ; but while the trades-unions' 
aim remains rather the controlling 
of the temporal affairs of workmen 
than the furthering of their intel- 
lectual and moral progress, it is not 
likely that they will give their coun- 
tenance to a scheme of quiet and 
slow-working utility whose influ- 
ence would be towards the healing 
of the artificial feuds between em- 
ployers and employed, and the 
creation of a well-founded spirit of 
contentment among a class surely 
increasing in education, prosperity, 
and self-respect. Agitation is so 
wholly based upon destitution that 
any broad scheme, not Utopian or 
violent, for the removal of the con- 
ditions of destitution must be in- 
stinctively distasteful to agitators, 
which, practically, most leaders of 
trades-unions are. In England, 
where the upper classes, on the 
surface at least, take much more 
part in questions relating to the 
well-being of the lower classes, and 
where intercourse between the two 
is more developed than it is in the 
United States, a good deal of vague- 
ness and conventionality still dis- 
tinguishes the speeches made at 
educational gatherings by members 
of Parliament and other men of 
wealth or position. Good sugges- 
tions, however, are often made, as 
Mr. Gladstone's at a lately-started 
Nonconformist College, tending to 



the equalization of classes in know- 
ledge and the decline of social 
prejudices; and those of Mr. Smith, 
member of Parliament, at the open- 
ing of a new school for the poor 
outside the jurisdiction of any 
board, concerning the thorough- 
ness of moral education, and the 
confining of teaching to a few 
branches of study calculated to 
become a basis of further self-at- 
tained knowledge. Still, no dis- 
tinct effort towards utilizing school- 
time for the purposes of trade has 
yet been made in England, except 
in the cases of a few manufacturing 
firms in the north. We are not aware 
of any extended efforts in this coun- 
try that is, any commensurate with 
the importance of the subject or 
the size of the places where such 
improvements would be most bene- 
ficial ; but the experimental school 
in Philadelphia is, growing and 
prospering, and it is probable that 
the trustees of Girard College will 
provide technical education in 
many branches on a liberal scale 
for at least several hundred boys. 
A suggestion has been made, the re- 
sult of which would be immensely 
beneficial in the agricultural dis- 
tricts i.e., to teach farming in the 
common schools and the cost to 
each town would be trifling, less, in- 
deed, than is frequently incurred 
by prolonged carelessness as to the 
state of the buildings or fittings of 
district schools. It would be well 
if more publicity could be given 
to this practical and useful idea. 
Country interests are often over- 
looked by reformers under whose 
eyes the abuses and shortcomings 
of city life come most prominently, 
but they are as important as the 
interests of the crowded inhabi- 
tants of cities. The large manu- 
facturing towns are probably the 
places where schools on the French 



My Christmas at Barnakecry. 



plans above described could be of work can hardly be denied, 
best tried ; and that instruction The subject is, at any rate, worth 
there is needed in most branches investigation. 



MY CHRISTMAS AT BARNAKEERV. 



I HAD played innumerable rub- 
bers of whist with Colonel Dolphin 
at the Stephen's Green Club, Dub- 
lin, and had lost them. I had 
borne with his revokes, borne with 
his long-winded explanatory and 
double-milled apologies, borne with 
his interminable and prosy sto- 
ries of horses that ought to have 
won the Conyngham cup at Punch- 
estown ; I had snubbed him, cut 
him, spoken of him, not falsely 
Heaven forbid ! but in a way calcu- 
lated to warn others against falling 
foul of him ; and yet one lovely 
morning in the month of August, in 
the year of grace 187-, found me 
in a first-class carriage belonging 
to the Midland Great Western 
Railway Company of Ireland, en 
route for Barnakeery, the seat of 
the redoubtable colonel, whose in- 
vitation to fish for salmon I found 
myself utterly unable to resist, 
partly because I had not been in- 
vited to " wet a line " elsewhere, and 
partly because I consider that a 
day's salmon-fishing is worth well, 
it is worth being bored by your 
host, provided that his mutton hap- 
pens to be tender, his claret soft, 
and his whiskey John Jameson's 
seven-year-old. 

Colonel Dolphin is a pompous 
old fogy, who presides at petty ses- 
sions in his magisterial capacity as 
though he were the lord chief-jus- 
tice of the Court of Queen's Bench, 
and passes sentence upon turf-lift- 
ers and poachers as though the black 



cap was snugly adjusted on his 
rusty-looking brown jasey. He 
dyes his whiskers a Tyrian purple, 
his moustache a canary color. He 
wears black satin stocks of the 
year one, and straps to his trousers. 
His frock-coat is always buttoned 
up to his chin. 

Now as regards myself. / am a 
fogy. I am an old bachelor, rusty, 
crusty, of confirmed habits. I re- 
side in two old-fashioned apart- 
ments in Eccles Street, Dublin. I 
have lived there for twenty-five 
years. My landlady absit omen ! 
is a widow: the widow of my 
old kinsman, Tom Connolly, who 
broke his neck with the Meath 
harriers. My twenty pounds a 
month keep the roof over her 
head. She keeps another lodg- 
er, an old bachelor. We are like 
Box and Cox. I never meet him 
except on the staircase. He is taci- 
turn, I am reserved. "Morniiv!" 
" How do ?" This is all that the 
English language has done for 
either of us in twenty years. I am 
not rich, but I am snug. I am 
worth one thousand pounds a year. 
I spend about five hundred, be- 
cause I live generously and like 
life after my own fashion. I pur- 
pose leaving my property to but 
I will not anticipate. 

Upon arriving at the Barna Sta- 
tion I found a retainer of the col- 
onel's in waiting a bright-eyed, 
merry-looking " boy," attired, al- 
though it was a warm day in Au- 



My Christinas at Barnakecry. 



gust, in an enormous frieze coat; 
not the petroleum, shoddy, and 
devil's-dust which is worked into 
our ulsters, but a cunning substance, 
soft as a dog's ear, warm as a turf 
fire, and as impervious to water as 
though the wearer were encased in 
three solid inches of trotter-oil. 

" Yer honor's for Barnakeery?" 
he cried, touching his hat. 

" I am." 

"Yer Counsellor Daly?" 

Having responded in the affirma- 
tive, I inquired if the colonel had 
sent a vehicle for me. 

" Av coorse he did, yer honor; 
he wudn't see ye bet that way. 
Have ye more nor wan box, 
sir?" 

No\v, I pique myself on two 
things my atiire and my luggage. 
I hold that no man has a right to 
go on a visit to a friend with seedy 
garments or travel-stained, bulgy 
impedimenta. The servants are more 
impressed when they find a visitor 
the owner of a handsome dressing- 
case, and of garments which com- 
pel respectful admiration during 
brushing; and we all know that the 
verdict of the jury that sits " below 
stairs " very materially influences 
the decision of the upper court. 
Judge my disgust when asked if 
my solid leather, brass-capped, 
nickel-mounted, patent valise was 
my only "box " ! I felt that I was 
throwing pearls Before swine, and 
that a hair-trunk of the year '15 or 
an emigrant's wooden chest would 
have suited Barnakeery quite as 
well as my very elegant travelling- 
case and my garments built by 
Mr. J. H. Smalpage. 

An outside-car awaited us, upon 
the well of which my " box " was 
safely roped in by a few dexterous 
twists at the horny hands of my 
charioteer, who drew back some 
paces to admire his Davenport 



41.3 

Brothers' trick, exclaiming in unc- 
tuous tones of satisfaction : 

" Sorra a stir ye'll stir so long as 
the car '11 hould." 

" What is your name?" I asked, 
as we started at a hand-gallop up a 
stiffish hill. 

"Ned Jyce, yer honor." 

" Have you been long with the 
colonel ?" 

"Long! I'm wud him man an' 
boy, an' so was me father afore me 
the Lord be merciful to him, 
amin !" 

"Is the colonel liked down, 
here?" 

"Well, now he is an' he isn't. 
There's some that wud borry mo- 
ney for to spinel it on him, an' 
there's more that crasses the road 
whin he's seen comin'. He's a soft 
man enough av ye'll humor him, 
but he bangs Banagher whin he 
gets on the binch below at Rowsers- 
town. Faix, he'll give ye a month 
av ye wur for to sneeze in t!u- 
coort." 

"Are his sentences severe?" 

" Well, now, they're harder be 
raisin av the way he gives thim. 
But he met his match wanst," said 4 
Joyce, with a chuckle. " Pat Fal- 
vey that's his cabin over there be- 
yant the shovvlder av that hill was 
suspected av well, it was thought 
quare that wan of Joe Heffernan's 
sheep should be as bare as a crow 
and that Pat's barn should 
rowlin' in wool ; and so they had 
poor Pat up before the binch. 
' What have ye got for to say for 
yerself, ye ovvdacious burglar?' se/ 
the curnel. 

" 'Sorra a wurd, barrin' this,' 
Pat, as bould as a ghandher : ' Av 
the wool found in the barn fits Joe 
Heffernan's sheep I'm guilty,' se/ 
he, 'but av it doesn't I'm innocent; 
an' I demand, in the name of jus- 
tice, that the wool be timed on.' 



414 



My Christmas at Barnakeery. 



" Well, sir, wud ye believe it, but 
the curnel, who's as just as the sun, 
sint for the sheep and sint for the 
wool, an' no sooner was the sheep 
it was a ram, yer honor put on 
the table but it let a roar that ye'd 
hear in Barnakeery, an' darted right 
into the curnel's stomik, pitchin' 
him over the clerk an' raisin' a 
terrible whillalew. 

"'Arrest yer presoner!' roared 
the curnel, pointin' to the ram ; an' 
it tuk five policemen wud fixed 
bagonets for to ketch him. 

"'Now, yer honor,' sez Pat Fal- 
vey to the curnel, ' I'll lave it to yer- 
self, av that wool was tuk off that 
ram, wouldn't the crayture be only 
too plazed for to get into it agin 
on this murdherin' could day?' 

" Well, yer honor, this riz the 
laugh agin the binch, an', begorra, 
Pat Falvey got off scot-free." 

After J had enjoyed a laugh for 
the story was told with inimitable 
drollery I asked if the colonel was 
alone at.Barnakeery. 

"Thrue for ye, sir. There's no- 
body there but the mistiness an' 
Miss Emily." 

" The mistress ? Is the colonel 
married ?" 

" Faix, Father Mick O'Brien sez 
so, anyhow; an' he never makes a 
mistake." 

Up to that moment I imagined 
that Colonel Dolphin was an old 
bachelor like myself; up to that 
moment I regarded him in the light 
of an elder in a brotherhood into 
which I had been promoted by the 
direct and unerring influence of 
time. Why the deuce didn't he 
speak of his wife instead of the 
Conyngham Cup? It was treating 
me badly, and I mentally resolved 
upon avenging myself on his sal- 
mon, his mutton, and his Lafitte. 

"And pray who is Miss^Emily?" 
I asked. 



" Sorra a know I know, sir. She 
kem on us promiscuous. Some 
say she's Mrs. Dolphin's niece, more 
say she's the curnel's niece, an' 
some say quare tilings, mind ye ; 
but she's good to the poor, and 
sings illigant at last Mass on Sun- 
da's in front of a harmonicum that 
she riz for Father Mick herself; 
an' she's as nice a young leddy as 
there's in the barony, and a nice- 
mannered young leddy good luck 
attind her day an' night !" 

A mystery, I thought. This visit 
promised well. 

" What is Miss Emily's other 
name?" 

" Troth, thin, it's tasty enough 
Primrose, no less. There's heaps 
o' the rose about her, sure enough." 

Somehow or other I became in- 
terested in Miss Emily Primrose. 

" How long has this young lady 
been at Barnakeery ?" 

" How long ? Why, thin " 
scratching the side of his head 
" she kem at Candlemas ; no, faix 
last Aisther was a twelvemonth. 
She kem on the last thrnin from 
Dublin, an' it was Tim Donnelly 
that dhruv her to Barnakeery an' 
bet thim up in the dead o' the 
night. 

" ' Who's that at the doore, at 
all, at all ?' axed the curnel. 

" 'It's me, yer honor,' says Tim. 

" ' Who the dickens are ye ?' sez 
the curnel in a tovverin' rage. 

"'Tim Donnelly, the boy that 
dh rives the car from Barna Sta- 
tion, yer honor ; an' I've a young 
leddy here that's bet up be th' 
could. ' Spake up, miss,' sez Tim 
to Miss Emily, 'for the curnel 'ud 
sind a bullet through the doore in 
a brace o' shakes.' 

" So she ups and cries in a tear- 
ful way. 

" ' It's me Emily Primrose,' sez 
she. 'I have come to ye, for me 



My Christmas at Barnakeery 



415 



heart is sore,' sez she, 'an' I've no- 
where else for to lay me hed,' sez 
she." 

" And what did the colonel say ?" 

" Here's Barnakeery, sir," was 
the response of Ned Joyce, as, pass- 
ing through a somewhat formidable- 
looking gate, we dashed into the 
neatly-gravelled drive and up to 
the hall-door of an old-fashioned, 
able-bodied house surrounded by 
venerable elm-trees whose boughs 
rubbed themselves affectionately 
against the upper window-panes. 

" Ye can go in on that doore, 
yer honor," said Ned, "an' I'll luk 
afther yer box," disappearing, as 
he spoke, in the direction of the 
ivy-covered stables. I was about 
to ring the bell when a lo\v, girlish 
voice exclaimed : 

<; You are Mr. Daly ? Colonel 
Dolphin rode to the station to meet 
you, but I assume that Ned Joyce 
came by the boreen instead of by 
the high-road." 

I lifted my hat and replied to 
the effect that I was the individual 
in question, and that we had tra- 
versed a somewhat narrow and un- 
even roadway, but that the absence 
of Colonel Dolphin was now more 
than amply compensated for. 

She was not a handsome girl by 
any means. Her features were all 
irregular, but the ensemble was ear- 
nest and interesting. 

She looked at me full in the face, 
and her eyes were large and Irish 
gray. She smiled as I paid my 
compliment old-fashioned as be- 
came me and her mouth revealed 
large, very white but somewhat ir- 
regular teeth. She was strongly 
moulded, though small in stature. 

u If we are to be friends, Mr. 
Daly, no compliments. If we are 
to be acquaintances only, pray put 
ir. another cartridge, and " Here 
she paused and smiled. 



"Blaze away!" I added laugh- 
ingly. She laughed with me. This 
mutual merriment cut down the 
brushwood of conventionality, and 
a few minutes found us as though 
we had known each other for a 
considerable period, and that this 
meeting had been anticipated with 
pleasure by both. 

I seated myself, at the imminent 
risk of a sharp attack of rheuma- 
tism, upon the stone steps, while 
she lightly vaulted on to the back 
ofacouchant lion that ornament- 
ed the portal of Barnakeery. 

Away to the silver river stretch- 
ed the emerald lawn. Away to the 
purple mountains stretched corn- 
fields, their golden grain glistening 
in the mellow sunlight, while the 
wild and not unmelodious cries of 
the bo>s appointed to scare the un- 
scrupulous birds came to us on the 
wooing breeze. 

" So you have come down to this 
out-of-the-world place to fish for 
salmon, Mr. Daly ?" 

I admitted the fact. 

" And to play whist ?" 

I expressed a hope that Miss 
Primrose was a whist-player. 

" I am, Mr. Daly ; but I am hap- 
py to say that you are to relieve 
guard." 

"Does Mrs. Dolphin play whist?" 

" Not well enough to satisfy the 
colonel." 

" Then, upon my conscience, she 
must be a very inferior performer," 
I blurted out, without for a second 
considering the awkwardness of the 
remark. 

Miss Primrose laughed a bright, 
happy, honest laugh. 

' ; I fear that I have uttered a 
very uncomplimentary 

" It's refreshing to meet anybody 
who says what he thinks," she in- 
terrupted " who possesses the cou- 
rage of his convictions. 1 play as 



416 



My Christmas at Barnakecry. 



badly as Mrs. Do] \*\\m,ct voila tout "y 
and seeing that I was a little put 
out, she added : " You will teach 
me how to score the odd trick 
against four by honors." 

" The Northwest Passage of whist, 
Miss Primrose. By the way, the 
colonel never mentioned Mrs. Dol- 
phin, nor did he ever refer tojw/." 

" Oh ! I am nobody," a shade of 
sadness sweeping over her face; 
" but I wonder he did not speak of 
Mrs. Dolphin. Oh ! she is a good, 
kind creature, so good to me oh ! 
so good to me," clasping her hands 
and holding them tightly pressed 
together. 

A pompous "Ah ! aha ! all !" caus- 
ed us to turn in the direction of the 
avenue, and mine host revealed 
himself astride an uncompromising, 
phlegmatic, conscientious cob, who, 
so soon as his master dismounted, 
proceeded of his own accord to the 
stable. 

"Ah Daly! Welcome to Barna- 
keery. I rode over to the station, 
but that scoundrel Joyce took the 
short cut. I'd sack the fellow, if he 
were not connected with that cele- 
brated race for the Conyngham 
Cup, Tom Tucker's year. Well, 
sir, I " 

"You told me all about it, colo- 
nel," I interrupted. 

" Did I ? Ah ! so I believe I did. 
Let me present you to Miss Prim- 
rose." 

" I have been doing the honors," 
she gaily exclaimed " four by ho- 
nors and Mr. Daly has been 
gracious enough to gossip with me, 
giving battle to ennui until your 
arrival. That's the dressing-bell. 
Au revoir, messieurs'' And with a 
coquettish curtsy she disappeared 
into the house. 

"That's a charming girl, Dol- 
phin," I observed. 

u Yes, poor girl! I'll show you 



to your rooms now, Daly ; you can 
have any number of 'em in this bar- 
rack of a house." 

I was duly presented to Mrs. 
Dolphin a little, red-faced lady 
wearing a delightful mob-cap. She 
was the picture of rude health, but 
ere I was five minutes in her company 
I learned from her own lips that she 
was afflicted with every ill the flesh 
is heir to, from rheumatism to an- 
eurism. I had the honor of taking 
this robust invalid in to dinner, and 
had the pleasure of beholding her 
partake of almost every dish with a 
breadth of appetite and a gusto that 
would seem to render the visits of 
Dr. McCormick not only unneces- 
sary and presumptuous but absolute- 
ly insulting. 

I had my after-dinner nap I al- 
ways bargain for this wherever I 
go and a very unsatisfactory rub- 
ber, as Mrs. Dolphin, who was my 
partner, revoked no less than five 
times and trumped my thirteenth 
card twice. 

*' If you were in a club, madam,'' 
I said to her, provoked beyond en- 
durance, "you would not be per- 
mitted to play unless you had a lit- 
tle more regard for the interests of 
your partner." This was severe 
enough. 

I was glad to get to my own room 
after a prolonged/#<?-^-/<?/6' with the 
colonel who treated me to half a 
dozen of his confounded Punches- 
town reminiscences and had pop- 
ped out a light preparatory to turning 
into bed, when the scraping of an 
elm bough against my window ar- 
rested my attention. I opened the 
window for the purpose of breaking 
it off, when the sound of a footstep 
on the gravel walk immediately be- 
neath somewhat startled me. I 
cautiously peeped out, and beheld 
a man creeping along by the side 
of the house arid walking with i 



My Christmas at Barnakeery. 



417 



guarded and cat-like tread. It 
was bright moonlight, and I could 
see that he was tall and slight, and 
that his hands were very small 
and very white. His clothes were 
dark, and he wore around hat. My 
curiosity became violently aroused, 
and, regardless of inevitable rheu- 
matism, I continued to watch the 
new-comer's movements. 

He stopped under a window up- 
on a level with mine mine was at 
right angles and in shadow and, 
picking up some gravel, tossed it 
against the glass. " Some village 
swain keeping tryst," I thought ; 
'but nevertheless, in the interests 
of mine host, I shall keep my eye 
upon you, and possibly speak about 
you at breakfast." 

Some person in the room at the 
window of which he cast the gravel 
immediately replied to the signal, 
and a conversation in low tones en- 
sued, of which, although I strained 
every faculty into my ears, I could 
not catch a single word. The 
man's whispers waxed fierce, and 
after a hissing burst of anger, dur- 
ing which he gesticulated violently, 
he suddenly turned on his heel, and 
in a few strides was lost in the sable 

I gloom of the enormous evergreens 

that bordered the avenue. 
" You have received your conge, 
my good fellow," I muttered as I 
closed the window; "and if you 
come back to-morrow night you 
may receive a welcome you little 
anticipate." 

" Well, Daly, how did you sleep ?" 
demanded the colonel at break- 
fast. 

"Like a pointsman, colonel ; but 
I was near losing a few of my forty 
winks by a midnight visitor." 

" Did you say coffee, Mr. Daly ?" 
interrupted Miss Primrose, who 
looked pale and unrefreshed. 
VOL. xxx. 27 



" If you please." 

"A midnight visitor, Daly? A 
ghost, eh ?" 

" No, colonel, a" 

" Sugar, Mr. Daly?" interrupted 
Miss Primrose. 

" Thanks ! The ghost proved to 
be" 

"One or two lumps, Mr. Daly?" 
interrupted Miss Primrose. 

"Two, if you please." 

"Well, Daly, go on about this 
midnight visitor," cried the colonel, 
tapping an egg. 

" I did not retire to bed for 
some little time, and was about to 
turn in when " 

" Mr. Daly, you are eating noth- 
ing," exclaimed the girl in a ner- 
vous, jerky manner. 

" My dear Emmy, you are not 
over-polite to poor Daly. He 
wants to tell you a story, and you 
won't let him," observed Dolphin 
somewhat snappishly. 

"He should be allowed to eat 
his breakfast first, colonel ; and, if 
he takes my advice, he will not tell 
his story until afterwards." 
. "The fact is, Miss Primrose," I 
said, addressing myself to her, " I 
would wish to tell it no\v, for I 
And here I stopped, for she put her 
finger to her lips warningly, and 
said to me, as plainly as her great 
gray eyes could utter the words : 
" That man came to visit me." 

Then she arose, and quitted the 
room by the veranda. 

I was completely dumfounded, 
taken aback, knocked all of a 
heap, to use a vulgarism. I had 
beheld caballeros, both in Spain 
and in Mexico, serenading their 
mistresses after the Romeo and 
Juliet fashion, albeit the balcony 
was barred with two-inch iron ; 
but a midnight interview such as 1 
had been witness to on the previ- 
ous night assuredly shocked me, 



4i8 



My Christmas at Barnakeery. 



offending my old-fashioned notions, 
and putting me on my edge against 
a young and charming girl for 
whom I had, in the small space of 
twenty-four hours, formed a very 
honest and patriarchal liking. 

"What did it mean?" The old, 
old story, of course, but the old, old 
story told after a fashion long since 
exploded. It was quite evident 
that the visits of the person, who- 
ever he might be, were interdicted 
by the Dolphins, and her receiving 
him in this surreptitious manner 
placed Miss Primrose in the posi- 
tion of both a deceiver and an in- 
grate. I felt thoroughly angry with 
her, and resolved to show my dis- 
approbation in every way that lay 
in my power so long as my visit 
continued. 

"Will you fish to-day, Daly?" 
demanded my host, " or would you 
prefer to accompany me to Quar- 
ter Sessions ?" 

" Quarter Sessions be hanged !" 
I growled. " I'll go on the lake." 

" Just as you please ; but I 
thought you might be interested in 
a decision I am about to give in a 
trespass case, and " 

" Not a bit interested, Dolphin. 
Have you a boat ?" 

"Yes; and Ned Joyce can ac- 
company you." 

" I wouldn't ask better company." 

" He knows every salmon corner 
on the lake, as he has poached it 
since he was a spalpeen the height 
of a bee's knee." 

"How that 'man avoids acute 
rheumatism is a puzzle to me" sigh- 
ed Mrs. Dolphin. " I am such a 
martyr to it that I can't raise an 
arm." 

As the good lady spoke a rat- 
tling big wasp came buzzing close 
to her mob-cap, and in an instant 
she was on her feet and pursuing 
him with the napkin all round the 



apartment, displaying a vigor and 
an agility that bade defiance to the 
querulous groaning of the moment 
before. 

" If you are not bent on fishing, 
Daly," observed the colonel, " I 
would really wish you to hear my de- 
cision in the trespass case. I have 
studied the authorities most mi- 
nutely, and " 

" I wouldn't take a five-pound 
Bank of Ireland note and listen 
to you, Dolphin," I laughed. " I 
have come to the country to enjoy 
myself to feel like an emperor, 
sir ! Sic volo, sicjubeo j and, except 
for my meals and my bed, don't 
expect to see me in the house." 

" As you please," cried the colo- 
nel, waggling his head behind his 
stiff satin stock of the year one. 

The lake was distant about a 
mile and a^ half a most delightful 
walk through a fern-caressed boreen 
which led to the water's edge. Ned 
Joyce, still in the ulster, led the way, 
carrying a pair of oars, and I fol- 
lowed, bearing a rod, landing-net, 
and other piscatorial belongings. 

" Is that one of the Punchestown 
horses?" I asked, as we passed a 
field in which a garron stood lazily 
browsing. 

" Troth, thin, it is, yer honor ; an' 
that's the wbndherfullest horse that 
ever won any race there, now !" 

" How do you mean ?" 

"Bedad, ye may well ax me, sir. 
What would ye think av a horse 
that won three races an' never cum 
in first?" And Ned planted the 
oars on the ground, leaning upon 
them, while he regarded me with a 
critical and scrutinizing eye. 

" I don't see how it could be 
done." 

" Well, now, it was done sorra 
a lie in it." 

"But how?" 

" It was done on ob-jecshins." 



My Christmas at Barnakeery. 



419 



" Objections?" 

" Yis, sir, ob-jecshins, no less." 

" How in the world was that 
done, Ned ?" 

" I'll tell ye thin, an' it's Gospel 
what I'm goin' for to. tell. I'd take 
the Buke on it oh ! in troth I wud, 
sir," seeing a smile on my face. 
" Well, sir, the masther had a lump 
av a horse that he christened Faugh- 
a-ballagh, or Clear the Road an', 
barrin' his manger, the dickins a 
haporth he ever cleared an' av 
coorse he ups an' enthers him for 
a Corinthin race at Punches town. 
Are ye knowlidgable on racin', 
Misther Daly?" 

" I know nothing about it, 
Joyce." 

" See that, now," exclaimed Ned 
in a disparaging tone: " wud all the 
law of the land in his hed, sorra a 
haporth he k.nows in regard to horse- 
racin'," adding : " Thin I'll explain 
to ye that a Corinthin is a race 
run be gintlemin an' no purfessional 
is entitled for to run. There was 
three horses enthered, an' Faugh-a- 
ballagh was wan av the three. The 
first horse tuk the big lep crukked 
an' bruck its leg, an' the second 
horse come in first, an' Faugh-a- 
ballagh, hardly able to crawl, come 
in last." 

"'Claim the race, curnel dar- 
lin !' whispered Joe Connelly, the 
groom, as cute a boy as ever threw 
a leg over a pigskin ' claim it, cur- 
nel darlin,' sez Joe. 

" * Arrah, is it coddin' me ye are ?' 
sez the curnel. 

" ' May I sup sorrow this night if 
I'm not telling ye right.' 

' ' Arrah, what do ye mane ?' sez 
the curnel, sez he. * How the dick- 
ins cud I claim a race on the last 
horse,' sez he, 'an' sich a garron too?' 

" * I'll tell ye, sir : The man that 
rode the first horse is a paid jock,' 
sez Joe ; ' his name is Billy Doyle, of 



Ballymany.' .An' shure enough, the 
curnel saw they were thryin' for 
to run a buck on him, an' he claim- 
ed the stakes ; ay, and he got them, 
an' Faugh-a-ballagh was declared 
the winner of the race. What do 
ye think of that, sir ?" 

" Awfully funny, Joyce. Now for 
the second race." 

" Well, sir, there was four horses 
run the next time this was below 
on the Curragh and wan av thim 
was Faugh-a-ballagh." 

" * Arrah, is it goin' for to ride 
that baste y' are ?' sez wan to the 
masther 's jock. 

" It's inside av him ye'd look 
betther nor outside,' sez another, 
coddin' the boy. 

" ' Ye'll get to the post afore the 
snow comes, anyway,' sez another. 

" ' Mebbe ye'd prefer Ned Gorm- 
ley's jackass.' 

" ' What an illigant set o' bones 
he has !' 

" ' He's fit for a rnusayum.' 

" ' Yez'll be both gray be the 
time yez pass the judge's stand.' 

" ' The big lep is what'll suit him.' 
An all to the like o' this. Well, sir, 
the boy sez nothin,' but he tould 
me that he was wishin' the ground 
for to open an' swally himself an' 
the baste intirely. Howsomever, 
he started wud the rest av thim, an' 
he tuk it quiet an' aisy, for he seen 
that the other horses were able for 
to run him on three legs to his four. 
He riz Faugh-a-ballagh at the big 
lep, expectin' for to land on his nose ; 
but the baste done it, shure enough, 
be raison av a glass o' sperrits that 
Larry Murphy, the groom, levelled 
at him before he left the stable. 
Whin the boy done the big lep he 
seen that wan av the three horses 
was hobbled, an' that Faugh-a-bal- 
lagh, goin' as aisy as if he was dhraw- 
in' a kreel o' turf, was ketching 
wud the second horse.' 



420 



My Christinas at Barnakccry. 



11 ' Be the mortial, I might come 
in second,' sez the boy to himself; 
an' givin' a wallop or two to his 
baste, he passed the second horse 
convaynient to the winnin'-post, the 
first horse havin' run home snug 
an' comfortable five minutes be- 
fore.' 

" ' Object !' sez a man in the 
crowd to the masther. 

" ' Object to what ?' sez the cur- 
riel. 

u ' Object to Misther O'Donnell's 
horse Liffey winnin' the race.' 

{t ' How the dickins can I object 
when he won it?' roars the curnel. 

" * Object, I tell ye ! The horse 
is over age, an' O'Donnell knows it 
well. Object, an' ye'll get the 
stakes at Aisther when he goes to 
his dhnty,' sez the man. 

"AVell, sir, the masther object- 
ed ; but as Aisther was on top of 
O'Donnell, an' Father Tim Boyce a 
sevare clergyman, what do ye think 
but he ups an' cries that Liffey was 
beyant the age set down be the 
stewards ; an' ould Faugh-a-ballagh 
won the second race on ob-jec- 
shin." 

The drollery with which Ned 
told this story could never be re- 
duced to writing. His wit was the 
paroxysm of facetiousness, while 
the disparaging yet affectionate 
manner in which he referred to 
Faugh-a-ballagh was intensely amus- 
ing. 

" How was the third race won, 
Ned ? " I asked. 

" Aisy enough, sir. There was 
three of thim in it an English 
horse bred be Lord Drogheda, a 
tip-topper, an' a illigint bay bred 
be Brierly, of Dugganstown. The 
masther, in ordher for to have a 
horse in the race, enthered Faugh-a 
ballagh ; but just for divershun, 
he hadn't a ghost av a chance, bar- 
rirf the ob-jecshin. The race kern 



off below at Gurtnacrockeen, an' 
Brierly's jock, who had a sup in, 
rovvled clane out av the saddle, 
an' Lord Drogheda's crack run in 
in a canther." 

"And how jn the world did 
Fagh-a-ballagh win on an objection 
this time ?" 

" Only this way, sir : Whin the 
jockey kem to be weighed he was 
a pound less than whin he went 
out, an' a lump av lead was found 
on the coorse that fitted exactly 
into a nate little hole in the sad- 
dle-flap. But here we are, sir ; an' 
wisha, but the lake 's as smooth as 
the parlcr windy. Sorra a much 
chance av a rise this day." 

Beneath us lay the lake, flashing 
like a jewel in the sunlight, the 
sloping mountains dipping into its 
bed and casting reflections clear-cut 
as cameos, while ever and anon a 
chasm in the purple-clad heather 
disclosed a foaming brown torrent . 
leaping gladly into the placid wa- 
ters below. The remnants alas ! 
that it should be a deserted village 
of a once populated hamlet stood 
on our right : the mud cabins with 
their thatched roofs tied down by 
hay-ropes secured by stones, while 
the blue smoke of the turf-fire curl- 
ed upwards in white wreaths to 
the azure sky. In front the inevi- 
table pig wallowed in a pool of 
muck, the very sight of which would 
drive a sanitary inspector into de- 
lirium. Supporting the cabins on 
one side affectionately leaned the 
turf-clamp, now running low ; on 
the other side the open sheeling for 
the protection of the cart ; behind 
and in close proximity to the chim- 
ney a shanty for the ragged but 
sturdy pony. 

In picturesque groups that Mu- 
rillo would have rapturously trans- 
ferred to canvas were children with 
raven-black hair, and. violet-blue 



My Christmas at Baniakeery. 



421 



eyes, and bare limbs worthy the 
chisel of Phidias; the girls in scar- 
let petticoats and nothing more, 
the boys in corduroy " in flitthers," 
or a blue-gray, rough frieze called 
" nap," now unhappily yielding to 
broadcloth ; every one of them stud- 
ies in their dirt, and rags, and squa- 
lor, and yet withal full of a glorious 
sunshine that gilded their tattered 
raiment, their unwashed faces and 
unkempt hair. 

Curs there were plenty, who bark- 
ed themselves hoarse, their tails 
between their legs, becoming val- 
iant as we passed forward, but dis- 
appearing into the bog with a de- 
spairing howl when either Ned or 
I turned upon them. Out of the 
smoke-filled doorways peered faces 
of men and women, who bade us 
*' God speed " in their native Irish, 
or questioned Ned as to the identity 
of the individual who is now nar- 
rating his experiences. 

As we were crossing the road 
that stood between us and the lake 
Joyce made a hurried movement to 
clear the hedge at the other side, 
muttering under his breath, " Musha, 
but Father James has me now in 
airnest "; and on turning in the di- 
rection from whence the sounds of 
the footfall of a horse were proceed- 
ing I beheld an old-fashioned gig 
attached to a " bit of blood," the 
reins in the hands of a handsome, 
benevolent-looking Catholic cler- 
gyman. Father James pulled up 
short. 

" Ned Joyce, why haven't you been 
over at Narraghmore ?" he cried. 

" Bedad, the baste is in illigant 
shape," exclaimed Ned admiringly, 
as he patted the horse's neck. 
" Rosy as a robin, no less." 

" Why haven't you been over at 
Narraghmore ?" repeated the priest. 

" It's the black oats that does it." 

" Why" 



" Troth, ye show for yer feeding" 
addressing the horse. " Me father 
God rest his sowl, amin !" reverent- 
ly removing his hat " that often 
served poor Father Tom Donnel- 
ly's Mass an' where's the use in 
me goin' over to Narraghmore, yer 
riverince, an' you on rethrait at 
Mayneuth Collidge ?" 

" That's three months ago, Ned. 
A retreat don't last three months." 

" See that, now!" 

" Besides, Father Harold was 
there all the time> and was in his 
confessional three nights a week." 

" Ye have me conquered, Father 
James," grinned Ned. 

" Let me see you before first 
Mass on Sunday, Joyce !" 

" Sure, ye don't want me for to 
sit up all night, father?" pleaded 
Ned. 

" I want you to come over to me 
on next Sunday morning, and make 
no bones about it." And giving the 
reins a gentle shake, and courteous- 
ly lifting his hat to me, Father 
James rapidly disappeared down 
the road. 

" Ay, there ye go," soliloquized 
Ned, gazing after the receding 
form of the priest. " Yer aisy 
enough av a boy's in hardship, 
but av he's goin' on quiet an' to 
his liken yer as hard as a griddle." 

" Father James means business," 
I laughed. 

" He does, sir. He'd take the 
back tooth out av an ostrich sooner 
nor let the boys mitch or go for 
to desave him. He's a hard man, 
but he's a fair man, an' he's on 
his bades night an' mornin'. His 
heart's as big as that mountain' in 
regard to the poor, an' that's a good 
thing. Sorra a buke betune this 
an' Mayneuth but he has it off 
be heart. He's wrote a cupple av 
bukes that they tell me is shupayrior. 
He bet th' ould Orange dean, Mcll- 



422 



My Christmas at Barnakcery. 



wester, that \vint for to argue wild 
him on religion bet him till he was 
the laugh av the whole counthry, an' 
had to ax for lave to go to furrin 
parts for to recruit. But cute as 
Father James is, he was distanced 
wanst whin he was a curate below 
at Ballyboffy, beyant Galway, an' 
badly conquered" this with a broad 
grin. 

" How did it happen, Ned ?" 

" I'll tell ye, sir. Ye see Bally- 
boffy is a saypoort on the coast, an' 
full of fishers and all soarts av na- 
tives. Well, sir, wan mornin' Father 
James, as usual, was upon his bades 
whin a boy kem runnin' up to the 
house roarin' millia murdher, an' 
that a man was wracked in the bay 
below out av a bit av a hooker that 
kem from Galway, an' for Father 
James to run to him at wanst, as 
he wasn't expected to live. Well, 
sir, Father James run the bades 
an' the brevvary into the pocket 
av his small-clothes, an' away wud 
him like a hare to the very spot, 
as nimble as a deer; an', shure 
enough, there was a poor sayfarin' 
man lyin' for dead on the say- 
rack, an' not as much breath in him 
as wud make the eye av a midge 
wink. 

" ' Have none of yez a tent o' 
sperrits about yez ?' sez Father 
James. ' Have none av yez a tent 
o' sperrits for to put betune this 
poor crayture's shimmy an* the 
could ?' sez Father James, risin' at 
it. 

" Now, they were all afeerd for 
to say 'yis,' bekase Father James 
had denounced sperrits from th' 
althar, an' if they were for to own 
to a sup the father wud ketch them. 
At last a virago faymale in the 
crowd cried : 'Arrah, where wud we 
get a dhrop, Father James, whin ye 
won't let it be sould in Ballyboffy ? 
Mebbe ye'd have a dhrop yerself 



in that bottle that's stickin' out of 
yer coat.' 

" * How dare ye, ye ould ' But 
Father James pulled up short, for, 
shure enough, whin he was lavin' 
the house he run it into his buz- 
zem, thinkin' it might be wanted, 
and forgot it intirely; so he lifted 
up th' sayfarin' man's head an' gev 
him a scoop out av the bottle. 
Bedad, it put life into him, an' he 
gev a great sigh. 

" ' He wants another sup, yer riv- 
erince,' sez wan. 

" ' Let me hould the bottle, fa- 
ther,' sez another. 

"'Whisht, ye haythens !' roared 
Father James, * an' go down on 
yer two knees an* pray for a sowl 
that's goin' to glory,' sez he. 
'Whisht! every wan of yez,' 
houlding up his hand, for the poor 
sayfarin' man was thryin' for to 
spake, but the rattles was in his 
troath. 

" ' Say wan word,' sez Father 
James, ' for to let me know that ye 
die a Catholic,' sez he. 

"The sayfarin' man med a bould 
attempt. 

" 'Wan little word, honey,' whis- 
pered Father James into his ear. 
The sayfarin' man med another ef- 
fort, an', wud a screech loud enough 
for to be heard at Ballyboffy be- 
yant, yelled : 

" ' To hell wud the pope /' 

"And that was ho\v Father 
James was caught. But," added 
Ned, well pleased with the recep- 
tion accorded to his story, " av 
his riverince was bet up wanst, he 
caught an Orangeman just as bad, 
an' I'll till ye how he done it, sir. 
Father James was a brave curate 
up in the North wanst, where the 
Orangemin is as bould as rams, an' 
thinks no more of Catholics nor if 
they wor dirt ; an' wan day the fa- 
ther was comin' along the sthreet 



My Christmas at Barnakeery. 



423 



whin he seen a sailor-lukkin' man 
come up to an Orangeman that was 
standin'at a shop-doore, an' sez the 
sailor, sez he : 

" ' There's a man dhrownded on 
me below at the bar,' sez he, * an' I 
Avant for to sod him at wanst,' sez 
he. 

" ' There's nothin' aisier in life,' 
sez th' Orangeman. 

"'But I want,' sez the sailor, 
1 for to bury him in a Christian 
ground where there's no Papishers 
berried in,' sez the sailor. 

" ' That's not so aisy,' sez th' 
Orangeman. ' The Papishers is 
everywhere,' sez he ' the curse o' 
Crummle on thim ! But whisht!' 
sez he, thinkin' he'd have some di- 
varshin, ' do you see that man 
readin' a buke on th' other side o' 
th' sthreet?' sez he. 

" ' I do,' sez the sailor-man. 
' ' Go an' ax />;/. If any man 
can tell ye he can, for he's a most 
knowlidgable man.' And shure 
'enough, the sailor crossed the 
sthreet, over to where Father James 
was meanderin' along readin' his 
brevvary who, be the same token, 
heerd every word that th' Orange- 
man had sed. 

" ' I ax yef pardin,' sez . the 
sailor to Father James, 'but can ye 
tell me any berrin'-ground where 
there's no Papishers berried ?' 

'" Yis,' sez his riverince. 

" ' Where ?' axed the sailor. 

" '/ hell? roared Father James, 
An' I think he had the Orange- 
man that time, anyhow. Don't you, 
counsellor?" 

"I think Father James has got 
you this time," I laughed. 

" Faix, I'm afeerd he won't let 
go his hoult,' grinned Ned, as he 
placed the fishing-tackle in the 
boat. 

The lake was like a mirror, and 
it was perfectly useless to attempt 



to fish. The sky gave promise of 
a breeze, so, setting up my rod and 
one of Weeks' " strongest " flies, 1 
lazily lay back in the boat while 
Ned Joyce as lazily paddled, gazing 
up at the blue rings of smoke from 
my Reina, or gloating over the 
greens, and purples, and golds on 
the softly-outlined hillside. 

" Do many people fish here, 
Ned ? " I asked of Joyce, who pre- 
ferred his short, black "dhudheen '' 
to the lordly cigar which I had of- 
fered him. 

" Not here, for the masther pre- 
serves it ; but below at Lake Iney 
the fishers is as thick as hives, 
an' sorra a fish in it, barrin' a few 
throuts that's fed like aldhermin." 

" Why do they come, then?" 

" Begorra, ye may well ax that, 
counsellor. What brings any wan 
here, at all at all ? Gintlemin from 
Dublin an' London an' other fur- 
rin parts, wud rings on their fingers, 
an' goold pins in their neckties, an' 
banknotes as thick as rishes, comes 
here for what ? To wallop the lake 
below for throuts that's too well fed 
for to care ^.thraneen for their flies, 
or for mebbe a pike that runs away 
wud rod and line to the tune of 
five pound, no less. What brings 
thim here, at all at all ? They 're 
always com plain in'. Sorra a ha- 
porth else they do. from mornin' 
until night. Wan man has his feet 
all in blisthers an' roars murther ; 
another sez his face is disthroyed 
wud the sun, and ye'd think he'd lost 
a barony in regard to a few freckles 
the open air painted on him; an- 
other ups an' sez he ates too 
much ; another murns that he can't 
dhrink enough; an' all av thim 
condims the cunthry. There's 
no satisfyin' thim. They've quare 
notions av divarshin, these shoot- 
hers an' fishers !" 

" Who's place is that over yon- 



424 



My Christmas at Barnakcery. 



der ?" I demanded, lazily nodding 
in the direction of a large white 
house half hidden in a clump of 
trees. 

"That's Slievnacullagh, sir, that 
belonged to ould Major Mori- 
arty. It's th' anshint sate av th' 
ould family. That's where me 
father lived man an' boy the hea- 
vens be his bed this night, amin ! 
An' talkin' av shoothers, th' ould 
major med the quarest shot, over 
on that slip of grass foreninst ye, 
that ever was fired out av a gun." 

Knowing that a story was com- 
ing, I preserved a masterly inac- 
tivity while Ned " reddied " his 
u dhudheen." 

" Well, sir, th' ould major was as 
dacent an ould gintleman as ever 
swallowed a glass o' sperrits or 
stuck a knife into a leg o' mutton, 
an' there was always lash ins av 
lavins at that house beyant. If ye 
wor hungry it was yerself that was 
for to blame ; an' if ye wor dhry, be 
me sowl, it was from takin' a sup too 
much ! Faix," added Ned, with a 
reflective sigh, " it wasn't for want 
av a golliogug) anyhow. Th' ould 
lady herself was th' aiqual av the 
major, an' a hospitabler cupple 
didn't live this or any other side av 
the Shannon. Well, wan mornin' a 
letther cum sayin' that some frinds 
was comin' for to billet on thim. 

" ' Och, I'm bet ! ' says Mrs. Mo- 
riarty. 

'"What's that yer savin', at all 
at all ? ' sez the major. * Who bet 
ye, ma'am?' sez he. 

"'Shure there's Sir Val Blake 
from Mario Castle, an' Misther 
Bodkin Burke from Loughrea, an' 
there's more comin' this very day,' 
sez she. 

'"Arrah, what the dickins has 
that for to say to it ? ' sez the major. 

" ' There's not as much fresh 
mate in the house as wud give a day- 



cent brequist to a blackbird/ se/ 
Mrs. Moriarty ; ' we et it all up/ sez 
she. ' An' they all ate fish of a Fri- 
da', sez she. ' An' ho\v are we to 
get at it, at all at all, wud the hor- 
ses spavined and lame/ sez she, 
* an' Paddy Joyce that's me fa- 
ther, counsellor in the "horrors 
av dhrink " ? ' sez she. ' They'll be 
wantin' fish an' game, an' all man- 
ner av divarshin ; an' it's bacon 
an' herrins they'll have for to put 
up wud, an' the house '11 get a bad 
name/ sez she. 

" You see, sir," explained Ned 
parenthetically, " there was little or 
no roads in thim times, an' the 
carriers only kem past wanst ;i 
week, an' sometimes sorra a sign 
wud be seen av thim for a month." 

" ' We're hobbled/ sez the ma- 
jor, ' we're hobbled, ma'am, shure 
enough/ sez he; 'an' I wish they'd 
had the manners for to wait till we 
cud get thim somethin' to ait/ sez 
he, * an' afore they'd come into n 
man's house like an invasion. Be 
this an' that, it bates the Danes.' 

" ' Cudn't ye shoot somethin' ? ' 
sez Mrs. Moriarty. 

" ' Shoot a haystack flyin', ma'am ! ' 
sez the major in a hate for he was 
riz ; an' when he was riz, d' ye see, 
sir, he wor wickkeder nor a Thro- 
jan. 'What is therefor to shoot, 
barrin' a crow? an' ye might as 
well be atin' sawdust or digestin* 
the Rock o' Cashel.' 

"'I seen three wild ducks on the 
lake below/ sez she. 

" ' Ye did, ma'am, on Tibbs Eve ; 
an' that comes nayther afore nor 
afther Christmas.' 

'"Faix, it's the truth I'm tellin' 
ye/ sez Mrs. Moriarty. ' I seen 
thim this very mornin' whin I was 
comin' from Mass/ sez she ; ' an', be 
the same token/ sez she, lukkin' out 
av the windy, 'they're there this 
blessed minit.' 



My Christmas at Barnakccry. 



425 






! 



" * Thin 'pon me conscience,' 
roared the major, 'they won't sit 
there very long; for av I don't hit 
thim, anyhow I'll make them lave 
that: 

" So he ups an* loads an ould 
blundherbuss wud all soarts av com- 
busticles, an' down he creeps to the 
edge av the wather and hides him- 
self in the long grass, for the ducks 
was heddin' up to him. Up they 
cum, an' the minit they wor within 
a cupple av perch av him he pulls 
the trigger, whin, be the -hokey, 
th' ould blundherbuss hot him a 
welt in the stummick that fairly 
levelled him, an' med him feel as 
if tundher was rowlin' inside av 
him. 

''He roared millia murdher, for 
he thought he was kilt ; but, how- 
somever, he fell soft and aisy, an' 
he put out his hand to see if he 
wus knocked into smithereens be- 
hind, whin he felt somethin' soft 
an' warm right undher him, an', 
turnin' round, what was he sittin' 
on but an illigant Jack hare- 

" ' Yer cotched, ma bouchal,' sez 
the major; 'an' let me tell ye 
yer as welkim as the flowers o' 
May.' 

" Wasn't that a chance, counsel- 
lor?" asked Ned slyly. 

" Not a doubt of it." 



" Well, now, what I'm goin' for 
to tell ye now is quarer agin." 

" Let's have it, Ned." 

"Ye'll hear it, sir, but it's so 
quare that ye'll be afther tellin' mo 
I invinted it." 

" I'll not tell you anything of the 
kind, Ned. I believe every word 
that you say." 

" That's mannerly, anyhow," ob- 
served Joyce, as he resumed : " The 
major wud his shot dhropped two 
av the ducks the combusticles in 
the blundherbuss would have level- 
led a rlock o' sheep, let alone a few 
fowls but th' ould mallard kep' 
floatin' on the wather in a quare 
sort av a way as if he was tied to 
it, an' he yellin' murther all the 
time. Whin the major kem nigh 
him he seen that lie was fastened 
to somethin' undher the wather, an' 
whin he cotch him what d'ye think 
he found? It's no lie I'm tellin' ye, 
counsellor he found the ramrod, 
that he neglected for to take out 
av the blundherbuss, run right 
through th' ould mallard, an,' be 
the hole in me coat, the other half 
wus stuck in a lovely lump av n. 
sammin, an' th' bould major cotch 
thim both. ' Now,' sez he, 'T've the 
hoigth av game an' fish, an' the good 
name of Slievnacullagh is as sthrong 
as ever it was.' " 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



426 



New Publications. 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



FIVE-MINUTE SERMONS FOR Low MASSES 
ON ALL SUNDAYS OF THE YEAR. By 
Priests of the Congregation of St. 
Paul. Vol. I. New York : The Ca- 
tholic Publication Society Co. 1879. 

Those who were interested in the be- 
ginning of the Oxford movement may 
remember the Plain Sermons by the au- 
thors of the Tracts for the Times. These 
were something new at that time in Eng- 
lish sermonizing. They were wholly 
different from the received type of the 
sermon. They were very short, very 
plain, with one leading idea only, or sa- 
lient point, which was developed very 
simply and directly and brought to a 
practical conclusion at the end. They 
were easy reading, but certainly not 
very easy writing, for they were carefully 
prepared, and could be read both by the 
learned and the simple with pleasure. 
The Abbe Mullois published several 
years ago a set of little sermons, each 
one just long enough to occupy seven 
minutes in the delivery. These short 
sermons were very popular in Paris, and 
we know it to be a fact that not in Paris 
only, but in many other places, short 
sermons as well as short Masses are 
much preferred to long ones by a large 
number of persons. This need not be 
in all cases because the devotion of 
such persons is short. Frequently their 
time for devotion is short, through the 
necessity of the case, whatever their in- 
clination may be. A great many are 
either obliged to go, generally or always, 
to Low Mass on Sundays, or follow this 
practice from choice. Such persons 
have hitherto for the most part been de- 
prived of the privilege of hearing the 
word of God frequently preached. This 
is obviously a great loss to them, and it 
is most desirable that such a want should 
be supplied. Sermons of a half-hour, or 
even of a quarter of an hour in length, 
would be most inconvenient at Low 
Mass for many reasons. A very short 
extemporaneous address is likely to be 
a mere random declamation without pith 
or marrow, and the preacher will often 
be tempted to overrun his time, or will 
do it unawares. There is only one way 
of preaching very short 'sermons which 



are really useful and interesting, and 
this is to write them out carefully and 
deliver them exactly as they are written, 
either from memory or by reading. 

The Five-Minute Sermons of the Paul- 
ists which are now published in a volume 
have been given at all the Low Masses ( 
for the people on Sundays in their 
church during the past three years, and 
simultaneously printed in the Catholic 
Review. The printed copy is received 
in advance from the office of the news- 
paper and pasted on a tablet which is 
left on the desk for each one who cele- 
brates a Low Mass to read to the people 
after the Gospel has been said. These 
short, popular sermons have given great 
satisfaction to the people frequenting the 
church, and to many others who have 
read them in the excellent newspaper in 
which they are regularly published. The 
late Father Brown, C.S.P., was the au- 
thor of the plan, and wrote nearly all the 
sermons until his fatal illness put a stop 
to his priestly labors. Whether he took 
the idea from the Plain Sermons we do 
not know ; but we have been reminded 
of these on reading his own, which are, 
however, more pithy and pungent, be- 
sides containing, as of course genuine 
Catholic sermons must, that pure and 
complete doctrine which is not found in 
imitations of Catholic teaching. The 
Seven-Minute Sermons of the Abb6 Mul- 
lois must undoubtedly have suggested 
the plan of preaching still shorter ones 
at Low Mass. This plan must commend 
itself to all priests who have parishes in 
cities and towns, where the people at- 
tend Mass at different hours on Sunday 
mornings and cannot be assembled all 
at one time, unless perhaps on some 
rare occasions, for hearing the regular 
parochial sermons of their pastor and 
the other clergy of the parish. It is to 
be hoped that the publication and circu- 
lation of this volume will have the effect 
of proving that the plan of preaching 
short sermons at Low Mass is feasible 
as well as desirable, and that it may be 
extensively adopted. For all Catholics, 
good Sunday reading of the kind which 
may fitly be called mustard-seed is pro- 
vided in a cheap and convenient form, 
and for their greater convenience and 



New Publications. 



427 



advantage the Epistles and Gospels in 
full have been placed before the sermons 
for each Sunday. 

THE JESUITS : Their Foundation and 
History. By B. N. Two vols. New 
York : Benziger Bros. 1879. 

The Jesuits continue to be subjects of 
deep interest to Catholics and non-Ca- 
tholics alike, and we hope the day may 
be far distant when they will cease to 
be so. From the very foundation of the 
society they made themselves an impor- 
tant factor in general history. It is im- 
possible to read the history of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries without 
meeting the Jesuits at every turn. Their 
great-hearted missionaries followed the 
stream of enterprise and discovery, and 
left their saintly names to territories that 
they had consecrated with their blood. 
In Europe they faced the growing revolt 
against religion and society, and com- 
bated it as much by their superior know- 
ledge and wisdom as by the heroic ex- 
ample of their lives of self-sacrifice. 
Thus they became a part of our modern 
history ; for the revolt recognized them, 
after the church of Christ, as its dead- 
liest foe, and wreaked its vengeance on 
them. 

It is strange that, with the array of 
learned and capable men at the com- 
mand of the society, there should 
be no good history of it in English. 
True, the Jesuits have other work to at- 
tend to than to defend themselves from 
calumny and misrepresentation, which 
they seem rather to court than not. 
Their chief business is the salvation of 
souls, and not self-justification. Never- 
theless a complete history of the society, 
by some of its very able historians and 
writers, would be a great addition to 
English literature as well as a service to 
the Catholic cause ; and the ardent pur- 
suit of historical investigations in these 
days would seem to demand such a 
work. It is not yet forthcoming and 
the two volumes before us are at present 
the nearest approach to it in English. 
The author has made liberal use of Cre- 
tineau-Joly's Histoire de la Compagnie de 
Jesus, which it was his intention to 
translate. He, wisely we think, chang- 
ed his intention, and used Cretineau- 
Joly's work as a foundation, to which 
he added considerably from other 
sources. He has been diligent in his 



researches, and is a pleasing writer. 
While without that keen historic in- 
stinct and admirable style that impart 
such an irresistibly delicious flavor to 
the writings of Father Morris, and 
stamp them throughout with importance, 
he has made a careful selection of facts 
and brought together a great quantity of 
excellent material in an excellent man- 
ner. 

While on this subject we would call at- 
tention to the very great importance to 
Catholics of the study of history mod- 
ern history especially. More than half 
the prejudices against Catholics and the 
Catholic Church prevalent to-day spring 
from a false history, which begets and per- 
petuates a lying tradition almost impossi- 
ble to be broken down. So outrageous- 
ly false has the history of the past three 
centuries more especially been that, 
once Lingard helped to open men's eyes, 
Protestants themselves begin to recoil 
from it in horror. A historical writer of 
Mr. Froude's blind bias is to-day an 
exception, and his very co-religionists 
hold him up as a warning. Notwith- 
standing this fairer tendency of mind 
now setting in, Catholics will still be far 
astray if they take their history from 
non-Catholic sources. To read non- 
Catholic authors engenders a constant 
desire to refute them. A good practical 
historical series is one of the great de- 
sideratums in our colleges and schools. 
Owing to the absence of it hitherto one 
of the most important branches of edu- 
cation in these days has been. too much 
neglected. History is an ever-lengthen- 
ing chain, not a haphazard collection 
of broken links, and as such it ought 
to be viewed and studied. Under our 
present system we have a history of this, 
that, and the other ; of a period, an epoch, 
a nation, or a group of such. Some- 
thing more than this is needed and can 
be had. A sound general knowledge 
of history ought to be possessed by any 
man, claiming to be intelligent, who 
has had time and opportunities to cul- 
tivate his intelligence. This is to be 
acquired at school, but hardly under 
the present system of teaching. 

The best approach to a complete his- 
torical series that we have thus far seen 
is that of the Jesuit Father Gazeau, 
which has been wisely taken up by the 
Catholic Publication Society, and is now 
nearing its completion. We learn 
that they meet with great favor from 



428 



New Publications. 



the heads of educational establishments, 
which is a sign that they were wanted. 
The plan is excellent, and, with the na- 
tural eliminations and additions in an 
English version of such a work, admira- 
bly adapted to meet and satisfy the re- 
quirements we have indicated. 

L'ART DE LA LECTURE. Par Ernest Le- 
gouve. J. Hetzel & Cie., Paris. Read- 
ing as a Fine Art. Translated by Abby 
Langdon Algcr. Roberts Brothers, 
Boston. 

Abby Langdon Alger professes to 
have translated M. Legouve's LArt de la 
Lecture. Now, strange to say, there is a 
good deal less matter in Reading as a 
Fine Ait than in L'Art de la Lecture. 
LArt de la Lecture contains twenty chap- 
ters, Reading as a Fine Art contains only 
twelve. There may be a special reason 
for the setting aside a few chapters, such 
as " Modele d'Exercice," " Zezaiment 
et Grasseyment," but we see no good 
reason why the others should not be re- 
tained. To strike eight chapters from a 
book of twenty is an unwarrantable li- 
cense, a dealing in subtraction against 
all laws of literary justice. A render- 
ing like this might be titled " Extracts 
from," or " Dissections of," etc. ; but by 
no manner of fair play can it be called 
a "translation." In French we should 
call it an " escamotage." Moreover, this 
subtracting process which does away 
with whole chapters is carried out on the 
retail plan in the chapters which the 
translator has been considerate enough 
to introduce to the English-speaking 
public. Entire sentences are coolly ig- 
nored or resum6d in a word or two, giv- 
ing more or less the sense, but not the 
delicacy and refinement, of the original. 
We are willing to acknowledge that 
JJArt de la Lecture is a hard book to 
translate, because it is peculiarly French ; 
but if the translator was not equal to the 
task, why, in the name of literary good 
faith, have put forth such a mutilation as 
this? 

The French Academician must be a 
very wise father indeed if he can recog- 
nize his sprightly child in the English 
Midget exhibited in short-clothes by Miss 
Abby Langdon Alger. 

The work of M. Legouve is one of the 
most readable books which have come 
from the French press within these late 
rears, and one of the most useful. Its 



characteristic feature and one of its 
charms is the practical, living form in 
which the author presents the didactic 
rules of the art of reading ; he teaches by 
examples, and in giving his examples he- 
has all the Gallic vivaciousness of a chatty 
Frenchman. Reading, which too often 
is a bore, a positive torture to the sensitive 
ear of an intelligent and cultured listen- 
er, would indeed become a fine art, n 
thing of beauty, a source of literary joy, 
if it were modelled on the rules laid down 
by M. Legouve. The stage, the bar. the 
pulpit, as well as the recitation-hall of 
the college and the reading-desk of the 
refectory in our seminaries, would have 
fewer failures if this little work were 
thoroughly mastered and reduced to 
practice. Though modestly designed 
by the author "a 1'usage de 1'enseigne- 
ment secondaire," it contains sugges- 
tions, advice, and rules of the greatest 
importance to all whose profession calls 
them to speak in public. The reception 
given to it by the French press, and the 
many editions through which it has run 
in a short time, are evidence that it has 
become a favorite with numbers whose 
school-days are things of the past. 

SCIENCE AND RELIGION : Lectures on the 
Reasonableness of Christianity and 
the Shallowness of Unbelief, deliver- 
ed by the Most Rev. Roger Bede 
Vaughan, Archbishop of Sydney. Bal- 
timore : John B. Piet. 1879. 

The purpose of these lectures, deliver- 
ed during the Lent of 1879 in the Pro- 
Cathedral of Sydney, is to show that the 
religion of denial is not only a shallow 
one, but also that it cannot be made to 
work ; and that, on the other hand, the 
religion of affirmation, or Christianity, is 
adapted in a marvellous manner to the 
wants of humanity, and that to reject 
it would be to act not only against 
conscience, but also against those uni- 
versally-accepted maxims of prudence 
which are the guide of all reasonable 
men in every important affair of life. In 
the first lecture, ''Man," the author 
brings out clearly from the intellectual 
and moral constitution of man evidences 
of his having been made for something 
beyond merely living as an animal upon 
the eajth. In the second lecture, " God," 
it is proved from the evidences of Provi- 
dence and the governance of human 
things that the existence of God is as un- 



i 



New Publications. 



429 



deniable a fact as the existence of man 
himself, and that before the creature can 
deny the Creator he must first deny him- 
self. In the third lecture, " Denial," the 
most reverend orator demonstrates that 
the religion of unbelief is not merely 
shallow as a philosophy and empty as 
a religion, but, moreover, that it is the 
fruitful parent of intellectual imbecili- 
ty, moral depravity, and spiritual death. 
Finally, in the fourth lecture, " Faith," he 
proceeds to unfold the supreme advan- 
tages of Christianity, to show how it 
solves difficulties, unravels doubts, gives 
a meaning to life, an illumination to 
death, and that enlightened reason and 
human prudence compel men to submit 
to its authority in spite of its difficulties, 
which are in them rather than in it. 

These lectures are not a complete 
scientific expose of unbelief and Chris- 
tianity, nor does the author put them for- 
ward as such. Hereupon he makes a 
very pertinent remark : " I feel that I 
have far more to say than I shall ever be 
able to hint at ; that the few proofs and 
evidences that I shall be able to make 
use of might be urged with ten thousand 
times more vigor than I shall be able to 
bring to bear ; and that I am unable to 
draw out before you one-tenth of the 
proofs and consequences which go to 
make up the one grand argument for 
Christianity. ... It is not necessary, 
fortunately, in order to convince a rea- 
sonable man, to bring to bear upon him 
every possible argument in favor of a 
given proposition. Sufficient proof is 
enough proof, and enough proof is that 
which would satisfy a man of good-will, 
and one who, sciens et pmdens, makes use 
of the head which God has given him. 
Again, as a rule, what convinces one 
reasonable man will generally convince 
another reasonable man." The con- 
stant reader of Cardinal Newman's 
works will recognize in these remarks 
one of the most striking intellectual 
traits of the great Oratorian ; and we be- 
lieve they contain and point out a safe 
in fact, the only practicable proceed- 
ing for the preacher who must address 
his arguments to the people. Of course 
another method is required for the ex- 
profcsso scientific treatment of religion by 
the theologian writing against scientific 
theories and for a scientific audience. 

These lectures of Archbishop Vau- 
ghan are popular. They are addressed 
to the class of readers who pick up ar- 



guments against Christianity from the 
popular monthl)', the sprightly weekly, 
and the smart daily journal. They are 
eloquent, crisp with bright metaphor, 
apt quotation, and kindly but sharp wit. 
Perhaps the most remarkable feature, at 
first glance, is the wonderful knack the 
learned author has of making " diamond 
cut diamond," to use a common phrase, 
in pitting one scientist against another. 
This species of warfare, in which the 
late Mr. Marshall excelled, is very tell- 
ing with an intelligent and appreciative 
audience, and very telling, too, on the 
scientists, whom it converts into the wire- 
strung puppets of a Punch-and-Judy 
show, to the great consternation of their 
worshippers. 



O'CoNNELL CENTENARY RECORD, 1875. 
Published by authority of the O'Con- 
nell Centenary Committee. Dublin : 
Joseph Dollard. 1878. 

We owe an apology to the publishers 
and editor (Prof. James W. Kavanagh) 
of this magnificent volume for our delay 
in giving it the notice which it richly 
deserves. On August 6, 1875, occurred 
the hundredth anniversary of the birth of 
the most illustrious man in Irish history 
and one of the most illustrious in all 
history. We say this fearlessly ; for 
though there are many great and illus- 
trious names in the history of Ireland, 
there is not one significant of so much 
heroic achievement, and patient perse- 
verance, and manly might, and combin- 
ed qualities of true greatness as that 
of Daniel O'Connell. The men of his 
race felt this and manifested their feel- 
ing in language unmistakable all the 
world over on the occurrence of the date 
mentioned above. The work before us 
is the outcome of the celebration of that 
day. In the words of the editor of the 
Record : " The national committee charg- 
ed with that celebration, in Dublin, de- 
sirous to transmit to posterity an abid- 
ing and faithful record of the proceed- 
ings in Ireland and elsewhere connected 
with the centennial, requested unani- 
mously in public meeting, 24th of Au- 
gust, their president, the Right Hon. 
Peter Paul McSwiney, Lord Mayor of. 
Dublin, to prepare a Record of ike Cen- ' 
tenary." This sufficiently explains the 
general plan and purport of the work, 
which is preceded by an admirable 
sketch of O'Connell's career and a con- 



430 



New Publications. 



densed history of Ireland up to the time 
of his birth. 

When it is said that the volume con- 
tains over seven hundred pages quarto 
the reader will imagine how hard the 
task to hint even at the great variety 
of matter. It is rich in materials for 
the future Irish historian, particularly re- 
garding that most interesting and impor- 
tant epoch of Irish history immediately 
preceding and leading up to the crown- 
ing triumph of O'Connell's life Catho- 
lic Emancipation. As Louis Veuillot 
well says: "The consequences of this 
success have spread far beyond all ex- 
pectation. Not only did he emancipate 
Ireland, but even its very masters ; and, 
still further, those on the Continent who 
professed the unmutilated faith of Jesus 
Christ. Who can tell all the victory of 
O'Connell ? The old pupil of the semi- 
nary of Douay, ever devout to the Vir- 
gin Mary, was chosen to implant in the 
church a spirit of invincible hope and 
invincible liberty. He led back the per- 
verted masses into the true freedom of 
Christianity. No man with less means 
ever better deserved the title of Libera- 
tor, one really earned by so few mortals. 
In the modern world he sprinkled the 
first drops of baptismal water upon that 
savage power, unknown of all, and es- 
pecially of itself, which we call demo- 
cracy." The editor is to be heartily con- 
gratulated on the singular ability with 
which he has discharged his onerous task 
of collecting and collating and illustrat- 
ing by his own judicious observations 
the records of the celebration of so great 
a life streaming in on him from all quar- 
ters of the globe. He has been gener- 
ously seconded by the publishers. Both 
type and paper are beautiful and soft to 
the eye. There are twenty-four illustra- 
tions, all of them excellent,. and among 
them finely-executed portraits of O'Con- 
nell, of Cardinal Cullen, Archbishops 
MacHale, McGettigan, Croke, Denis 
Florence MacCarthy, the poet, Lord 
O'Hagan, and other distinguished men. 
The work is appropriately dedicated 
to " the Irish race, wherever dispers- 
ed, and to all the friends of civil and re- 
ligious liberty throughout the globe." 
Those of our readers anxious to procure 
a copy of so valuable a work may apply 
to Mr. P. V. -Hickey, editor of the Ca- 
tholic Review and publisher of the excel- 
lent "Vatican Library." Copies are for 
sale, price $20. 



MEDITATIONS AND CONTEMPLATIONS ON 
THE SACRED PASSION OF OUR LORD 
JESUS CHRIST AND ON THE BLESSED 
SACRAMENT. With Instructions on 
Prayer. Translated from the Spanish 
of the Venerable Luis of Granada, O.P., 
by a member of the Order of Mercv. 
New York : The Catholic Publica- 
tion Society Co. 1879. 

For over three centuries the works 
of Venerable Luis of Granada have 
borne the highest reputation. They 
were recommended in an express brief 
by Pope Gregory XIII.; St. Charles Bor- 
romeo preferred them to all other spirit- 
ual writings, meditated on them every 
day, and preached no theology but what 
he learned in them ; and St. Francis de 
Sales advised every priest to procim- 
them and make them his second brevi- 
ary. In his approbation of this work 
the Archbishop of New Orleans says : 
44 Venerable Luis of Granada, ' the Bos- 
suet of Spain,' has long been regard- 
ed as one of the ablest masters of 
spiritual life, and his works are most 
conducive to the sanctification of souls." 
The " imprimatur" of his Eminence Cardi- 
nal McCloskey is also given. The book 
is divided into three parts ; the first treats 
of prayer in general, the second con- 
tains meditations on the sacred Passion 
of our Lord, the third contains useful 
counsels on devotion and its impedi- 
ments. A method of hearing Mass and 
the Way of the Cross, short but full of 
unction, are added, making this one of 
the most convenient books for the Lent- 
en season that we know of. 

Of all the subjects for meditation 
there is none which attracts more pow- 
erfully the soul, whether advanced to 
the higher grades of contemplation or 
only just beginning to run its course 
in the spiritual life, than the sacred Pas- 
sion of our Lord Jesus Christ. To the 
hearts of the people, of the laboring poor, 
of the Christian who is under bodily or 
mental suffering and toil, do the sorrows 
and sufferings of our Lord especially 
appeal. Every priest frequently meets 
in the confessional good souls which 
grace seems to draw to mental prayer, 
and with a little questioning he easily 
discovers that the subject on which their 
thoughts generally run is the Passion of 
our Lord. The season of Lent, the im- 
pressive ceremonies of Holy Week, the 
Stations of the Cross, the crucifix and 



New Publications. 



so many other emblems of the Passion 
which constantly meet the eye in the 
church and in every Catholic house, ne- 
cessarily fix the attention on our Lord 
suffering. To unlock to such souls the 
abundant spiritual treasures of this de- 
votion to which the Holy Spirit attracts 
them, the only thing needed is a few 
counsels as to prayer and its hindrances, 
and a simple, easy method to guide them 
in meditation. This want is admirably 
supplied by this small book. It con- 
tains by no means all the spiritual writ- 
ings, but only a few of the meditations, 
of the illustrious writer. May this little 
selection, in its new form, be as condu- 
cive to Catholic piety as it has been for 
centuries in the stately Castilian of the 
great Dominican ! 

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY 
ANNUAL FOR 1880. New York : The 
^Catholic Publication Society Com- 
pany. 

The reappearance of this most excel- 
lent Annual reminds us that another 
year is closing, and that the season of 
Christmas-boxes and New Year's gifts 
is on us. There is no more welcome 
gift .than this beautiful little book, 
with its bright woodcuts and pleasant 
sketches of Catholic life and lives. 
The illustrations this year are excep- 
tionally good, and the literary sketch- 
es are in keeping. Cardinal Newman 
occupies the place of honor. He is 
followed by Bishop Foley, Father Fi- 
notti, Rev. Charles White, of Maryland, 
whose names will be more familiar to 
our readers. There are also portraits, 
with accompanying biographical sketches, 
of Denis Florence MacCarthy and his 
illustrious compatriot, Moore the poet ; 
Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan, Dr. 
Lingard the historian, and Bishop Hay, 
of Scotland. Among the Catholic saints 
and heroes of earlier times we find Al- 
bert the Great (a face full of intellectual 
beauty); Bayard, the knight sans peur et 
sans reproche, and a model for all high- 
minded Christian youth ; Jacques Car- 
tier, with the resolute expression and 
eager eye of the explorer ; and Charle- 
magne, the great Christian ruler and 
warrior. There are pictures of historic 
landmarks in the New World and the 
Old : Seton House, the Cathedral of 
Orleans, the Castle of Ostia, the Cathe- 
dral of St. Augustine, Florida, and a 



quaint illustration of the celebration of 
the first Mass on this continent, and 
Jerpoint Abbey in Ireland. Besides 
these there are some very interesting- 
original articles, such as "Education in 
the Middle Ages," the Catholic Indian 
missions in this country, " An Unwritten 
Chapter of '98," " Reminiscences of Mis- 
sionary Days in Scotland," etc. Indeed, 
there is not a page without value in the 
entire book. 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH LITERA- 
TURE. The Old English Period. By 
Brother Azarias. New York : D. Ap- 
pleton & Co. 1879. 

" Semper aut discere, aut docere, aut 
scribere dulce habui " is the epigraph to 
this work. If it be a pleasure to Brother 
Azarias to write it is no less a pleasure 
to read his writings, for he writes well. 
This volume, which is to be followed by 
two others bringing the subject down to 
the present day, traces the development 
and the growth of old English thought, 
as expressed in old English literature 
from the first dawning of history down 
to the Norman Conquest. It goes back 
of the written word to the life, the aspira- 
tions, and the motives that gave it expres- 
sion. It seeks in the manners and cus- 
toms, the religion, and law, and govern- 
ment, and international relations, of the 
old English people the sources whence 
the literature of that people derives its 
tone and coloring. The volume may be 
divided into three very distinct parts : i, 
the old English in their Continental 
homestead ; 2, foreign influences on the 
old English, especially the Celtic influ- 
ence ; 3, The new creed, or the influence 
of Christianity on English literature and 
the more famous schools which religion 
before the Norman Conquest had found- 
ed on the island. 

Man is so called because of his think- 
ing power : the word man is pure San- 
skrit, and means to think. Thought, 
therefore, and literature, which is the ex- 
pression of thought, will give the mea- 
sure, as of man, so of a people. A peo- 
ple's literature is the criterion of a peo- 
ple's civilization ; it is the outcome of the 
whole life of a people. 

The history of a people's literature, 
then, is inseparable from that of a peo- 
ple's life. This canon of criticism is 
the guiding principle throughout Brother 
Azarias' work. One test of a people's 



432 



New Publications. 



civilization is the condition made to wo- 
man and the respect given to her ; and 
not only is this a test of civilization, but 
one of the main principles of a people's 
literature also. Now, this question is 
very well treated by Brother Azarias, 
and nothing can be more striking than 
the contrast he draws between woman 
among Teutonic races and woman among 
the Celtic races. The Teutonic woman 
is by no means a pleasing picture to 
contemplate, despite what Tacitus says. 
She was nothing but a slave; she was 
guarded like a pet animal : the Teuton's 
ideal of women was that of an unsexed 
human being. But with the Celt the 
sentiment with which woman is regarded 
assumes a cast of peculiar delicacy and 
tenderness. She loved him, and clung to 
him, and lived for him ; and he in return 
loved, respected, and protected her. And 
when Christianity shall have dawned on 
the Celtic races the Celtic mind will rise 
to the height of the Christian conception ; 
it will help to build up chivalry in mediae- 
val Europe ; it will take in and uphold 
as the mind of no other race has done 
the dignity, position, and prerogatives of 
the Woman par excellence of her who is 
"blessed among women." The nature 
of the Celt is more spiritual than that of 
the Teuton ; its ideal is more elevated ; 
it has greater susceptibility for the beau- 
tiful. Bright color and fair form delight 
it. 

" For acuteness and valor the Greeks ; 

For excessive pride the Romans ; 

For dulness the creeping Saxons ; 

For beauty and love the Gaedhills" 

So says an old Irish poet, forgetful, 
however, that the persistency of the 
"creeping Saxon " is the source of his 
strength and the secret of his enduring 
power. A more disinterested testimony 
than the above is that of Mr. Matthew 
Arnold : "If I were asked," says he, 
" where English poetry got those three 
things its turn for style, its turn for 
melancholy, its turn for natural magic, 
for catching and rendering the charm of 
nature in a wonderfully near and vivid 
way I should answer, with some doubt, 
that it got much of its turn of style from 
a Celtic source ; with less doubt, that it 
got much of its melancholy from a Celtic 
source ; with no doubt at all, that from a 
Celtic source it got nearly all its natural 
magic." Perfervidum ingenium Scotorum, 
With Christianity the Anglo-Saxon 
becomes a profoundly and enthusias- 



tically religious people. It creates a 
Christian epic in the song of Ceadmon. 
It sends abroad missionaries who convert 
the kin it left in the Continental home. 
Wearmouth and Jarrow shed lustre not 
only on England but on the whole of 
Western Europe. Bede is the brightest 
light of his age ; Alcuin reflects that 
light in France ; England becomes the 
educator of Western Europe. Then 
comes the Dane ; Alfred checks his 
course and makes Winchester another 
focus of learning. Again the light wanes. 
Then it revives under the fostering care 
of Dunstan, and Ethelwold, and Alfric ; 
Glastonbury, and Abingdon, and Win- 
chester become each a celebrated seat 
and nursery of scholars. But the Nor- 
man despises the old English language ; 
it ceases to be written ; it runs waste 
into as many dialects as there are shires. 
Such, in very broad outline, is the record 
of the rise and fall of old English litera- 
ture ; it has been the task of BrotMer 
Azarias to fill up this outline, and it has 
been his and our good fortune that he 
has given us one of the most valuable 
books of the season. The subject is 
somewhat dry and the book too scholarly 
to become a favorite with what is called 
the "general reading public" ; nor is it 
intended to be such, for the author is 
careful to premise that the work is in- 
tended for a class-book, and that he has 
restricted himself to presenting the mer- 
est outlines of his subject. It is to be 
hoped that the author's health may per- 
mit him to continue and complete his 
study of English literature in the two 
volumes which are announced to follow. 



ST. JOSEPH'S MANUAL OF A HAPPY ETER- 
NITY. By Father Sebastian of the 
Blessed Sacrament, Priest of the Con- 
gregation of the Cross and Passion of 
our Lord Jesus Christ. Dublin : M. 
H. Gill & Son. 1879. 

This is an excellent hand-book for all 
members of the " Bona Mors " Confra- 
ternity, containing as it does the Mass 
and Office for the Dead in Latin and 
English, and, moreover, twenty -one me- 
ditations on subjects of importance not 
only to them but to every Christian who 
looks forward to a happy death and a 
happy eternity. 

It has the "Imprimatur" of his Grace 
the present Archbishop of Dublin. 









THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXX., No. 178. JANUARY, 1880. 



THE PLEA FOR POSITIVISM.* 






MR. MALLOCK has met with one 
opponent, at least, who has under- 
taken a systematic reply to his ar- ' 
gument against positivism. This 
counter argument divides itself 
into two principal parts. One part 
attempts to defend positivism by 
setting forth what its view is of the 
value of life, and what its purpose 
in respect to making this value at- 
tainable in actual existence on the 
earth by mankind in general. The 
other makes answer to Mr. Mai- 
lock's argument in favor of the 
Catholic view of the nature of that 
life which is worth living, and the 
way of securing its permanent ex- 
istence. 

We will take up these two parts 
in succession ; and first let us ex- 
amine what the anonymous advo- 
cate of positivism has to say of the 
real value of life, according to his 
theory. What is it which makes the 
earthly life of mankind worth liv- 
ing ? What is the proposed substi- 
tute for the prize of an absolutely 
perfect and everlasting life in the 
future world, which a Christian as- 
pires to attain ? The positivist gives 

* The Value of Life. A Reply to Mr. Mallock's 
Essay, Is Life Worth Living ? New York : G. P. 
Putnam's Sons. 1879. 

Copyright : REV. I. 



up at the outset the pretence of 
offering any equivalent. 

" For this prize positivism pretends to 
offer no equivalent " (p. 208), 

It confesses, therefore, that its 
ideal of possible good is infinitely 
inferior to the ideal of the believer 
in infinitely perfect Being and in- 
destructible existence. 

" Existence being the highest conceiv- 
able necessity, everything which condu- 
ces to the extension of the largest exist- 
ence involved, is good ; everything which 
tends to its diminution is an evil " (p. 
198). 

Compared with the idea of the- 
ism, the a-theistic id^a of positiv- 
ism substitutes infinite metaphysi- 
cal evil for infinite good. The 
ideal excellence and desirableness 
of a life self-existent and of bound- 
less perfection, and of a life parti- 
cipating without end in this perfect 
possession of boundless life, is ad- 
mitted ; but not its possibility. So 
far, the case is given up. The life 
which the positivist considers to 
be known by reason as possible is 
acknowledged to be relatively not 
worth living, as compared to that 
which Plato believed to be possi- 
ble, and every Christian hopes for. 

T. HECKER. 1880. 



434 



The Plea tor Positivism. 



Moreover, the great antagonists 
of theism are wont to represent life, 
in so far as men have experience 
of its good and evil, as containing 
not enough good and too much 
evil to be the product of a power 
which is omnipotent and at the 
same time good in an equal pro- 
portion. It is, therefore, the ex- 
istence of evil in the universe which 
has caused the modern recoil into 
atheism which is the last result of 
Protestantism in Western Christen- 
dom. The positivists fall back 
upon the theory of the essential 
and eternal imperfection of the 
universe, involving the perpetual 
existence and endless struggle of 
good and evil, as a pis-aller, in 
order to escape from what they* 
think is the contradiction involved 
in the existence of evil to the idea 
of God as first and final cause of 
the universe. The only conceiv- 
able good left to them is that which 
is capable of being apprehended as 
the excess of good over vil in 
this natural evolution of a world 
necessarily and essentially unstable 
and imperfect. 

To many minds, this is enough 
to settle the question. A universe 
which perfect reason, supposing it 
to exist, could not approve, which 
perfect goodness could not tole- 
rate, which perfect power could not 
create, is not worthy of the com- 
placency with which the human 
mind must regard any ideal of a 
life which it can reasonably con- 
sider as corresponding to its innate 
and necessary desire for good. If 
the ideal is shattered, what is left 
is not worth having, and only the 
poor consolation remains, that what- 
ever imperfect good can be obtain- 
ed in this life may be enjoyed 
while it lasts, and whatever evil is 
unavoidable may be endured, with- 
out fear of any evil to come after 



death ; and that one always has in 
his power a remedy for the evil of 
existence, if it becomes insupport- 
able, by putting an end to the evil, 
with his own individual existence, 
by suicide. 

We say that what is left, accord- 
ing to the positivist theory, is not 
" worth having." By this we mean, 
not that there is no value at all in 
a life of imperfect and temporary 
happiness, but that this value is 
not worth having, when it can be 
had, by comparison with the good 
which the Christian hopes for and 
partially possesses. Moreover, that 
for the greater number, the value 
of life actually enjoyed is not worth 
having, by comparison with even 
the ideal good of the positivist 
which is more or less actually at- 
tained by some, at intervals, and 
for a time. In short, that pre- 
scinding from accidental qualities 
which life may have and which 
give it an extrinsic value in certain 
conditions, it has not, according to 
the positivist theory, essentially and 
intrinsically, simply as life, that 
high value and moral worth which 
make it worth living for its own 
sake. 

The anonymous author of the 
Reply to Mr. Mallock confirms 
and proves the substantial truth of 
the statements which he contro- 
verts. He does not attempt or 
show any disposition to deny or 
palliate the general state of moral 
wretchedness and physical misery 
by which the present world is op- 
pressed, and which has prevailed 
in the past. He does not forecast 
any immediate or near improve- 
ment on a large scale in the future. 
As for those who are personally de- 
graded by vice, by physical or in- 
tellectual degeneracy, or who are 
sunk in misery, he holds out no 
prospect of relief or deliverance. 



fcr 



435 



There is no mercy and no redemp- 
tion in the inexorable cruelty of 
the positivist system. The value 
of the individual life which he de- 
picts is the value of a certain num- 
ber of lives approaching to an 
ideal of virtue, excellence, and en- 
joyment, such as he thinks will be 
made actual in mankind generally, 
in some remote period. 

His phief argument goes to show 
that the human society in organic 
unity, when developed, will become 
something, the existence of which 
is a good in itself, for the sake of 
which all previous individual lives 
have a worth and a value, for which 
each one ought to work and to 
suffer. % 

" It is our business," he writes on the 
last page of his volume, "to seek the 
new good of which, indeed, we have 
had much foretaste and keen realization, 
but which, in all soberness, we may now 
begin to anticipate in much fuller mea- 
sure, when each restless, passionate, ea- 
gerly active and keenly sensitive human 
being shall find his place and fulfil his 
function in the vast living being of hu- 
manity. Then will literally be fulfilled 
the ancient prophecy,* ' Ye shall be as 
gods, knowing good and evil.' It will 
be found that the Tree of Life grows 
for ever by the Tree of Knowledge, and 
that, after its long exile, the race which 
has once become possessed of the fatal 
fruit of the one, may re-enter an earthly 
paradise to enjoy the other. And we 
may dare to say, that if society to-day 
be really in the position of a man who 
awakes from a dream, it is certain that 
any temporary regrets he may feel must 
ultimately be more than compensated 
by the full possession of the dawning 
realities." 

What are these " temporary re- 
grets "? They are a regret for the 
loss of all belief in the objects of 
the intellect seeking for the know- 
ledge of being in its first and final 
causes, a regret for the loss of the 

* Uttered by the devil, the great prophet of 
positivism, j 



hope of endless existence and per- 
fect felicity, a regret for the loss of 
belief in revelation, in the super- 
natural order, in the Father who 
creates and provides for his ad- 
opted sons, in the Son who re- 
deems and glorifies humanity, in the 
Holy Spirit who sanctifies the hu- 
man spirit and raises it to a beati- 
fic union with God, in the eternal 
communion of the blessed in hea- 
ven. They are the regrets of abeing 
whom has befallen a fate the re- 
verse of that imagined in the beau- 
tiful myth of Undine, who by wed- 
ding the knight Huldebrand gam- 
ed a soul. In the ugly myth of the 
anonymous positivist, the unhappy 
man wakes from a dream in which 
he had a soul, to find that he 
has none, but belongs to the same 
category of being with Undine's 
uncle, except that he cannot have 
the knowledge of God as creator. 
Perhaps some may envy Undine 
as she was before she became im- 
mortal, when she told the priest 
who admonished her to put her 
soul in order: "But if one has no 
soul, how, I beg you, can one put 
it in order ? And that is my case." 
They would like to have their be- 
all and their end-all here, and sink 
the life to come. But such per- 
sons are not thinking and feeling 
rationally. So long as life has a 
paramount value, nature shrinks 
from its extinction. It is only 
when it is reduced to so low a 
value that it is not worth anything 
as a permanent possession, that its 
extinction can be anticipated with 
desire or indifference. 

What, then, are those realities 
whose possession even in their 
dawning, or in their full noon-day, 
are more than a compensation for 
what are called the dreams of the 
Christian ? 

In place of the sublime philoso- 



436 



The Plea for Positivism. 



phy and theology which a Catholic 
inherits from Plato, Aristotle, Au- 
gustine, and Thomas Aquinas, the 
knowledge of sensible and psychi- 
cal phenomena; which he can have 
anyway, without recourse to athe- 
ism; and of which atheism may rob 
him' if he gives Up philosophy, leav- 
ing him in the gloom of scepticism. 
In lieu of endless existence and 
perfect felicity, an imperfect hap- 
piness for eighty or one hundred 
years, after science has found out 
the means of prolonging the lives 
of all men to that period. That 
this temporary happiness is intrin- 
sically worth something no one 
will deny, even if it is measured 
by only a year_or a day. But it 
does not satisfy the innate longing 
for perfect felicity, and, such as it 
is, it is spoiled of its chief good by 
the privation of that perpetuity of 
life in knowing, loving, acting, ex- 
isting in health and vigor, for 
which the soul naturally longs. 

Instead of God, " the how," or 
regular mode of movement in the 
series of physical and psychical 
evolutions is proposed as a sub- 
stitute. The Positivist wonders 
why the Cosmos does not present 
to the mind of a Catholic an idea 
equally attractive with the idea 
of God. The difference is simi- 
lar to that which exists between 
the ideas of a living, personal, lov- 
ing father in a family, and of an 
ingenious automatic contrivance 
which provides the fatherless, mo- 
therless young beings who happen 
to find themselves living together 
in the same dwelling, with all those 
things which they want. A dead 
cosmism is no substitute for the 
Living God, because the mind 
seeks to find its object of intelli- 
gence, and the will its object of 
love, in most perfect Being, which 
the unconscious cosmos is not. 



The greatest amount of scientific 
knowledge of the sensible world 
and its laws is no substitute for the 
natural philosophy of theism and 
the revealed truths of faith, because 
it is only a fragment torn out of 
its place which loses its value by 
its isolation from the great all in 
which it belongs, and because, in 
its due position, its value is secon- 
dary and inferior. * 

The fellowship of natural society 
is no substitute for the communion 
of the Catholic Church, because 
association and organization for 
merely temporal well-being and 
earthly ends which stop short with 
this present world, are infinitely 
inferior to the union in faith, hope, 
and charity, which respects the sub- 
lime end of man as destined to 
beatitude in the everlasting king- 
dom of God. 

The " dawning realities " are very 
commonplace objects over which 
a thin haze of rhetoric, faintly col- 
ored with an after-glow borrowed 
from Christian poesy, has been 
thrown. The " vast living being 
of humanity " is something about 
as real as one of Plato's myths. 
Humanity is not an animal, it has 
no consciousness. Mr. Mallock's 
opponent, who has, notwithstand- 
ing his satirical remarks upon the 
imaginative faculty of the former 
gentleman, some imagination as 
well as intellect, has drawn heavily 
on his imagination in casting the 
horoscope of the future of humani- 
ty. He can personify as well as a 
Catholic, nor do we object to his 
using such metaphorical language. 
But when it comes to a matter of 
logical analysis, we require exact 
thought and scientific definition. 
Organic unity is not a mere aggre- 
gation, yet it is not the unity of 
individual, conscious being. It is 
only the [individual, conscious be- 



The Plea for Positivism. 



437 



ing which has what can properly 
be called life; for vegetative life, 
the highest form of unconscious 
organization, is only a shadow of 
life. Organic being without con- 
sciousness is not an end in itself, 
but only a means. Sensitive life, 
even if it be regarded as in some 
sense worthy to be called an end, 
that is intrinsically worth living 
and not merely n means of enhanc- 
ing the value of intellectual life, is 
not fully and completely an end. 
But intellectual life is so. The in- 
telligent being, as an individual, is 
an end in himself, intrinsically and 
-essentially. He is the real unit, 
and it is only the addition and multi- 
plication founded upon his intrinsic 
value, which augments and extends 
the sum total of that existence in 
society which is worthy of our ra- 
tional estimation, as a much great- 
er good than the private good of 
one individual. 

The judgment of the total value 
of all human existence depends on 
the estimate of the value of the 
units composing it. One man is 
worth more than an infinite num- 
ber of animalculae. One immortal 
soul is worth more than an infinite 
number of beings like Undine's 
relations. Organization is for the 
sake of the rational beings who are 
served by it, and for the glory of 
the Creator. As an. end it is worth- 
less. The self-existing, infinite In- 
telligence is an infinite end in him- 
self, his life is of infinite value 
as most perfect being. Each and 
every intellectual being is made 
similar to him by participation. 
The supreme good of each one is 
worth more than the lower and 
temporary good of one or all of 
the others. It is therefore reason- 
able to sacrifice one's own lower 
.good to his supreme good, or to 
ihe supreme good of others. Take 



away the relation to a supreme 
good, and all the highest and most 
efficacious motives to self-denial 
and self-sacrifice are annihilated. 
Mr. Mill concluded that if he could 
give all men possession of the good 
of this earthly life, it would not be 
worth having. We agree with him. 
We think Mr. Mallock has proved 
his point, and that his opponent 
has not succeeded in refuting him 
and proving the contrary. His El 
Dorado would not be worth its 
cost if it could be constructed. 
We have no evidence that it is pos- 
sible, much less to be reasonably 
looked for as a future reality. If 
we look at actual phenomena and 
real facts, we are forced to con- 
clude that the lives of most human 
beings hitherto, viewed apart from 
their relation to another world and 
to God, have been complete fail- 
ures, the lives of the remainder 
only a partial and temporary suc- 
cess, and human history like the 
dream of a man in the delirium 
of fever. Mr. Mallock's opponent 
has failed to show an essential and 
intrinsic value in life as such, suf- 
ficient to make it an end. At most 
he has shown that it may acquire 
an accidental and extrinsic and 
temporary medium value, in cer- 
tain favorable circumstances. The 
hope of these favorable circum- 
stances becoming universal and 
permanent is one which presup- 
poses a credulity far greater than 
is necessary for believing all the 
legends in Mr. Baring-Gould's col- 
lection of myths. 

We come now to the second and 
most important part of the conten- 
tion. In the outset we take notice 
of the author's high view of the 
paramount excellence of truth, a 
view which we applaud. We find, 
however, that there are many state- 
ments, insinuations, and expres- 



438 



The Plea for Positivism. 



sions of sentiment in respect to the 
Catholic religion, which will not 
stand the application cf this test. 
We will not accuse an author who 
is wholly unknown to us, except by 
this one book, of deviating from 
truth with deliberate intention. 
Therefore we criticise only the ob- 
jective sense of his statements as 
manifesting not wilful ignoratio but 
only a great amount of ignorantia 
elenchi, as well as other faults of 
logic ; and of the feeling which 
breaks out occasionally, we say no- 
thing more severe than this; that it 
is not quite in accordance with the 
scientific equanimity and candor 
befitting a disinterested altruist. 

" Of the characteristics which go to 
the making of that type so bitterly well 
known in Europe the Jesuit Mr. Mai- 
lock, almost by his 'own showing, is at 
once seen to possess two : an habitual at- 
titude of warfare, and a systematic and 
avowed contempt for truth " (p. 45). 

The " attitude of warfare " means 
nothing except that Jesuits and 
Mr. Mallock engage in polemics^ 
just as our author does. The im- 
putation of " systematic and avow- 
ed contempt for truth," in respect 
to both the Jesuits and Mr. Mal- 
lock, is an absolute falsehood, and 
it shows a heated state of feeling 
in the one who makes it, very dis- 
turbing to mental equilibrium. 

Falling back on the old, trite, and 
threadbare vituperations of the Ca- 
tholic Church, and of the Jesuits in 
particular, is a sort of polemical 
strategy belonging to an inferior 
class of lecturers and pamphleteers 
with which a dignified philosopher 
ought to be ashamed to associate. 
There is more of the same style a 
few pages further on : 

" The church denies itself the luxury 
of persecuting savages whom it is easy to 
baptize ; but is compensated by full au- 
thority over all those born within the 



pale of its own dominions, i.e., in all 
countries included under the title of 
Christend om. For the Peruvian heathen, 
the baptismal font ; for the baptized Eu- 
ropean heretic, the spy, the tribunal, the 
thumb-screw, the rack, the dungeon, the 
oubliette, the stake. 

" * And all we know, or dream, or fear 
Of agony, are thine.' 

" May the deep shudder of horror 
which has convulsed the inmost con- 
sciousness of Europe on this subject, 
never cease to vibrate so long as vitality 
remains in this deadly principle au- 
thoritative care of souls, to the salvation 
of man and the greater glory of God ! 

" Yes, we know the type, whether 
male or female, the stealthy step, the set 
composure, the downcast eyes, the in- 
sinuating voice, the half-perceptible de- 
precatory gesture with which dispute is 
declined when the proposition has failed 
of a favorable reception, the apparent 
acquiescence, the secret resistance, 
watchfulness, and counterplotting, by 
aid of a silent impersonal agency, invisi- 
ble, ubiquitous, unfathomably treacher- 
ous ; whose very good seems evil from 
the impossibility of testing its sincerity, 
whose evil seems blacker from its man- 
tle of immaculate good ; who does not 
know this hated and hateful type, every- 
where the same in essence under any 
disguise, under the priest's cassock or 
the nun's robe or the cardinal's hat? 
No Methodist fanaticism, no Baptist un- 
couthness, no Calvinistic rigidity, no 
Episcopal inconsistency, ever has or 
ever can awaken the passionate antag- 
onism aroused by the vision of Jesuit 
Catholicism in the breasts of those who, 
either personally or in sympathy with 
her victims of any age, have known what 
it was to writhe, though but for an in- 
stant, in her clutches. She is still the 
Infamous, and for our part we should 
rue the day when we so far forgot its 
history as to remove the brand from this 
gigantic impersonal Personality" (p. 49). 

This kind of violence we can 
understand in an apostate Catholic. 
In the same way that members of 
respectable families who have gone 
astray and got into disgrace are 
wont to turn upon those whom 
they have offended and injured, and 
seek to reverse their respective 



The Plea for Positivism. 



439 



positions by assuming that they are 
victims of some kind of injustice or 
cruelty, so do apostate Catholics 
turn spitefully against their mother. 
It is sin which is their sore spot, 
and which is galled by the pre- 
sure of Catholic discipline, irri- 
tated by the admonitions and 
menaces with which the church 
unremittingly pursues the erring 
children of her household. 

The feeling in those who have 
never believed in the authority of 
the Catholic Church is not the 
same, unless they have had the 
truth brought to bear in some way 
upon their conscience, and they 
have wilfully resisted their inward 
misgivings and convictions. Their 
enmity is founded on traditional 
prejudice, and, when they get a 
better knowledge of the real cha- 
racter and history of the Catholic 
religion, gives way to a more just 
and impartial estimate. It needs 
some personal contact of the church 
with private passions and interests 
to awaken that kind of sore and 
irritable animosity, that vindictive 
feeling, which we perceive in those 
who have been bred as Catholics 
and have renounced their religion ; 
or who have been very near con- 
version and have relapsed into 
their errors. This violent enmity 
of the authors of the Protestant re- 
bellion, which had its origin in 
gross passions, sins, and moral cor- 
ruption seeking emancipation from 
the law of God, has originated the 
systematic falsification of history 
by which the English people and 
the other descendants of the origi- 
nal schismatics in European Chris- 
tendom have been duped and pre- 
judiced for the past three centu- 
ries. Any violent assailant of Car 
tholic Christianity can appeal to 
this ignorance and prejudice and 
reawaken the slumbering animos- 



ity of a great mass of readers, ex- 
cept so far as their enlightenment 
and knowledge prevent their being 
affected by his rhetoric. In the 
case of the present author, we can 
only appeal from his ravings to a 
candid consideration of the his- 
toric truth. As to his diatribe 
against Jesuits, priests, and religious 
women, it is a caricature which re- 
minds us rfLothair, Father Clement, 
and of a large collection of books 
with which we were familiar in 
childhood along with Bluebeard 
and Jack the Giant- Killer. It is 
a chimera which exists only in 
the writer's disordered imagina- 
tion, and at which many intelligent 
Protestants who are well acquaint- 
ed with priests and nuns will either 
laugh or be indignant. 

The same irritation of temper 
and consequent exhibition of un- 
fair and petty querulousness is 
shown through nearly the -whole 
book. Why should an infidel call 
Cardinal Newman an " apostate "? 
What need of bringing in a sneer 
at " a plaster and tinsel Madonna," 
to cast ridicule on Mr. Mallock's 
beautiful apostrophe to the Blessed 
Virgin Mary ? What point or ap- 
propriateness can we find in a ref- 
erence to Mr. Mallock's "confes- 
sor," and the very cheap travesty 
of the words of our Lord, " Well 
done, good and faithful servant ; 
enter thou into the joy of the 
church "? The author seems con- 
tinually to insinuate that Mr. Mal- 
lock writes at the instigation and 
under the prompting of Catholic 
directors, whereas he is not a Ca- 
tholic, and his books contain many 
things which could not be written 
or approved by any well-informed 
and sincere Catholic. There is 
also a direct accusation, which 
other critics have also made, that 
Mr. Mallock has a predilection for 



440 



The Plea for Positivism. 



matters connected with depraved 
sensuality. Mr. Frothingham has 
made a worse accusation against 
the Bible viz., that parts of it are 
obscene. It is sometimes neces- 
sary or proper to speak of revolting 
vices, as it is to lay open offensive 
ulcers. It is also a fact noticed 
by many moralists that language 
becomes more fastidious in a so- 
ciety where moral corruption pre- 
vails, than it is in a simpler and 
purer state. The impure mind 
and conscience impute the evil 
which is in their own diseased con- 
dition to natural things, to inno- 
cent acts and persons, and to the 
intentions and language of those 
who chastise vice by ridicule, sa- 
tire, denunciation, or a more calm 
exposure of its hidden deformity. 
Modern society and literature are 
gangrened to a fearful extent. In- 
fidelity, materialism, and every kind 
of anti-Christian error are a leprous 
poison, infecting the very life-blood 
of this generation. Those who are 
infected and who are infecting 
others consider it very rude and 
coarse to be told this. Is Mr. 
Mallock an apologist for vice, or 
does he resemble that vile school 
of French novelists who are the 
votaries of what is called L'Esthe- 
tique Naturaliste ? T h e re are many 
who wince and writhe under his 
well-directed, vigorous lash, and 
whose peevish retorts show how 
keenly they feel the strokes which 
go through all their coverings and 
cut to the very bone. The sting 
of his satire is in its truth. Truth, 
even when unpleasant, is salutary. 
One who proclaims the paramount 
value of truth, even when it de- 
stroys pleasant illusions, should be 
more particular to adhere to it 
than our critic has shown himself 
to be in respect to this part of the 
case. 



There is another deviation from 
the principle of preferring truth, in 
the sympathy which the author pro- 
fesses for Protestants and Protes- 
tantism in their contention with 
the Catholic Church, without re- 
gard to their consistency, or the 
rational and historical merits of 
their cause, but merely because 
they have rebelled against au- 
thority. 

It is the same with his estimate 
of early and mediaeval Christianity. 
Myths, falsehoods, illusions have 
been necessary from the beginning 
of the world, and as the last of 
these Catholicism was necessary 
for the evolution of humanity, the 
salvation and improvement of so- 
ciety, the preparation for entering 
the earthly Paradise. Fraud and 
dupery are the necessary means of 
the greatest good, the precursors of 
truth, the chief agents in bringing 
about intellectual, moral, and politi- 
cal improvement. This is one of 
the most degrading and repulsive, 
as well as one of the most absurd 
theories ever invented in order to 
escape from truth, to evade the 
force of irresistible argument, to 
calcine and turn into smoke all his- 
torical facts, and to dishonor vir- 
tue, faith, religion, and the sancti- 
ty of all the prophets and martyrs 
of divine truth who have lived since 
the foundation of the world. We 
cannot stop to do justice to this 
topic, but must hasten on to note 
in a summary manner a few more 
of the many instances in which the 
truth is perverted by misstatements. 

One of these is borrowed from 
Mr. Emerson, and is a travesty of 
the Christian idea of heaven which 
stands self-condemned simply by 
being stated. 

" We are to have ]ustsuc/i a good time 
in the next world as the wicked have in 
this" (p. 16). 



The Plea for Positivism. 



441 



" By the inclusion of the Virgin Mary, 
' Parent of sweet clemency,' its Godhead 
is quadruple instead of a Trinity " (p. 72). 

This is as ridiculous as it would be 
to assert that in the Copernican 
theory the moon is, together with 
the sun, the centre of the solar sys- 
tem. 

" The church parliament avowedly 
disdains the very world in which it sits 
and operates, and its uniform answer to 
inquiry concerning the right direction of 
terrestrial forces, or the legitimate ad- 
justment of mundane preoccupations, is 
to let both alone " (p. 82). 

This is an argument from ignor- 
ance to ignorance. Read the quota- 
tion from the Council of the Vatican 
in the article on the Encyclical of Leo 
XIII. in our last number, and take 
a look into the smallest compen- 
dium of the history of the church 
which can be found, for a sufficient 
answer. 

"He cannot but know that, except to 
pure deism, the correlative of the belief 
in question has been the absolute worth- 
lessness, wickedness, and ruined condi- 
tion of man ; has been a theory of the 
complete degradation of every faculty 
and impulse of his nature. . . . The 
Christian or Catholic conception, whose 
introduction into the world is alleged as 
conferring such an immense increase of 
human dignity, has indisputably been 
attended by conceptions of human vile- 
ness perhaps more intense than have 
ever existed anywhere except in Hindu- 
stan " (p. 114). 

This is a great mistake, appa- 
rently made in perfect good faith. 
Lutheran and Calvinistic concep- 
tions, Jansenistic conceptions, and 
loose, rhetorical statements of some 
Catholic writers, are here confused 
with the real doctrine of the Catho- 
lic Church, as defined by councils 
and popes and explained by theo- 
logians. 

' It is a principle of positivism, in 
emphatic contradiction here as elsewhere 
with the principles of Catholicism, that 



the existence of one ultimate fact can 
never be invalidated by knowledge of 
the existence of another, whatever ob- 
scurity may rest on the relations between 
them" (p. 156). 

This is another misapprehension. 
We accept unreservedly the princi- 
ple stated by the author, and it is 
axiomatic in Catholic philosophy 
and theology. Whatever can be 
certainly proved to be a fact, his- 
torical or scientific, must be admit- 
ted, on Catholic principles, and 
one of our great struggles with all 
opponents is to compel their ad- 
mission of the proof of facts, in 
face of the obscurity which rests 
on the relations between these and 
other facts. Indeed, it is the very 
definition of a mystery, that it is 
an obscure relation between two 
known and intelligible terms. 

" A logical asceticism creates an ideal 
of absolute celibacy, from which mar- 
riage is a degradation only palliated as 
a matter of necessary compromise by 
the sacraments of the church." 

By no means. Marriage and the 
family are the ideal as well as ac- 
tual conditions of the majority of 
Christians, in which they can at- 
tain a sanctity essentially equal to 
that which is attainable by virgin- 
ity, and even superior to that really 
attained by many who observe re- 
ligious vows. Virginity is a higher 
state, the counsels of perfection are 
the most powerful means of elevat- 
ing the soul to God. But mar- 
riage is not a degraded state, or one 
merely tolerated. It retains the 
dignity which the Author of nature 
gave it, and is elevated by the sac- 
rament which Christ instituted. 
The counsels are only for those 
who have received a special voca- 
tion, and marriage is not only a 
permission, but a privilege, a bless- 
ing, a most excellent and altogeth- 
er honorable means of sanctifica- 



442 



The Plea for Positivism. 



tion and merit for others, even 
though they aspire to perfection. 

These are not all the mistakes 
of the author, but we have noticed 
a sufficient number to show that 
in arguing against Catholicity he is 
aiming at random, in the dark. He 
is not, however, always arguing 
against Catholicity when he seems 
to suppose that he is doing so, but 
only against certain views and ar- 
guments of Mr. Mallock. In our 
review of this latter gentleman's 
last famous book, we have pointed 
out, in part, how imperfect is his 
knowledge of the Catholic theology, 
and how deficient is his philosophy. 
He really argues from Kantian 
principles which have so profound- 
ly affected English thought, as, in 
fact, they had their origin in the 
scepticism of an Englishman, David 
Hume. Mr. Mallock's anonymous 
opponent argues with no small co- 
gency of reasoning against him in 
certain respects, on the same line 
with ourselves, and so far we con- 
cede to him the advantage in his con- 
tention. The point he makes is, 
that theism and revelation are 
proposed as desirable and there- 
fore to be assented to by an act of 
the will, determining the intellect. 
There is a confusion here, on the 
part of both the contestants, respect- 
ing the act of rational conviction 
by which the mind assents to the 
truths of natural theology, and the 
evidences of the credibility of reve- 
lation, and the act of faith by which 
the mind assents to revealed truths. 
In the first act, the mind is deter- 
mined solely by the motive of evi- 
dence, and the sole agency of the 
will is exerted in directing the atten- 
tion of the mind upon the evidence, 
and excluding the bias of disturbing 
passions. In the second act, the 
will by an imperate act commands 



the assent of the intellect to the 
truth revealed by God. Yet the 
will itself is moved by a previous 
judgment of the intellect that such 
assent is reasonable and obligato- 
ry, otherwise its imperate act would 
be imprudent. The argumentative 
and rational discussion is entirely 
on the reasonableness of the mo- 
tives of assent, and does not con- 
cern the immediate assent of the 
mind under the influence of divine 
grace to the obscure object of di- 
vine faith. It turns upon evidence ; 
the evidence of the being of God, 
of the spirituality, liberty, and im- 
mortality of the soul, of the fact of 
revelation, of the criterion of re- 
vealed truth, of the non-repugnance 
of revealed truths and facts to any 
other known facts and truths. The 
desirableness of rational belief in 
religion, and the dismal gloominess 
of unbelief, are by no means the de- 
termining motives of a rational and 
certain assent to the doctrines of 
natural and revealed theology. In 
so far as Mr. Mallock concedes that 
other and more decisive motives of 
assent are wanting, that is, that na- 
tural theology and the motives of 
credibility possessed by the Chris- 
tian revelation lack the certainty of 
evidence, he is in error and in op- 
position to Catholic doctrine. In 
so far as he omits to propose the 
evidence, his argument is deficient. 
There is, nevertheless, a 'latent and 
implicit argument involved in the 
presentation of the desirableness of 
assenting to the truth of at least natu- 
ral theology. It needs, however, a 
more formal and explicit statement 
in order that its force may be clear- 
ly and distinctly perceived. And 
this statement is made in an excel- 
lent manner by Father Maurus, in 
a passage quoted by Dr. Van Wed- 
ingen in the article contributed by 



The Plea for Positivism. 



443 



him to La Revue Gene'rale on the 
late Encyclical of Leo XIIL* 

"Thirdly, that is not impossible, to- 
ward which the will tends by the strongest 
inclination ; but the will tends by the 
strongest inclination toward a being 
which has no defect and every pure per- 
fection. Fourthly, that is not impossi- 
ble, which every intellect judges from 
its very terms to be such a being as is 
most worthy to exist ; but every intellect 
judges that a being having no defect and 
every pure perfection is most worthy to 
exist ; every will also is inclined to desire 
that such a being should exist ; therefore, 
such a being is not impossible. In con- 
firmation of this may be alleged, that 
since the very nature of things has engraven 
ivithin us this judgment, by which we 
judge it to be most worthy that there 
should be a being without any defect, 
and this inclination by which we desire 
that such a being exist, nature itself 
judges that it is most worthy that such a 
being should exist, and has the strongest 
inclination for its existence ; but the na- 
ture of things does not judge that some- 
thing impossible is the most worthy to 
exist, or have the strongest inclination 
for the existence of something impossi- 
ble ; therefore a being without any defect 
is not impossible. Add to this, that the 
possibility of things is not irrational, but 
it is most irrational that only defective 
beings should be possible, and a being 
without defect should be impossible. 
This is confirmed by the argument that 
the centre toward which the intellect and 
will are impelled by the strongest im- 
petus as their place of rest is not some- 
thing impossible ; for if bodies having 
gravity do not seek an impossible centre by 
their movement, much less do intellect 
and will, powers in the highest degree 
rational, seek an impossible centre ; now, 
intellect does not find rest in the con- 
templation of .defective being, but, of- 
fended by defects, turns to contemplate 
something else; and likewise will does 
not rest in defective goods, but, offended 
with defective things, seeks always some- 
thing better ; therefore there is some 
being void of defect, in which the con- 
templative intellect can rest, and also the 
loving will, because there is in it noth- 
ing which displeases, and by displeasing 

* Revue Gene'rale de Bruxelles, Sept., 1879, p. 
482. 



stimulates to the search of that which is 
better" (Qucest.Phil., vol. iii. pp. 348,349, 
ed. 1876). 

Religion is better than no-re- 
ligion. Therefore, there ought to 
be a bias in its favor, a presump- 
tion of its truth, to say the least ; 
and there is one valid argument for 
its truth which concurs with and 
corroborates its other evidences. 
Moreover, since a revelation is 
morally necessary even in respect 
to things which are not above 
reason, and there is no other which 
presents any serious claim to belief 
except the Christian revelation as 
promulgated by the Catholic Church, 
the same argument which avails for 
natural religion avails also for the 
Catholic religion. 

Mr. Mallock applies himself to 
the moral part of the question, ap- 
pealing to the moral sense of those 
who are enjoying the .benefits of 
Christianity, not to let themselves 
be despoiled of these benefits by 
an atheistic revolution which can 
never substitute anything equally 
good or better in place of what it 
seeks to destroy. He attempts to 
prove too much, and his opponents 
have therefore gained an advantage 
in arguing against his extreme as- 
sertions. Human nature, like all 
nature, is essentially good and can- 
not be totally depraved. Satan is 
not totally depraved. A rational 
nature cannot seek or approve evil 
as evil, or falsehood as falsehood, 
but only under an aspect of the 
good and the true. Prescinding 
from every consideration of God as 
the absolute truth and goodness, 
prescinding from every considera- 
tion of a future life of retribution, 
the true and the good are cogniza- 
ble and lovable in the nature of 
things. The true statement of the 
case is, that we are rationally 
obliged to ascend from the know- 



444 



The Plea for Positivism. 



ledge and love of the created good 
to the uncreated. Those who are 
only negatively turned away from 
the uncreated good can have the 
inchoate and implicit religion and 
morality of natural conscience 
stimulating and directing them to- 
ward virtue. This cannot be per- 
fect, however, without the philoso- 
phy of the wise. In the present 
condition of human nature this phi- 
losophy cannot be perfect without a 
higher rule given by divine revela- 
tion, which is morally necessary to 
give even philosophers a complete 
system of natural theology and 
ethics. Moreover, it is necessary, 
considering the state of the mass of 
mankind, that even this philosophy 
of rational nature should be taught 
them and enforced upon them by 
the way of a teaching founded on 
divine revelation, in order that the 
knowledge^ and practice of even 
natural religion and morality may 
be made adequately certain, easy, 
and universal. This is all that Ca- 
tholic theology teaches, as any one 
may see by reading the decrees of 
the Vatican Council and their pre- 
ambles. Supposing, now, a system 
like positivism to prevail universal- 
ly, men are placed in a worse posi- 
tion than that of a mere negative 
privation of a complete natural re- 
ligion taught by the medium of re- 
velation. By their rejection of both 
religion and philosophy, they are 
in a state of positive aversion from 
the supreme and uncreated good, 
and positive denial of the prima- 
ry truths of their rational nature. 
Wherefore, they are destitute of 
the necessary foundation of private, 
social, and political morality and 
order, and without sufficient safe- 
guards against the violent outbreaks 
of the passions. A total deprava- 
tion and corruption of human na- 
ture is indeed impossible ; there 



cannot be a total obliteration of 
morality, and an absolute degrada- 
tion to the bestial state. Never- 
theless, there must be a degree of 
disorder and debasement generally 
resulting which is frightful to con- 
template, and which tends toward 
moral chaos and anarchy. All this 
is without direct reference to the 
absolutely supernatural end and 
destiny of the human race, which 
we are not now considering. The 
positivists do not venture to deny 
this, and can only forecast a new 
order to come out of the revolution 
and chaos after some millenniums, 
when the present and many suc- 
ceeding generations will be extinct 
nullities. 

In view of this dismal prospect, 
every rightly-constituted mind and 
heart must shrink back appalled 
from the idea that Christianity may 
be an illusion, and nothing true 
but a series of phenomena known 
and tested by sensible experience 
which spring from no first cause, 
have no final object, and offer to 
the intellect and the will no ideal 
term in which they can find rest as 
the intelligible and desirable good 
which is supreme. However, the 
true and final issue is the naked 
question of the intrinsic, objective 
truth of Christianity, as a super- 
natural religion which contains 
within its sphere the natural ; and 
of its certain cognoscibility by the 
human mind. We look, therefore, 
to see if there is some common 
measure recognized by our author 
and by ourself, which can be ap- 
plied as a criterion of truth. 

We find that he recognizes sense- 
cognition, consciousness, testimony, 
and the concurrent judgment of 
the competent upon matter of 
scientific knowledge, as sufficient 
sources of certitude and furnishing 
an exact criterion. External, and 



The Plea for Positivism. 



445 



internal or psychological pheno- 
mena, are the object ; the correla- 
tion of this object in accordance 
with the laws of mind with the 
conscious Ego or subject, is truth. 
We are happy to find here some 
elements of sound logic and psy- 
chology, and some solid basis for a 
rational argument. We much pre- 
fer positivism thus presented to 
scepticism, to the grosser and more 
abject materialism, and even to a 
vague transcendentalism. That the 
human subject is essentially corpo- 
real as well as rational, that his 
knowledge begins from sense, that 
his primary, immediate object is 
the sensible manifested by pheno- 
mena, that he can proceed no fur- 
ther in natural cognition than the 
term to which he can be led up 
from the sensible, that he has no 
other secondary and immediate 
object of intuitive cognition except 
by consciousness of self, all these are 
sound principles. Aristotle and 
St. Thomas have established so 
firmly and clearly these fundamen- 
tal relations of sense and mind 
against the visionary metaphysics of 
the ultra-idealists, that they have 
been and still are reproached by 
these latter as the masters of a sen- 
sualist system of philosophy. 

On the other hand, the same 
principles and reasoning which es- 
tablish the reality and objectivity 
of the sensible, and the infallibility 
of the spontaneous tendencies of 
the living, sensitive being toward 
the external, corporeal world, es- 
tablish equally the objectivity of 
all being which is a term of per- 
ception, and the infallibility of all 
spontaneous tendencies toward the 
intellectual and moral reality which 
is attained by ideal activity as an 
ideal object. The positivists who 
admit consciousness of self and 
psychical phenomena together with 



the perception of sensible pheno- 
mena, and who recognize " laws 
of mind " along with other laws of 
nature, according to which " imma- 
terial relations " even of bodies are 
apprehended, and pronounced upon 
by mental judgments, open the way 
to metaphysics. A new element 
besides mere sensation is introduc- 
ed. Consciousness is more than a 
perception of impressions, on sensi- 
tive organs and the imagination, of 
sensible phenomena. Reflection is 
more than the return on past sen- 
sations. The intelligible, and the 
intelligent self, the essences of 
things immediately perceived by 
the light of the mind cast on the 
sensible phenomena, and the nature 
of the mind itself as manifested by 
these intellectual acts, are necessa- 
rily included within the sphere of 
the thinkable and knowable. 

Positivists are compelled to re- 
treat upon the ground of metaphy- 
sics in order to defend themselves. 
They will not be permitted to ig- 
nore all questions concerning first 
and final causes, or to make, with 
impunity and unchallenged, their 
assertion that all true philosophy, 
that is, science of real things in their 
principles and deepest causes, is an 
illusion. They have got to defend 
themselves and to argue against 
their opponents, which they cannot 
do by mere physics or empirical 
logic. The battle-ground is the 
field of metaphysics, where they 
have long ago been beaten by an- 
ticipation, and will be beaten again 
and again, as often as they venture 
on the contention. 

In respect to the facts and the 
truths of the Christian revelation, 
also, they are obliged to meet in a 
square issue the whole question of 
the evidences, and of the motives 
of credibility. Testimony and a 
sufficient consent of the competent 



446 



'Ike Plea fcr 



are admitted as sources of certi- 
tudp. No kind of cloudy idealism, 
no a priori plea in bar of evidence 
and argument, is open to them, in 
consistency with the principles on 
which they establish the certainty 
of the physical sciences and of his- 
tory. Religion is established on 
sensible facts which are necessarily 
connected with the authority of 
those who are the human instru- 
ments of manifesting the truth and 
law of God, and with the doctrines 
which they proclaim. Here, again, 
assertions, sophistical arguments, a 
studied ignoring of real issues, or 
an ignorance of the merits of the 
case which comes from inattention 
or want of thought, will only serve 
to show the weakness of their cause 
and to make their defeat more 
signal. 

Nothing can be more completely 
opposite to the truth than the 
statement of the author of The 
Value of Life : 

" Catholicism is the religion of failure, 
of ignorance, of weakness, of despair " 
(p. 249). 

Positivism is the result of a sen- 
timent that all human history and 
activity thus far is a failure. It is 
a profession of absolute and neces- 
sary ignorance in respect to every- 
thing which the mind of man, that 
curio sum ingenium which seeks for 
wisdom in the science of the deep- 
est causes, has always most desired 
to investigate and know. It is a 
confession of a weakness, an infir- 
mity, a fatal disease in the very 
nature of man, which dooms every 
human being to decay and extinc- 
tion. It is an outcry of despair, 
proclaiming that all the aspirations 
after a perfect ideal, a supreme fe- 
licity, the attainment of a sovereign 
and incorruptible good, which have 



swelled the hearts of the noblest of 
men, are illusions. The essence 
of the power and attractiveness of 
the Catholic religion does not lie 
" in the consolation it offers to 
those who cannot get what they 
want," nor does positivism under- 
take, much less prove that it is able 
" to show people how to get what 
they want," unless they want to 
deny their intellectual nature, and 
to rid themselves of the dread of 
future retribution for their sins, 
that they may enjoy the few and 
uncertain pleasures of a short ex- 
istence on the earth. The mind 
of man wants truth of an order 
higher than physical and social 
science ; knowledge of the infinite, 
faith in the sovereign and absolute 
good in a word, God. His heart 
wants a sovereign ideal of absolute 
beauty and perfection as the object 
of a satisfying and undying love in 
a word, union with God. The Ca- 
tholic religion offers him what will 
satisfy both the mind and the will, 
and points out the way to attain 
this supreme end. Positivism does 
nothing but offer a wretched sub- 
stitute, which, wretched as it is, 
cannot be reached by the majority 
of men who are now living, and is 
only promised to mankind after 
some millenniums have passed, to 
console them for the loss of belief in 
God and the hope of immortality. 

Science is dishonored when it is 
made a stalking-horse for this dis- 
mal, abhorrent ghoul of atheism. 
We have a profound respect for 
the physical sciences and for their 
methods and discoveries. Mathe- 
matics, and all the physical scien- 
ces founded on mathematical rea- 
soning and experimental induc- 
tion, are, in our opinion, among 
the strongest barriers against scep- 
ticism, and against every kind of 
vain speculation contrary to sound, 



A Christmas Thought. 447 

Catholic philosophy. We regard necessary truths, and the mind is 
the present aberrations of certain led by the hand from sense to 
votaries of science as a temporary theology. Sensible and historical 
delirium which will soon run its facts are indissolubly bound with 
course. We look to see the disor- the truth of revealed mysteries, 
ders of pseudo-science cured by Whatever establishes the certainty 
genuine science, to see scientific of science and history, necessarily 
clouds of doubt scattered by rays establishes at the same time the 
of scientific light, and to see har- rational certitude of the motives of 
mony reign among all branches of the credibility of the Christian re- 
true knowledge, with faith reigning ligion. The cause of science and 
over all in undisputed supremacy, the cause of faith are but one cause, 
The ideal has its foundation in and neither has more than one 
reality, the real its reason in the real opponent, which is Unscience. 
ideal. Sensible facts are indisso- " Dixit insipiens in corde suo, Non 
lubly bound with universal and est Deus." 



1 



A CHRISTMAS THOUGHT. 

LITTLE Baby ! gift from Heaven, 
Sent to fill our days with love, 

Hearken we, before thee bending, 
For thy message from above. 

Do thy blue eyes see the glory 
Of thy soul's home left behind ? 

Do thy fingers clasped hold treasure 
Earthly seeking cannot find ? 

Dost thou wonder at us mortals, 

At our strange and uncouth phrase ? 

Heark'ning thou, perchance, thine angel 
Who beholds the Father's face. 

When thou smilest doth our Lady 
Whisper how her blessed Son 

Once to earth came, just as thou art, 
Just as helpless, little one ? 

Whispers she how dear he holds thee, 
How she loves thee for his sake ? 

Seeks to bind thee with love's fetters 
Worldly touch can never break. 

We are deaf: in vain we listen, 

Those sweet words we cannot hear ; 

Yet we feel the love protecting 
Keeping evil from thee, dear. 



448 -A Christmas Thought. 

We are blind : the heavenly glory 
Hath grown dim before our eyes ; 

Yet our prayers for thee ascending 
Even reach the far-off skies, 

As we pray, the loving Shepherd 
Sinless keep thee, precious one, 

Till earth's weary days are over 
And the crown for heaven is won. 

Baby ! at thy mother gazing, 
Softly smiling in her face, 

Dost thou in her loving glances 
Heaven's earthly shadow trace ? 

Do her words, so strangely moulded, 
Bear to thee a meaning clear ? 

Do her kisses showered upon thee 
Make our cold earth seem more dear ? 

Unto us so near thou seemest 

To the home we seek on high, 
That the light within its portals 

Seems around thy brow to lie. 

i 
Little treasure, Christ's redeemed one ! 

With sweet reverence we gaze, 
Thinking of another Infant 

Born for us in other days ; 

One Divine, who bore thy likeness 
All thy pain and weakness bore, 

Whose child-eyes with love sought Mary's, 
Fraught with worship, bending o'er. 

Little hands outstretched with.yearning 
Baby hands as frail as thine 

Soothing with their touch the weary ; 
Hands sore-wounded, sweet heart mine. 

Bearing of the thorns no shadow, 
Sweet with peace the brow divine ; 

Unto us that peace he leaveth, 

Our woes share th thine and mine. 

Darling ! if the sacred shadow 
Of his thorns should ever rest 

On thy brow, ah ! do not blindly 
Cast from thee a gift so blest. 

He will give thee love and patience, 
With the thorns his peace will blend 

So, thou bearest still his likeness, 
Dearest, even to the end. 



Follette. 



449 



FOLLETTE. 

BY KATHLEEN o'MEARA, AUTHOR OF U A WOMAN'S TRIALS," " IZA'S STORY," " A SALON IN THE LAST 
DAYS OF THE EMPIRE," ''FREDERIC OZANAM," " PEARL," ETC. 

CHAPTER III. 

JULES' MESSAGE. 



MME. BIBOT dropped in that 
evening to consult Jeanne about 
cheeses that she was taking to the 
fair ; for, though no cow had been 
kept at Quatre Vents since the 
bountiful days of Gripard pere, the 
fame of Jeanne's dairy in olden 
times still lived, and made her an 
authority on all such matters. 

" It's a long step to the fair, and 
if you like a lift in my cariole you're 
welcome to it," said Mme. Bibot. 

"You're always neighborly, Mme. 
Bibot; but I'm not thinking of 
going to the fair this year," replied 
[eanne. 

'Then I'll take \hspetiote" said 
Mme. Bibot with ready good-nature, 
nodding at Follette. 

" Thank you, Mme. Bibot ; but 
I am not going either," said Fol- 
lette, without looking up from her 
work. 

"What? Eh?" said Gripard, 
turning sharp round on her. " Of 
course thou art going ; Mme. Bi- 
bot will give thee the jaunt there 
and back, and Victor will look after 
thee at the fair, and dance with 
thee, and so will all the lads in Ba- 
cararn, and the lads from every 
Gave side along the Adour. Tut, 
tut ! Of course she'll go to the 
fair." 

Follette made no answer. There 
was no use in quarrelling about it 
before the time came, but she was 
resolved that cart-ropes should not 
drag her to Earache, or, if they 
did, she would be whipped rather 
than dance with Victor. 
VOL. xxx. 29 



Gripard took her silence for sub- 
mission, and no more was said 
about it for the moment. 

Victor was not present at the lit- 
tle scene; if he had been he would 
not have been so easily deceived. 

He watched Follette with eyes 
made sharper by the knowledge 
that his interests were in her keep- 
ing, and he saw that her mind was 
set against him. He guessed, too, 
that under her gentle exterior she 
had a will that would prove a match 
for Gripard's; but not, he flattered 
himself, for his. There was not 
much chivalry in Victor's nature ; 
he did not look upon a woman's 
heart as a guerdon to be won, but 
as a prize to be clutched at, a prey 
to be entrapped, or an obstacle to 
be overcome. He would much ra- 
ther marry Follette with her own 
sweet will ; but marry her he would. 
Meantime he meant to try his best 
to win her consent. And he meant 
to treat her kindly when he had 
won it and made her his wife. 
Was it merely her uncle's money- 
bags that he coveted ? Victor was 
only twenty, and love of money had 
scarcely hardened his heart to the 
exclusion of all better loves. He 
was only twenty, and Follette was 
sixteen and the comeliest maiden 
on the mountain-side. 

Follette was on the watch be- 
times next morning, and as soon 
as she descried the dwarf, astride 
the miller's horse, jogging up the 
road she hurried off to the river. 

"Well, Nicol, did you see him ?' 



450 



Follette. 



" Yes, and he sends you this." 
Nicol thrust his hand into his 
pocket and brought out another 
little box. 

" And he says he can't go with- 
out seeing you," continued Nicol ; 
''that he will wait for the fair, and 
that you must come and meet him 
there." 

Follette's dark eyes grew bright- 
er with joy. 

" Oh ! thank you, Nicol. I am so 
much obliged to you ! I wish I 
had a nice present to give you; but 
take this and buy yourself something 
at the fair." 

She held up a few pence to him ; 
but the dwarf drew away his hand. 
"I don't want your money; Jules 
Valdory thanked me, and Victor 
Bart will be vexed, and that is pay 
enough for Nicol." 

He shouldered his hump and 
turned sulkily from her. 

" I did not mean to hurt you, 
Nicol," said Follette, vexed at hav- 
ing affronted him. 

"What does it matter? Nicol 
is only a dog. He never does any- 
thing but for a kick or a bone; he 
is only made to be mocked." And 
seizing the heavy mane of the horse, 
he drove him into the middle of the 
stream and left Follette standing 
on the bank, disconsolate and peni- 
tent. 

Jeanne saw her come tripping 
back to the house, and noticed how 
light her step was, and how dif- 
ferent she seemed altogether from 
the moping, languid creature of 
the last two days. Follette passed 
through the kitchen without speak- 
ing; for Gripard was toting up his 
accounts, and while this operation 
lasted the household held its tyeath. 
But as she passed quickly on, and 
ran up the stair to her room, Jeanne 
followed the child wistfully, and 
wondered what had happened to 



light those lamps of joy in her 
eyes. 

Follette's room was a whitewash- 
ed garret with a slanting roof and 
no furniture to speak of, but she 
thought it as beautiful as any lady's 
boudoir. The truckle-bed, the 
three-legged stool, the deal table 
with its broken pitcher, the cup- 
board in the wall where she kept 
her clothes, comprised, to her, every 
modern convenience, while her 
love of ornament was abundantly 
satisfied by a small looking-glass 
over the mantelpiece and two col- 
ored prints, all gifts from Jules ; a 
terra-cotta Madonna, Jules' work, 
enthroned under the looking-glass, 
fed her simple devotion and smiled 
on her like the presiding divinity 
of the little white room. Follette 
loved her garret as the anchorite 
loves his cell or the scholar his quiet 
study, and flew to it whenever she 
was vexed or angry or in trouble. 
She would sit on her three-legged 
stool by the little diamond-pan- 
ed casement, and look out over 
the babbling Gave, and the forest, 
and the billowy mountains, and 
dream sweet nothing-at-all dreams 
like any chatelaine in her bower. 
But she did not sit down to dream 
now. She took her little box from 
her pocket, and opened it with 
fluttering fingers, expecting to find 
a curling lock of hair inside; but 
instead of this she beheld a pair 
of gold ear-rings, Moorish fili- 
gree crescents with sequins drop- 
ping from them. Follette put her 
hand to her mouth to stop the 
scream of delight that nearly es- 
caped her. Then, clasping her 
hands, she gazed at the glittering 
trinket in breathless admiration. 
She 'had never seen anything so 
beautiful, except once at Earache 
in the jeweller's shop-window. Af- 
ter a spell of speechless awe sh< 



Follette. 



451 



ventured to take them out of the 
box, where they lay on a little cush- 
ion of rose-colored wool, and held 
them up to the light and made the 
sequins dance. 

How Jules must love her to send 
her such a splendid gift ! There 
was no calculating what it must 
have cost, for Follette had no pre- 
cedent in her mind for even mak- 
ing a guess ; but it must be a great 
sum of money. t 

" What would my uncle say if he 
saw them ?" thought Follette. She 
went to the glass and put the rings 
in her ears, and turned her head to 
the light and shook it to see the 
effect of the glittering little bits of 
gold. The effect was splendid, de- 
lightful, and Follette, after examin- 
ing them at her ease, took the rings 
out carefully and laid them back 
on their pink pillow, and hid the 
box away in her cupboard. She 
longed to show her treasure to 
Jeanne at once, but she dared not. 
Gripard was so sharp and so sus- 
picious, and Jeanne would for a 
certainty cry out when she beheld 
the rings, and then what a scene 
there would be. 

" I will wear them at the fair, 
and Jules will be pleased," thought 
Follette. " And how furious Vic- 
tor will be !" And this reflection 
lent an additional charm to the 
prospect of pleasing Jules. With 
a heightened glow on her cheeks 
she tripped down stairs and sat to 
her basket of socks. They were 
nearly all Gripard's, but there were 
a few of Victor's. She had never 
grudged mending Victor's before, 
but she felt aggrieved to-day at 
having to do it, and took great 
long stitches that made lumps in 
the well-darned soles. Miserly 
Victor ! who never made her the 
least little present, though he had 
more money than Jules, for he kept 



sheep upon the mountains, and 
sold them well, as Follette knew, 
and Jeanne too ; but Victor was 
so clever there was no use telling 
Gripard, for he would deny it, and 
make her uncle believe it was a 
wicked invention of theirs to injure 
him. 

Was her uncle never going to be 
done with the accounts this morn- 
ing ? They only made one short 
row of figures, but there he sat 
poring over them this hour, mum- 
bling and muttering to himself 
(cursing, Follette suspected), while 
he. stretched out the fingers of his 
left hand, and drew them slowly 
up into his palm with a crab-like 
movement that gave Follette the 
creeps, but which apparently assist- 
ed him in his calculations. 

When at last they were over, he 
squeezed the greasy old book into 
his tightly-buttoned coat, and, to 
Follette's surprise, asked for his 
hat, and hobbled out alone to look 
at the mushrooms and the celery, 
and peer about the garden. She 
flew up to her room, slipped the 
rings into her ears, ran down to 
the scullery, and stood demurely 
before Jeanne, who was busy wash- 
ing vegetables. 

" Bonne Vierge Marie !" ex- 
claimed Jeanne, drawing her hands 
out of the tub and making a towel 
of her blue apron. " Where ever 
didst thou get those ?" 

"Can't you guess? Who could 

have given them to me but Jules?" 

Follette told how it had come 

about, and how they must now both 

go to the fair. 

" My uncle will think I am giving 
in to please him," said the design- 
ing little thing, " and that you are 
coming to please me. But are not 
the ear-rings pretty, Jeanne ?" 

" Pretty ? They are divine ! 
They are fit for a queen, child 



452 



Follette. 



What heaps of money the foolish 
lad must have paid for them !" 
And Jeanne, unclasping her hands, 
spread them out with a gesture ex- 
pressive of piles and piles of gold. 

"He is generous; he ought to 
be a prince," said Follette, more 
proud of Jules than of his gift. 

"But where can he have got the 
money, little one ?" said Jeanne, 
surveying the bright spangles that 
made Follette's pink ears shine 
again. 

" He must have sold his groups, 
petite mere ; he had some fine 
ones, he told us, you remember? 
But I will scold him." 

" Nay, nay, scolding will do no 
good. Thou must coax him to be 
more careful till he has conquered 
the marble, and then he may buy 
thee as many trinkets as he likes." 
Follette heard footsteps outside, 
so she snatched the rings out of 
her ears and hid them away preci- 
pitately. 

It was Gripard. 

That evening he told Follette, in 
a tone that implied his determina- 
tion to be obeyed, that she was to 
go to the fair on Tuesday. 

" If you will have it, my uncle," 
replied Follette, with a little pout ; 
*' but then Jeanne must come. I 
won't go without Jeanne." 

"Jeanne shall go," said Gripard, 
delighted to find her so docile, and 
taking no notice of the pout. 

The child was free to show her 
little temper so long as she did 
his bidding. 

There was a slight fall of snow 
during the night, then it froze, and 
at sunrise a pearly fog hung like a 
white gauze veil over the moun- 
tains, causing great alarm at Baca- 
ram, for the success of the fair de- 
pended entirely on the weather. 
Towards nine o'clock, however, the 



sunbeams rent the mist, and it 
rolled away far up the hills like 
vanishing smoke, and' all promised 
to go well with the day. 

Follette could have sung for joy ; 
but she had to keep up an appear- 
ance of reluctant compliance with 
her uncle's will, so she kept her 
song in her heart and dressed herself 
in silence. When the last fold was 
pinned in her kerchief, and the last 
touch given to her toilet, she put 
her precious little box in her pocket 
and ran in to Jeanne. 

They went down together. Vic- 
tor stood ready waiting to see them 
off. He looked remarkably well. 
His fair complexion and blue eyes 
gave him an air of frankness that 
sat well on his youth, and his well- 
knit figure showed to advantage in 
his Sunday clothes. There was no 
denying he was a young man whom 
any girl might be proud to meet on 
the war-path. But Follette was de- 
termined he should 'not meet her 
there. She did not deign to say 
merci when he assisted her into 
Mme. Bibot's cart, but seated her- 
self without taking the least notice 
of him, while she laughed and prat- 
tled with everybody else. Victor 
took the snub like an angel, tucked 
the blanket about her feet, and saw 
that nothing was forgotten. Then 
the cart drove off, and he strode 
on after it towards the forest. He 
had bargained with one of the 
farmers for a donkey-cart to carry 
Gripard's wares to the market, and 
it had gone off in company with a 
number of others before Mme. Bi- 
bot's vehicle started. He was in 
high spirits, and bore himself with 
the air of one to whom war means 
conquest. 

All the village was out of doors 
and drifting off to the forest. Well- 
to-do farmers crossed over from the 
Basque country in picturesque cos 



Follette. 



453 



tumes, and riding on mules whose 
bells tinkled musically as they came 
down the mountain-side. Jean Brie, 
the miller, made a fine figure in his 
gig behind his big gray horse; the 
brewer bestrode his cob with the 
air of a man who has money in his 
till; and M. and Mme. Tarac jaunt- 
ed along in their high-wheeled cart, 
dispensing good-morrows to every 
one. Nicol had started betimes on 
foot, for the walk was long, and he 
needs must rest now and then on 
the road ; his hump was heavy, the 
children said. 

The forest was just now in all 
its beauty, a wilderness of marble 
illuminated by the morning sun- 
light, ablaze in spotless white. 
The genii of the woods had pass- 
ed that \vay and touched every 
tree with their magic wands. Here 
a blighted trunk was changed into 
a Greek torso ; there a fallen stem 
crouched like a crocodile that had 
strayed away from the brown bo- 
som of the Nile, and lay paralyzed 
in the snow; the trees ran into line 
and formed Corinthian colonnades, 
or stood apart in fantastic shapes, 
like nymphs poised on crooked 
pedestals, or satyr-like figures that 
reminded Follette of Nicol. Here 
an Arab of the desert, lance in 
rest, came riding on a dromedary; 
tli ere rose up some 

" Stately tower, or palace fair, 
Or ruins pendent in the air. 1 ' 

The noisy human stream that stir- 
red the silence of the forest made 
no disturbance in its beauty, but 
gave a soul to the sleeper, a voice 
to the dumb white harmonies. 

Follette took out her golden rings 
and fastened them in her ears, and 
sat smiling to herself complacently 
and thinking ho\v she could best 
tease Jules. It would be so pleas- 
ant to vex him one moment and 



smile him into good-humor the 
next. 

" Why, bless my eyesight ! what 
has come to the little one ?" ex- 
claimed Mme. Bibot, as she turned 
round suddenly and beheld the 
trinkets dancing and sparkling 
against the pinky brown cheeks. 

Follette blushed up and laughed. 

"They're pretty, an't they?" 
she said. 

" Pretty ? They're fit for Mme. la 
Prefete! Sly little pussy-cat! That 
was what Victor Bart was at when 
he was tucking in the blanket !" 

" Victor Bart had nothing to do 
with them," said Follette, with a 
saucy toss of her head. " Victor 
never makes me presents ; I 
wouldn't take one from him if he 
asked me." 

" Vrai ?" said Mme. Bibot, look- 
ing at Jeanne dubiously. " Ah a, 
what an old fool I am not to 
have guessed !" she cried, as a 
sudden light broke on her. " Of 
course it was Jules Valdory ! And 
a handsomer lad than Jules won't 
dance with a pretty maid at the 
fair to-day. Here we are ! He ! 
Nicol ! Lend a hand, little man, 
and help me to unload these bas- 
kets." 

There was a clear space in the 
forest where the carts and wag- 
ons pulled up, and the process of 
alighting and unloading was going 
on amidst a great chatter of tongues 
and neighborly greetings when 
Mme. Bibot's cariole appeared. 
" Bestir thyself, Nicol, and carry 
these off to my stall ; we will open 
the baskets there. What ! you here, 
Mme. Pastrin ? Come all the way 
from Tarbes to bowl my cheeses 
out of the market ?" 

This was to an old woman of 
eighty, whose cheeses had been fa- 
mous for half a century until Mme. 
Bibot got the secret of their pecu- 



454 



Follette. 



liar make, and drove old Mme. Pas- 
trin out of the field in the annual 
battle of the cheeses at Earache. 
Jeanne was exchanging good-mor- 
rows with everybody, and Follette, 
under cover of the confusion, was 
free to cast her eyes round in 
search of Jules ; but she did not 
see him. 

" Look to the left towards the 
Oak of Justice," said somebody in 
a low voice, nudging her. Follette 
turned round and saw Nicol at her 
elbow. She looked quickly in the 
direction he named, and saw Jules' 
curly head amidst a group where 
his tall figure and gay Basque 
costume made him conspicuous. 
Drawn by the magnetism of her 
glance, he turned, too, and in a 
moment came bounding along to 
her side. 

" Te voila done !" exclaimed 
Jeanne, her mahogany face un- 
puckering in a burst of smiles as 
she beamed on him. " So thou art 
here to amuse thyself instead of 
being in Paris." 

" It was a gmgnon, petite mere ; 
I could not get away," replied 
Jules, with an arch smile. " The 
Fates were against it." 

"Who be they? The Follies, 
mayhap ? They mock us old folk 
with big words nowadays, the 
youngsters do," said Jeanne ; and 
she turned to finish her gossip with 
the occupant of a market cart that 
had drawn up near them. 

" So you thought I was going off 
without bidding you good-by ?" 
said Jules aside to Follette. 

She tossed her head saucily. 

" How do you like my ear-rings ?" 
she said. 

u I dare say they are very pret- 
ty." 

" Everybody is admiring them," 
said Follette, pretending to be 
piqued. 



" Petite coquette ! You are very 
fond of being admired. I wonder 
who you will have to admire you 
while I am away." 

" Everybody," said Follette, dart- 
ing a wicked glance at him. 

Jules' face clouded over. 

** I think you might find some- 
thing pleasanter to say to me 
before I leave you. I wonder 
whether you care about my going, 
and whether you will have patience 
to wait for me." 

" If you are afraid to trust me, 
say so, and I will not hold you to 
your promise." 

" How ready you are to give me 
up ! I did not say I was afraid." 

" You are jealous." 

"Yes, I anr jealous, because I 
love you. Follette, if you loved 
me as I love you, you would un- 
derstand it. But let us come away 
out of this crowd ; I have so much 
to say to you. And if you want to 
pick a quarrel we had better be 
where we can do our quarrelling 
quietly." 

He made his way on through 
the carts and the people, and then 
in amongst the trees, and they 
were soon out of ear-shot, and 
everybody was too busy to look 
after them. 

" Follette, tell me something," 
said Jules, looking down on her 
with a glance that was eager and 
stern : " if I were to stay away 
longer than you expected, and that 
anything happened to prevent my 
sending you word why, would you 
doubt me ?" 

" No," said Follette. 

" You would go on trusting me ?" 

-"Of course I would! But why 
do you ask me such funny ques- 
tions ?" She looked up at him, sur- 
prised and a little alarmed. 

" I was only thinking one never 
can tell what may happen. But 



Follette. 



455 






you are sure you would always be- 
lieve in me, no matter what any- 
body might say ?" 

" Nothing that anybody could 
say would make me give up be- 
lieving in you. You never told 
stories or played wicked tricks like 
Victor. I always believed in you, 
and I always will." 

"My own little Follette!" said 
the young man, taking her hand 
and leading' her farther away into 
the white maze of the forest. " I 
was only thinking that as I dare 
not write to you, but only to 
Jeanne, who will have to take my 
letters to M. le Cure to read, it 
might happen that one of them got 
lost, and you would be without 
news, and then you would be won- 
dering why. But you never would 
think I had forgotten you ?" 

" No, I should never think that," 
said Follette, laughing at the ab- 
surd notion. "You have been away 
at your Volontariat long enough to 
forget me, if you had be*en in- 
clined." 

Follette knew nothing of life be- 
yond her village, nothing of the 
great city with its snares and pit- 
falls, nor of the altered conditions 
of life that awaited Jules there, 
and which might change his esti- 
mate of all things, making that 
commonplace and wearisome which 
he had hitherto found beautiful. 
She only knew that opportunities 
were to be found there that he 
longed for and without which he 
could never be a sculptor. He 
loved his art, and for its sake he 
was going to Paris to lead a lonely 
life of toil and privation, so as to 
make friends amongst the masters 
and learn to disinter the forms of 
beauty that slept within the block. 
Of other less austere delights and 
compensations that might await 
him in that distant world little 



Follette guessed nothing. If she 
had been of coarser fibre she 
might have been jealous of this 
passion that was strong enough to 
lure her lover away from her; but 
the little plebeian maid had an in- 
stinct that informed her of the no- 
bility of his choice and reconcil- 
ed her to the sacrifice it exacted. 
She was proud of the lofty ambi- 
tion that raised her lover above 
herself, and it did not enter into 
her mind that any other rival could 
ever step in between them. 

" Follette," said Jules, while they 
strolled on through the white trees, 
that made no hindrance to the 
sunlight, " Gripard may insist on 
your marrying Victor. What would 
you do then ?" 

"What puts that silly notion 
into your head ?" said Follette. 
" My uncle has never thought of 
such a thing." 

" You are mistaken ; he has 
made up his mind that you shall 
marry Victor. Victor himself told 
me so, and I suspected it before." 

"It is not true," replied Fol- 
lette; "he said it to vex you." 

But, while denying it so emphati- 
cally, she felt suddenly convinced 
that it was true. 

" It is one of Victor's lies," she 
said angrily ; " you know he tells 
lies. He has not dared say it to 
me. I wish he did. I would let 
him see !" 

" He would not mind that. He 
would persevere till he had his 
own way. He has a will of iron, 
Victor." 

"So have I," said Follette, with 
a defiant air that looked adorable 
to Jules. 

" What a little vixen of a wife it 
will make !" he said, laughing; upon 
which Follette grew very red, and 
tossed her head with a movement 
that made her ear-rings dance. 



! 



456 



Follette. 



" But, Follette, suppose I am 
only supposing," continued Jules 
" that it should be true, and that 
your uncle insisted ? He can be 
cruel when he likes ; he might turn 
you out of the house in a passion 
some day, as he did me. What 
would you do then ?" 

" I would go." 

"Where to, child?" 

" To the good God and the Ma- 
donna. They would take care of 
me. But, Jules, why are you fan- 
cying such dreadful things that are 
never going to happen ? Let us 
only love one another, and all will 
come right." 

Jules had nothing to urge against 
this sweet philosophy, and called 
himself an idiot for taking any less 
rose-colored view of the future. 

But the fair was now in full 
swing, and the band was playing a 
martial air that spirited on buyers 
and sellers to the fight. 

" Jeanne will be wondering what 
has become of us," said Follette. 
" Let us go and find her." 

Jules was reluctant, but he turn- 
ed with her and walked back to 
the busy, animated scene. 

The booths were surrounded by 
noisy crowds ; flags were flying 
from kiosks in every direction. In 
a pagoda, high-perched at one end 
of the market, was the orchestra, 
and near it, in a space swept clear 
of the snow, and marked off at 
each corner by poles decorated 
with flags and evergreens, the danc- 
ing was going on. At the other 
end a Court of Justice was being 
held by an elder who sat enthron- 
ed on the gnarled trunk of an oak, 
and acted as judge, jury, and advo- 
cate in a variety of cases that 
might have puzzled the wisdom of 
Solomon. The Oak of Justice, as 
the patriarchal court was called, 
was a relic of the feudal times 



when the king of France, seated 
beneath le chene du Roi, dealt out 
justice to his people. It had not, 
however, merely lingered amongst 
the unprogressive population of 
the mountains as a picturesque 
custom ; it exercised the sway of 
a legitimate tribunal, and many 
were the knotty points unravelled, 
the contracts made and dissolved, 
the quarrels settled by the respect- 
able elder who sat under the white 
branches of the forest pontiff. He 
had a large circle round him when 
Jules and Follette passed. But 
this was nothing compared to the 
audience which the menagerie com- 
manded close by, for the bears 
were the most popular persons of 
the whole fair. 

" Would you not like to feed 
the bears?" said Jules; and he 
went to the nearest cake-stall and 
brought back a bagful of buns,, 
which Follette proceeded to pass 
in to tyg and little Bruin through 
the bars of the cage. She was still 
feeding them when Victor caught 
sight of her from his stall, where 
he was clearing first-rate profits for 
Gripard's celery and mushrooms, 
and for eggs and poultry that came 
no one knew from where, but cer- 
tainly not from Quatre Vents. 
As he watched Follette he forgot 
his sales for a moment, and her 
uncle's money-bags, and everything 
except the lovely young face, just 
now aglow with fun and happiness; 
her eyes danced with excitement, 
her dimples were all alight, as she 
tossed in the bits of cake which 
Bruin begged for, standing dh his 
hind legs, with fore-paws hanging, 
amidst the laughter and applause 
of the bystanders. And there was 
that fellow Jules standing beside 
her as if she belonged to him \ 
Victor felt at the moment that he 
would have sacrificed his day's 



Follette. 



457 



gains for the satisfaction of thrash- 
ing Jules. It was he, no doubt, 
who had given her those ear-rings 
that made the bright young face 
look brighter. "Sweet Follette! 
Why can't I make you care for 
me ?" thought Victor ; but a custo- 
mer called to him for a capon, and 
he had to leave the solution of this 
enigma for the moment and attend 
to business. He cleared his stall 
as quickly as possible, and, in high 
good-humor with his sales, started 
off in search of amusement and 
Follette. 

" Where have you been all this 
time? I have been hunting the 
fair for you," he said, coming up 
behind her. 

" What did you want with me ?" 
was the cool rejoinder. 

" I wanted to know if you will 
dance with me. Will you, Fol- 
lette ?" 

" I dor.'tknow. Oh ! look atthat 
bear. What a greedy beast he 
is ! I stuffed him with such lots of 
cakes ; and just see, he is begging for 
more !" She turned back to the 
cage and gave all her attention to 
Bruin pere, who looked very comi- 
cal as he caught a bun in his fore- 
paws and began demurely munch- 
ing it, while he sat upright on his 
hind quarters. 

" Would you mind answering 
me ?" said Victor. 

" Oh ! I forgot. I promised the 
first dance to Jules," said Follette, 
looking round to see where he was. 

" I will put up with the second." 

" Well, if I'm not too tired after 
the first ; but I dare say I will be. 
Where is Jeanne ?" 

" I left her with Mme. Bibot. I 
suppose she's with her still. Fol- 
lette," he said, lowering his voice 
a little, " I know you don't want 
to dance with me ; but the patron 
will ask me whether you did or 



not, and it may be as well if I can 
say you did." 

Follette understood the covert 
threat, and she was in no mood to 
take it meekly. 

" Did he send you here to spy 
on me ?" she asked, turning on him, 
while her eyes flashed angrily. " In 
that case I make you my compli- 
ments !" 

" You take every word I say 
amiss," said Victor, swallowing his 
vexation and only seeming hurt. 
" Let me take you back to Jeanne, 
at any rate. I can tell him you 
were with her when he questions 
me. I am thinking of you, Fol- 
lette, not of myself. I can't think 
why you hate me so," he added with 
feeling. 

" I never said I hated you ; only 
I wish you would leave me alone." 

" I wish I could, but I can't," he 
said, speaking quickly. "I wish 
it was I who was going away in- 
stead of Jules. Then I would leave 
you alone, and you would be hap- 
py, and I would try to forget you." 

Toilette's heart smote her. Did 
he really care for her so much ? 
And yet, if so, why could he not 
leave her alone when he saw that 
he only tormented her ? But Jules 
came up and claimed her for the 
dance, and Follette, for the mo- 
ment, forgot everything else. 

When the two appeared, hand-in- 
hand, there was a general move- 
ment and every one fell back, leav- 
ing the space clear for them. Jules 
danced with southern grace and 
agility, and no one rivalled him 
in picturesque fandango. Follette 
danced prettily at all times, but 
to-day her young limbs were vibrat- 
ing to the melody of unseen cho- 
risters, and every nerve thrilled to 
the spirited measure of the music. 
The brilliant colors of her dress, 
the short blue petticoat and crim- 



458 



Follette. 



son and gold head-kerchief, her 
glowing cheeks and the dewy bright- 
ness of her eyes, all formed a charm- 
ing picture amidst the winter trees, 
as, standing opposite Jules, she de- 
scribed a circle with both arms, 
striking the castagnettes high above 
her head, and swaying her body 
this way and that like a bird about 
to take flight. As the dance pro- 
ceeded the spectators grew more 
and more sympathetic, till at last 
they broke into applause ; but Fol- 
lette, as the spirit of the dance took 
her, seemed to forget that any one 
was by, while Jules was conscious 
of no presence but hers, making 
his court to her through the passes 
and figures of the characteristic 
dance. When it was over he made 
her his final bow, and led her away 
amidst the cheers and admiration 
of the crowd. 

Victor had looked on in a rage 
of jealousy. He had no mind to 
ask Follette to dance with him 
now the exhibition would have 
been too much to his disadvantage ; 
so he slunk away and interfered 
with her no more. 

" It is not worth while vexing her 
to-day," he said to himself. u That 
fellow is going, and then I will 
have the game in my own hands." 

So the lovers said their last good- 
by unmolested. Follette shed a 
few tears, but Jules kissed them 
away, and talked so brightly of the 
happy days that were in store for 
them when he came back that she 
caught his hopefulness and cheer- 
ed .up, and they parted in sweet 



sorrow. 



The fair was over, Jules was 
gone, and Quatre Vents fell back 
into the even tenor of its way. 
Victor had told no tales, so things 
went smoothly between old Gri- 
pard and Follette. Jeanne even 



noticed that Victor was always 
anxious to keep him in good-hu- 
mor, instead of setting him on to 
scold herself or Follette, as he had 
been used to do of late. 

Follette sat at her wheel, and 
mended and washed; and Jeanne 
went on moiling and toiling, and 
clacked in and out of the scullery, 
scraping carrots and washing po- 
tatoes ; while Gripard smoked and 
spat, and growled over his rheuma.- 
tism. So the days went on as 
monotonously as the tick of a 
clock. 

Jules wrote to announce his 
safe arrival in Paris, and then there 
was a long silence, until in the be- 
ginning of February another letter 
came : 

" MY DEAR OLD GRANNY : I waited to 
have something to tell you before I 

wrote again. M. X has taken me 

into his studio, and says he means to 
make a real artist of me ! I've been at it 
three weeks now, and I love the work 
better every day. I begin already to 
feel the marble soften under my hand. 
The great artists are kind, but I am not 
always with them, and then I am alone. 
It costs money to be merry in Paris, and 
I have none to spare, so I can't go with 
the young fellows who invite me. I 
must keep out of debt. The evenings 

are long, but I have books that M. X 

lends me, and I think of you and Fol- 
lette, and the hours pass. Paris is a 
wonderful place. First it was like a 
dream ; now it is like a nightmare. The 
roar of the streets, the crowds that pass 
and never give one a look or a word of 
recognition, make me feel, as if I were 
an exile travelling through a desert. 
But time goes quickly. Tell Follette to 
be patient, and that I will soon come 
and fetch her. Tell her I have seen all 
the beautiful women in Paris, and there 
is not one of them fit to scour her little 
wooden shoes. Mind you tell her this, 
petite mere ! And see that Victor 
doesn't make her forget me. Give my 
respects to M. Gripard. I hope he is 
well. 

" Your affectionate grandson, 

" JULES VALDORY." 



Follette. 



459 



M. le Cure read this letter twice 
over to Jeanne and Follette, and 
Follette knew it nearly by heart. 
But she was seized with a great 
longing to know how to read her- 
self; so M. le Cure gave her a 
book, and she set to work and 
studied hard to master the mystery 
of letters, with no teacher but her 
own industry and an occasional 
word of help from Gripard of an 
evening when he was in a good 
humor. This was not often ; for 
the severe and long winter was 
bad for his rheumatism, and the 
rheumatism was bad for his temper. 
He was kept a great deal indoors, 
and he chafed under this, and 
took it out in worrying everybody. 

He had wanted to bring about 
the marriage between Follette and 
Victor immediately after the new 
year; but Victor entreated him to 
have patience. 

" I can't bear the idea of putting 
any stress on Follette," he said; 
" I am too fond of her for that. I 
had rather wait till she gets to 
care a bit for me ; though I don't 
see why she ever should, consider- 
ing she might pick and choose all 
over the country side. I ought, 
besides, to do something first to 
show her I can earn enough to 
keep her." 

" And you think nothing of me ? 
I count for nothing, eh ?" said 
Gripard querulously. " You've 
got to stay here and look after 
my interests; it's the least you 
may do, parbleu ! Remember that. 
You will marry the little one, and 
both of you can take care of me. 
I won't live for ever, and when I'm 
gone you'll have the place to 
yourselves." 

'* That's just it, patron. I can't 
bear the idea of marrying an heir- 
ess a poor devil like me !" 

" An heiress ? Eh ? What are you 



talking about? Where's the heir- 
ess ?" And Gripard glared at him. 

" Why, patron, you've told me 
again and again that Quatre Vents 
would be Follette's." 

" Yes, Quatre Vents ; but not a 
penny besides ! Where should I 
get it ? Every penny I had scrap- 
ed together went in that rascal 
Blondec's bankruptcy ! Don't talk 
of heiresses, or you'll have all the 
thieves in the country coming 
about the place to rob and murder 
me. Do you hear, eh ?" 

" It was only my little joke, pa- 
tron. I'll never try it again. We 
all know that you have lost all 
your money," said Victor. But in 
his heart he knew better. Many a 
time in the dead of the night he 
had heard Gripard up, and had 
seen light through the keyhole of 
the door at the foot of the stair; 
and Gripard was not likely to 
waste candles for nothing. What 
CQuld he want a light for at that 
time of night, when everybody was 
fast asleep? Besides what Gripard 
pere had left, the garden brought 
in a good bit of money one way or 
another, and where did the money 
go ? Not into food, for all the 
old man's grumbling at the three 
mouths he had to feed. No; the 
money was somewhere about the 
house. Victor had long ago be- 
gun to suspect this. Gripard pere 
had died rich ; he had left a good 
sum invested, and what had be- 
come of it ? Gripard fils had 
been in the habit for years of going 
to Tarbes " on business " three or 
four times a year, and then he 
had given up the practice. Had he 
sold out the old investments, and, 
if so, what had he done with the 
money ? Victor took note of 
these things and drew his own 
conclusions. 

Follette, on her side, was taking 



460 



Follette. 



note of other certain things. She 
saw perfectly what was going on 
between her uncle and Victor, and 
Victor's conduct touched her. 

" He is fonder of me than I 
thought," she said; and her man- 
ner grew gentler to him. But 
Jeanne was not won over. 

" He is a hypocrite," she said ; 
" don't let thyself be duped by his 
sly ways." 

" Granny, you are too hard on 
him," replied Follette ; " he is al- 
ways trying to make Gripard kind 
to me, and I'm sure he is fond of 
me, poor Victor !" 

" He is fond of himself, and he 
has a motive in pretending to be 
fond of thee. Beware of him, 
child !" 

But Follette, in her wisdom, 
thought old Jeanne foolish, and un- 
just to Jules' rival. 

And now it was near Easter. 
The snow had melted and the 
wicked north wind was gone, and 
Follette went out into the fields 
to look for snowdrops. The first 
sight of their white bells was an 
event every year, and she watch- 
ed for it like the coming of a fa- 
miliar friend. But she was not 
as glad of it this year as she used 
to be. Her happiness in the snow- 
drops was dim.med by vague fears, 
like a patch of black cloud in a 
blue summer sky. 

" Something is going to happen," 
she would say ; but Jeanne, who 
was learned in omens, reassured 
her: 

" I have watched the rooks, and 
they have not alighted once in a 
flock on the roof of Quatre Vents ; 
and I've never met a black cat on 
the road since Jules left." 

As soon as the cold abated Gri- 
pard left his chair and hobbled 
abroad on his rounds as of old. 
One day he went out before break- 



fast, and, crossing the bridge, walk- 
ed on into the forest. He stood for 
a while amidst the leafless trees, 
looking round him as if he were 
trying to recall some object or 
measuring the distance; then he 
began poking with his stick amongst 
the brambles, stopping now and 
then when he thought he heard a 
noise, and at last he disappeared 
behind a mound round which the 
underwood grew rank and high. 
It was not long before he emerged 
again into the open pathway, and 
as he came out Nicol met him, 
shambling along with a bundle on 
his hump. 

"What brings you here at this 
hour?" said Gripard, with a sharp 
glance of suspicion. 

" I have business at Cotor," said 
the dwarf. u The forest is open to 
everybody." 

Gripard muttered something 
about this insolence, and hurried 
home. The moment he saw Vic- 
tor he called him aside. 

" Look ye here," he said : " you 
must marry petiote after Easter. 
It's all nonsense this waiting till 
she likes it. I don't care a broken 
pipe whether she likes it or not; 
she must make the best of it." 

He was not so much angry as 
agitated. Victor saw that some- 
thing had happened. But what ? 
Nobody knew, but everybody paid 
the penalty, for Gripard was in a 
vile temper all day ; every footstep 
that sounded outside the door 
made him start ; he snarled and 
snapped at Jeanne for everything 
and nothing. 

"What do you keep rubbing 
those spoons for? Do you want to 
scratch every bit of silver off them, 
eh ? Wipe 'em softly with a wet 
rag and leave 'em alone. You're 
wearing the place out with your 
rubbing and scrubbing. As to the 



Follette. 



461 



linen, it's melting away like snow; 
you won't leave me a sheet to be 
buried in. That's what you want, 
I suppose." 

Next morning, when Follette was 
going to hang out the ill-used linen, 
Victor followed her into the gar- 
den. 

" Let me help you with the heavy 
things," he said; and he began to 
spread the coarse sheets on the 
line. Follette made no objection. 

" I hope you don't hate me as 
much as you used, do you, Fol- 
lette?" he said presently. 

" I never said I hated you." 

" You have a way of saying 
things without saying them ; and I 
understand them. But tell me, 
Follette, you don't quite hate me 
now ?" 

" Why should I ? You have been 
very kind to me since Jules went 
away." 

"I was very sorry for you, and 
for him too." 

Then there was a pause. 

" It's not my fault," Victor be- 
gan again, " but I can't help it. I 
have something to say, and I'm 
afraid it will make you angry." 

"Then don't say it," said Fol- 
lette, turning her bright, black eyes 
at him laughingly. 

" But I must. Your uncle says I 
must. He has been wanting me to 
say it this ever so long ; but I 
would not. Can't you guess what 
it is ?" 

Yes, she guessed now, and he 
saw that she did. Her pink brown 
cheeks crimsoned and then grew 
pale, and there was a flash in her 
eyes as she looked away and went 
on hanging the clothes. 

" I could not ask you while you 
hated me," continued Victor, mov- 
ing closer to her and speaking in a 
pleading tone ; " but your uncle in- 
sists on my telling you now. He 



has set his mind on our marrying, 
and my heart is set on it, too, Fol- 
lette." 

She made no answer, but stuck a 
peg on the line. 

" Follette, will you marry me ?" 
She turned round and looked at 
him without the least shyness or 
displeasure in her face. 

" No, I can't marry you. I'm 
engaged to Jules." 

" I know that ; but Jules is gone, 
and he can't be back for years. 
And besides, your uncle will never 
consent to your marrying him." 

" Then I will marry nobody. He 
can't force me to marry against my 
will." 

"Are you quite sure of that, Fol- 
lette ?" said Victor, not mockingly, 
but in a tone of anxious warning, 
as if he would have put her on 
her guard. 

"I will never marry any one but 
Jules," said Follette. 

" Jules can't marry you. He is 
hard set to earn enough to keep 
himself." 

" I can wait." 

" Where will you wait, if your 
uncle turns you out?" 

" I will go to service, as other 
girls do." 

"You would find it very hard, 
and you might have 'to go on at it 
for a great many years till you were 
an old maid.." 

" I should not care. I would 
wait for Jules till I was an old wo- 
man." 

" And do you think he would 
wait as long for you ?" 
" Of course he would !" 
" You are sure he would not 
grow tired ? that he would not see 
some pretty maid in Paris, mean- 
time, who had money and would 
be glad to marry him ? " 

Follette started, but her heart did 
not beat any quicker ; -she was sim- 



462 



The Polemics of Light Literature. 



ply too puzzled to know what to 
say. Such a fear had never before 
presented itself to her, and she 
could not at once apprehend it. 

"Poor little Follette !" said Vic- 
tor compassionately, "you know 
nothing of the world nor of men. 
Jules is gone to where all the wo- 
men are beautiful, and clever, and 
accomplished ; he will soon get so 
used to their ways and manners 
that he will be disgusted with sim- 
ple village folk like us. Fancy 
what sort of figure you would make 
amongst fine ladies with their fine 
manners and silk dresses! Jules 
would be ashamed to let them see 



you. 



" I don't understand you. You 



are wicked and unkind," said Fol- 
lette ; " you want to frighten me 
into giving up Jules and marrying 
you. But it is no use. Even if 
he did forget me and grow asham- 
ed of me I should forgive him and 
love him all the same. And I 
would rather die than marry 
you !" 

She was beginning to under- 
stand, and her lip trembled. Vic- 
tor chuckled inwardly at having 
stuck a thorn into her simple, loyal 
heart, for he flattered himself this 
would gradually loosen her trust in 
Jules. Follette took up her basket 
and hurried into the house, leaving 
Victor standing alone amidst the 
clothes. 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



THE POLEMICS OF LIGHT LITERATURE. 



THE correspondence of Macvey 
Napier, who succeeded Lord Jef- 
frey in the editorship of the Edin- 
burgh Review, has just been made 
public, and it furnishes another 
illustration of the wrath which 
at times disturbs celestial minds. 
Brougham and" Macaulay hurl their 
darts at each other over the head 
of the editor, and write quires of 
fiercest criticism upon each other's 
articles. Brougham declares of 
Macaulay that he knew absolutely 
nothing about the inductive sys- 
tem of Bacon, and roundly asserts 
that he never read the Novum Or- 
ganum. Macaulay declares that 
Brougham had the temper of the 
devil, and that he was the most 
incompetent jurist in England. 
Another contributor pronounces 
the philosophical speculations of 
G. H. Lewes " rot " and " twaddle." 



This internecine war among the 
writers was going on in conjunc- 
tion with an elaborate system of 
puffery kept up by them in public ; 
for in the pages of the Review 
they referred to one another's arti- 
cles in a tone of high eulogy. 

Whatever opinion may be enter- 
tained relative to the propriety of 
an editor's publishing the private 
correspondence which passes be- 
tween him and his contributors, 
such publications as Macvey Na- 
pier's book will serve to acquaint 
the general reader with the fre- 
quently ignoble motives which in- 
spire certain articles that appear to 
be the genuine outpourings of a 
writer's honest convictions. The 
influence and prestige of the ear- 
lier Edinburgh Review were very 
great out of all proportion, in fact, 
to its real worth. Brougham him- 



The Polemics of Light Literature. 



4*3 



self boasted that he wrote nearly 
the whole of the first numbers ; and 
though he was undoubtedly a man 
of extensive acquirements and a 
physical capacity for literary work 
which was herculean, it is simply 
absurd to suppose that he was at 
home on a range of subjects which 
touched the highest metaphysical' 
problems on one side and the 
chemical properties of guano on 
the other. He certainly deserves 
a good word from a Catholic for 
his advocacy of Emancipation at 
a period of bigotry paralleled only 
by that of Cromwellianism ; but it 
was the sunny wisdom of Sydney 
Smith that, pouring its genial rays 
upon the subject in the PJymley Let- 
ters, lighted up the mind of the 
lord chancellor. Brougham shows 
better than Macaulay in the Review \ 
for, with all his enormous self-con- 
ceit, he had a broad and liberal 
mind, and he was certainly right in 
his estimate of Macaulay's philoso- 
phical knowledge. It may not be 
true that Macaulay was incapable 
of " seizing a principle," but he 
was incapable of tracing a princi- 
ple through all its consequences. 
Brougham was furious at the exces- 
sive popular applause bestowed 
upon Macaulay's essays. There 
was no mistaking that style, blazing 
with " barbaric pearl and gold " ; 
and he could hardly contain him- 
self when, dropping in at White's, 
he would see the Review thumb- 
marked at Macaulay's article, and 
the pages of his own essay uncut. 
Jeffrey had a most painful ex- 
perience in trying to soothe his 
wounded vanity, which resorted to 
the most grotesque ways of seek- 
ing gratification as, for instance, 
when he invented the canard of his 
death by being thrown from his 
carriage, in order to have the 
pleasure of reading his laudatory 



obituaries. He was an able and 
even eloquent speaker, but he 
never forgave the House for laugh- 
ing at the peroration of his speech 
on the queen's trial a beautiful 
and pathetic appeal, which he 
ruined in the delivery by getting 
on his knees with difficulty (being 
a pudgy, corpulent man) and get- 
ting up with greater difficulty. It 
was more ludicrous than Edmund 
Burke's flinging down a dagger in 
his speech on the Hastings trial. 
It took Burke some time to get the 
knife out of his coat-pockel, and 
it rebounded so near a Yorkshire 
squire (who, no doubt, was placid- 
ly snoring, if we are to credit 
Goldsmith) that he sprang up with 
a volley of oaths, and threatened 
to pull the orator's nose. 

The Edinburgh had it in its power 
to do great service to Catholics, 
and its utterances upon the subject 
of their claims were awaited with 
painful anxiety by all liberal-mind- 
ed men. Sydney Smith was known 
to be a thorough friend of Emanci- 
pation, but his satire was not an 
effective weapon. The English 
detest any satire upon religious 
questions, and it is doubtful if 
Smith's badinage did not really in- 
jure the Catholic cause. It might 
be absurdly ridiculous to fancy 
that the pope had landed at Dover 
and was marching on London at 
the head of all the religious orders, 
armed with miraculous images ; but 
such satire jarred upon the sensi- 
bilities of Catholics, who wanted 
only fair play and a serious exami- 
nation of their claims. Besides, 
Sydney's articles on Methodism in 
the Review infuriated the Dissent- 
ers, and left his arguments valueless 
with that very portion of the 
British public who should have 
made common cause with the Ca- 
tholics. Brougham was under the 



464 



The Polemics of Light Literature. 



influence of the traditional belief of 
British statesmen that popery is a 
deadly enemy of Protestant govern- 
ments ; and though he scouts the 
calumny about the " not keeping 
faith with heretics," it is plain to 
see that he cannot shake off the old 
bugbear about the civil supremacy 
of the pope. It is part and parcel 
of the British statesman's training 
to keep a sharp eye upon Rome, 
and we need not wonder that every 
prime minister from Burleigh to 
Gladstone has left on record his 
unfaltering belief in this' article of 
English statecraft. When, there- 
fore, " the terrible Harry " touches 
upon a Catholic question in the 
Edinburgh, we are always prepared 
to view the tortuous policy of the 
Roman court, not with alarm oh ! 
no; Harry afraid, indeed! but 
with a calm assurance that Eng- 
land may rely upon the intelli- 
gence, etc., of her statesmen. 

There is piobably no country 
that finds more entrancing yet 
melancholy interest in religious 
questions than England. This in- 
terest attaches to even the lighter 
forms of its literature, which has 
a piquant element in its frequent 
polemics. Froissart says of the 
English that they take their plea- 
sures sadly, and the same appears 
to be true of their religious ex- 
periences and speculations. We 
purpose in this article examining 
the polemic element in the general 
literature of England, particularly 
in that which is serial and tran- 
sient. 

Lord Macaulay, in his day, was the 
prince of essayists, and it was com- 
mendable in him to refrain from 
the full expression of his genuine 
dislike of the Catholic Church. 
He was born and raised in an 
atmosphere of anti-popery, and 
his education never took in that 



wide culture which might have 
modified his views of the church. 
For him she was always the Church 
of Rome* narrow, limited, uncatho- 
lic. Outside his special studies in 
English history his reading was 
what we agree to call light, though 
in reality heavy enough. He was 
familiar with the light literature 
of all civilized languages, but, as 
Brougham said of his essay on 
Bacon, " Tom knows nothing about 
philosophy." The consequence is 
that he is an admirable exemplar 
of the polemical method discover- 
able in light literature. He studied 
the Bible just as he studied Aristo- 
phanes. All the quips and jokes 
against the church to be found in 
the jesters of the middle ages and 
the Renaissance he knew by heart. 
He thought that Rabelais was as 
safe a guide in church matters as 
Fleury or Bossuet. He had a weak- 
ness for this light style of history 
which he gravely defends in his 
England when he ascribes as much 
value to the newspapers of the time, 
and to old Pepys' egotistic diary, as 
to the gravest state papers. He 
believed the most improbable tales 
against the church, because he had 
little sense of humor. The irreve- 
rent but often good-natured jokes 
at the expense of friars and monks, 
the wit of Pasquin, the legend of 
the Popess Joan, which originated 
in a funny alliterative poem, the 
graceless jesting of Boccaccio, the 
offhand familiarity with which the 
Southron Catholics speak of the 
most sacred things, affected Macau- 
lay to a degree unintelligible to 
the children of the household of 
the faith. He seriously chronicles 
events and impressions which look 
ill for the church until we set them 
at the right angle. It is quite easy 
to see that Macaulay was unfa- 
miliar with the great theological 



The Polemics of Light Literature. 



465 



writers of the church. He makes 
game of the scholastics, which is 
a mark of the shallowness of all 
" light " literature. Of course we 
have sly allusions to the question, 
which is supposed to have divided 
the schools, as to the number of 
angels that could dance on a 
needle's point. He thinks more 
of a passage in Shakspere's King 
John about England's refusal to 
bow to any " foreign priest," as a 
proof of England's consistent op- 
position to papal claims, than he 
does of the indubitable evidence 
of the land's intense Catholicity 
furnished by countless historical 
monuments. There is a strong 
presumption that Macaulay had no 
intellectual sympathy with theolo- 
gical studies, which require a men- 
tal aptitude similar to that neces- 
sary for the higher mathematics, 
which he most cordially detested. 
He would rather read the Deca- 
merone than Guicciardini, at whose 
prolixity he rails, though he be- 
lieves his vile calumnies upon Al- 
exander VI. He preferred Scar- 
ron to Racine, and Voltaire to any 
ecclesiologist. He was fond of 
the epigrammatists, and appears to 
have despised Plato and the more 
spiritual forms of Hellenic philoso- 
phy. There is not in all his writ- 
ings a judgment upon the Catho- 
lic Church which impresses one as 
the result of a careful study of a 
theological basis or dogma. He is 
by excellence a polemic of light 
literature. 

One of the strangest of literary 
fates is that of Walter Savage Lan- 
dor, whose Imaginary Conversations 
contain some of the best English 
prose since Swift, yet are they 
almost entirely neglected, except 
by those light litterateurs who go 
to them as an armory for anti-Ca- 
tholic weapons. Landor was com- 
VOL, xxx. 30 



pelled to leave England on account 
of his violent temper, which found 
continual vent in publications pro- 
nounced libellous by the legal au- 
thorities. He took up his residence 
in Italy, and found, or pretended 
to find, innumerable reasons for as- 
sailing the church. Of a hard, un- 
bending, British stolidity, he never 
even sought to discover if he were 
not doing injustice to the Italian 
pe.ople in his view of their ways 
and forms of practising their re- 
ligion. He was embittered against 
the English government, and fu- 
riously indignant at the Holy Al- 
liance, which, he declared, broke 
every promise and pledge it was 
instituted to fulfil. He also took 
for his game the respect and vene- 
ration which Catholics pay to the 
relics of saints ; and certainly this 
poor subject of easy and ignorant 
satire was unworthy of a man 
of his unquestionably fine powers. 
The fervid and, if you please, the 
extravagant expression of Italian 
religious feeling struck him as su- 
premely superstitious ; and, as his 
studies lay mainly in classic litera- 
ture, he adopted toward the church 
the tone of Julian the Apostate. 
He gloats over the most salacious 
stones in the exotic literature of 
Italy and France ; nor has he the 
decency of Gibbon, who veiled his 
obscenity in a dead language. We 
can afford to laugh at the paltry 
and unlettered spite which finds 
ignoble expression in shameless 
books about the filthiness of the 
confessional and the horrors of 
convents ; but it is with the gravest 
concern that we behold the efforts 
of such men as Landor and Robert 
Southey to infiltrate all English 
light literature with anti-Catholic 
venom. The Imaginary Conversa- 
tions of Landor were read and 
studied by the scholarly minds of 



466 



Polemics of Light Literature. 



England, by men who would toss 
into the fire even a Protestant 
bishop's Ref^ltation of Popery. He 
wrote at a time when England had 
the Hellenic craze, when Byron 
espoused the cause of the Greeks, 
and when the world had scarcely 
r-eeovered its equipoise after the 
downfall of Napoleon. It was a 
time when every element of re- 
ligion and good government should 
liave been fostered ; but, as if und.er 
satanic influence, this modern Lu- 
cretius sent out books which as- 
sailed the very foundations of so- 
cial order and religious faith. He 
had an almost preternatural in- 
stinct for finding out the limitations 
f religion, human weaknesses in 
its practice and profession, and 
difficulties which no one but the 
devil would think of; and he put 
alt. tlaese objections and difficulties 
iru fehe mouths of men of eminent 
ebaraeter and name. Unlike Fene- 
lon's Dialogues of the Dead, these 
Conversations had no moral. He 
was so completely a master of style 
that he could reproduce in words 
the very mental state of the con- 
v,ersers a deep literary and ethi- 
cal wrong, for his characters would 
generally have repudiated the opin- 
itms which he made them, like tele- 
$li&<nic puppets, enunciate. The 
naafesty of a name was made to 
lend itself to Landor's individual 
judgments. 

As Hume would read with sur- 
prise Huxley's estimate of his phi- 
losophy, so Landor's various cha- 
racters would rise in indignation 
against him. All of them are pa- 
gans,. freftB Cicero to Pope Leo 
XII. ; all speak like pagans and live 
Tike pagans. The pope chuckles 
ovr his successful chicanery, yet 
Gii*io-usly mixes blasphemy with 
tlLe grossest superstition. Nor is 
%., " Romanism " alone that elicits 



the scorn which the conversers feel, 
but all religion which in any way 
allies itself with the people. This 
is the burden of those conversa- 
tions which touch even remotely 
upon moral issues. Caesar and 
Lucullus view the religion of an- 
cient Rome as a part of the police, 
just as Pitt and Canning do the 
Establishment. Wherever the un- 
fortunate Bourbon monarchs are 
introduced there is a painful dis- 
play of the most puerile supersti- 
tion, as if Catholicity consisted in 
relics and amulets. Catholic peo- 
ples must be tickled with miracles 
and portents. Protestant nations 
must be kept in awe by a vigorous 
insistence upon the activity and 
malignity of the devil. The old 
popular paganism comes in for its 
share of philosophical scorn, and 
Christianity itself is a vulgar super- 
stition, probably invented by crazy 
enthusiasts, whose barbarous Greek 
in the New Testament and the 
Epistles is the strongest argument 
against their religion. Cicero says 
that if Jove spoke to mortals he 
would employ the diction of Plato; 
but no wonder the Athenians fled, 
if St. Paul spoke such Greek as 
is attributed to him in the Acts. 
Newton appears to have been a 
naturally good man, though it is 
probable that he was an Arian ; but 
Landor makes him supremely ridi- 
culous on the subject of the Apo- 
calyptic predictions, and he insinu- 
ates that Sir Isaac would never 
have discovered the law of gravita- 
tion if he had not abandoned the 
Bible. Protestants, with an explain-, 
able fatuity, have gone to Landor 
to get satire against " relic-worship- 
pers," not perceiving that he scorns 
them quite as fiercely as he does 
" Romanists." 

The pope, in light English litera- 
ture, has gone through a number 



The Polemics of Light Literature. 



467 



of phases. In the earlier Protes- 
tant literature he is the man of 
sin, and in Bunyan a ferocious 
giant who crunches the bones of 
poor heretics. The characteristics 
ascribed to him are cruelty, ava- 
rice, blasphemy, and other marks of 
the Beast. It is rather a sad com- 
mentary upon the change in Pro- 
testant opinion that at present the 
Book of Revelations is, not only 
stripped of its predictive character, 
but an opinion is gaining ground 
among them of its uncanonicalness. 
This is the natural rebound from 
the absurd interpretation to which 
it was long subjected. England 
has been laughed at all over Eu- 
rope for its accepted interpretation 
of the Apocalypse as against Po- 
pery. Ewald and other German 
hermeneutists leave no opportunity 
pass to sneer at English Protestant 
theology, which they identify with 
the puerility of the anti-popery 
exegesis of the Apocalypse. Gro- 
tius in vain endeavored to turn 
Protestantism from this absurd 
track ; and no doubt there are even 

now people who believe that the 
mystic number 666 designates the 
pope. A little dexterous arithmetic 
'would very probably find the num- 
ber in Leo XIIL, especially if His 
Holiness makes any kind of a 
flourish in signing his name. A 
flourish, for example, over the L 
would make it 500 in a trice, ac- 
cording to the ancient Roman nu- 
meration. 

As we descend the stream of 
English literature the pope emerges 
from his pronounced Apocalyptic 
character, and becomes a most ex- 
traordinary compound of Machia- 
velli and Julius Caesar an incar- 
nation of boundless ambition and 
the most subtle cunning. Now, it 
is a patent historical fact that many 
of the % Sovereign Pontiffs were men 



by no means remarkable for the 
extraordinary intellectual endow 1 
ments which Protestants are fond 
of ascribing to them. The great 
minds of the church often serve 
her better in the cloister than upon 
the apostolic throne. There is no 
doubt that the Roman pontificate, 
viewed simply as a succession of 
rulers, numbers a far larger propor- 
tion of great and able men than 
any other dynasty of the same 
length in the annals of history. 
But we doubt if there ever was a 
pope who possessed so many won- 
derful powers as Protestant histo- 
rians credit to each and all. It is 
simply bosh to talk of the pheno- 
menal subtlety, the iron severity, 
the brazen arrogance, the steely 
obduracy, and other metallic qua- 
lities of " Hildebrand," who, in 
truth, was a marvel of sweetness 
and patience, a great loving heart, 
which broke with sorrow in his 
exile. We do not know our popes 
in the disguise clapped upon them 
by these historical costumers. Who 
thinks of Pius IX. as a " wily old 
fox " ? The man was as open- 
hearted as a child. Our brave old 
Sixtus V. and our learned, witty, 
and saintly Benedict XIV. are 
made out to be positive gorgons. 
One would suppose that, if every 
pope was a genius of the highest 
order, he should have done some- 
thing that left a profound impres- 
sion upon his age. But the fact is 
that the history of the popes is 
rather tame reading not at all 
like the chronicle of the wars of 
Napoleon, or the conquests of Al- 
exander, or even the kistory of 
many eminent statesmen, authors, 
and artists. But Protestants won't 
believe that the pope is, as a gene- 
ral rule, very much like other bi- 
shops in the church, who says his 
Mass, goes to confession, reads his 



468 



The Polemics of Light Literature* 



office, attends to his correspon- 
dence, and very often is wholly un- 
conscious of the possession of those 
Machiavellian qualities to which 
the Roman Church is indebted for 
her extensive sway, her unity in 
doctrine, and her remarkable per- 
petuity. 

It is to the credit of the older 
English dramatists that they do 
not introduce polemics into the 
play. Shakspere invariably speaks 
courteously of the friars, and there 
is not a clerical character in Eng- 
lish dramatic literature that cor- 
responds to the Tartuffe of Moliere. 
Tennyson has been properly pun- 
ished for his tours of dramatic 
bigotry in the failure of his Queen 
Mary. The " poor players " have 
generally been adverse to the ridi- 
culing of things sacred, especially 
upon the English stage, whose tra- 
dition in this regard is deserving 
of high encomium. Of course it 
is impossible to eliminate the anti- 
popery element from the drama of 
a people whose mental habitudes 
have been almost entirely formed 
by Protestantism. But one looks 
in vain in the plays of Congreve 
or Ford for any distinct attacks 
upon the Catholic religion, or even 
a holding up to ridicule of the 
sacerdotal character. The English 
stage always desires to represent 
the clergy as consistent with their 
sacred profession ; and it is in 
marked and praiseworthy contrast 
with the ribaldry of the infidel 
drama of France and Italy, in 
which a monk plays the rdle of 
absurdity. 

One of the ready polemical wea- 
pons which appear in light litera- 
ture is a phrase or a saying about 
the Catholic Church let fall in con- 
versation by some eminent man. 
The superficial writer will find in a 
book of anecdotes or table-talk 



some anti-Catholic remark made 
say by Coleridge or Selden, ajid 
forthwith it is reproduced, without 
any reference to the circumstances 
under which it was spoken. Cole- 
ridge said some very bitter things 
against the church, but then who 
was Coleridge? Had he clear 
views on anything ? He evidently 
did not deem the Catholic Church 
worthy of investigation. There is 
nothing more absurd in English 
philosophy than his attempt to 
prove the Trinity from the princi- 
ples laid down by Spinoza. His 
" Tritheism," as elaborated in the 
system of philosophy which he pro- 
jected but never completed, is re- 
ducible to pantheism. Coleridge's 
mind was shattered by his indul- 
gence in opium-eating, as he whin- 
ingly deplores ; and it must have 
been an inspiration of that drug 
which caused him to say of the Ca- 
tholic Church that its complete 
extinction would be the highest 
benefit that could be bestowed 
upon the race. Southey was an 
Anglican of the narrowest type, 
and, though well versed in every 
literature except that of Catholic 
theology, his mind never broad- 
ened. Indeed, the most serious 
charge we can bring against him 
and his like is that they did not 
think it worth their while to study 
any Catholic authorities. Southey 
was not a learned, but rather an 
erudite, man. He contented him- 
self with the flowers of letters, and 
knew religion only in its connection 
with the more evanescent forms of 
human thought. No matter how 
accomplished an English author is, 
his insularity sticks to him with 
provoking pertinacity. He prides 
himself upon this narrowness, and 
flatters himself that what English- 
men have said about a certain sub- 
ject is the best and truest saying 



The Polemics of Light Literature. 



469 



possible. Continental and trans- 
atlantic thought must pass through 
the English alembic before it ap- 
proves itself as an elemental force 
and not mere dross. All Catholic 
writers are to be viewed with sus- 
picion, as presumably in league 
with the wily pope and Jesuits, and 
it is safe to attach no credence to 
their statements or explanations. 
The best way to deal with John 
Bull is to state a fact without apo- 
logy or explanation ; and the best 
style of theological writing for him 
is that which is akin to the poli- 
tical style of the Declaration of 
Independence. Apologetic writers 
on Catholic themes have little or 
no weight with a people who, like 
their own Falstaff, will never admit 
the truth u upon compulsion," either 
moral or physical. Men like Car- 
dinals Newman and Manning are 
plain, simple, and positive in their 
statements of Catholic doctrine, 
and the Englishman understands 
them ; for he is only perplexed and 
made suspicious by ''casuistical" 
distinctions and sub-distinctions. It 
is said that Bishop Vaughan's an- 
swer to Gladstone's Vatican De- 
crees was more generally effective 
than Newman's or Manning's, be- 
cause it was more pugnacious in 
style than that of either cardinal, 
and he hit harder and oftener in 
the rough style of the nation. Eng- 
lishmen who could not understand 
the exquisite fence of Newman, or 
even the trenchant thrusts of Man- 
ning, could appreciate the terribly 
evident "knock-downs" of the bi- 
shop of Salford. 

As if ashamed of having so long 
committed themselves to such ab- 
surdities in their treatment of Ca- 
tholics, the English seem now fe- 
verishly anxious to hear and to say 
-everything good that they can 
about the church. This change is 



mainly due to the divine grace 
which God is pouring out upon the 
nation in response to the prayers 
and good works of his faithful peo- 
ple, whose unclouded faith and 
hope in England's ultimate return 
to Catholic unity have been suffi- 
cient to draw down the most co- 
pious blessings. The great reviews 
open their pages to the most libe- 
ral discussion, and it is a remark- 
able fact that positivism and scien- 
tific agnosticism have wrought good 
in forcing the logical position of 
the church upon the attention of 
the people. Men like Mallock ap- 
pear to reason themselves up to the 
church, and they have that hard, 
positive, common-sense way of stat- 
ing their reasonings which is cha- 
racteristic of the English intellect. 
A Briton has nothing but contempt 
for the dreamy speculations of Ger- 
man philosophers. He wants to 
know what you mean by the Ab- 
solute, what by Ding-in-sich, what 
by your " sublimated personality," 
and if you appeal to his ego in its 
relation to the Unconditioned you 
will fare well if you escape with a 
judgment 'that charitably supposes 
you to be " cracked." Ten to one 
but he will think that you are an 
atheistic scoundrel, on whom it is 
just as well to lock up the spoons. 
The people are becoming less insu- 
lar since their writers branched out 
into a nobler philosophy than that 
of Locke. Dr. Arnold and Car- 
lyle have made it possible for other 
than Englishmen to be heard with 
attention. There is a grateful ab- 
sence in recent light literature of 
the old anti-Catholic spirit of sus- 
picion and hatred ; and Lothair 
read all novelists a lesson. Who 
knows but that in time we shall en- 
counter the pope in his true cha- 
racter in English poetry and ro- 
mance ; and the day may come 



470 



My Christmas at Barnakeery. 



when even the terrible Jesuit shall chine which, at the touch of a 

not be a mysterious depositary of spring from a hidden source at 

awful state secrets, a cunning plot- Rome, produces awful social and 

ter of the overthrow of Protestant moral convulsions ? 
governments, and an animated ma- 




CHRISTMAS AT BARNAKEERY. 

NEr3' prophecy regarding the claim as some incident to the dis- 



fishing proved correct, and we 
trudged back to Barnakeery with- 
out having seen the fin of a fish. 

" I deeply regret, Daly, that you 
were not with me to-day ; my deci- 
sion in that " 

" Don't bother me with your de- 
cision, Dolphin. Let me get into 
my dinner toggery," was my un- 
ceremonious reply. 



credit of an acquaintance would be 
made known to him. Simple as a 
very child in the world's ways, as 
a scholar he was a Titan. We se- 
niors consulted him as we would a 
book in the Law Library. 

If a quotation from Horace re- 
quired capping, or a hidden mean- 
ing in Aristophanes demanded elu- 
cidation, George Blackball was re- 



" By the way, I've asked one of ferred to, and ever with success. 



your cloth to take pot-luck. He 
is stopping at Inchatemple for pis- 
catorial purposes. I told him you 
were here, and he rose at my offer 
like a trout at a fly." 

" Who is he ?" I asked, dreading 
the name of a flippant- junior or 
the dead-weight of a mouldy, brief- 
less elder. 

" His name is Blackball." 

" George Blackball ?" 

"Yes." 

This announcement caused me 
very considerable pleasure. George 
was a rising junior, if not a risen 
one. No man was liked better by 
the profession ; no man whose ad- 
vancement gave birth to less ran- 
cor, ill-feeling, or jealousy. Black- 
ball was possessed of one of those 
open, frank, fearless natures that 
woo confidence and win friendship. 
He was truth and honor personi- 
fied. To him a mean and shabby 
action was simply unaccountable. 



His modesty was as great as his 
merit, while his punctilious defer- 
ence toward women dated back to 
a remoter age than that of the pre- 
sent. 

A knock came to my door just 
as I had soused my sunburnt face 
into a basin full of water, and in 
response to my "Come in!" the 
young barrister presented himself. 
He was, and is, a tall, pale, thought- 
ful-looking man of eight-and-twen- 
ty, with a calm, penetrating, dark- 
blue eye, a delicately-cut nose, and 
a mouth as if chiselled by Canova,, 
revealing a set of even white teeth 
that flashed again in the sunlight. 
He shaves closely, save as regards 
his luxuriant whiskers, which, in 
common with his curly hair, are 
of a rich, lustrous brown. He has 
the shoulders of an Orlando, and 
a hand as white as that of Mary, 
Queen of Scots. 

" What a chance, to stumble on, 



The man is mad," he would ex- you, sir !" he gaily exclaimed as he 



Christmas at Bamako ry. 



47* 






seized my extended hand. "I got 
down here yesterday to fish Loch 
Inchicore; but finding that the fish 
refused to rise to my seductive flies, 
I gave over the gentle art and turn- 
ed into the court-house in the vil- 
lage, where I heard our host deliver 
a magisterial decision with the aw- 
ful solemnity of the late Chief-Ba- 
ron Pigott." 

" I was nearly in for it, Black- 
ball. I suppose it was a clincher." 

"I envied him his intimate know- 
ledge of the acts of Parliament, es- 
pecially those of Anne and George 
II. Happily, he was in blissful 
unconsciousness that every act 
which he cited was repealed years 
and years ago ; but, my dear Mr. 
Daly, he was in earnest, and an 
earnest man, woman, or child is a 
rara avis in tern's." 

Blackball, who was already at- 
tired in conventional dinner cos- 
tume, seated himself on the edge 
of my bed, and clasping his right 
knee in both hands, and wagging 
his foot backwards and forwards, 
suddenly asked me : 

"Who is that lovely girl I en- 
countered just now in the corri- 
dor ?" 

" Describe your lovely girl." 

The young barrister instantly 
presented me with an admirable 
word-portrait of Emily Primrose. 

" She is a Miss Primrose." 

"What a charming name! It 
suits her admirably. Is she stop- 
ping here?" 

"Yes." 

" Any relation ?" 

u N I can't say." 

" Do you know, Mr. Daly, that 
Miss Primrose realizes a mind's-eye 
portrait that I have illuminated on 
my heart ever since I was in Trini- 
ty? I saw such a face once, years 
ago, in the front of the dress circle 
in the Theatre Royal at a panto- 



mime, and I drank such a deep, 
deep draught of its intoxicating 
beauty that " 

" Come down to dinner," I in- 
terrupted ; " there's the second bell/ 5 
I did not want this fine, straight, 
honorable, brilliant'you'ftg -fellow to 
fall in love wit-li : 't^is s ^oung lady. 
The midnight ..visit : stuck in. my 
throat, and mylmaHije^r toward Miss 
Primrose at d*inrvef- : >v as .formal i'f 
not icy. I saw, that it 'pained ike 
girl, and I was glad. 

George Blackball came to my 
room that night. I saw thru 
was bursting to talk about Miss- 
Primrose, a.nd I didn't choose tc 
give him the chance. 

" What a capital dinner, 
Daly !" 

" Very good." 

" And the wine ?" 

" Very good indeed." 

'* What an admirable host you: 
friend the colonel is !" 

" He's well enough till he talk* 
horse and law, and then he's 
drearier than the Bog of Allen." 

"Mrs. Dolphin is a very agree- 
able little lady." 

" I'm glad you like her." 

" So chatty!" 

"I'd just as soon chat with 
labels in an apothecary's shop." 

" Miss ahem ! Primrose is 
charming." 

" Very. Good-night, Blackball. 

" Are you sleepy, sir ?" 

" I am." 

"Try a cigar?" 

" I never smoke." 

He commenced a long disserta- 
tion on the use and abuse of tobac- 
co, merely to gain time in order to 
return to the Primrose by a circui- 
tous route. I waited for him. 

"How divinely Miss Primrose 
plays!" came after a little while. 

" I'm not a judge." 

" But surely that ' Fantasia 



472 



My Christmas at Barnakcery. 



Chopin's was a marvellous perfor- 
mance." 

" Was it ?" 
, " Were you not electrified by it ?" 

" I was then, what I wish I was 
now, and what you seem determin- 
ed I shall not be asleep." 

" That's a hint." 

" If it's not broad enough, Black- 
ball, I'll extend it by saying, jGet 
out of this." And taking him bynhe 
shoulders, I pushed him out of the 
room. 

Upon the following morning the 
first object that met my eyes as I 
leaned out into the~autumn air was 
George Blackball bounding over 
ribbon-borders and flower-beds in 
pursuit of Miss Primrose, who, ac- 
companied by a superb collie, was 
to be seen crossing the fields and 
occasionally flinging a stick for the 
especial edification and amusement 
of her canine companion. 

They returned to breakfast, the 
girl flushed by her morning excur- 
sion, and looking well, I am not 
given to gush, but she did look un- 
commonly handsome ; not that wax- 
doll or poudre de riz beauty if 
beauty it may be called but with 
apple-blossoms on her brow, and 
rose- petals on her cheeks, and 
fuchsias on her lips, and the bright 
sparkle of the light of the spring- 
time of life in her liquid eyes. Poor 
George Blackball could do nothing 
but stare at her, dropping his eyes 
whenever they met hers, and blush- 
ing as if he were still in jackets. 

Dolphin repaired to a small 
apartment up in the sky, which 
he called his study, where he pre- 
pared those magisterial decisions 
which were invariably in direct 
contravention to the act of Par- 
liament, and otherwise coached 
himself in the duties appertaining 
to his J.-P.ship. I took my cigar 
to the veranda, and Blackball, hav- 



ing letters to write, went to his 
room. 

I was sitting smoking in a shady 
corner and enjoying the cigar, the 
scenery, and the mid-morning air, 
when I suddenly perceived a white 
object in motion amongst the trees 
at the entrance to an elm copse 
indeed, it might be dignified with 
the title of wood which stood at 
the distance of a few hundred yards 
from the house. A more scruti- 
nizing glance revealed a pocket- 
handkerchief. 

I could detect a hand waving the 
handkerchief. Evidently this was 
a signal; but a signal for whom? 
For what ? Not for me ? 

Presently I heard a window open, 
and, cautiously moving to the right 
of the veranda, I detected Miss 
Primrose replying to the signal by 
waving her kerchief in return. 

I waited. 

In a few moments Miss Primrose 
appeared at the end of the house, 
and, casting a hurried glance round 
her, as if afraid of being perceived, 
made straight for the wood. 

I do not know what tempted me 
to follow her, but I did so. The 
great elm-trees were very close, 
and their foliage imparted a deep, 
cavernous gloom. I struck a beat- 
en path, and had penetrated but 
a short distance when I caught a 
glimpse of two forms, a man and a 
woman, standing with their backs 
towards me. 

The woman was Emily Prim- 
rose. 

The man the midnight visitor. 

I knew his white hands, and one 
of them was placed upon her shoul- 
der, while he seemed to speak with 
a terrific earnestness. 

I turned for the purpose of quit- 
ting the wood; but one of the dogs 
had followed, unperceived by me, 
and I trod upon its foot, causing it 



My Christmas at Barnakeery. 



473 



to utter a dismal howling. Miss 
Primrose turned round with a white, 
scared face and terror-stricken 
eyes. The man disappeared be- 
hind the trunk of a tree. I lifted 
my hat, and strode in the direction 
by which I had come. The crack- 
ling of the dead leaves beneath my 
feet prevented my hearing the girl's 
approach ; but she was beside me, 
and, placing her hand upon my arm, 
asked me in pleading, agitated tones 
to stop. 

" Mr. Daly I I you know," 
she commenced, and then, as though 
by a supreme effort, she continued : 
" An explanation is due to you." 

" Miss Primrose, / require no 
explanation." 

" But / consider it is due," she 
haughtily exclaimed; "and yet I 
am precluded from affording it by 
circumstances so inexpressibly bit- 
ter as to render my silence nothing 
short of an agony." 

" My good young lady," I said, 
" your meetings and trysts, wheth- 
er at midnight or at noonday, are 
of no consequence to me ; but to 
my friend Dolphin " The misery 
in her eyes caused me to become 
silent. " Have a care, young lady; 
this sort of thing is sure to end 
badly, and jw will be the sufferer." 

" What I have suffered !" she ex- 
claimed, clasping her hands pas- 
sionately. 

I turned away, leaving her stand- 
ing on the soft carpet of dead leaves 
and live mosses ; and, save in the 
commonest circumstances, I did not 
speak to her again during the re- 
mainder of my visit. 

George Blackball became utter- 
ly absorbed in her. I never even 
read of such a case of spoonyism ; 
and were it not that he unexpect- 
edly received a brief in an import- 
ant Privy Council case, the big-wigs 
of the bar being all in Switzerland 



how the Irish bar does fly to Switz- 
erland during the long vacation ! 
I do believe he would have become 
rooted to the soil of Barnakeery. 
As it was, he shook hands with Miss 
Primrose a dozen times, and bade 
her farewell- as if he were going 
straight to the scaffold. 

I did not care to break the bub- 
ble of his happiness, and let him 
dream on. 

" If he consults me in the affair 
I'll tell him all," I argued; "but 
otherwise I'll be as dumb as an 
oyster." 

I did my fishing daily with Ned 
Joyce, and laid in a stock of stories 
for the bar mess that would put a 
coal in the pipe of " Billy " Keogh 
or Baron Douse; and after a visit 
of twenty-one days I ordered I 
had to order it the outside-car 
to take me to the railway station. 

"You'll come to us for Christ- 
mas, "urged Dolphin. "I can pro- 
mise you some cock-shooting; and 
as I will have to decide an eviction 
case, I should be glad of your le- 
gal acumen ; not but that I am 
certain of the ground I stand on, 
for Chitty's Reports, volume seven- 
teen " and thusly. 

" Do come to us at Christmas," 
crffed Mrs. Dolphin, " and I'll give 
you a commission to bring me a 
box of Holloway's pills, a package 
of nerve-drops, some neuralgia 
anodynes, a dozen of Mephista 
blisters " and thusly. 

I was passing through the hall 
when a door opened and Miss Prim- 
rose stood before me. Her eyelids 
were very red, and she appeared to 
have been weeping bitterly. 

" You are going to leave ?" she 
said. 

" I am going to leave," I replied 
coldly. 

She seized my hand, and in a low 
whisper, " Do not think ill of me. 



474 



Hfy CJiristuias at Barnakeery. 



I I cannot explain now, bat I 
hope that one day I may tell you 
all. I do not want to be misjudg- 
ed ty you" 

" I assure you, Miss Primrose, 
your love-affairs are a matter of 
total indifference to me." 

I was annoyed with the girl, and 
uttered this cruel, mean, and un- 
manly speech. She shrank as if 
from a blow, and, with a reproach- 
ful look which was destined to haunt 
me, she was gone. 

It was the 24th day of Decem- 
ber, and I again found myself en 
route to Barnakeery. Fifty times 
did I ask myself, as I stamped my 
feet to get some warmth into them 
and pulled the silk muffler up over 
my ears, why I had quitted my 
comfortable bachelor apartments. 
For what? Was it to listen to Dol- 
phin's magisterial harangues or his 
wife's multitudinous complaints ? 
Was it for the purpose of playing 
double dummy, or with the idea of 
breaking myself off my favorite ha- 
bit of a post-prandial nap ? What 
had the country to offer me in win- 
ter? Nothing but snow and mud, 
and a chance of damp sheets a 
risk that a man turned fifty upwards 
should not lightly run. Hadnfc I 
snow in Dublin, and mud enough 
to fill up the Liffy from Leixlip to 
the Pigeon House? My" landlady 
wouldn't credit her senses when I 
broke the dismal intelligence to her. 

" Are ye mad, Mr. Daly, to risk 
the country, and in such weather, 
too, sir ?" 

" Jacta est alea," I Ceesar-like 
uttered, as I stepped into the com- 
partment, at the Broadstone termi- 
nus of the carriage destined to take 
me to the Barna station. I had 
written to Dolphin to send a vehicle 
for me, and my consternation went 
hand-in-hand with my indignation 



when I found Ned Joyce awaiting 
me with an outside-car. 

" Bedad, a rowl agin the wind 'itt 
do ye a power o' good, sir," he ar- 
gued. " I'd wager a crock o' goold 
that ye'll be rosy an' well be the 
time we raich the house beyant y 
an' reddy fo.r to take a hait out 
av' the rale natural food they'll be 
afther givin' ye. Troth, the rousin" 
air 'ill do ye more good nor the 
biggest bottle that old Docther Hut- 
tie, that I seen on the thrain, cud 
do for ye, bad cess to him for a 
botch !" 

I hesitated. 

" I'll tell ye how we'll manage it r 
sir," suggested Ned : " I'll plant 
all the luggidge on wan sate, and 
I'll sit betune ye an' the wind on 
th' other; an' a Februry lamb cudn't 
cotch could convaynient to this 
coat," giving a shake to his hon- 
est frieze overcoat a coat requir- 
ing some physical strength to stand 
straight up in. 

Having effected this arrangement,, 
the case began to wear a very dif- 
ferent aspect, and as we spun along 
the frost-riveted road the bracing 
air caused me to feel as did the 
immortal Mr. Pickwick while en 
route to Dingley Dell willing to 
give or take a back at leap-frog. 

" I wondher who ould Huttle's 
goin' for to murdher ?" soliloquized 
Joyce. " Faix, it's a sorra Christ- 
mas they'll be havin', barrin' they 
thrate him the way ould Casey 
done." 

"How was that, Ned?" I asked. 

" Did ye never hear av how ould 
Casey, that keeps the Brian Bpru 
tavern convaynient to Glasnevin 
Cemethry, done ould Huttle, the 
great Dublin docther?" 

" Never." 

" See that, now, an' ye livin' all 
yer life in the place. I'll tell ye, thin, 
an' shure it will lighten the road. 



My Christmas at Barnakeery. 



475 



anyhow." And giving a cheery 
"Hiep! hiep!" to the horse, Ned 
began as follows : 

u Ye see, sir, ould Casey he's 
alive an' well this day was a bat- 
therm' sort av a boy, an' wanst he 
wint on the batther he'd drink the 
say dhry. He was a good provi- 
der whin he was sober, an' Mrs. 
Casey was as ginteel an' as dacent 
a woman as there's betune this 
an' Boher-na-Copple. But she was 
fairly heart-scalded wild Casey, for 
whin the dhrop was in him he was 
all soarts, an' it's his manes he'd be 
squandherin' over the counther av 
his public-house to every man, wo- 
man, an' child that had a corpse for 
Glasnevin ; for ye see grief is dhry, 
sir, an' afther soddin' their friends 
they cum to the Brian Boru just 
for to take a dock an' dhuris, or a 
partin' glass. 

" Well, ould Casey got on a 
cruel batther, an' was tuk wud the 
horrors. He dhrank his horse an' 
car, an' a cupple av cows, an' a 
goold-framed lukkin-glass, an', a lot 
av other ornamints, and whin he 
was tuk wud the horrors six men 
cudn't hould him in the bed. 

" Well, sir, poor Mrs. Casey, a 
dacent woman, was comin' out av 
Gardiner Sthreet chapel wan Sunda 
mornin' whin she meets Mrs. Mul- 
doon, a friend, an' wanst a neigh- 
bor. 

' ' How's yer good man, Mrs. 
Casey?' sez Mrs. Muldoon. 

" ' Bad enough, ma'am,' sez Mrs. 
Casey. 

"'An' might I take the liberty 
ov axin', ma'am, what's his com- 
plaint ?' sez Mrs. Muldoon, who 
was a very 7-teel faymale, an' had 
the hoighth av the dicshionary. 

" ' The docther calls it relieve- 
an'-tear-him, but it's nothin' less 
nor the horrors av dhrink, Mrs. 
Muldoon.' 



"'An' so he's that way agin, 
Mrs. Casey collapsed into infay- 
rior demaynor agin, ma'am?' 

" ' Thrue for ye, ma'am,' sez Mrs. 
Casey, comrnincin' for to cry. 

"'An' might I take the liberty 
of axin', ma'am, what medical opin- 
ion yev got for yer man ?' sez Mrs. 
Muldoon. 

'"Well, I've the society doc- 
ther.' 

'"The what, ma'am?' 

" ' The society docther.' Ye see, 
sir," explained Joyce, " people 
joins in a society for to pay a doc- 
ther, and whin any wan av the so- 
ciety gets sick the docther comes ; 
but he's always a botch. 

" ' The society docther, Mrs.. 
Casey! I'm surprised, ma'am.' 

" ' Surprised at what, ma'arn ?' 

" ' That ye'd enthrust the mor- 
tial coil of the life av yer husband 
an' the father av yer childer to a 
gom av a society docther.' 

" ' Docther O'Looney has a shu- 
payrior reputation, Mrs. Muldoon/ 

" Mrs. Muldoon laughed ye 
know how wan woman can laugh 
for to vex another. 

" ' What are ye laffin' at, ma'am ?' 
axes Mrs. Casey, gettin' hot ; for 
Mrs. Muldoon was aggravatin' her 
by her disdainful ways. ' What are 
ye laffin' at?' 

'"I'm thinkin' that/wudn't sac- 
rifice my man for the filthy lucre av 
a guinea,' sez Mrs. Muldoon. 

" ' If ye think a guinea, or twin- 
ty guineas, wud balk me, Mrs. 
Muldoon, yer in the hoighth av a 
dilemma.' 

"'Then why don't ye sind for 
Docther Huttle?' sez Mrs. Mul- 
doon. 

" ' Who's Docther Huttle ?' 

" ' Whos Docther Huttle ! Why, 
he's the great docther beyant in 
Rutland Square. An' for the hor- 
rors he's shupayrior.' 



4/6 



My Christmas at Barnakeery. 



" The two ladies parted, an' Mrs. 
Casey crossed over Rutland Square 
to Huttle's, resolved not to be bet be 
Mrs. Muldoon anyhow. She gev a 
double knock at Huttle's doore, 
an' a boy all cut in two wud brass 
buttons tould her to cum in. 

"'Can I see the docther?' 

"'Have ye a card?' sez the 
boy. 

" ' No.' 

" ' Then the dickins resave the 
sight av him ye'll git,' sez the boy, 
as impidint as the brass on his but- 
tons. 

"At this minit a big doore open- 
ed an' a murnful-lukkin' man kem 
into the hall. 

"'Who's this lady?' he demands 
av the boy. 

" ' She wants for to see you, sir.' 

"'And why don't ye show her 
in?' sez the murnful man, in a way 
that med the boy Ink as murnful as 
his masther. 

" Mrs. Casey thought the sight 
wud lave her eyes whin she wint 
into the room ; for there was a 
skeleton, as naked as whin it was 
born, in wan corner, an' a stomick 
in wax in another, an' a man wud 
his troath cut, in wax, somewhere 
else, an' the whole place was full 
av saws, an' pinchers, an' hatchets 
besides. 

" ' What can I do for ye, ma'am ?' 
sez Huttle. ' What's yer com- 
plaint ?' 

" ' I want ye for to come an' see 
me man, 'sez Mrs. Casey, thrimblin' 
all over. 

" ' Who's yer man ?' sez he wicked 
like. 

" ' He's Phil Casey, that keeps 
the Brian Born tavern convaynient 
to Glasnevin Cemethry,' sez Mrs. 
Casey. 

" Do ye want me for to see him 
out there,' sez Huttle, ' or in here ?' 

" ' In here ! Sure,' sez Mrs. 



Casey, ' whin I left him there was 
five min houldin' him down in the 
bed.' 

" What's his cumplaint, ma'am ?' 
sez Huttle, a little white in the 
face an' glarin' at a cupple av 
saws that were grinnin' at him. 

'" He's in the horrors, sir.' 

" The docther wrote somethin' in 
a little buke. 

" ' Are ye aware, ma'am,' sez he, 
' that me charge for goin' so far is 
wan pound wan, paid in advance?' 
sez Huttle, very grand. 

" Here's.your wan pound wan, sir,' 
sez Mrs. Casey, handin' him over 
an illigant Bank of Ireland note 
an' a shillin' on the inside av it. 
c Whin can ye come ? ; 

" Well, whin I've proscribed for 
the Lord Liftenant, an' his lady an' 
his aunt, an' for the Chief Secre- 
tary, an' the Commander av the 
Forces, including th' archbishop, 
I'll get round to him,' sez ould 
Huttle, shovin' Mrs. Casey's wan 
pound wan into his breeches poc- 
ket., 

" When Mrs. Casey got back to 
the Brian Born she tould the 
naybors what she done, an how she 
got the highest docther in the 
land for to bring ould Casey to his 
sinses. About five o'clock up 
comes a carriage, an' it stops op- 
posite the tavern, an' out gets Hut- 
tle. 

" ' Is this where there's a man in 
relieve-and-tear-him ?' axes Huttle. 

" ' Yis, sir. There's five min 
houldin' Misther Casey down this 
minit.' 

" ' Don't let thim let go their 
hoult,' sez Huttle, as he advanced 
up the stairs. 

"Well, sir, Huttle took a distant 
view of Phil Casey, an' thin he 
wint into the back parlor, an' call- 
in' for paper and pen and ink, 
wrote out a combusticle. 



My Christmas at Barnakeery. 



477 






" ' Give him what's wrote on 
this, Mrs. Casey,' sez Huttle, 'an' 
I'll call an' see him to-morrow.' 

" ' That's good of ye, docther,' 
sez she. 

" ' I'll thrubble ye for me wan 
pound wan, ma'am/ sez Huttle, 
houlding out his hand. 

" ' Shure I gev it to ye this 
mornin', sir.' 

" ' That was for this visit. I want 
it for me visit to-morrow.' 

" Well, the poor woman hadn't 
another wan pound wan convay- 
nient, an' had, more betoken, for to 
pay five shillin's for the combus- 
ticle that Huttle med up for ould 
Casey ; so she sez : 

"'Whin ye come in the mornin', 
docther, I'll have the wan pound 
wan reddy an willin'," sez she. 

"Have a care that it's reddy,' 
sez Huttle, ' for yer man is in a 
very critical state,' sez he ; * an' 
upon yer own admission he is a 
fine provider, the laste ye can do, 
ma'am, is for to pervide for him.' 

"Well, sir, Mrs. Casey got the 
combusticle med up, but whin she 
cum for to giv it to her man she 
was mulvadhered complately, an' 
she cudn't tell whether Huttle tould 
her for to give the combusticle in 
two doses in four hours or four 
doses in two hours. 

" ' It must be four doses in two 
hours, his case is so bad,' she sez 
to herself; an' she upsan' lets ould 
Casey have a cupple av rousers out 
av the bottle. 

" Faix, shure enough, the combus- 
ticle done its work well, for Casey 
wint aff into an illigant, paceful 
sleep, an' ye'd think he'd shake 
Nelson's Pillar in Sackville Street 
wud the snores av him. 

" Mrs. Casey run another cupple 
av rousers into him, an' thin be the 
mortial he woke up roarin' like 
the bull o' Bashan. 



' ' What the ' (" I wudn't like 

for to utther his words, sir," said 
Ned, with a sublime affectation at 
prudery) "' what the dickens 
are ye at, ye ould faggot ?' sez 
he. 

" ' Thim's hard wurds, Casey,' 
sez Mrs. Casey, 'an' me rowlin' 
medicine into ye that coSt five 
shillin's a bottle.' 

'That cost what?' roars ould 
Casey. 

"'Five shillin's, no less.' 
" ' The price av a quart av John 
Jameson !' roars ould Casey, in the 
greatest rage ye ever seen. 'An' 
who, ma'am, gev ye lave for to squan- 
dher me little manes in this way, 
might I ax ?' sez Casey, sittin' up in 
the bed an' rowlin' his eyes like a 
crab at her. 

" 'Docther Huttle,' sez she. 
"'An' who's Docther Huttle?' 
sez Casey. 

" ' He's the great quollity doc- 
ther, av Rutland Square.' 

" ' An' how did Docther Huttle 
come for to order medicine for me 
at five shillin's a naggin' ?' 

" ' I sint for him for to come and 
proscribe for ye, Casey, for I never 
see ye so bad.' 

" ' I was often worse, an' always 
come to be meself!' roars ould 
Casey, 'an I'll be worser afore I 
die,' sez th' ould sinner. 'An' so 
ye sint for Huttle, no less ?' 
" ' I did, Phil.' 

"'An' who ped him, I'd like for 
to know ?' 
"'I did.' 

'" You did! Out o' me hard 
airnin's ! By the hokey, it's in the 
North Union I'll be spendin' me 
winther evenin's,' sez Casey. 'An* 
how much, ma'am, did ye con sint 
for to pay Huttle ?' 

" ' Wan pound wan a visit.' 
"'Wan pound wan! It's in jail 
the pair of yez ought for to be. 



478 



My Christmas at Barnakeery. 



An' bow many times was Huttle 
here ?' 

" 'Only wanst.' 
" ' An' did ye pay him ?' 
" ' I did, Phil ; an' he's for to 
be here to-morrow- mornin' for to 
see how yer getiin' on.' 

" * An' he'll want wan pound wan, 
I suppose?' 

" Poor Mrs. Casey commenced 
for to cry. 

"'I'll wan-pound-wan him,' sez 
ould Casey. 4 I'll give him Grif- 
fith's jail, the varmint ! Lave him to 
me, ma'am. What time will Wan- 
pound-wan be here ?' 

" ' He sed about eight o'clock.' 
" ' I'll see him, Mrs. Casey. Lave 
him to me.' 

"Well, sir, for to make a long 
story short, ould Casey got up the 
next mornin' airly, an' as fresh as if 
he'd never touched a sup in his 
life, an' gettin' an ould black waist, 
he hung it on the doore, till ye'd 
think it was a lump av murnin' and 
that somebody was dead in the 
house. Thin, sir, he tuk a spade 
an' comminced for to land some 
broccoli that was growin' in the 
front gardin, an' he had just land- 
ed a cupple o' head whin up drives 
Huttle. 

" 'Ould Casey wint on landin' the 
broccoli, an' Huttle come in on the 
gate, and whin he seen the murnin' 
on the doore he gev a great start. 

" 'Who's ded, me man ?' sez he, 
not knowing ould Casey or ex- 
pectin' for to see him out landin' 
broccoli. 

"'Casey,' sez Phil. 
"'When did he die?' 
** ' Last night at five o'clock,' sez 
ould Casey. 

" ' At five o'clock?' sez Huttle. 
" ' At five o'clock,' sez Casey. 
" ' Bless me sowl ! but that was 
suddin,' mutthers Huttle. 

" Ould Casey layned his elbow on 



the spade, that he dug into the 
ground, and, lukkin' hard at Hut- 
tle, sez : 

" ' Yes, it was rather suddint, and 
there'll be thrubble about it. Ye 
see he was goin' on illigant, like 
a house a-fire, an' comin' to like a 
young lamb, when a docther be the 
name av' Huttle ordhered him a 
combusticle, an' the minit he swal- 
lowed it he was gone. He died 
at five o'clock, an' the poliss is 
goin' for to luk for Huttle.' 

"'Good-mornin','sez Huttle, cut- 
tin' out o' the front garden like a 
red shark; an' now, Misther Daly," 
added Joyce, " that's how ould Casey 
done Docther Huttle out av' the 
guinea." 

Lights shone in every window as 
our wheels cut the crisp snow on 
the avenue at Barnakeery, and a 
cheery shout of welcome greeted 
me as I leaped, yes, bounded, from 
the step of the car. I thought I 
was past all acrobatic performances, 
but the bracing drive whispered to 
me that there was still plenty of 
sap in the tree. Dolphin was there, 
as good-natured and pompous as 
usual there in the oaken wainscot- 
ed hall, lighted by sconces, around 
which festoons of shining holly and 
ivy and blood-red berries hung 
with welcoming and timely grace- 
Mrs. Dolphin was there in a dainty 
mob-cap trimmed with Christmas 
flowers, and, beside her, her sister, 
a buxom little dame of forty-two 
or three, with bright black eyes 
and a cosy mouth. Emily Prim- 
rose was not in the group, and 
somehow or other I felt sorry ; her 
absence made a gap in Barnakeery. 
I had brought Dolphin a present 
of a superbly-bound set of the 

most recent statutes; Mrs. D , 

a medicine-chest, with a book which 
set forth in good Saxon the reme- 
dies most recommended for every 



My Christmas at Barnakccry. 



479 



\ 



human ailment under the sun ; and 
I had not forgotten Miss Primrose, 
as for her I had purchased a pretty 
little French watch, with its quaint 
fifteenth-century breloque. 

I detest making useless presents. 
They are nothing short of encum- 
brances to the people who receive 
them. If donors would only give 
themselves the trouble of consider- 
ing what will fit in, their gifts 
would receive a tenfold value. 

" Barnakeery is full to the gar- 
ret," cried Dolphin, rubbing his 
hands gleefully. "We have Joe 
French, our resident magistrate a 
good sound opinion on a knotty 
point. We have' Mr. and Mrs. 
Bodkin, of Tobermore you'll like 
Bodkin; he sings the ' Widow Ma- 
chree ' to perfection the Keogh 
girls, two real Irish beauties. But 
you don't care for these things, 
Daly." 

" Don't be too sure of that," 
chimed in Miss Price, Mrs. Dol- 
phin's sister, with a cheery laugh, 
and showing a set of teeth that 
reminded' me of the pearls in 
Water-house's window in Dame 
Street. 

" We have Barney Elliot and his 
sister, the best cross -country man 
and woman in these parts. We have 
Mrs. Pat Taafe, the widow of the 
poor fellow that broke his neck at 
Punchestown,offKill-o'-the-Grange. 
She's a rich widow, Daly, and " 

" I don't believe in widows, Dol- 
phin," I interposed, glancing at 
Miss Price. 

" That's right," cried Miss Price, 
clapping her hands. 

" Where's Miss Primrose ?" I 
asked. 

" Oh ! she's here, and Blackball 
is here," responded Dolphin. 

" It's a regular case," chirruped 
Miss Price. 

I thought of the midnight visitor, 



and the thorn in this Christmas 
rose pricked me. 

As I passed up the broad oaken 
stairway to my room a guest was 
descending from it. It was a man, 
and his hand lightly ran along the 
carved baluster. 

In an instant I recognized the 
hand. 

// was that of the midnight visitor. 
I would have known it in ten thou- 
sand. 

I passed him with a scrutinizing 
stare, and proceeded on my way. 
In the corridor I encountered Emi- 
ly Primrose. She colored violently. 

" I long to apologize to you, my 
dear young lady, for my rudeness 
when last here," I exclaimed, " and 
let this be my peace-offering," 
handing her my Christmas gift. 

"Ah! you misjudged me," she 
palpitated ; " but we are all so 
happy now. I longed to explain 
everything to you, but you know 
that I could not." 

I was silent. 

" It was nothing but a miracle 
that saved him. I was utterly 
wretched on that day my poor 
brother an outcast." 

" Your brother /" I blurted. 

" Yes, my brother." 

" And do you mean to tell me 
that the man whom I saw in the 
garden that night, in the wood next 
day, and whom I met on the stairs 
this moment, is your brother ?" 

I did not wait for a reply, but, 
taking her in my arms, kissed her 
forehead, as I was old enough to 
be her father, you know. 

The brother's story was this : 
George Primrose retired from the 
British service, and drank the pro- 
ceeds of the sale of his commission. 
Then he commenced operations 
against his sister's fortune, and 
made away with as much of it as 
she could legally convey to him, 



48o 



My Christmas at Barnakeery. 



always under the impression that 
he was about to reform. Then he 
sponged upon his friends till they 
cast him off. Then he threaten- 
ed his sister, playing upon her 
fears by a false story of his having 
committed forgery, until, soul-sick, 
she flew for protection to her mo- 
ther's oldest friend, Colonel Dol- 
phin. His reception by the colo- 
nel was of a nature calculated to 
prevent his repeating his visits ; hence 
the nocturnal and subsequent inter- 
view with his sister to which I had 
been a witness. Having procured 
from her a sufficient sum to enable 
him to proceed to America, he 
was embarking at Liverpool when 
he fell from the ship's gangway into 
the river, and was only rescued and 
recuscitated after considerable dif- 
ficulty. He emerged from the river 
as though he had /passed through 
the gates of the valley of death. 
From that moment the shadow of 
the curse of drink quitted him, and 
he 15eheld in its true colors the 
hideous phantom which had hunt- 
ed him to the edge of the grave. 
A small property had unexpectedly 
and opportunely come to him, and 
he was now installed at Barnakeery, 
if not an honored at least, a re- 
spected guest. 

I danced Sir Roger de Coverley, 



leading off with Miss Mary Price, 
and gave the young people a sam- 
ple of what dancing really meant 
slink, slide, and coupee, hands across, 
up and down the middle, turn your 
partner, and the while executing 
a series of brilliant steps that I had 
been taught years before at Gar- 
bois Academy in Baggot Street. 
As I stood almost breathless after 
the dance, imbibing a delectable 
glass of cold punch, I suddenly 
burst out laughing. 

11 What are you laughing at ?" 
asked Miss Price. 

" I'm just thinking what my old 
landlady would say if she saw me 
now." And I described Mrs. Con- 
nolly and my bachelor apartments 
in Eccles Street. 

" Don't you think this is prefer- 
able to a newspaper and gruel ?" 
demanded Miss Price archly. 



I have taken a house at Rath- 
mines, and I do believe that another 
six months in the mouldy apart- 
ments in Eccles Street would have 
fossilized me. 

Mrs. Daly and I will start on the 
2oth for Barnakeery to spend the 
Christmas. We travel, by pre-con- 
certed arrangement, by the same 
train with Mr. and Mrs. George, 
Blackball. 



The Neiv Educational Law in Belgium. 



481 



THE NEW EDUCATIONAL LAW IN BELGIUM.* 






A LAW affecting the public edu- 
cation of a country is no ordinary 
law. It touches all that is most 
sacred in the family and the con- 
science. 

The schoolmaster is but the re- 
presentative of the father, and it is 
his duty to continue in the school 
the Christian education commenced 
at home. The state, in opening 
schools, is bound to recognize the 
parental rights, knowing that a father 
expects to find there for his son 
not only solid and useful secular 
instruction, but also an education 
which shall help to render him du- 
tiful, respectful, virtuous, religious, 
and good. On the other hand, to 
apply the public funds to subsi- 
dize those schools only from which 
the teaching and influence of re- 
ligion are systematically banished 
is to employ the resources of pa- 
rents to maintain a species of in- 
struction which their conscience 
and their heart alike condemn. 

When, in 1842, the question of 
clerical intervention in the primary 
schools was discussed at length in 
the Belgian legislative Chambers, 
the result of the discussions was 
the adoption of a law which recog- 
nized the right of the church to 
direct religious education in those 
schools ; and this law had the un- 
usual privilege of being passed al- 
most unanimously, the votes against 
it amounting only to three. Ca- 
tholics and liberals, members of 
congress and new representatives 
of the people, all agreed in ruling 
that primary instruction ought to 

* See Le Nfluveau Prfljs.t de Lot sur P Enseigne- 
ment Primaire. Par S. E. le Cardinal De- 
champs, Archeveque de Malines. Malines : Des- 
sain. 

VOL. XXX. 31 



be moral and religious, and that, in 
order to be such, it must be given 
with the efficient co-operation of 
the Ministers of Worship. So strong 
was the conviction of all the mem- 
bers of the Chamber upon this point 
that M. Lebeau, one of the chiefs 
of liberalism, did not hesitate to 
say: "In reality we all wish the 
same thing : we wish primary in- 
struction to be moral and religious. 
The necessity for this is so evident 
that the man who should contest it 
would merit a certificate rather for 
insanity than for immorality." 

By having procured the aboli- 
, tion of this equitable law, ratified 
as it was by the assent of the two 
parties which divided Belgium, the 
adversaries of the church have 
overthrown a work the national 
character of which had been sol- 
emnly acknowledged by the very 
men who elaborated and voted the 
articles of the Constitution ; they 
have denied the principles unani- 
mously professed at that time by 
the liberals, and, from hatred of re- 
ligion, have broken with their past 
and put themselves in opposition 
to the national compact. 

Among these adversaries of the 
church, Messrs. Van Humbeeck 
and Frere-Orban have made them- 
selves conspicuous, and have earn- 
ed in Belgium well-nigh as unen- 
viable a notoriety as that obtained 
in Germany by Falk. 

They and their followers urge, 
as an excuse for their proceedings, 
the neutrality imposed upon the 
state with regard to the different 
religious denominations, and have, 
on more than one occasion, cited 
the example of the United States of 



482 



The New Educational Law in Belgium. 



America as an argument in their 
favor. On this the Cardinal Arch- 
bishop of Malines remarks : 

" In a country where, as in the United 
States, the legislative sessions are open- 
ed with Christian prayer, where over 
the tribune of the hall of Congress is 
the representation of Our Lord and Sa- 
viour, where the President orders public 
fasts in days of calamity and danger, 
where the reading of the Bible is obliga- 
tory in the schools, where the aid of the 
state is largely accorded to places of 
worship by the liberal and generous ap- 
plication of the system of foundations, 
for buildings (for religious purposes), for 
education, and for charities an inter- 
vention assuredly more efficacious than 
that resulting from a Budget of Public 
Worship a state like this, I repeat, is 
not in reality under the rule of absolute 
separation."* 

But if, by way of hypothesis, we 
grant the realization of this regime 
in all the vigor of its principle, 
what would be logically the posi- 
tion of the state, and the line it 
must adopt ? Evidently that of in- 
competency and non-intervention 
in the matter of instruction, as in 
the domain of liberty. If the state 
remains neuter among the various 
religions it is bound to remain so 
with regard to the various forms of 
philosophy, and hold itself aloof 
from all doctrinal teaching of 
whatever kind. 

For there is one thing which the 
advocates of absolute secularism 
have never been able to explain, 
and this is the completely contra- 
dictory manner in which liberal- 
ism applies the liberal idea to dif- 



* There are three kinds of relation between 
church and state : i. The absolute alliance, or, as 
it may be called, the system of exclusive protection ; 
2. A restricted and liberal alliance, wherein the 
state maintains a certain connection with the dif- 
ferent religious bodies, and especially when there 
is a Budget of Public Worship; and 3. Absolute 
separation. " This does not in reality exist any- 
where. The United States approach it the most 
nearly, the essential character of this regime being 
the absence of a Budget of Public Worship " 
(Card. Dechamps). 



ferent modes of development of hu 
man activity and thought. Thus, 
how is it that in the order o( re- 
ligious interests worship in the 
order of intellectual interests the 
press and in the order of material 
interests labor state intervention 
is to be considered an illiberal and 
retrograde idea, while in the order 
of education and instruction this 
same governmental intervention and 
protectionism is to be called and 
considered liberal ? A state church 
is called the ancien regime ; a state 
press, pensioned and official, the sup- 
pression or enslavement of the press ; 
commerce living on the favors of the 
treasury, and on customs, imposts, 
and monopolies, is called protec- 
tionism, to be condemned by all in 
the name of commercial liberty 
and progress. In all these three 
powerful interests liberty is trust- 
ed, and progress is made to consist 
in the increasingly large scope al- 
lowed to individual effort and pri- 
vate initiative independent of the 
state. Why, then, is it that in the 
at least equally important interest 
of education a diametrically oppo- 
site line of argument is employed? 
For this alone liberty is not to be 
trusted; for this alone the "lib- 
eral " idea consists in giving the 
fullest scope to state interference 
and action ; and for this alone the 
one notion of progress is centrali- 
zation and monopoly by means of 
heavy budgets, official privileges, 
and even compulsory instruction. 

The " two weights and two mea- 
sures " are evident and incontestable, 
and can only be explained by the 
fact that the liberals and free- 
thinkers do not find themselves so 
successful with liberty of education 
as with, liberty of the press. Lib- 
erty of teaching, they say, means 
liberty for Catholics and their cler- 
gy as well as for free-thinkers, and 



The New Educational Law in Belgium. 



483 



tliis is not what they intend. They 
are willing enough for the liberty 
which they can turn to their own 
account, but not for that which 
can also be turned to advantage 
by others. The formula of Bel- 
gian liberalism in 1830 was, " Lib- 
erty in everything and for all "; 
but of this little remains but the 
name. 

We mentioned above that the 
liberals insist upon what they call 
4t the neutrality of the state." 
There is also another " neutrality " 
upon which they insist namely, 
that of the teaching in the schools. 
A brief examination of this pre- 
tended desideratum will suffice to 
prove its impossibility, and also 
what it really means. 

Teaching, even the most elemen- 
tary, cannot be neutral in mat- 
ters of religion ; the word itself 
proves this. Teaching i.e., doctrine 
is something positive, declaring a 
thing "to be or not to be." Neu- 
tral teaching at the utmost could 
but ring the changes on the poten- 
tial mood, and allow that a thing 
may, might, could, would, or should 
be. Apply this neutrality to prac- 
tical science, and what becomes of 
it ? Apply it to the science of the 
way of salvation, and where is the 
guide, what is the hope, on what 
can repose the trust of the bewil- 
dered soul ? Neutrality is nullity. 

Given any school composed of 
the children of Catholics, Protes- 
tants, Israelites, and rationalists ; 
what would be the "neutral" teach- 
ing appropriate to all these groups? 
In the first place, the crucifix 
must be taken down and remov- 
ed out of sight. The crucifix is a 
dogma. No prayer must be said 
on the opening and closing of the 
classes. Prayer springs from dog- 
ma as inevitably as a tiower from 
its root. Catholic doctrines must 



not be mentioned in this school, 
out of respect to the Protestant 
conscience ; nor Christ and his 
Gospel, out of respect to the 
conscience of the Israelites ; nor, 
again, the Creator and Eternal Fa- 
ther of all, out of respect to such 
consciences as refuse to believe in 
God otherwise than as an abstract, 
vague, and loveless " Great First 
Cause "; nor must the immortality 
of the soul or the existence of a 
future state be taught, lest the sus- 
ceptibilities of the pantheistic, athe- 
istic, positivist, or materialist "con- 
science " be wounded thereby. 
No ; in this matter there can be no 
compromise. Teaching that is not 
Christian is anti-Christian. He 
who is Truth itself has said : " He 
that is not with me is against me." 
Religious neutrality in teaching is 
an impossibility. 

With regard to secular branches 
of study, we will confine ourselves 
to the consideration of history. 

It is impossible .to teach history 
without speaking of Christianity, 
and equally impossible to speak of 
Christianity without declaring one's 
self for or against it. Christianity 
is not only an historic fact but the 
greatest of historic facts the only 
fact which belongs to all time. 
" To be expected, to come, to be 
worshipped by a posterity which 
shall endure as long as the ages 
shall last such is the mark of Him 
in whom we believe." * In teach- 
ing history is it possible to pass 
over this immense fact, which ra- 
tionalism owns by calling it " the 
Messianic Idea" and of which it 
would fain rid itself by a phrase? 

Again, can the teacher of history 
be silent as to that living monu- 
ment raised by Providence as a di- 
vine protest in the midst of the 
ancient empires fallen into idola- 

* Bossuet. 



484 



The New Educational Law in Belgium. 



try? the monument of a whole 
people destined to perpetuate the 
remembrance of the creation and 
the promise of redemption ; the 
prophetic nation whose sacred 
books declare, centuries before- 
hand, and with marvellous fulness 
of detail, the coming of Christ, the 
time of that coming, his death, 
and his great work, the church of 
the New Covenant. 

And if it is impossible to ignore 
Christianity before the Incarna- 
tion, still more must it be so after. 

What is the dominant fact of 
the first three centuries of our era 
while the last of the four world- 
empires was crumbling to decay ? 
What was the new and vital power 
that could not be crushed out 
either by imperial edicts or po- 
pular madness ; which grew and 
strengthened as if in holy mockery 
of tortures, confiscations, and death, 
and which, in spite of deadly and 
repeated persecutions, continued 
to gain its peaceful victories over 
paganism, in court and camp, in 
corrupt and idolatrous cities, in 
barbarous regions where the Ro- 
man armies had, by their military 
roads, made a path for the Chris- 
tian missionaries, or in the Druid- 
ic forests of old Armorica and the 
islands of the West ? How is this 
power to be ignored when mod- 
ern civilization that is, Christian 
society owes its very existence to 
the blood of martyrs ? 

Again, when the first ages of 
persecution were over, is nothing 
to be said of the action of the 
church in the presence of barba- 
rian, and later of Mohammedan, 
invasions, when warring monarchs 
laid aside their private quarrels 
and arose as one man, summoned 
by the voice of the Father of Chris- 
tendom, to turn back the torrent 
of Islamism from overwhelming 



Europe? Or how be silent as to 
the Crusades, which, in the words 
of a great historian, " having al- 
most all failed, none the less all 
succeeded "; or the attitude of the 
church with regard to slavery, her 
defence of the true rights of man, 
her protection of the feeble and 
defenceless against the lawless and 
the strong, and her upholding, in 
spite of the violence of princes, 
the basis of all social progress ? 

It would, further, be curious to 
see how the history of the sixteenth 
century could be told without 
touching upon religion, or how the 
struggles of Protestantism against 
the unity of the church, the inter- 
necine quarrels of the sects, more 
or less wildly anti-Christian, and 
alike in nothing but rebellion, could 
be related with absolutely no tone 
or tinge of personal sympathy or 
conviction. 

Lastly, could anything be more 
hopelessly impossible than to teach 
contemporary history without allu- 
sion to the combat raging every- 
where between rationalism and the 
faith, and this in a century more 
profoundly disturbed by religious 
discussion than all the centuries 
which have preceded it, and when 
" the religious question " every- 
where occupies the foremost place 
in the attention of powers and of 
peoples ? 

And if it is impossible to teach 
history without speaking of Chris- 
tianity, it is equally impossible for 
him who teaches it not to take 
part with or against the Christian 
Church. 

The teaching of faith affirms that 
Christianity is from God. 

Anti-Christian teaching denies 
it. 

What will " neutral teaching " do 
in this case ? 

If it neither affirms nor denies, 



The New Educational Law in Belgium. 



485 






necessarily it doubts, and conse- 
quently it teaches doubt. 

But to teach doubt is emphati- 
cally anti-Christian. Therefore, by 
the simplest process of reasoning, 
"neutral teaching" is anti-Chris- 
tian. Neutrality pure and simple 
does not exist. 

Sir Robert Peel once quoted the 
report of a school committee in 
Boston, United States, which de- 
clared that a " neutral reading- 
book " had been sought for in 
vain, and that the want of a good 
reading-book had resulted in an 
alarming deficiency of moral educa- 
tion. 

But if this wonderful book were 
discovered where would a neutral 
master be found ? a man without 
conviction^, philosophic or religious, 
or who will never express them if 
he has. How will this man, if he 
possess opinions, convictions, in- 
telligence, or mind, contrive that 
his words shall reflect nothing of 
his own ideas? that his look shall 
have no expression, and his teach- 
ing no color of its own, no leaning 
in one direction more than another, 
no character, no earnestness, no 
sense? This neutral and mechani- 
cal master must be a hypocrite, an 
idiot, or else an automaton, incapa- 
ble of conveying a single idea out 
of accordance with the colorless 
neutrality of his mind in fact, a 
stranded jelly-fish is the only living 
thing in creation to whom this 
imaginary being can claim affinity 
in the way of mental resemblance. 
No, we repeat, there is no such 
thing possible as a neutral master, 
or book, or teaching, and to believe 
that there is is to believe in a 
chimera. 

It may also be fairly asked of its 
advocates whether it is this neutral 
school, cold and leaden, mute and 
dead, for which they mean to claim 



admiration when they so loudly 
boast the action and influence of 
primary instruction (as they under- 
stand it] in the intellectual, moral, 
and social regeneration of the peo- 
ple. An instruction limited to the 
alphabet, writing, and arithmetic 
does not surely answer to this pro- 
gramme and these expectations? 

No ; were these people sincere 
they would own that " neutral 
schools " are not what they want, 
any more than they are what we 
want ; only, they intend the schools 
and the teaching to be all their 
own. They banish the priest, that 
they themselves may enter in his 
place and exclude, not all at once 
but by prudent and sure degrees, 
all that is Catholic and Christian. 
The only neutrality they desire is 
hostility. Abundant proof of this 
may daily be found in the utter- 
ances of the liberal press. In the 
Flandre Liberate we come upon a 
case in point. 

"There are free-thinkers," says the 
writer, " and we are of the number, who 
have a deep contempt for the Catholic 
religion, who hold its doctrines to be 
absurd and as violently contrary to all 
reason as they are contrary to all liberty. 
We are convinced, profoundly convinc- 
ed, that human reason will end by com- 
pletely freeing itself from the chains in 
which this religion has bound it, and 
that it will attain this result by its own 
progress and natural developiru nt. Like 
all other errors prejudices, and super- 
stitions, the Catholic religion will break 
down before the natural strength and 
light of reason. And what instrument 
of progress more puissant than the 
school ? We free-thinkers have the right 
to say that the school, strictly and tigcr- 
ously neuter, of which the sole end is to 
instruct and enlighten the reason, . . . 
will hive the inevitable result of snatching 
souls front the degrading yoke which the 
church presses heavily upon them."" 

From this and countless other 
declarations of a similar nature it 
is easy to perceive in what this 



486 



The New Educational Law in Belgium. 



" strict and rigorous neutrality " 
consists. 

"At least," said the Belgian bi- 
shops in their protest against the 
present action of the ministry " at 
least let the conflict be fair and 
equal. Set up your secularized 
schools where you think proper to 
do so, and we will do the same 
for our Christian schools. Let the 
state alike subsidize all and each, 
established under suitable condi- 
tions, in proportion to the number 
of their scholars and according to 
their success. The families shall 
be the sole judges in the camp." 
Cardinal Dechamps said that he 
would " even admit government 
inspection, under the conditions 
adopted in England, . . . where 
the organization of public educa- 
tion is, on account of the large 
liberty allowed to Catholics, a mat- 
ter of envy to the Catholics of every 
other country of Europe." 

But no. "A fair field and no 
favor " w.is the last thing the lib- 
erals desired. There is nothing 
they have more reason to dread 
than a contest on equal terms, as 
they have proved in France, where 
nearly all the bourses founded for 
merit were awarded to pupils of 
the Christian colleges and schools. 
What they wanted was for the state 
to provide them everywhere with 
schools which they could not pro- 
vide for themselves. The "Law 
Van Humbeeck " is passed by a 
majority of two ; and a member of 
the majority, since deceased, has 
been succeeded by a Catholic. 
They have got what they desired. 

And what, so far, are the conse- 
quences ? 

The religious teaching orders 
have been driven from their posts, 
which they filled so well that the 
plea of incompetency or neglect 
has never been even attempted to 



be brought against them. The 
Christian schoolmasters have near- 
ly everywhere resigned, refusing to 
continue their engagements under 
Freemason regime. 

The Catholic clergy and people, 
besides being taxed fur the bene- 
fit of the liberals and their prey, 
are in all directions building new 
schools at their own expense, and 
providing them with teachers from 
the expelled religious, or with 
Christian lay masters, for whose 
payment they contribute among 
themselves. 

The following statistics give some 
idea of this movement. 

Immediate resignations of Catho- 
lic teachers from the government 
schools on the passing of the new 
law: 



Antwerp in 

Brabant 181 

West Flanders 119 

East Flanders 83 

Hainaut 442 

Liege 101 

Limbourg ._ 14 

Luxemburg 51 

Namur 102 



Total. 



..1,204 



We learn that the number of re- 
signations now is more than double 
that here given ; many, chiefly 
assistant-masters, having remained 
at their posts until October, when 
the law was put into effect. 

We will now give one arrondisse- 
ment, taken at random, as a speci- 
men of the rest, and which is suffi- 
cient to show the feeling of the 
country in regard to the present 
law, and to furnish an emphatic 
denial of the repeated declaration 
of its promulgators that the coun- 
try would eagerly receive any 
measure which should free public 
education from ail interference of 
the priests. We could fill many 
pages with a mere repetition of the 
relative numbers in the other ar- 
rondissements. 



The New Educational Law in Belgium. 



487 



ARRONDISSEMENT OF THIELT-ROULERS. 









. 


E 


_ 





!2 


Cantons. 






|| 


1 


i 


8 


1 








u 


1 


o 


1 




















Emelghem 






2 


230 






70 


Dadizeele 






2 


278 






5 


Cachtem 






2 


208 








Hooglede 
Ingefmunster 






6 
8 


642 , 

755 i 






i6 

22 


Lichtervelde 






3 


1,100 






40 


Moorslede. 






3 


770 








Oost. Nieuwkerke. . . 






2 


472 : 






3 


Ouckene 






A 


234 








Rumbeke 






7 


1,143 








Staden 






4 


521 j 






25 


WinckelSt. Eloy.... 






2 








22 


Aerseele 






2 


280 






1C 


Coolscamp 
Eighem 
Meulebeke 






2 
2 

7 


280 
249 
1,236 


, 




16 
27 


Oostroosebeke 








650 






i 


Oyghem 






2 


170 








Pitthem 






3 


500 






3 


Buysselcde 






4 


908 






29 


SchuyfTerscapellc. 






j 


TOO 






JX 


Vive St Bavon 






2 


[98 






43 


Waeken 
Wielsbeke 






2 
2 


295 , 

227 






46 


VVyngcne 
Zwevezeele 






7 
4 


1,575 






II 
2 


Iseghem 






6 


1,280 








Roulers 






7 








1 60 


Beveren 






2 


450 ' 








Gits... 






2 


480 








Thielt 






6 


1,500 






46 


Total 






"3 


19,745 | 


3 


i 


66 7 






It must also be taken into con- 
sideration that many children at- 
tend the official school solely be- 
cause their parents are kept in 
terrorem by the manufacturers in 
whose employ they are ; and many 
more are the children of function- 
aries or of schoolmasters. For 
instance, at Exel there are 150 
scholars in the Catholic school, 7 
in the Liberal ; and of these 5 are 
the schoolmaster's children and 2 
are Protestants. 

A ministry possessed of any dig- 
nity would resign within twenty- 
four hours on learning from every 
part of the country facts like the 
foregoing, which condemn without 
mercy its anti-national as well as 
anti-religious policy. 

Instead of this, however, it re- 
mains in power, as if for the ex- 
press purpose of passing some new 
and oppressive measure. One of 
the latest measures is to the effect 
that every Catholic schoolmaster 
who, on the appropriation of his 



school by the government, lias re- 
signed, shall no longer be allowed 
the privilege of exemption from 
military service, but be placed 
under the law of conscription for 
the army and compelled to serve; 
u liberal " schoolmasters alone being 
allowed to profit by the old law of 
exemption. 

With what rigor the new rule is 
enforced may be gathered from 
the following incident, which oc- 
curred quite recently. A school- 
master of the name of Vanderputte, 
having resigned, did not wait to 
be sent to the military authorities, 
but, saying that he "would rather 
be a good soldier than a bad 
schoolmaster," presented himself 
for enrolment. After the custom- 
ary examination by the medical 
man he was, however, pronounced 
to be unfit for service, on account 
of defective sight and some other 
physical disability ; and, receiving 
a certificate to this effect, he was 
dismissed. He came away, glad 
to find himself free to work for the 
support of his widowed mother. 

Next day he was sent for by the 
governor (a liberal and Freema- 
son), who asked him angrily "why 
he had not enlisted ?" The man 
explained, and was about to pre- 
sent the doctor's certificate. 

" What is that to me ?" was the 
answer, with an oath. " You are 
to serve all the same." 

And Vanderputte was then and 
there given into custody and con- 
veyed to the barracks at Bruges, 
where for four days he was kept 
in close confinement and treated 
as a prisoner and deserter. The 
facts becoming known to the 
colonel, he at once ordered him to 
be released and treated like the 
other recruits. 

Disappointed as to the results 
they anticipated from compulsion, 



488 



The New Educational Law in Belgium. 



the liberal camp is having re- 
course to other of its favorite wea- 
pons calumny, pressure, and a sus- 
picious assumption of pious inten- 
tions. 

One outcry is against the pre- 
tended insalubrity of the Catholic 
schools, and in several instances, 
as in France, a " liberal " mayor has 
in Belgium also made this an ex- 
cuse for closing them by force, 
notwithstanding any impossibility 
to substantiate the charge. 

Occasionally, however, these sani- 
tary anxieties have a result which 
can scarcely be agreeable to those 
who profess them, as recently was 
the case at Ghent. 

** Action, immediate action, is 
imperatively necessary !" urged the 
Indtpendance. " Prompt and en- 
ergetic measures must be taken 
to rescue the children. Medical 
commissioners must be employed, 
and without delay, to pronounce 
on the cases submitted to them. 
If the clericals are free to kill the 
understanding, that is no reason 
why they are to be free to kill the 
body as well," etc., etc. 

Two medical inspectors, MM. 
Van Holbeke and Rogghe" (both 
liberals), were accordingly instruct- 
ed to visit all the (public) schools 
in the town and make their report. 
The Catholic schools were found 
to satisfy the requirements of hy- 
giene, but the infant school and 
orphanage, occupying a part of the 
ancient hospice, and solely under 
" liberal " care, was reported by 
the inspectors as follows : " The 
place is by no means suitable for 
its purpose. Some of the rooms 
are so damp and insufficiently 
aired that no one would put horses 
or cows there, much less orphan 
girls." 

The infant school attached to 
the orphanage was not much bet- 



ter. In the class-room, measuring 
about seven metres by six, there 
were a hundred children. 

During a period of more than 
two centuries that the hospice and 
orphanage at Client were under 
the care of the sisters, they were 
not once visited by an epidemic. 
Since the religious were forced to 
resign their charge to the persons 
appointed by government these in- 
stitutions have suffered from two 
severe* epidemics in the course of 
little more than four years; and 
when, three months ago, two-thirds 
of the children were suffering from 
ophthalmia and typhoid fever, the 
sick were removed to the ho>piral, 
to be put under the care of the 
very sisters who had been sent 
away from the hospice. 

At Dinant the radical party, 
having gained the upper hand in 
the administration of one of the 
hospices, lately decided, in spite of 
the protests of their compeers and 
the supplications of the sisters, 
that the orphan girls should be 
made to attend the godless school. 
The decision was opposed from an 
unexpected quarter. Without any 
instigation or advice, the girls not 
only one and all absolutely refus- 
ed to go, but also, among them- 
selves, drew up and signed an em- 
phatic protest against this " libe- 
ral " compulsion, and supported 
their resistance by reasons so just 
and self-evident that, for the pre- 
sent at least, they are left in peace. 

In numerous places we could 
name a cruel pressure is exercised 
upon employes and the poor to 
induce them to send their children 
to the official schools. In the 
towns where the funds of the bene- 
volent societies are under "liberal 
administration this injustice is 
practised in a particularly oppre>- 
sive manner, and in certain bureaux 



The New Educational Laiv in Belgium. 



489 



de bienfaisance the poor who seek 
relief are met by the demand, 
"Give us your children or you 
shall have no help." "May the 
good God help us, then !" is often 
and often the courageous answer, 
"for our children you shall not 
have !" 

In Bruges (and therefore, doubt- 
less, elsewhere also) persons are 
employed by \hegueux to go from 
house to house of the small trades- 
people, as well as the very poor, and 
promise gifts of coal, food, clothing, 
and also schooling without pay- 
ment, on condition that they send 
their children to the ''liberal" 
schools. It is, in fact, the souper 
system as practised in Ireland, 
with this additional aggravation : 
that whereas even the worst of the 
sonpers believe in God, the Belgian 
variety believe in nothing but nega- 
tives, profess nothing but " neutrali- 
ty," and practise nothing but hos- 
tility against Christianity itself. 

Not that all this is openly avow- 
ed where it would shock minds 
whom it is desirable to delude. 
More haste than speed having in 
some cases damaged the applica- 
tion of the new law, private orders 
appear to have emanated from the 
Freemason camp, which are ope- 
rating simultaneously in Belgium 
and France. The crucifix is re- 
stored to its former place on the 
walls of the class-rooms, and the 
known and bitter enemies of the 
Catholic Church and of Catholic 
doctrine are transformed, with sus- 
picious suddenness, into ardent 
propagators of the catechism. We 
hear from France that the govern- 
ment schoolmasters and mistresses 
have received orders, with the sole 
intent of not leaving the religious 
teachers a single scholar, to show 
themselves as pious as those whom 
they have supplanted, and, among 



other things, to take their pupils in 
rank and file to Mass on Sundays. 
It is to be hoped that the Christian 
population of Belgium and France 
will be doubly on their guard in 
presence of this new sham, which 
is offering the singular spectacle of 
a chameleon-colored ** neutrality." 

Arguments failing, or being con- 
tradicted by facts, the Masonic 
press has recourse to inventions in 
justification of Van Humbeeck's 
measure. A few days ago L? Etoile 
announced " a crisis in Catholi- 
cism, the inevitable result of which 
will be the constitution of national 
churches," and based this predic- 
tion on the discovery that "Pope 
Leo XIII. represents the principle 
of conciliation and capitulation 
with liberalism," while "the epis- 
copate, in Belgium as in Germany 
and France, represents inflexible 
obstinacy and opposition." " It is 
useless," we are told, " for the 
Sovereign Pontiff to advise : his 
counsel is set at naught. Orders 
he dare not give, for he knows that 
they would be disobeyed." Con- 
sequently, it is the . V.*. B.'. Frere- 
Orban and the V.". B.'. Van Hum- 
beeck, S.'. P.\ of the R.\ S/., * whose 
views are most in accordance, it 
seems, with those of the Holy Fa- 
ther, while (we are informed) "the 
bishops retain nothing more than a 
merely formal attachment to the 
chair of Peter, and are preparing 
to constitute a national that is, a 
schismatic church out of pure op- 
position to the Holy See." 

If two negatives are equivalent 
to an affirmative, two affirmatives 
are sometimes equivalent to a 
negative. This present utterance, 
taken together with another, also 
very recent, one of the Freema- 
sons, is a case in point. We need 

* The " Venerable Brother " Van Humbeeck, 
" Sovereign Prince of the Royal Secret." 



490 



TJie New Educational Law in Belgium, 



only judge them out of their own 
mouth : " The [Belgian] bishops 
show a servile willingness to be dic- 
tnted to by the Holy See, and to sac- 
rifice episcopal independence to the 
omnipotence of the Sovereign Pon- 
tiff." The Flandre Liberate at the 
same time complained that "the 
Belgian episcopate was probably, 
without exception, the most Ro- 
man, the most ultramontane epis- 
copate in the world " an accusa- 
tion which the bishops would ac- 
cept as a most honorable distinc- 
tion. 

Nor is it only from the Holy 
See that the ministerial organs af- 
fect to separate the Belgian epis- 
copate, but from their own clergy 
also. M. Frere-Orban, after an- 
nouncing himself " disposed to lay 
hands on the revenues of the bi- 
shops, and thus bridle their arro- 
gance," seeing that it is in great 
measure "their audacity which neu- 
tralizes the government schools," 
with a bitter mockery professes 
himself and his compeers to be the 
" protectors " of the clergy against 
"episcopal despotism!" Protec- 
tors of the devoted priesthood 
whose burdens they are studiously 
endeavoring to make too grievous 
to be borne ! 

It might be objected, by persons 
who do not realize what European 
liberalism is, that some compro- 
mise with the new law might per- 
haps have been made by allowing 
children to frequent those schools 
to which a priest would have been 
allowed to give religious instruction 
once a week. 

In the first place, the time de- 
termined upon by government for 
this instruction was arranged so 
as to be extra and apart from the 
regular hours of attendance at 
school, and when the children 
would naturally be at their homes. 



Some of the liberal journals them- 
selves owned that the hours select- 
ed would force the priest to refuse 
to go, and make it useless if he 
went, as he would find only empty 
benches. In one or two cases we 
have heard of where the priest went 
he was kept waiting until the ex- 
piration of the regulation hour, the 
children who came being set to other 
employment by the master. 

Secondly, the rest of the instruc- 
tion during the week was out of 
accordance with this solitary hour. 
Religion was no longer at home 
there, but came only with the priest, 
and, like him, as a scarcely tole- 
rated visitor. All the class-books 
being approved and appointed by 
a Freemason ministry, it is need- 
less to say how antagonistic to Ca- 
tholic belief and teaching even the 
secular instruction would be made. 

Lastly, in the interval between 
the passing of the new education 
law and its general enforcement 
abundant proofs were furnished ot 
the impossibility of anything like 
compromise. Out of several in- 
stances we could mention we will 
only give two, which occurred in 
schools where the masters were 
appointed by government. 

In one the subject of religious 
instruction had been the mystery 
of the Holy Trinity. As soon as 
the priest had left the room the 
master said : " Well, boys, I am 
sure you are not foolish enough to 
believe the nonsense you have just 
been hearing. ' Three in One ! 
One in Three !' You have too 
much sense to believe that !" 

In another the priest had been 
speaking against profane swear- 
ing and taking the holy name of 
God in vain. When he was gone 
the master held up a franc, saying 
it was for the boy who should utter 
the most daring blasphemies. 



Washington and the Church. 



491 



What may not be expected as the 
result of the newly-ordered " reci- 
tations of the catechism " under the 
auspices of teachers like these? 
The mischief of which it may be 
made the instrument is not to be 
imagined, where the doctrines of 
the church will be taught only to 
be misrepresented or derided, and 
her faith only to be attacked or 
undermined. 

For the instances we have given 
are, as it were, only single hailstones 
of the icy storm of spiritual death 
which would sweep over Europe 
should Freemasonry and -socialism 
gain the upper hand. 

We are not, however, of the num- 
ber of those pessimists who blame 
or despise all that is effected by 
modern society, and who await the 
return of an impossible past, of 
which, in some periods at least, and 
in some respects, they are apt to 
form a mistaken ideal. We are, on 
the contrary, among those who re- 
joice and hope. 



If we had lived at the close of 
the last century, in the last days of 
the ancien regime, in the times of 
Louis XV., of Joseph II., of Pom- 
bal, and of Catherine II., when all 
appeared to be stagnant or crumb- 
ling away, we might have despair- 
ed. In the present day, on the 
other hand, though evil increases, 
the church has arisen with renew- 
ed strength. Never has she been 
ruled by a wiser pontiff, never has 
she owned an episcopate more re- 
markable for virtue and learning, 
a priesthood more devoted and re- 
spected, religious orders more ac- 
tive and fervent, never were there 
more illustrious names among her 
devout laity, than at the present 
time, or works and missions more 
wide-spread and energetic. Never 
need we fear for the church in 
times of struggle and suffering; we 
must fear and then not for the 
church but for society in times of 
apathy, indifference, and slumber. 
Where there is conflict there is life. 



WASHINGTON AND THE CHURCH. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON was made 
a member of the Church of Christ 
in his infancy by baptism. The 
family addendum of his mother's 
Bible is the witness. It testifies 
that "George Washington was bap- 
tized the third of April (1732), 
Mr. Beverly Whiting and Captain 
Brookes godfathers, and Mrs. Mil- 
dred Gregory godmother." As 
this date was Anglican style, used 
when "England would rather war 
with the stars than agree with 
the pope," it was just eleven days 
behind the truth ; and had Wash- 
ington kept the anniversary of his 



baptism when he arrived at man- 
hood, in 1753, he would have kept 
it on the i4th of April, for he 
would have found that the Protes- 
tant dates were all error, that the 
pope was right, and the king, Lords, 
and Commons wrong, as they had, 
by act of Parliament of the pre- 
vious year, acknowledged. Wash- 
ington became twenty on the nth 
day of February, 1752, but in the 
autumn following the Parliament, in 
order to "catch up" with the time 
of the Catholic world, declared the 
day following the 2d of September, 
1752, to be the i4th of September; 



492 



Washington and the Church. 



so that, owing to the stupid pride 
of England, Washington did not 
attain his majority until the 22d of 
February, 1753, eleven days after 
he became twenty-one years old. 

No one knows where or by 
whom Washington was baptized ; 
but the fact and its witnesses are 
of record. Perhaps none knew that 
he was born of water and the Holy 
Ghost at that hour. They heard 
the gurgling water as they heard 
the whispering wind, which bloweth 
where it listeth. They had the 
Scripture, which, even in their clip- 
ped version, ever coupled the water 
and the Spirit. They had, too, 
Catholic sacramental forms, muti- 
lated, but plain of meaning, yet 
they saw not, or only carelessly 
guessed ; for, like the eunuch of Can- 
dace, no man had shown them. 

Across the Potomac, almost in 
sight of the windows that gave light 
to the new-born child, the Holy 
Sacrifice was hidden among the 
Maryland hills, offered in chapels 
concealed in private houses, pro- 
scribed in the colony (Terra 
Maria) which had been founded 
that it might be offered up in free- 
dom. Even the far-sighted, as they 
looked from the windows of the 
Virginia homestead, could see no 
cross in Maryland. It lay buried 
as of old before Helena found it ; 
but the hand of God was upon the 
unconscious Constan tine who should 
bring to light again that freedom 
which Puritan intolerance had driv- 
en into hiding-places on the Poto- 
mac side. Promises are vain, if the 
crosses which here and there now 
dot its banks shall not so multiply 
that, within a hundred years, a 
hundred waves of that bright river 
shall not catch and hold in their 
embrace a hundred crosses, from 
minster vast, from parish church 
or humble wayside chapel. Surely 



some blessing must be in store 
for the waters that now kiss the 
shore of Jlfary-\a.nd. 

But Egyptian darkness then cov- 
ered the land. The state was the 
church. A wolf sat crowned in 
the shepherd's place, and one of 
his chief officers, when reminded 
by a pious clergvman, the subject 
of his jurisdiction, that the Virgi- 
nianshad souls, responded: " Souls ! 

their souls! let them plant 

tobacco." Into this darkness came 
the christened babe, George Wash- 
ington. 

To many darkened lands there 
are lights subdued and dim. Even 
here on the Potomac side, without 
faith, a supers ition hung about 
christening. The traditions of the 
time bore fresh impress of an inci- 
dent which had happened there 
less than sixty ye.irs before, and 
the memorial of which is still pre- 
served in a letter sent from Poto- 
mac by " T. M." (understood to be 
Thomas Mathews, son of the ex- 
Cromwellian governor) to Harley, 
Secretary of State to Queen Anne, 
in 1705. The writer first notes 
that " about the year 1675 appear- 
ed three prodigies in that (Poto- 
mac) country : the one was a large 
comet every evening for a week or 
more at Southwest, thirty-five de- 
grees high, streaming like a horse- 
tail westward until it reached al- 
most the horizon, and setting to- 
wards the northwest. Another was 
flights of wild pigeons, in breadth 
nigh a quarter of the mid-hemi- 
sphere, and of their length there 
was no visible end; whose weights 
broke down the limbs of large trees 
whereon they rested at night, of 
which the fowlers shot abundance, 
and ate them. . . . The third 
strange phenomena was swarms of 
flies, about an inch long and as big 
as the top of a man's little finger, 



Washington and the Church. 



493 



rising out of spigot-holes in the 
earth, which ate the newly-sprout- 
ed leaves from the tops of the trees, 
and, without other harm, left us." 
He then, in detailing the circum- 
stances which led to Bacon's re- 
bellion, narrates the capture of an 
Indian fort on the banks of Piscat- 
away by the joint forces of Vir- 
ginia and Maryland, Washington's 
grandfather being one of the Vir- 
ginian captains. "After this fight," 
he says, "Capt. Brent brought 
away the king's son, concerning 
whom there was an observable 
passage at the end of this expedi- 
tion." He adds in conclusion : 
"The unhappy scene ended, Col. 
Mason took the King of Doegs' 
son home with him, who lay ten 
days in bed as one dead, with his 
eyes and mouth shut, no breath 
discerned; but his body continues 
warm, and they believe him yet 
alive. The aforenamed Capt. Brent 
(a papist), coming thither on a 
visit, and seeing the prisoner thus 
languishing, said : ' Perhaps he is 
pawc- w awed ' /.<?., bewitched 
and that he had heard that bap- 
tism was an effectual remedy,* . . . 
wherefore advised to baptize him. 
Col. Mason answered no minister 
could be had within many miles. 
Brent replied: 'Your clerk, Mr. 
Dobson, may do that office,' which 
was done by Church of England 
liturgy ; Col. Mason, with Capt. 
Brent, godfathers, Mrs. Mason 
godmother. My overseer, Mr. Pi- 
met,! being present, from whom I 
first heard it, and which all the 
other persons present afterward 
affirmed to me, -the ffour men re- 
turned to drinking punch ; but Mrs. 
Mason staying and looking on the 

* This was doubtless a confused memory of the 
exorcism which precedes baptism in the Catholic 
ritual. 

tPimet's Run, in Virginia, opposite Georgetown, 
long preserved the name. 



child, it opened its eyes and breath- 
ed, whereat she ran for a cordial, 
which he took from a spoon, gap- 
ing for more, and so by degrees re- 
covered, tho' before this baptism 
they had often tried the same 
means, but could by no endeavors 
open his teeth. . . . This was taken 
for convincing proof against infi- 
delity." 

There were also traditions of 
the time when there were chapels 
in the Virginia forest where the 
red men bowed, and of later-day 
chapels in homesteads. There was, 
until after William and Mary, no 
law forbidding the Holy Sacrifice 
in Virginia; but the statute de- 
clared " that it shall not be lawfull 
vnder the penaltie aforesaid, 1,000 
bbs. of tobacco, for any popish preist 
that shall here after arrive, to re- 
maine above five days, after warn- 
ing given for his departure by the 
governour or comander of the place 
where he or they shall bee, if wind 
and weather hinder not his depar- 
ture." Indeed, there had been Ca- 
tholics from the time when the 
Potomac and Doeg Indians lis- 
tened to the Gospel preached to 
them by Father Altham and the 
Jesuits who had come over \vith 
Lord Baltimore. True to the mis- 
sionary spirit of their order, to the 
faith of Columbus, they, that had 
crossed the ocean for charity, saw 
no limit in a narrow river; and the 
Virginians who dwelt by the Poto- 
mac felt the influence of the free 
Catholic spirit that animated their 
Maryland neighbors. The faith was 
slowly and surely making its way, 
and some Catholics were anxious 
to procure a spot in Virginia where, 
amid the surroundings of a Catho- 
lic settlement, they might practise 
their religion free from the perse- 
cutions of the state-church officers, 
who had power to fine and impri- 



494 



Washington and the Church. 



son for non-attendance at the dry 
sermon and formal prayers decreed 
to be the only legal worship of God 
in the colony. The head of the 
Anglican Protestant Church at 
that time was a Catholic a poor 
miserable Catholic, it is true, but 
Catholic enough to desire to give 
Catholics the same religious free- 
dom in the realm that the sectaries 
enjoyed. He used his prerogative, 
exercised the dispensing power 
that Filmer and the Anglican di- 
vines declared to be inherent in 
'the kingly office, to give this " pro- 
tection to a Catholic colony on the 
Potomac." 

This document, which was pub- 
lished in a sketch of the life of 
Archbishop Carroll some twenty- 
five years ago, is worthy of repro- 
duction in these pages. It reads 
as follows : 

4< Jntnes, R. ' 

" Right trusty and well-beloved : We 
greet you well. Whereas our trusty and 
well-beloved George Brent, of Wood- 
stock, in our county of Stafford, in our 
collony of Virginia. Richard Foote and 
Robert Bristow, of London, Merchants, & 
Nicholas Hayward of London, Notary 
Public, Have by their Humble petition 
informed us, That they have purchased 
of our right trusty and well-beloved 
Thomas Lord Culpeper, a certain tract 
of land in our said collony between the 
rivers of Rappahannock and Potomac, 
containing- of estimation thirty thousand 
acres lying .in or near our said county of 
Stafford, some miles distant from any 
present settlement or Inhabitants and 
at or about twenty miles from the foot of 
the mountains, upon part of which Tract 
of Land the Pet'rs have projected and 
doo speedily design to build a towne 
with convenient fortifications, and do 
therefore pray that for the encourage- 
ment of Inhabitants to settle in said 
Towne and plantation, wee would be 
pleased to grant them the free exercise 
of their religion, Wee have thought fitt 
to condescend to grant their humble re- 
quest, and we doo accordingly give and 
grant to the Pet's, and to all and every 
Inhabitants which now or hereafter shall 



be settled in the said Towne and the 
tract of land belonging to them as is 
above mentioned, the free exercise of 
their religion without being persecuted 
or molested upon any penall laws or 
other account lor the same, which wee 
doo hereby signifie unto you to the end 
that you may take care and give such 
orders as shall be requisite That they 
enjoy the full benefit of these our gra- 
cious Intentions to them, Provided they 
behave themselves in all civill matters 
so as becomes peaceable and Loyal sub- 
jects, and for so doing this shall be your 
warrant, and so we bid you heartely fare- 
well. 

" Given at our Court at Wh ; tehall 
the loth day of Feb'y, i686-*7, in the third 
year of our reign. By our Maj'ties 
Commands, 

" [Royal Signet :] SUNDERLAND. 

"To our right Trusty and well-beloved 
Francis, Lord Howard of Effingham, 
our Lieutenant & Governor General 
of our Collony and Dominions of 
Virginia in America, and to our Chiefe 
Governor or Governors there for the 
time being." 

The exact location over which 
this protection extended is not now 
known. From its position as de- 
signated, "some miles distant from 
any present settlement or inhabi- 
tants, and about twenty miles from 
the foot of the mountains, "it seems 
likely that it was located a short 
distance from the battle-field of 
Bull Run. In that locality, to this 
day, Brentsville and Biistoe Station 
are memorials of two of the paten- 
tees of the thirty thousand acres. 
Stafford County, which is now 
limited to a comparatively small 
area, then covered all the river- 
side above Westmoreland, and ex- 
tended far above the great falls of 
the Potomac, embracing the land 
opposite what is now Washington 
and Georgetown. 

" Of the fate of the settlement we have 
no record, but the events which crowd 
around the time and place leave little 
doubt that the proprietors did not hesi- 
tate to avail themselves of the freedom 
guaranteed under the royal signet. The 



Washington and the Church. 



495 



document arrived in Stafford in the fall, 
at a time when Virginia was already ex- 
cited by tne struggle between Lord How- 
ard and the Assembly as to the appoint- 
ment of the clerk of the House. It was 
alleged that ' the king would wear out 
the Church of England, for whenever 
there was a vacant office he filled it with 
men of a different persuasion.' New 
and dreadful dangers were hinted at, by 
those already in the secret of the pro- 
posed movements in the interest of Wil- 
liam of Orange, on the other side of the 
ocean. The ;ippointment of Allerton, an 
old resident of Stafford and alleged to 
b.e a Catholic, to the Council in the place 
of the popular Philip Ludwell, added 
fuel to the fire burning in many hearts 
along the Potomac shore. To .add to 
these discontents, a servile insurrection 
was discovered ia Westmoreland just in 
time to prevent its bursting forth. Ru- 
mors of Indian and * popish ' plots were 
circulated until the community grew 
fairly in ad with excitement. Monmouth's 
men, a considerable number of whom 
had been transported to Virginia, doubt- 
less were largely implicated, desiring to 
redeem their misfortune in England by 
success in America. The news of this 
grant to Brent and his associates fell 
upon this frenzy, and the practical carry- 
ing into effect of its provisions became 
the signal lor extensive commotion. 
John Waugh, parson of the parishes of 
Stafford and Choatauck, inflamed the 
people with enthusiastic harangues, and 
some commotions took place which au- 
gured the most alarming consequences, 
while the upper part of old Rappahan- 
nock (now a part of Stafford and Prince 
William) was actually in arms. Noth- 
ing, says Burke, but the moderation 
and reserve of the Council prevented a 
civil war. 'Three councillors were des- 
patched to quell the disturbances in 
Stafford ' ; and they seem to have suc- 
ceeded, for we hear no more either of 
the ' discontents ' or the ' protection.' 
William and Mary soon came to the 
throne, however, and religious freedom 
ceased to exist in Stafford, as elsewhere 
throughout the British realm." 

For nearly two hundred years 
yet the region about Brentsville 
and Bristoe waited for the com- 
ing of the Holy Sacrifice; but on 
one August Sunday of last summer 



a little chapel, All Saints, at Ma- 
rt assas reared the cross over a coun- 
try which saw it snatched away 
when Alexander VIII. was pope ; 
and, amid a gathering of ten thou- 
sand men with banners, flags, and 
music, the Bishop of Richmond of- 
fered the atoning Sacrifice, and 
dedicated the chapel to " the free 
exercise of their religion," secur- 
ed " from being persecuted or mo- 
lested by any penall laws," not 
by the protection of any king, but 
by the natural and revealed law 
of God; by the declaration of 
Magna Charta, " We will that holy 
church shall be free"; and by the 
fundamental compact of our fa- 
thers which on the I2th day of June, 
1776, created the commonwealth of 
Virginia. 

William, Prince of Orange, and 
his wife were proclaimed at James- 
town in April, 1689, Lord and 
Lady of Virginia. From this time 
forth fear of James II. and his 
sons kept alive the popular feeling 
against Catholics, and just as it 
was dying out the approach of the 
French on the west came to re- 
vive it. Amid the hatreds, igno- 
rance, and prejudice dominant over 
this time and place Washington 
lived as a child and was taught. 
The clergy, of whom John Waugh 
is an example, had been described 
by Governor Berkeley in 1670. He 
wrote: " We have fforty-eight par- 
ishes, and our ministers are well 
paid, and by my consent should be 
better, if they would pray oftener 
and preach less. But of all other 
comodities, so of this, the worst 
are sent us, and we had few that 
we could boast of since the persi- 
cution of Cromwell's tiranny drove 
divers worthy men hither. But I 
thank God there are no free schools 
nor printing." The parsons were 
bound by law to teach the com- 



49 6 



Washington and the ChurcJi. 



mon prayer-book catechism, but 
they often failed ; for the labor 
would have been immense, as be- 
sides the children there was a large 
pagan population of newly import- 
ed negroes, whose ranks were re- 
cruited every year by other pagans 
brought direct from Africa. Some 
of the clergy were learned and 
pious men, and it is charity to be- 
lieve that the reports concerning 
others are without foundation. 

Such was the state church which 
assumed to be George Washing- 
ton's religious teacher. He prob- 
ably never saw a Catholic until he 
grew to manhood. There is no 
mention of any religious instruc- 
tion given him, except the tradi- 
tions, recorded by Parson Weems, 
of the striking examples by which 
his father impressed upon him some 
of the truths and precepts of na- 
tural religion : the cabbage-seed 
which, in imitation of Beattie, he 
planted that it might grow and 
spell his name, to illustrate that 
creation impliesa Creator; the half- 
apple which he gave away in the 
spring, rewarded by abounding fruit 
in autumn, to illustrate the need 
and reward of kindliness such 
were the teachings of the new Ulys- 
ses to Telemachus. A part of Ca- 
tholic tradition, with its reverence 
for the Holy Scriptures, was proba- 
bly taught him, the enemy, may 
be, sowing tares all the time ; but 
it is possible that he was never 
taught that the church is the ene- 
my of the Bible, for he never went 
to Sunday-school. His mother 
must have taught him something 
of revealed truth, which, for Our 
Blessed Lady's sake, it is given to 
mothers to teach their children. 
" George was always a good boy," 
said she when, in after-years, her 
son had risen to the height of a 
great ambition, and some French 



officers congratulated her upon 
it. 

When Washington reached man- 
hood he probably believed in a 
Supreme Being, who required him 
to do his duty as shown him by 
his natural conscience, modified by 
his surroundings in life. He seems 
faithfully to have adhered to this 
standard. He early showed him- 
self, by unusual service to the state, 
capable of high employment; and in 
March, 1754, when he was twenty- 
three years of age, he was commis- 
sioned lieutenant-colonel of the 
regiment then being raised for ser- 
vice against the French, who had 
advanced from Fort Du Quesne 
(Pittsburgh) towards Winchester, 
Va. On the ipth of March in that 
year he made his first formal de- 
claration of disbelief in Catholic 
truth. The record of the act is 
still extant. It is upon the min- 
utes of the county court of Fair- 
fax, and reads : 

" Lieutenant-Colonel George Washing- 
ton, Lieutenants John West, Jr., and 
James lowers, presented their military 
commissions, took the oaths according 
to law registered (or rogated), and sub- 
scribed to the //." 

This test had been years before 
devised in England in the same 
spirit which led the Japanese to 
make trampling upon the crucifix 
a test against Catholics at Yeddo. 
A copy of the English test still re- 
mains at Fairfax Court-House. 

Upon one of the last pages of 
an old court blotter extending 
1751-3 the test is written, in a 
plain, clear hand, at the top of the 
page ; but the ink, like the memory 
of the iniquity, has almost faded 
out : 

"THE SUBSCRIBERS DECLARE 
THAT THERE IS NO TRANSUBSTAN- 
TIATION IN THE SACRAMENT OF 



Washington and the Church. 



497 



THE LORD'S SUPPER, OR IN THE 

ELEMENTS OF BREAD OR WINE, AT 
OR AFTER THE CONSECRATION 
THEREOF BY ANY PERSON WHAT- 
EVER." 

This test is signed by George 
William Fairfax, Wm. Ramsay, and 
others in 1751; but the later signa- 
tures are gone, and it does not con- 
tain Washington's name. In 1751 
there was no answer to this decla- 
ration in all Virginia. Now the 
tinkle of the consecration-bell at 
the Chapel of Our Lady of Sor- 
rows a short distance away can 
almost be heard in the old court- 
house where this moth-eaten re- 
cord is fading out of the light. 

All the Catholics that Washing- 
ton met for years henceforth were 
Frenchmen and enemies. The 
tales of French cruelty, generally 
false ; the errors and false charges 
which grew out of the death of M. 
de Jumonville, whom, it was said 
untruly, Washington had allowed 
to be assassinated while coming 
with despatches, all doubtless con- 
spired to fix upon him the univer- 
sal sentiment amid which he had 
been brought up that the Catholic 
Church was at best but " a cor- 
rupt following of the apostles." 
He probably gave the subject little 
thought. 

His letters show, to this time, 
no Catholic correspondent. Even 
a correspondence with Maryland 
Calverts in relation to the marriage 
of his step-son, John Parke Custis, 
to Miss Calvert, which suggests 
Catholicity, is with Protestants. 
As yet he seems never to have 
known personally any Catholic who 
avowed his faith. 

The legislation was more rigor- 
ously anti-Catholic than ever in 
1756. Laws were enacted provid- 
ing for " the disarming of papists." 
VOL. xxx. 32 



In the terror which followed Brad- 
dock's defeat not only were " pa- 
pists " ordered to be deprived ot 
arms, but they were forbidden to 
own an effective horse. Even a 
vessel load of poor Acadian pri- 
soners affrighted the Notables at 
Williamsburg, the seat of Gover- 
nor Dinwiddie's court these sad 
exiles, reft from a blessed land on 
which their lingering eyes had last 
rested only to behold their homes 
on fire. 

" When on the falling tide the freighted vessels 

departed, 
Bearing a nation, with all its household gods, into 

exile 
Exile without an end, and without an example in 

story ; 
When far asunder on separate coasts the Acadians 

landed, 
Scattered like flakes of snow, friendless, homeless, 

hopeless, 
Friends they sought and homes ; and many, despair- 

. ing, heart-broken, 
Asked of the earth but a grave, and no longer a 

friend nor a fireside." 

Yet when some of these poor ex- 
iles arrived in Virginia they met 
an old Virginia welcome in this 
style : 

" Whereas a large number of people 
called Neutral French have lately been 
sent into this Colony from Nova Scotia, 
and it is apprehended that their continu- 
ance here will greatly endanger the peace 
and safety of the colony, be it therefore 
enacted, That Peyton Randolph, etc., be 
hereby empowered and required to con- 
tract with any person willing to trans- 
port the said Neutral French to Great 
Britain, and to agree on such prices, etc., 
as they shall judge reasonable." 

Surely timidity must have been 
extreme when they refused a home 
to Evangeline because they were 
afraid of her. To make this tran- 
saction still meaner, every cent of 
this cost was taken from the ^40,- 
ooo which had been provided to 
support Washington and his troops, 
who were fighting on the frontier 
amid such drawbacks from the No- 
tables of Williamsburg as, Wash- 



498 



Washington and tJie Church. 



ington writes to Gov. Dinwiddie, 
" would induce me, at any other 
time than this of imminent danger, 
to resign, without one hesitating 
moment, a commission from which 
I never expect to reap either honor 
or benenX" Less than thirty years 
afterwards six thousand compa- 
triots of these Acadians marched, 
with trumpet's blare and banners 
flying, with Rochambeau, Viome- 
nil, and Chastellux at their head, 
through this same Williamsburg 
amid the wild shouts and glad hur- 
rahs of the Virginians. Upon the 
waters whence sailed the ship that 
bore these poor Acadians to a se- 
cond exile French ships rode and 
French cannon thundered to make 
Virginia free. 

It seems likely that the first Ca- 
tholic Washington ever saw was 
Captain Joncaire, whom he met at 
Venango on the 4th of December, 
1753, when he bore the letter of 
Gov. Dinwiddie to the French 
commander at Fort Du Quesne. 
He captured in 1754, at the fight 
with Jumonville, M. Drouillon, a 
French officer, and two cadets, M. de 
Boucherville and M. de Sable, with 
thirteen privates. These Dinwiddie 
refused to exchange, and these poor 
Catholics were kept in Virginia 
many weary months, first at one 
place, then at another. They were 
in Alexandria in April, 1755, when 
Braddock landed, and were locked 
up toprevent their observation of his' 
movements. Many a " Hail Mary " 
these home-sick prisoners sent up 
as they were moved from place to 
place. Theirs were probably the 
first Ave Marias that ascended 
from the interior of Virginia. Soon 
after Braddock's expedition their 
prayers were answerad and they 
were sent across the ocean. 

The wars over, and Washington 
married, he seems to have taken 



some interest in the affairs of his 
neighborhood, and he was chosen 
vestryman in two parishes. A par- 
ish vestry was then, however, more 
a civil than a religious body. It 
indentured apprentices, attended 
to bounding lands, overlooked the 
poor and the like, as well as paid 
the parson and bought his surplice. 

Washington attended a Catholic 
church for the first time on the 
9th of October, 1774, when he was 
over forty-two years old. He was 
a delegate to the Continental Con- 
gress at Philadelphia, and on one of 
the Sundays he spent there he went 
to Vespers at St. Joseph's Church. 
He makes record of the visit, but 
gives no hint of the effect produc- 
ed upon him by the services or 
what he thought of them. He 
writes in his diary merely : " Octo- 
ber 9. Went to Presbyterian meet- 
ing in the forenoon and the Rom- 
ish church in the afternoon ; dined 
at Bevan's." 

No other record of him in any 
relation to Catholics or Catholicism 
appears until he took command of 
the Continental army at Cambridge 
and on Boston Heights. The New- 
Englanders had imported the cus- 
tom of celebrating the discovery of 
the Gunpowder Plot by burning, 
not a stuffed image of Guy Fawkes, 
but an effigy of the pope. There 
was some proposal, as the 5th of 
November, 1775, approached, to re- 
peat this sport in the American 
camp near Boston while Mont- 
gomery and Arnold were making 
their way toward Quebec with 
every prospect of its capture. The 
stupid malignity of this sort of car- 
nival was rebuked by Washington 
in this order : 

;< NOVEMBER 5. 

" As the commander-in-chief has been 
apprised of a design formed for the 
observance of that ridiculous and 



Washington and the Church. 



r99 



childish custom of burning the effigy 
of the pope, he cannot help express- 
ing his surprise that there should 
be officers and soldiers in this army so 
void of common sense as not to see the 
impropriety of such a step at this junc- 
ture, at a time when we are soliciting 
and have really obtained the friendship 
and alliance of the people of Canada, 
whom we ought to consider as brethren 
embarked in the same cause, the de- 
fence of the general liberty of America. 
At such a juncture, and in such circum- 
stances, to be insulting their religion is 
so monstrous as not to be suffered or 
excused ; indeed, instead of offering 
them the most remote insult, it is our 
duty to address public thanks to these 
our brethren, as to them we are so 
much indebted for every late happy 
success over the common enemy in Ca- 
nada." 

The surroundings of the army 
during the Revolutionary war must 
have called Washington's attention, 
in some degree at least, to Catho- 
lics, if not to the church ; but it 
was a time too stormy and full of 
daily needs to allow much thought 
on what he considered an abstract 
i- question. He must have known 
Barry Moylan and other American 
and foreign officers who held the 
Catholic faith. Colonel John Fitz- 
gerald, one of his aides-de-camp, 
and long his neighbor at Alexan- 
dria, was a Catholic. It is possible 
that in his military association with 
these officers Washington saw no- 
thing which led him to suppose 
that their religion was so very dif- 
ferent from his own as to require 
him to make any special inquiry 
about it. He never saw a Sister 
of Charity on his battle-fields; her 



was not, like Franklin's who had 
gone with him on the mission to 
Canada intimate and. friendly, but 
only courteous and official. Years 
afterwards, when Washington was 
enjoying home life at Mount Ver- 
non, came young Carroll of Carroll- 
ton to court his step-daughter, Nel- 
lie Custis. Young Carroll's suit, 
says Irving, " was countenanced by 
Mrs. Washington "; but Washing- 
ton favored his protege, Lawrence 
Lewis, and so did the young lady, 
so the question of a mixed mar- 
riage never came on the tapis. 

Of all the Catholic officers of 
the army, Lafayette only grew to 
be intimate with Washington. The 
marquis was a Catholic, it is true, 
but a Catholic reared in France 
when " isms " called themselves Ca- 
tholic, and Jansenism, Gallicanism, 
quietism, and the like had touched 
men's faith with canker. 

Washington mentions in his diary 
going to Mass once while attend- 
ing at Philadelphia the sessions 
of the Federal Convention which 
framed the Constitution of the 
United States. He writes : " May 
27. Went to Romish church to 
High Mass; dined, drank tea, and 
spent the evening at my lodgings." 

While at Georgetown in 1791, 
making arrangements for the foun- 
dation of the federal city, he paid 
a visit to Georgetown College. It 
is mentioned by the Metropolitan 
that 

" While the small college was sur- 
rounded by a whitewashed paling fence 
a horseman, well stricken in years but 



white cornette, flag of the Truce of f n ble u and soldier-like bearing, reined 

iin hiQ rharo-fr x^ thp> little rraf^T.roTr <mA 



God, carrying the charity of angels 
beside the courage of men. Charles 
Carroll of Carrollton did not enter 
the Congress until July 2, 1776, 
long after Washington had left the 
legislature for the field. His ac- 
quaintance with Rev. John Carroll 



up his charger at the little gateway and 
hitched him to the fence. Alighting 
with grace and ease, he entered the hum- 
ble enclosure with a benevolent serenity 
of countenance and a placid look of 
confidence for a cordial reception. This 
every American gentleman feels in visit- 
ing his friends. On this occasion the 
young Professor Mathews had the plen- 



5oo 



Washington and the Church. 



sure and the honor to be the first to 
welcome to Georgetown College Gene- 
ral George Washington. I have heard," 
continues the narrator, " Father Ma- 
thews repeat with evident delight the 
familiar and accurate remarks of Pater 
Patrice on that memorable occasion : 
how the first citizen admired the lofty 
and picturesque situation of the house, 
and then descanted on the chilling blasts 
in sharp winter of the fierce northwester ; 
how we must be paid for summer scenery 
by wintry storms." 

Washington, on his elevation to 
the Presidency, received an address 
from the Catholics of the Union, 
and returned a formal reply. The 
correspondence has often been pub- 
lished, and differs in no notable de- 
gree from similar addresses which 
passed about the same time be- 
tween the sects and the President. 

So far as any record goes, it would 
be quite as reasonable to infer that 
Washington believed Our Lady to 
be the Mother of God as that he 
believed our Saviour to be the Son 
of God. In all of his voluminous 
writings as published the holy name 
of Jesus Christ is never once writ- 
ten. Family prayer was unknown 
at Mount Vernon, and, with death 
standing at his bedside face to face 
with him, he calmly attended to the 
little earthly business he had left 
before uncompleted, but never ask- 
ed to see his pastor nor spoke a 
word that indicated a religious 
sentiment. Yet in early manhood 
he had "fasted all day " upon the 
occasion of a public fast, and in all 
his public career he was especially 
careful that there should be public 
religious services in camp ; and 
whether in office at New York or 
Philadelphia, or in private life at 
home, he always attended some 
church nearly always the nearest 
Episcopal church on Sunday. He 
habitually, when in authority, urged 
the keeping holy of Sunday, dis- 
countenanced gaming, and punished 



profanity in the service. One of 
his earliest orders directs his offi- 
cers, " if they should hear the men 
swearing or using oaths or execra- 
tions, to order the offender twen- 
ty-five lashes immediately without 
court-martial." His official deliv- 
erances during the Revolution are 
notable in their frequent recogni- 
tion of an overruling Providence, 
and of special interpositions of the 
divine government in support of 
the American cause. Even in a 
private letter to Governor Nelson,. 
of Virginia, in August, 1778, when 
the British who had been chasing 
him were reduced to rely upon the 
spade and pickaxe for their de- 
fence, he dwells on the same sub- 
ject, and says : " The hand of Provi- 
dence has been so conspicuous in 
all this that he must be worse than 
an infidel that lacks faith, and more 
than wicked that has not gratitude 
enough to acknowledge his obliga- 
tions. But it will be time enough 
for me to turn preacher when my 
present appointment ceases; and 
therefore I shall add no more on 
the doctrine of Providence." One 
or two expressions, such as " the be- 
nign light of Revelation," " the di- 
vine Author of our blessed reli- 
gion," may be gathered from the 
many volumes of his writings to 
show that a Christian idea under- 
lay his thoughts; and there are not 
wanting traditions of episodes 
which represented him as possess- 
ed of a more devotional spirit than 
he ordinarily manifested in his life 
or which anywhere appears in his 
writings: His thought that " ours 
is a kind of a struggle designed by 
Providence to try the patience, for- 
titude, and virtue of men," seems 
but other words for the Catholic 
thought, " Our life is the God-di- 
rected education of our souls, and 
the fashion of our human life is the 



Washington and the Church. 



501 



i 



mould which God has prepared for 
us," so impressively and beautifully 
developed in " The Eternal Years." 
Mr. Sparks, who collected much 
evidence on the subject of Wash- 
ington's religious convictions, con- 
cludes "that he believed in the 
fundamental doctrines of Christian- 
ity as usually taught in that (the 
Protestant Episcopal) church, ac- 
cording to his understanding of 
them." 

Although Washington has been 
set up as a special patron of Free- 
masonry, he seems to have early 
grown tired of its childish myste- 
ries, not to have gone beyond the 
first three degrees, and never to 
have attended a Masonic lodge 
more than two or three times after 
he grew to be thirty-six years old. 
That he abhorred the doctrines 
which in Continental Europe are 
known as Freemasonry and which, 
perhaps, are never revealed except 
in the higher degrees there, his let- 
ters to Rev. G. W. Snyder, a clergy- 
man of Frederick, Md., leave no 
shadow of doubt. Mr. Snyder had 
sent Robinson s Proofs of a Conspi- 
racy to the general, and in reply 
Washington writes : 

" I have heard much of the nefarious 
and dangerous plan and doctrines of the 
Ilhiminati, but never saw the book until 
you were pleased to send it to me. . . . 
The multiplicity of matters . . . allows 
me t.o add little more now than thanks for 
your kind wishes and favorable senti- 
ments, except to correct an error you 
have run into of my presiding over the 
English lodges in this country. The 
fact is, I preside over none, nor have I 
been in one more than once or twice 
within the last thirty years. I believe, 
notwithstanding, that none of the lodges 
in this country are contaminated with 
the principles ascribed to the Society of 
the Ilhiminati ^ 

In another letter to the same 
minister, dated October 24, 1798, he 



returns to the subject and writes 
to explain his former letter : 

" It was not my intention," he said, " to 
doubt that the doctrines of the Illuminati 
and the principles of Jacobinism had not 
spread in the United States. On the 
contrary, no one is more fully satisfied of 
this fact than I am. The idea I meant to 
convey was that I did not believe that 
the lodges of Freemasons in this coun- 
try had, as societies, endeavored to 
propagate the diabolical tenets of the 
former or pernicious principles of the 
latter, if they are susceptible of divi- 



Finis coronat opus. The su- 
preme hour of life is that when man 
stands face to face with death. 
Washington came to that hour in 
December, 1799. He gave expres- 
sion to no religious conviction, 
spoke no word of hope beyond the 
grave, and died like a Greek Stoic. 
He selected one of two wills which 
he had previously prepared, and 
directed that the other be burned; 
arranged with composure the few 
small matters of business to which 
he had not before attended; and 
spent his last breath in securing 
himself from premature burial. " I 
am going," he said; "have me de- 
cently buried, and do not let my 
body be put into the vault in less 
than three days." The affected 
attendant answered incoherently 
amid tears. "Do you understand 
me ?" said the dying man. " Yes," 
was the response. " 'Tis well," 
said Washington. He spoke no 
more, and in half an hour was dead. 
The ministers whom he had never 
invited to his death-bed officiated at 
his funeral and prayed for everybody 
but him. His body was placed in 
the tomb that has become a shrine 
of pilgrimage. To call it the Mec- 
ca of America, as is sometimes 
done, is an offensive incongruity; 
for that name, connected with an 
Arab impostor, can never attain 



5O2 The Legend of Dimas. 

dignity sufficient to be associated Socrates, ora pro nobis," surely we 

with the grave of the great and may murmur as we look within the 

good natural man whom we shall dark grating at Mount Vernon, 

ever venerate. where there is emblem neither of 

And if Sir Thomas More ever resurrection nor of hope, Domine, 

said of the Greek sage, " Sancte dona ei requiem. 



THE LEGEND OF DIMAS. 

HODIE MECUM ERIS IN PARADISO. 

IN that wild day so doth old legend tell 
When Herod sought the life of Juda's King, 

When word divine was brought by Gabriel 
How God's dear Son to keep from perishing, 

Three homeless wanderers crossed the sunny waste 
Of Syrian desert, seeking the far Nile ; 

Now bore sweet Mary Jesus on her breast, 
Now bore St. Joseph his soul's King awhile. 

Weary the days' long leagues of sun-burned land, 
Weary the nights of rest beneath the moon : 

The earth's Creator by his creatures banned ! 
His rule of love divine denied so soon ! 

Softly his little arms would twine about 
His mother's neck, and softly his sad eyes 

Would, meeting hers, pour all their sweetness out 
Fair day-stars shining through her sorrowing skies ! 

And, gently on St. Joseph's true arms borne, 
The Christ, not yet to graceless men revealed, 

To make the weary hours less forlorn 

Stroked the kind hand that was his earthly shield. 

Where, from the desert, stony hills upstart, 

One eve the pilgrims halted in a wild 
Where offered shelter kindly woman's heart 

That pitied sore the Maiden and the Child ; 

Pitied the slight young mother's fragile air 
Sad heart of mother troubled grievously 

In one dear child strong-limbed, but all too fair, 
White with the dreadful scourge of leprosy ! 

Kind shelter to the wanderers she gave, 
This gentle wife, of outlawed robber-chief, 

Her home the deep-embosomed mountain-cave 
To weary-footed pilgrims blessed relief. 



The Legend of Ditt-as. 503 

Shone the soft firelight on a fair, strange scene: 

Sad mother with her smitten little one, 
The Holy Maid that clasped her Babe serene, 

The Father's shadow watching o'er his Son. 

Did that poor woman in her heart discern 

What guests this night she harbored at her hearth ? 

Did darkened soul with love instinctive turn 
To greet the little Lord of Heaven and earth ? 

Grace did she feel soft falling from his breath, 
And healing from the touch of baby-hand ? 

Not as with earthly grace that perisheth 
Clothed these wayfarers in the desert land. 

Ere unto infant sleep his limbs were laid, 

That she might wash her weary little Child 
Some water meekly begged the Mother-Maid 

Cleansing from desert stain the Undefiled. 

O sudden thought that stirred the mother's breasf! 

The sorrowing mother of the smitten one, 
The faith fulfilling that her heart confessed, 

In that waste water bathed she o'er her son. 

O wondrous change as that blessed laver fell ! 

Straightway the white and awful leprosy 
Waned as the snow beneath the spring sun's spell, 

And rosy bloSm effaced shame's livery. 

Rosy and beautiful the boy had grown, 

On his young life no shadow resting no\v, 
New-crowned he reigned on one heart's royal throne, 

Lifted to men henceforth a fearless brow. 

With morn the exiles wandered forth once more, 

The little Dimas, watching as they went, 
Throned on his mother's arms that proudly bore, 

While grateful blessings spoke her heart's content. 

On passed the homeless ones o'er stony ways, 
O'er arid plain, by palm-o'ershadowed spring, 

On where the green-waved Nile old Egypt sways, 
Where Egypt's gods in fear fell shattering. 

Thenceforth fair Dimas grew in life and strength ; 

No firmer foot than his the sharp rocks pressed. 
Grown old enough to join the band at length, 

No robber stood of hardier fame confessed. 

Long years sped by nigh three-and-thirty years 

And Dimas, ever daring more, at last, 
Terror of men and cause of women's tears, 

Into Jerusalem chained captive passed. 



504 The begend of Divias. 

Condemned to death most shameful, he was bound 

And lifted up to heaven on a cross ; 
Fierce agony in all his limbs, he groaned 

With bitter execrations at life's loss. 

One hung beside him, lifted too on high, 

At whom the robber flung his words of scorn, 

Who nothing answered to their cruelty, 
So loving, unto death, this soul forlorn. 

Strange seemed the silence to the dying thief; 

He turned to gaze upon the wounded face 
Was it his mother's heart that brought relief? 

The old divining waked again to grace ? 

He did not know that this uplifted One 

From his youth's blasting curse had washed him clean, 
That royal blood of God's Beloved Son 

Must wash the ghastlier leprosy of sin. 

Upon the Sufferer's face divine he gazed; 

He heard men's cruel taunts, well heard he too \ 
The prayer sublime, 'mid agony, upraised : 

"Father, forgive, they know not what they do." 

Then Jesus looked on him, grace filled his soul 
The old, sweet grace that looked from childish eyes 

When his fond mother's faith had made him whole 
In far, dim cave o'er-shone by Syrian skies. 

Beneath the cross another woman's faith 
Gives him the richer grace of Paradise 

The mother true whose sons none numbereth, 
Who gives for them love's dearest sacrifice. 

" When that thou comest in thy kingdom, Lor'd, 
Remember me." O thorn-crowned charity, 
How swift the sweetness of thy honey poured ! 
" Amen, I say to thee, this day with me 

"Thou shalt be even in Paradise." The debt 

Of that long-distant hospitality 
By God, most merciful, remembered yet, 
Through life eternal paid with usury. 

" This day in Paradise !" And when God's heart 

Was opened with the cruel spear, the blood 
That followed, like pent stream, the loosening dart 
Washed Dimas once again with cleansing flood ; 

The new-found mother, still the cross below 
Speeding this soul to Paradise with prayer 

Dear-ransomed soul her heart claimed, long ago 
When love and faith made Syrian desert fair. 



Our Christmas Club. 



505 



OUR CHRISTMAS CLUB. 



ONE Christmas eve, fifty years 
ago, twelve of us Glasgow students 
inaugurated a club such as, we 
proudly thought, rivalled any of 
those mysterious societies and gath- 
erings common in romance, and 
not unknown among college boys 
at the most stately and ancient 
universities surviving in foreign 
lands. An old-fashioned tavern on 
the outskirts of the city (it stands 
far within the present city limits) 
was the place we chose for meeting, 
and the host entered into the fun 
all the more heartily that the feast 
was to fill his pockets and help to 
empty his cellar. The club was 
limited to twelve members, who 
were pledged never to fill up the 
number, to meet once a year only 
(that is, as members), on Christmas 
eve, and, failing to do so through 
unavoidable circumstances, to send 
to the president a letter to be read 
on the occasion and deposited on 
the absentee's empty chair. Fur- 
ther, if a member failed to appear 
or send the required letter, he was 
to be accounted dead and no in- 
quiry to be made by the rest; in- 
deed, his very name was no more 
to be heard. 

For three years the full comple- 
ment of members took their places 
at McGlashan's Tavern each ap- 
pointed day, and told storiet, drank 
toasts, and generally upheld the 
student-ideal of rollicking but harm- 
less wildness. Most of us, of 
course, were poor, and all depend- 
ent on ourselves. Some were of the 
traditional Scotch student type, the 
sons of struggling men anxious to 
rise in the world ; some the children 
of English and Irishmen resident 



in Glasgow as clerks in business 
houses, foremen in factories, and 
such. We. all aspired to profes- 
sional life, and were studying for 
doctors, lawyers, engineers, and 
one or two for the ministry. Christ- 
mas, as every one knows, is not 
kept in Scotland, and was even less 
so in our time than now ; while in 
England it was kept much more 
merrily than at present, and those 
of us who remembered it in their 
former homes, or whose parents 
tried to keep up its spirit in their 
present ones, introduced into our 
club all the traditional customs 
which time and space allowed us 
to imitate. We levied contribu- 
tions in kind on each of our house- 
holds for the table and decoration 
of our room : one brought huge 
candles, one a deer's head (his fa- 
ther had once worked for a dealer 
in stuffed animals), one brought 
evergreens from a villa where his 
cousin was gardener, several brought 
candlesticks of various patterns 
and sizes, wine and whiskey, raisins 
and dried plums (this for snap- 
dragon), home-made cakes, musi- 
cal instruments, besides our accu- 
mulated savings to pay for the sub- 
stantial part of the banquet. We 
had a roaring fire, and a bunch of 
English mistletoe hung over the 
door, though there was no one to 
kiss under it except the cheery but 
middle-aged waitress, the maiden 
sister of the host. This mistletoe 
came all the way from Devonshire, 
from the godmother of one of out- 
number, Edward Caxton, who was 
one of the " best off" among us. 

After three years we sat down 
to our Christmas feast with one 



506 



Our Christmas Club. 



chair vacant, and a letter was read, 
telling of a small, humdrum busi- 
ness established on limited means 
in a seaside town in the south of 
Ireland, and wishing well to all the 
club, whom the writer, through 
want of money, could not join. 
And so on for five years., when our 
number was reduced to eight (one 
having died, another disappeared 
without notice, and a third gone to 
some South American mines), and 
we met once more, not quite so full 
of boisterous spirits, and saddled 
with responsibilities and doubts 
such as we scouted before expe- 
rience had taught us better. I was 
a parish doctor now in a small vil- 
lage not so far from Glasgow as to 
prevent my keeping our old ap- 
pointment, but my means were 
small enough to make even this 
dissipation a consideration. No- 
doubt something of the same kind 
blurred the pleasure of each of 
those whom I was going to meet; 
and as to that, how could I tell 
whom I should meet ? Some one 
would probably be missing. 

As I neared the tavern, and saw 
the glow of the lights on the table, 
and the flickering of the firelight 
behind the red curtains that shaded 
the small-paned, old-fashioned win- 
dow, my dismal thoughts began to 
give way to fancies more meet for 
the occasion ; my spirits rose, and I 
walked faster, shaking the snow off 
my shaggy great-coat and clapping 
my hands together. I was the first 
at the tavern, and was welcomed by 
the host as if he had been my fa- 
ther; indeed, the homelike feeling 
old McGlashan contrived to throw 
over everything belonging to- his 
establishment was the special charm 
of the unpretending little place. 
Two big arm-chairs were drawn up 
to the fire, and on the tall mantel- 
shelf, almost beyond my reach, were 



two huge candles in uneven can- 
dlesticks ; the array of secondary 
dishes already on the table looked 
very tempting, and everything tend- 
ed to throw me into a pleasant 
day-dream. Before another quar- 
ter of an hour two of our fellow- 
ship came in together, boisterous 
and clumsy, full of Christmas fun, 
bringing an atmosphere of jollity 
into the room, and greeting me as 
became friends who had not met 
since midsummer. Some random 
talk about our various "shops," in- 
quiries about friends, a fire of 
cross-questions and crooked an- 
swers, and an occasional surmise 
about the number we might ex- 
pect to muster to-night, filled up 
the time till the next arrival. We 
were all curiosity, and watched the 
door with a touch of that old mys- 
terious expectation which we had 
cultivated as college lads, when in 
came the least mysterious and the 
cheeriest of our company, a young 
Irish engineer, still on the look-out 
for a job. We began to pluck up 
courage ; half of the club was here, 
and perhaps this year might go by 
without the melancholy vacant seat 
troubling our enjoyment of the 
good things we could smell plainly 
from the kitchen. Another and an- 
other came in till all but one of 
the eight were there; and the irre- 
verent Irishman began parodying 
" We are seven*" in the most ludi- 
crous, mock-pathetic way, while we 
all rather anxiously looked to the 
door, Ifctened for wheels, grew si- 
lent one by one, or spoke in con- 
strained phrases such as men use 
when intent on transparent make- 
believe. The hour of meeting was 
past, and the president reluctantly 
rang the bell for the hot dishes; 
we all sat down in silence and 
looked ruefully to the empty chair 
which should have held Caxton. 



Our Christinas Club. 



507 



It was our custom to wait until 
sitting down before producing the 
letter which was to account for the 
absence of the missing member, 
and we had still a faint hope that 
from the president's pocket might 
come the explanation ; but he look- 
ed as blank as the rest of us, and, 
with another look at the window, 
turned round to carve the huge 
turkey. One might have thought 
this was a funeral feast or a gath- 
ering of conspirators, so depressed 
and silent were we ; and, indeed, it 
was not till the wine had gone 
round more than once that we re- 
gained a Christmas frame of mind. 
The eating done, though some kept 
still playing with mince-pies set on 
fire with spirits of wine, the regular 
business of the evening began ; it 
was not late, as we always made a 
point of getting together as soon 
after dark as possible, and we had 
a good long time before us. Songs 
and toasts were given and stories 
told, bursts of laughter followed, 
and the influence of the empty 
chair seemed to have vanished, 
when an unusual clatter was heard 
outside and a stamping of feet in 
the hall. Presently the door open- 
ed noisily, and Caxton rushed in, 
still muffled in a huge coat, his 
face ruddy .and beaming and his 
hands outstretched. A hubbub 
and uproar, an unintelligible jum- 
ble of greetings and questions, a 
rush of the host to take his coat, 
a general move towards the fire- 
place, and by and by a glimmer- 
ing of order and the bidding of 
the president to take our seats 
again, was what I can remember of 
what immediately followed the ar- 
rival of the member given up for 
dead. Of course he was famished, 
and ate like an ogre, recounting, 
with his mouth full, how he had been 
delayed : the coach had been stop- 



ped by the snow-drifts and had to 
be dug out. He had fully expected 
to be in time, and so had not writ- 
ten ; but the weather takes ac- 
count of no man, and had upset 
his plans. The president remind- 
ed him, when he had done eating, 
that the rules of the club required 
a story of respectable proportions, 
or a personal narrative of such 
facts as did not come under the 
head of private or confidential, and 
he hoped Caxton would give them 
a rousing good tale. The inevi- 
table bottles were passed round 
again bottles, you know, are his- 
torical facts when writing of sup- 
pers half a century ago and Cax- 
ton, smiling like the full moon, 
crossed his legs and began : 

"You did not expect to have a 
bridegroom at table to-night." 

We all interrupted with shout, 
joke, question, and he went on : 

u Having announced my new 
character, I shall leave details for 
later on. You remember how we 
parted here last year, and how I 
told you I was going south to my 
godmother's place, she having taken 
it into her head that, because I 
had struggled through a law course 
and called myself a barrister, I 
could successfully manage an es- 
tate. It is a small property, but 
had been neglected, and might be 
improved at a small expense. Care 
and personal supervision were what 
it mostly needed, and the old lady 
felt she was not strong enough or 
stern enough to manage it any lon- 
ger alone. The place was to go to 
her niece, and I knew that she had 
always cherished a romantic wish 
to marry me to the heiress. My 
father was once her lover, and for 
his sake she remained single. I 
have always been her favorite, but, 
beyond giving me presents and 
putting by yearly savings for a 



508 



Our Christmas Club. 



small future fund, she was not able 
to provide for me as I know she 
had wished. Of course, grateful 
as I was to her for her intentions, 
I disliked the idea of even meeting 
the girl she destined for my wife, 
and not until I got to the house, 
early last January, did she tell me 
that her niece was staying with her. 
She is an abrupt, old-fashioned, 
eccentric woman, who hides her 
kind-heartedness under a gruff way- 
wardness which does not deceive 
her neighbors, and, altogether, it is 
quite the fashion in her neighbor- 
hood to humor her in any new 
whim she may take up. 

" The place is very comfortable, 
small and quaint, picturesque but 
not untidy, and very home-like, 
while the grounds are well kept, 
the trees especially cared for, and 
masses of bright-colored but not 
rare flowers fill up certain spaces 
on the lawn. One of my godmo- 
ther's hobbies is the perfection of 
mediocrity if that is not a contra- 
diction. She hates and scorns all 
attempt at possessing or cultivating 
rarities of any sort; she abominates 
show, modern contrivances, French 
cookery, tropical plants and fruits, 
foreign furniture, water-color paint- 
ings anything and everything that 
is not commonplace, unpretending, 
well seasoned by custom. She wears 
the dress of her own youth 
without the powder, however, and 
using dark colors instead of showy 
ones and her butler is seen in the 
morning in a calico striped jacket. 
She sees to her housekeeping her- 
self, and keeps the keys in the 
orthodox manner ; and her cook is 
as ' plain ' and English as any one 
can desire. She says she knows 
they do these things differently in 
London, but she is too old to take 
to new ways, and she has a lurking 
suspicion that when the new-fangled 



ways that are beginning to thrust 
in the thin end of the wedge have 
conquered, as they may in another 
generation or two, there will be 
little left to distinguish the English 
girl from the foreign, and modesty, 
honesty, arid truth will be things 
for polite society to laugh at. I 
think you will all agree with me 
that she is not far from right ; only, 
as she brings, up her nieces (she 
has several) in these principles, it is 
likely she will secure a few succes- 
sors of the right kind before society 
goes to pieces. 

"Well, I was installed at Mickle- 
ton Hall as manager protein., and in- 
troduced to the dreaded heiress and 
another young girl, a poor relation 
of my godmother, who was staying 
with her, chiefly as companion ; for 
the girl was an orphan and penni- 
less, and the old lady was too proud 
to allow her to go out as a gover- 
ness. I found fewer servants in 
the house than I had expected, and 
they were all old and had lived 
there as long as their mistress. The 
stables were, I thought, rather 
poorly organized, and I should 
have liked to add a young and 
smart * helper ' to the old groom and 
coachman; but Miss Mickletonsoon 
gave me to understand that the 
house was no part of my business : 
it was only the estate she wanted 
set to rights and put on a better 
footing. So I worked ; and I can 
tell you it was no sinecure, for the 
books had been kept for years in a 
slovenly manner, and there was 
much out-door work to be done, 
which was the pleasantest part of 
the task surveying and revaluing 
of farms, repairing roads and farm- 
buildings, systematically cutting 
down trees in some places and 
planting and transplanting in oth- 
ers. The girls sometimes went 
with me to see the improvements, 



Our Christmas Club. 



509 



and we rode or walked according 
as the distance was ; for myself I 
had a horse always at my disposal 
for the real work, though my god- 
mother unaccountably objected to 
my riding to hounds, much . less 
joining the hunt, and never asked 
any one to dinner' in a word, seem- 
ed to object to my meeting her 
neighbors. She was so free from 
ordinary old-maidishness, and had 
always been so sympathetic about 
my boyish pursuits and scrapes, that 
her wish to shut me out of social 
enjoyments now was quite a puz- 
zle to me. However, I saw her 
nieces constantly, and the heiress 
was very pleasant and cordial, and 
seemed not unwilling to fall into her 
aunt's plan of a marriage ; though I 
must say she was never forward, 
and perhaps if I had not known she 
was the heiress, and had not had 
the other girl so constantly before 
my eyes, I might have come to ac- 
quiesce in the plan myself. But the 
other girl was all that I liked. I 
need not describe how or why she 
charmed me ; I fell in love at first 
sight, and that was reason enough. 
" As to looks, neither was any- 
thing more than a pleasant, healthy, 
bright girl, both very English-look- 
ing, with their charm altogether in 
their frank but modest manner, 
and both were thorough country- 
girls. Of course, in my eyes, my 
love was a thousand times better 
than any woman who ever walked 
the earth, as it is quite right every 
man's wife should be in his own 
sight ; but I am much too sensible," 
said Caxton, with a mischievous 
look at us poor bachelors, " to swear 
to you that she was Venus, Mi- 
nerva, and Diana rolled into one, or 
that she was one of those impos- 
sible and exasperating pieces of 
perfection with indescribable eyes 
and hair which we used to laugh at 



in the romancers. There was only 
one thing that at first seemed to me 
odd in Miss Mickleton's compan- 
ion : quiet as she was, she seemed 
to have a little more independence 
and self-composure than I should 
have supposed her unprotected po- 
sition would have made natural ; 
and, on the other hand, her cousin, 
the heiress, though dignified, had at 
times a rather shrinking, depreca- 
tory air such as we associate with 
a weak character when it is not 
accounted for by the circumstance 
of inferior position. However, I 
grew so attached to my godmother's 
companion that I soon forgot to 
notice the behavior of her other 
niece"; and my own plight began to 
worry me, too, for Miss Mickleton 
sometimes eyed me sharply, and I 
knew I was going directly against 
her wishes. The affairs of the 
place were really so entangled that 
they took up most of my time, and 
I made them a pretext for more 
solitude than they actually requir- 
ed, as I began to reflect upon the 
uselessness of my love-making. If 
I married according to my heart I 
must wait a long time for my bride ; 
and if my godmother had not set her 
heart on my marrying her heiress, 
she would have been my first confi- 
dant, and, I felt sure, would have 
made her home Ellen's for as many 
years as I needed to get together a. 
little money to start on ; besides, she 
had promised me her little hoard of 
savings that had been accumulating 
almostsincemy babyhood. But if I 
crossed her plans what indulgence 
could I expect, and how long would 
it be before she took me into her 
good graces again after I confess- 
ed my love for the wrong girl and 
disappointed her? 1 went away 
abruptly one morning in April, on 
the plea of business concerning the 
estate which might require me to 



5io 



Our Christmas Club. 



stay in London some time, looking 
up papers in the family lawyer's of- 
fice, and I stayed away as long as 
I could without exciting remark. 
Things did not look a bit the brighter, 
and, though I knew I must tell my 
godmother soon, I shrank from doing 
it, and excused myself on the plea 
that as long as I had not told Ellen 
herself, nor was even sure whether 
she loved me in return, I need not 
say anything to Miss Mickleton. 
One is naturally prone to put off 
the evil day ; and so, when I could 
stay away no longer, I made up my 
mind to be as careful as I could, 
avoid Ellen as much as possible, 
and wait for circumstances to sug- 
gest further action. 

" I succeeded pretty well for a 
month ; and then the family left for 
the seaside, and stayed at a re- 
mote, quiet place until the regular 
seaside season came on, when they 
returned and led the same quiet 
life at home again. Things on the 
estate were going satisfactorily, ex- 
cept in the matter of a troublesome 
gamekeeper, whom I more than 
suspected to be a poacher and a 
bad character besides. He did 
not belong to the neighborhood, 
and had got his place through his 
undeniable skill at driving off 
poachers and helping the head- 
keeper two years ago with sugges- 
tions and devices that had worked 
well. Still, this woodcraft did not 
mean that he was an honest man ; 
I took it rather to point to the 
contrary, and, now that it suited 
his purpose better, he was evident- 
ly in league with poachers and 
making use of his position against 
his mistress' interests. The men I 
felt sure he was drilling and stir- 
ring up were nothing but wild, 
thoughtless young fellows of the 
neighborhood ; this is only the rural 
way of sowing one's wild oats, and 



I did not mean to implicate any of 
them, if I could help it, whenever 
I should catch this man in the act. 
He was a very different sort of 
person, more lawless than thought- 
less, .and a deliberate plotter, to 
say no worse. At last I got the 
clue I wanted ; but instead of hav- 
ing the party up before the magis- 
trate, which would have implied 
exposure and punishment for our 
own misguided men and boys, I 
easily persuaded my godmother to 
give the latter a sharp warning 
against repeating the offence, while 
the keeper was to be dismissed 
and forbidden to show his face 
anywhere on the estate. He sul- 
lenly acquiesced, and, as far as we 
knew, disappeared ; but the head 
man, who was getting old and past 
work, complained to me two weeks 
later that the fellow had come 
back and would hang about, pre- 
tending to help and ignoring his 
dismissal. The other under-keep- 
er, the old man's son, was away at 
the other end of the property, tak- 
ing care of the pheasants for the 
next month's shooting, and what 
was to be done ? 

" I saw the man myself next day, 
and told him to take himself off, 
if he did not want to get into jail. 
He muttered an evasive reply, not 
too respectful, and I had some 
trouble to keep my hands, or rather 
my whip, off him; but I. did not 
want to put myself in the wrong, 
and my lawyer's training stood me 
in good stead. A few days after I 
heard he was skulking about the 
place, and had forced a farmer's 
widow to give him food and shel- 
ter. He chose the house and time 
well ; and though she knew that 
Miss Mickleton had forbidden her 
tenants to have anything to do 
with him, she dared not refuse all 
he asked, being alone in the house 



Our Christmas Club. 



with her daughter and two maids. 
After this I thought of getting a 
warrant out against him, and should 
have looked to it at once ; but some 
urgent business intervened, and I 
put it off. Two nights after, about 
the middle of . September, several 
hours after we had all gone to bed, 
I suddenly woke and heard a very 
odd, muffled noise at the end of 
the passage on which my own room 
opened, and where my godmother's 
rooms were. They formed one angle 
of the house, her bed-room being 
the outer one next the wall, and 
her sitting-room the one nearest 
me, with a dressing-room between 
the two. In the bed-room were 
two windows very convenient for a 
hasty exit, as there were no inhab- 
ited rooms below and no part of 
the ' dressed ' grounds or servants' 
offices adjoining. In the ' sitting- 
room was well known to be a box 
where Miss Mickleton had a fancy 
for keeping her jewelry and other 
miscellaneous valuables. The things 
in daily use for the table were kept 
in the pantry at the back of the 
house, and the butler had the key 
of the cupboard in his own bed- 
room, which was a long way from 
either the pantry or his mistress' 
rooms. It struck me at once that 
there were burglars in the house, 
and that they were inaking for the 
things in the sitting-room, having 
no 'doubt been already successful 
in rifling the pantry cupboard. I 
also guessed directly that my dis- 
contented gamekeeper was at the 
bottom of this, and very likely 
the instigator of the whole affair, 
which was quite unlike the sort of 
assault a genuine countryman would 
have contrived. 

" In less than five minutes I was 
at the door with two loaded pistols 
(Miss Mickleton had often object- 
ed to my keeping them), and could 



hear two men inside. They had a 
dark-lantern, which was all the 
light we had for our fray, as the 
night was pitch-dark, and rny god- 
mother always slept without the 
night-light, which she laughed at 
as a new and artificial need of ner- 
vous fools. As I opened the door 
one of the men, evidently on the 
watch, sprang on me and hit me 
a smart blow, grappling with me 
afterwards so as to engage my at- 
tention, and knocking one pistol 
out of my hand. The other bur- 
glar went to the window and has- 
tily dropped a bag. I wrenched 
myself free from my opponent just 
in time to fire my other pistol at 
his confederate as he turned back 
from the window. It was the 
gamekeeper. Meanwhile the other 
man picked up my fallen pistol and 
let it off at me, hitting my shoulder, 
then closed with me again. In our 
struggles I tried to edge myself 
near the window, wishing at least 
to bar the exit of either ; and just 
then my godmother appeared at 
the dressing-room door, a gaunt, 
determined, but comical figure, 
dressed in a red flannel dressing- 
gown and holding a small lamp. 
I could see she was frightened 4 
indeed, I thought her plucky not to 
have locked herself in but she was 
evidently bent on doing her best. 
The gamekeeper rushed at her 
and upset the lamp, which went 
out, then dragged her with him 
into the dressing-room, while I 
succeeded at last in getting rid of 
my man by a blow that left him 
stunned, and me free to rescue 
Miss Mickleton. They had got to 
the bed-room, where he was endea- 
voring to open the window; but my 
godmother was nowhere to be seen. 
Turning desperately as he saw me, 
he drew a knife and set his back 
against the window ; as he did so 



512 



Our Christmas Club. 



Miss Mickleton's watch and chain, 
with the key of her treasure-box 
attached, fell from his pocket. I 
heard a scamper below and a stir 
in the sitting-room ; but I could 
only do one thing at a time, and to 
detain as well as punish my man 
was my chief aim. I wrenched the 
knife out of his grasp not before 
he wounded my left arm with it 
and, using it myself, wounded him 
in the side ; but I found it in my 
way and threw it behind the bed, 
at the same time bringing him down 
on his back and trying the same 
blow which had effectually quieted 
the other. A second blow left him 
quite unconscious, whereupon I 
bound him as fast as I could with 
the bed-clothes and a couple of 
stout curtain-ropes which, because 
they were old-fashioned and a pro- 
test against flimsy decoration, my 
godmother would never replace by 
anything more elegant. I groped 
my way back to the sitting-room, 
where the dark-lantern stood alight 
on the floor, showing me the other 
man, who had recovered his senses 
enough to try and crawl out of the 
window, but had evidently fallen 
back, as he lay in a different posi- 
tion from that in which I had left 
him. He was almost insensible 
again, so I had no trouble in tying 
his hands and feet securely, and 
then went to search for my god- 
mother. She was lying in one 
corner of the bed-room, which was 
rather large, and I found her bruis- 
ed, but otherwise all right. 

"The burglar had tried to gag 
her by stuffing a large silk hand- 
kerchief into her mouth, and had 
also knocked her about a good 
deal with his fists ; but though his 
intention had evidently been to 
tie the handkerchief so as to pre- 
vent her calling' for help, and to 
tie her hands as well, he had not 



time, as he heard me coming after 
him, and he had then thrown her 
violently on the floor and done his 
best to get out of the window in 
time. The blow had made her feel 
giddy, and when she could hear 
again the man and I were strug- 
gling; but she still felt too faint to 
rise, and mere shrieking was use- 
less. She told me I had saved her 
life, and thanked 1 me with all her 
old heartiness ; but by this time 
the men-servants, shaking in their 
shoes, were gathered round us, and 
we said no more. I got the two 
men locked up in my own room,, 
and set the most collected of the 
servants, the stable * helper ' and 
the * odd man,' to watch them with 
loaded pistols, while a messen- 
ger went off after a magistrate, and 
others were sent to track the third 
confederate, who had made off with 
the plunder while the rest remain- 
ed behind. He never turned up, 
but the heavy articles, which he 
managed to carry some distance, 
were found in a hiding-place to 
which our prisoners afterwards di- 
rected us. As to many smaller and 
costlier things, they are unrecovered 
yet, and, had I not interrupted the 
burglars, they might have emptied 
Miss Mickleton's little receptacle. 
As it was, they made away with all 
the most valuable and portable of 
the contents. The prisoners were 
put into jail and confessed their 
plan. The two strangers were ' pro- 
fessionals ' from a large town in 
the next county, where the game- 
keeper had made their acquain- 
tance in jail some years previous, 
and the attempt had been planned 
by himself, quite as much in re- 
venge as from covetousness. He 
knew the ins and outs of the house, 
as he had a sweetheart among the 
maids ; but he voluntarily added 
that she had not helped him, even 



Our Christmas Club. 



513 



f( 

i 



unconsciously, in this attempt at 
robbery. He had got a false key 
for the pantry cupboard from a 
wax mould, and had trusted to 
chance to get at the key of Miss 
Mickleton's box, which he knew 
she habitually wore on her watch- 
chain. Having rifled the pantry, 
he came up a back staircase which 
led into our passage by a second 
narrow corridor midway between 
my room and my godmother's. He 
and his friends each brought knives, 
but thought pistols too noisy, and 
trusted to their fists to supplement 
their other weapons ; they swore 
that they had intended no mur- 
der, even in the case of discovery. 
Not many believed that statement, 
though Miss Mickleton said that 
the keeper sparing her when he 
might have stabbed her was a fact 
in his favor. He had gone bare- 
foot into her room, the doors stand- 
ing open, and found the watch and 
hain on a table by her bedside ; 
the curtains were drawn, and he 
thought he had not waked her. 
She said herself that she heard no 
noise until he was at work in the 
sitting-room, emptying the box, and 
this had scarcely begun when she 
heard me. That is all as far as 
we know, for the trial does not 
come off till next assizes, though 
there is little doubt of the verdict. 
The police are doing their best to 
track the missing man and recover 
the plunder. But the best of the 
affair was that it ended my per- 
plexity and set everything straight. 
My godmother insisted on saying 
I had saved her life, and the girls 
tearfully chimed in with her and 
did their best to make a fool of me, 
and altogether it was a very touch- 
ing domestic scene, under the in- 
fluence of which I thought it right, 
and perhaps not inopportune, to 
make my unwelcome confession to 
VOL. xxx. 33 



Miss Mickleton, who was in the 
mood to forgive me anything and 
to heap upon me any reward I 
liked to ask. Of course I had 
done nothing but what any man 
would have done ; but, since circum- 
stances favored me, I thought it as 
well to take advantage of them, and 
the day after the affair, when the 
excitement was still at its height, 
I had a private talk with my god- 
mother. She made believe to be 
very angry; but I felt she was not 
in earnest, and told her so, though 
I admitted she had every right to 
be, considering how I had gone 
counter to her wishes under her 
very eyes. Then she burst out 
laughing, and told me, to my con- 
fusion, how I had fallen into the 
snare, and how she had outwitted 
me after all; for Ellen, whom I 
had taken for her poor companion, 
was the very girl she had destined 
for me, while Mary was in reality 
the poor girl. She had wanted to 
try me, and had with difficulty per- 
suaded her nieces to change places. 
I was bewildered, and rather angry 
in my turn. I did not like Ellen 
lending herself to such tricks, and 
yet the upshot was so lucky for me 
that I felt it was ungrateful of me 
to resent my godmother's fancies. 
I began to see why she had want- 
ed me to seclude myself so much, 
and why she would have no new 
servants about the house ; pretty 
nearly all the household were more 
or less in the secret, and, happy 
though I was, I felt very awkward. 
It was lucky that our domestic 
puzzle should be so overshadowed 
by the burglary excitement as not 
to be necessarily the prominent 
thing; otherwise I think I should 
have run away, the predicament 
seemed to me so ludicrously un- 
pleasant. The good taste of both 
the girls, however, made things pass 



Our Christmas Club. 



quite naturally into their regular 
order, and by degrees the mystifica- 
tion came to be looked upon as 
a joke, harmless after all, though 
only excused by my godmother's 
known eccentricity. My wounds 
took a little time to heal, and the 
womenkind took the occasion to 
make a pet and a hero of me, while 
Ellen would help me and serious- 
ly, too with the estate accounts, 
which she soon learnt to handle as 
well as a lawyer. We were to have 
been married in November, so as 
to be at home again for Christmas ; 
but something put it off, and we 
were not married till four days ago. 
As things had turned out, I determin- 
ed to keep my appointment to-night, 
and, remembering a little cottage on 
the outskirts of Glasgow, I took it 
for our honeymoon ; my wife was 
delighted at the idea of the club 
and its meeting to-night, and was 
as eager as myself to be in time. 
Coaches are slow now and then, 
and the snows of these regions can- 
not always be counted upon; in 
Devonshire we are almost free from 
them. I am afraid my godmother 
was disappointed at our leaving 
home at this time ; but Ellen had 
never been north, and she was wild 
for a change and a frolic. She ex- 
pects you all to-morrow evening 
for a real English Christmas din- 
ner not that we can give you any- 
think better than you have given 
to-night to the member whom you 
must, by our rules, have looked 
upon as dead." 

Here the shouting and laughter 
which had more than once inter- 
rupted his story were renewed, and 
rose to a roar that the president 
had some trouble to quell ; but the 
shakings of hands, the loud con- 
gratulations, thanks, and accep- 



tances went on, together with the 
heartiest blessings on Edward's 
bride, whom we all voted the great 
exception to the horrid primness 
of young wives, ever ready to snub 
their husbands' unlucky bachelor 
friends and interfere with the 
pleasure of good-fellowship. When 
we parted, and Caxton found I had 
to walk back, to my country home, 
he insisted on my going with him 
to the cottage and staying until 
after the dinner, when he would 
drive me home comfortably, by as 
broad ..daylight as we could com- 
mand. I did not like to intrude 
on his honeymoon, but he overrul- 
ed me, and the temptation was 
great. I found his wife all he had 
painted her ; and the next night, 
when we reassembled, all the club 
fell in love with her, and vowed 
never to marry until each could 
find as hearty and sensible and 
pleasant a wife as Caxton's. (Alas ! 
two of us fell victims to shrews, and 
never dared show their faces at the 
meetings in after-years.) Well, this 
is a very old story, and things are 
greatly changed since those times; 
only four of the club are alive now, 
and we are all grandfathers. Last 
Christmas we met at Caxton's place 
in Devonshire, each with a dozen 
or so of young relations, and we 
had a charming hour after dinner, 
going over the details of the bur- 
glary on the spot, to the intense 
excitement of the younglings ; the 
only change in my friend's god- 
mother's rooms being that Caxton 
and his wife occupy them in place 
of the quaint and kindly old wo- 
man who was once their mistress. 
I must not forget to say that Mary, 
Miss Mickleton's companion, has 
been my wife for nearly forty 
years. 



The American Side of the School Question. 



51$ 



THE AMERICAN SIDE OF THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 



MR. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, 
JR., in some recent papers upon 
educational topics, makes the re- 
mark that " the common schools 
are the one thing in regard to 
which there is no division of opin- 
ion in America." Has, then, the 
controversy that has so long ex- 
isted, on this subject been finally 
settled ? Surely Catholics form a 
very considerable portion of the 
American people, and it is well 
known that in the past their views 
on the public schools have not been 
in perfect accord with the views of 
their Protestant fellow-citizens, as 
is shown by the discussions that 
have been held, as well as by many 
articles that have appeared in this 
magazine. Have Catholics at last 
laid down their arms, acknowledging 
themselves worsted in the struggle, 
and determined to quietly accept 
the present system of public in- 
struction ? By no means. We 
have not wavered one jot or tittle 
from our former position the only 
position that we can consistently 
and conscientiously take. We are 
just as ready now as ever before to 
maintain the propositions on this 
question that have been set forth in 
THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and these 
propositions we shall continue to 
maintain and defend, in the hope 
that eventually the American spirit 
of fair play will' give us what we 
claim as our just rights. 

If Mr. Adams had made the as- 
sertion that upon the necessity of 
free education for our children 
there is no division of opinion in 
America, he would have said no 
more than the simple truth. The 
fact that the people of this country 
" lavish appropriations " upon the 



public schools, and the fact that 
these schools are frequented by 
children of all classes and creeds, 
only go to prove that education, 
and not necessarily this particular 
system of education, is looked upon 
as the "ark of the national salva- 
tion." As has been said recently 
by the vicar-general of the arch- 
diocese of Boston : " Our use of 
the public schools, or our co-ope- 
ration in carrying them on, when 
given with a view of correcting the 
evils in them, cannot fairly be con- 
strued into an approval of them. I 
can use a poor road in the absence 
of a better, without being said to 
approve the bad construction of 
the road, or the ruts that infest it.'* 
But the strongest proof that Ca- 
tholics do not favor the public- 
school system is that by its side 
throughout the land has grown up 
another system, that of our paro- 
chial schools. The Catholics of 
the United States, although they 
are mainly of the poorest class, are 
able, while paying their school-tax 
to the government, to support at 
the same time about twenty-five 
hundred schools, which have an at- 
tendance of upwards of five hundred 
thousand children. They could not 
in a more forcible manner show their 
disapproval of the public schools. 
And yet, in the face of this living 
protest, it is asserted that upon the 
common schools " there is no di- 
vision of opinion in America." 
How is it possible, when such facts 
are manifest to the eyes of all, that 
a man of Mr. Adams' standing and 
intelligence could make such a 
statement ? What are we to think of 
a public opinion which thus ignores 
so large a body of our citizens ? 



The American Side of the School Question. 



But our parochial schools, be- 
sides being a protest against the 
evils of the public-school system, 
also show that Catholics are not 
a whit behind their fellow-citizens 
in their zeal for education. On 
the contrary, they are rather ahead, 
because they not only give their 
share to the support of the public 
schools, but maintain their own 
schools besides. We do not know 
how far the Independent is author- 
ized to interpret General Grant's 
recent speech at Burlington, Iowa. 
Its words are these : " When Presi- 
dent Grant says that the next war 
in America is likely to be between 
intelligence and ignorance, he does 
not mean, we may tell some sensi- 
tive journals, between Protestants 
and Catholics, but between social 
order and communism. In that 
contest there is no doubt, thank 
God ! where good Catholics will be 
found." We hope that this may be 
the general's real meaning. But if 
it should not be, we, on our part, are 
sure that the cause of " ignorance 
and superstition " will never be our 
own. 

All are agreed that education is 
a necessity. It is the highest in- 
terest of the state to see that its 
citizens should be sufficiently edu- 
cated. All the civilized peoples of 
the earth to-day realize that one of 
the surest ways of strengthening 
the nation, of furthering its ma- 
terial prosperity, is to educate it. 
The road to national greatness is 
national intelligence. Even little 
Iceland, old in history yet young 
in progress, has awakened to a 
consciousness of this great need. 
Japan, by means of education re- 
ceived from foreign masters, is 
rapidly advancing in the way of 
civilization. 

But in no country of the world is 
he necessity of education more 



deeply felt than in our own, for in 
no country do the people enjoy so 
large a share in the government. 
Universal suffrage demands univer- 
sal education, else it might prove 
to be a curse rather than a blessing. 
Ignorant voters become an easy 
prey to demagogues. In order, 
then, that those who are growing up 
in this country may be able in the 
future to exercise intelligently the 
right of suffrage and the other 
duties of citizenship, at least a cer- 
tain amount of elementary educa- 
tion is necessary. We therefore 
willingly grant that it is both the 
right and the duty of the' state to 
see that such an education is given. 
We say not only the right but also 
the duty, for the duty of self-pre- 
servation binds the state as well as 
the individual, and therefore the 
state is as much bound to take all 
lawful means to secure its perma- 
nence and well-being as a man is to 
preserve his life and health. It is 
through a realization of this duty 
that our government has establish- 
ed our present system of public in- 
struction. Its aim in this institu- 
tion is to furnish to each and all of 
the children under its jurisdiction 
such elementary knowledge as is 
necessary and sufficient to make 
them good citizens of the republic. 
Now, if this end be attained, the 
state need have no concern as to 
the peculiar method by which, or 
the persons by whom, such instruc- 
tion is imparted. Provided the 
end be compassed, the means of its 
accomplishment must be to the state 
an altogether secondary considera- 
tion. If, then, persons come for- 
ward who offer to give such educa- 
tion, and who guarantee that their 
instruction shall be all that the 
state requires, that it shall be quite 
as satisfactory as that now given in 
the public schools and at less cost, 



The American Side of tke School Question. 



517 



we maintain that the state is bound, 
in the interest of its citizens, to ac- 
cept their offer. 

Such an offer is made by the 
Catholics of the United States. 
Our parochial schools are able to 
give as good primary instruction 
at least as that given in the public 
schools, and, if in some cases they 
now fall below that standard, it is 
owing to the disadvantages under 
which our poor people are labor- 
ing in having to support two sys- 
tems. Let the state give us fair 
play, and, itself being the judge, 
pay us according to the results. 
We can safely guarantee that our 
teaching shall be all that is de- 
manded to make our children good 
citizens. 

The first reason why the state 
should accept this offer is that it 
would be less expensive than the 
present system, and would thus 

I cause a diminution of the school- 
tax. That it would relieve from a 
great burden those Catholics who 
are now maintaining their own 
schools, while at the same time 
paying their taxes for the support 
of the other system, is self-evident. 
But it would lessen the cost of 
education chiefly in the important 
item of teachers' salaries. Here 
is a large body of men and women 
who have devoted their lives to 
teaching, with God's glory alone 
in view, asking for no earthly re- 
ward. For them it is enough if 
they get what is necessary for their 
daily subsistence ; and their rule 
of life obliges them to live simply. 
There is a vast difference between 
paying one hundred or one hun- 
dred and fifty dollars a year, more 
or less, to a Christian Brother or 
a Sister of Charity, and from five 
hundred to twelve hundred dollars 
to a secular teacher. Here is large 
room for economy. The state, 



then, in its own interests and for 
the good of all its citizens, should 
accept this offer. 

We are advocating what may be 
called the " voluntary system." If 
such a system be practical it would 
certainly be more in harmony with 
the spirit of freedom fostered by 
our political institutions, and for 
this reason : The state, while in 
this way fulfilling its own duties, 
would leave untrammelled the sa- 
cred rights of parents. To parents 
belongs primarily the right of edu- 
cating their children as they think 
fit. The family is a divine insti- 
tution, and parents are educators 
by divine right. The state can 
only be justified in interfering 
when parents are manifestly neg- 
lecting their duty in this respect. 
For the state, therefore, to try to 
force parents to adopt a system of 
education which their consciences 
cannot approve of, is tyranny, not 
freedom, and is entirely contrary 
to the spirit of our free institutions. 
By the voluntary system parents 
would be left perfectly free to send 
their children to schools of their 
own choice. Such a system would 
not only be a vast saving to the 
state, but would also be more in 
accordance with the principles up- 
on which our republic is based. 

Another reason in favor of this 
proposal is that the public schools 
are at present inadequate to their 
end. They leave a large number 
of children unprovided for, and 
those of the very class that is most 
in need of instruction. In New 
York City alone, were every seat 
filled in the so-called common 
schools, there would yet remain a 
surplus of forty thousand children 
who would be excluded. And 
what is true of New York is true 
proportionately of each of our large 
cities. Everywhere and this has 



518 



The American Side of the School Question. 



been the fact for years past the 
school-population is in advance of 
the school-accommodations. Just 
here our parish schools come in 
to partially supply this deficiency. 
That they are now unable to do 
so wholly is owing to the want of 
funds. Adopt the voluntary sys- 
tem, and those children now un- 
cared for will be brought under the 
influence of education. This need 
is all the more urgent because 
from this surplus is recruited what 
are called the " dangerous classes." 
On its own principles, then, and 
with a due regard to its preserva- 
tion and well-being, the state is 
bound to favor any method that 
will better this class intellectually, 
socially, and morally. Those who 
reproach Catholics with having 
more than their share of the crimi- 
nal class should examine how far 
they are responsible for Catholic 
inability to cope with this difficul- 
ty. Let them do Catholics justice, 
and then judge of the results. All 
who have our country's interests 
deeply at heart will surely be with 
us in our desire to train to habits 
of virtue and integrity this much- 
neglected class. Why, then, will 
they not listen to our just demands? 
It has been shown that the offer 
we make is highly advantageous to 
the state, and more in accordance 
with American principles. Will 
the advocates of our public-school 
system give us their real reasons, 
:as American citizens, why such an 
offer is not acceptable ? 

It has been asked whether our 
object is to make our children more 
loyal to the republic or to keep 
them more loyal to their church. 
In other words : Is it our aim to 
make them better citizens or to 
keep them good Catholics? We 
answer : Both. The two ends are 
identical. By keeping them good 



Catholics we shall make them bet- 
ter citizens. By keeping them 
more loyal to the church we shall 
make them more loyal to the state. 
The church inculcates the duty of 
loyalty to the government as a part 
of the duty of a good Christian, 
teaching that human government 
has a divine sanction. E-ducation 
is worthless without morality, and 
morality impossible without reli- 
gion. To make thoroughly good 
citizens we must supply this short- 
coming of merely secular educa- 
tion. It is in order that we may 
make our children better citizens 
that we ask for state aid. In loy- 
alty to the state, in the love of 
American principles, in readiness 
to serve our country in times of 
trial, we have yielded and will 
yield to none. The history of the 
United States, from the Revolution 
to the present day, is full of Ca- 
tholic names borne by men who 
have deserved well of their coun- 
try, and we are eager to do all in 
our power to make our record as 
glorious in the future as it has been 
in the past. 

It might be objected that the 
method of education we propose 
would destroy the public schools. 
Such an objection proves too 
much. If the state, by favoring the 
voluntary system, would destroy 
the public schools, this would 
show that these schools had not 
been acceptable to the great body 
of our people. It would show that 
the state had been forcing this sys- 
tem upon the people against their 
will and better judgment. But we 
do not believe this. Both systems 
could be maintained side by side. 
There would always be a large 
body of citizens who would prefer 
the public schools to any others, 
and would support them alone. 
Let, then, the public schools re- 



On Mans Destiny. 



519 



main for those who are satisfied 
with them. All we claim is that 
freedom of choice in this matter 
which is the right and heritage of 
American citizens. 

But then comes another ques- 
tion : Is the voluntary system 
practicable ? Why not ? It has 
succeeded in England, in France, 
in Austria, and in Prussia until 
the Falk Laws came to upset mat- 
ters. The Prussians, however, are 
already showing signs of being 
tired of those laws. These Euro- 
pean countries are in this respect 
far ahead of us. The only reason 
why this method should not suc- 
ceed here would be some suppos- 
ed incompatibility with our insti- 
tutions. It has been repeatedly 
shown that no such incompatibility 



exists. On the contrary, the pre- 
sent system is plainly in violation 
of those rights of conscience which 
Americans boast are here respected 
and upheld. When our republic 
shall imitate, upon this question of 
education, the liberal example set 
us by the nations of the Old World, 
our religious freedom, which " in 
its fullest sense is paramount to the 
interests of any party," will be 
something more than a name. 

We ask, then, the defenders of 
the public-school system, as Ameri- 
can citizens, as lovers of true reli- 
gious freedom, as upholders of the 
equal rights before the state of all. 
religions, to give us their real rea- 
sons why our offer is not accep- 
table. 



ON MAN'S DESTINY. 



EVERY intellectual substance na- 
turally craves after the clear vision 
of the Infinite as the only object 
really capable of satisfying its es- 
sential faculties. Nothing short of 
infinite and absolute Truth immedi- 
ately perceived can fill the aspira- 
tion of the intellect ; as nothing 
less than infinite Goodness, possessed 
in itself, can satiate the boundless 
craving of the will. 

This truth we set down with 
sufficient evidence in our last arti- 
cle on the same subject.* But as 
this question is of fundamental im- 
portance, and serves, as it were, as 
a link f which weds together in 



* See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, August, 1879 : 
*' What was the Primitive State of Man ?" 

+ Pere Gratry, in his Connaissance de Dieu, 
proves the necessity of a supernatural revelation 
from the natural craving of man after God's imme- 
diate vision. 3 



beautiful harmony the natural and 
the supernatural, it will not be un- 
acceptable, we trust, to the readers 
of THE CATHOLIC WORLD if we 
return to the subject, put it in a 
clearer and brighter light, and ex- 
hibit it in all the evidence with 
which some of the doctors of the 
church and a host of theologians 
have surrounded it. 

We propose, therefore, in this 
article to discuss the following 
points : 

ist. Is it true that there is a 
natural, inborn desire in man after 
the vision of God's infinite essence, 
so that we may conclude that such 
immediate vision, and nothing else, 
is the natural end of man ? 

2d. What is the nature of such 
desire ? 

3d. Is the supernatural state, 



520 



On Mans Destiny. 



without which man could not at- 
tain his end, due to him by any 
title or claim of justice ? 

4th. Has the opinion which we 
hold any affinity whatever with the 
condemned errors of Baius and 
Quesnel, or has the church ever 
looked upon it with any signs of 
disapprobation ? 

The first question we answer 
with the authority of St. Thomas 
and some of the best theologians 
of every school. 

In his Summa contra Gentes^ lib. 
iii., St. Thomas, treating this ques- 
tion ex-professo, proves by a chain 
.of propositions, one depending upon 
the other, that man naturally craves 
after the Beatific Vision as his own 
ultimate end, and that nothing less 
than God, seen in his essence, can 
satisfy that craving. We subjoin 
his demonstration. He sets out 
with the general proposition that 
to understand God is the end of 
every intellectual substance, and 
proves it thus : The ultimate end 
of everything is God, as we have 
shown (ch. xviii.) Every being, 
therefore, tends to unite itself to 
God, its ultimate end, as closely as 
possible. Now, a being is more 
closely united to God when it 
comes somewhat in contact with 
him (as in the case of one who 
knows something of the divine sub- 
stance) than when merely attain- 
ing a certain similitude of him. 
Therefore every intellectual sub- 
stance tends to the knowledge of 
God as its ultimate end (lib. iii. 
ch. xxv.) 

Again, the specific operation of 
any being is its end, because the 
end is the second perfection of the 
being. Now, to understand is the 
specific operation of every intel- 
lectual substance. It is, therefore, 
its end. Hence that which is the 
most perfect in such operation is 



its last end ; and this is especially 
true of those operations which do 
not regard things to be done, such 
as to feel and to understand. Now, 
such operations receiving their spe- 
cific form from their object, by 
means of which they are also 
known, it necessarily follows that 
they are the more perfect in pro- 
portion as their object is more per- 
fect; and thus to understand the 
most perfect intelligible, which is 
God, is the most perfect act in the 
species of intellectual operations. 
To know God, therefore, by the 
intellect is the end of every intel- 
lectual substance (ibidem). 

Having laid down this general 
proposition, that the end of every 
intellectual substance is to know 
God, St. Thomas proceeds to in- 
quire, In what kind of knowledge 
are we to place man's last end ? (ch. 
xxxviii.), and in a series of proposi- 
tions he rejects every kind of know- 
ledge, short of the vision of God's es- 
sence, as unfit to be the end of man. 
First he rejects that kind of con- 
fused and vague knowledge which 
most men have of God, in more or 
less degree, as being full of errors, 
whereas happiness must be an act 
pure of all errors (ch. xxxviii.) Then 
he rejects that knowledge of God 
which is attained by demonstration, 
because this kind of knowledge 
cannot be attained by all, because 
it is progressive, because it can be 
accompanied by misery, because 
not absolutely certain, and the last 
happiness of man must be a boon 
within the reach of all; it must not 
be progressive, pure of all unhap- 
piness and misery, and absolutely 
certain (ch. xxxix.) Then the holy 
doctor rejects that knowledge of 
God which we acquire by faith ; 
because by this knowledge the na- 
tural desire is not quieted but very 
much increased, and the last hap- 



On Mans Destiny. 



521 



piness must quiet the natural desire. 
" Per felicitatem quum sit ulti- 
mus finis naturale desiderium quie- 
tatur. Cognitio autem fidei non 
quietat desiderium, sed magis ipsum 
accendit, quia unusquisque deside- 
rat videre quod credit. Non est 
igitur in cognitione fidei ultima 
hominis felicitas " (ch. xl.) From 
these propositions St. Thomas con- 
cludes that happiness cannot be 
had in this life, as there is no other 
kind of knowledge attainable in it 
(ch. xlviii.), and sums up as fol- 
lows : 

" If the ultimate human happiness 
does not consist in that knowledge of God 
which is possessed by all or many ac- 
cording to a certain confused estima- 
tion ; nor, again, in that knowledge of 
God by which he is known by means of 
demonstration in speculative sciences ; 
nor in the knowledge which we obtain by 
faith, as we have demonstrated ; and it be- 
ing impossible in this life to attain a high- 
er knowledge of God, such as to make him 
known by his essence ; and it being equal- 
ly necessary to place the last happiness 
in a certain knowledge of God it fol- 
lows that it is impossible to obtain man's 
ultimate happiness in this life, and that, 
therefore, man's ultimate happiness must 
consist in such a knowledge of God which 
the human mind has after this life, in the 
manner according to which separated 
substances know him : Erit igitur ulti- 
ma felicitas hominis in cognitione Dei 
quam habet humana mens post hanc 
vitam, per modum quo ipsum cognoscunt 
substantiae separatse " (ch. xlviii.) 

Nor does the holy doctor stop 
here, but proceeds to inquire 
whether this same knowledge, by 
which angels and the souls after 
death know God by means of their 
own essences, be sufficient to con- 
stitute their last happiness (ch. xlix.) 
and, having shown the nature of 
such knowledge, comes to prove (in 
ch. 1.) that the natural desire of 
separated substances is not satis- 
fied by such natural knowledge 
" In naturali cognitione quarn ha- 



bent substantise separatse de Deo,, 
non quiescit earum naturale desi- 
derium " and goes on to prove it 
by the following arguments, which 
we beg our readers to ponder over, 
as they form the very essence of 
the demonstration : 

"ist. Whatever is imperfectin any 
species desires to arrive at the per- 
fection of the species, as he who 
has only an opinion about some- 
thing, which is only an imperfect 
notion of the thing, is urged by 
this very fact to arrive at the sci- 
ence of the same thing. Now, the 
knowledge which separated sub- 
stances have of God, not including 
a full knowledge of his substance, 
is an imperfect knowledge, because 
we never think we know something 
unless we know the substance 
thereof, in consequence of which 
principle, we consider that the prin- 
cipal point in the knowledge of any- 
thing is to know what it is. Conse- 
quently, from the knowledge which 
separated substances have of God 
their natural desire is not satisfied, 
but rather incited to seek the vision 
of the divine substance." 

" Again : From knowing an ef- 
fect there arises in us a desire to 
know its cause the reason why 
men began to philosophize by in- 
quiring into the causes of things. 
Therefore the desire of knowing, 
naturally inborn in all intellectual 
substances, is not satisfied except 
in the case when, having known the 
substance of an effect, it comes to 
know also the substance of its 
cause. Consequently, by the rea- 
son that separated substances know 
the substances of all things of 
which they perceive God to be the 
cause, their natural desire is not 
quieted until they come to see the 
substance of God himself." 

"Again: Nothing finite can sat- 
isfy the craving of the intellect a 



522 



On Mans Destiny. 



truth which appears from the fact 
that, given a finite object, it still 
endeavors to apprehend something 
further ; hence, given a finite line, it 
still endeavors to apprehend a lon- 
ger one. And the same must be said 
as to numbers a fact which ^ex- 
plains the addition ad infinitum in 
number^ and lines in mathematics. 
Now, the height and power of 
created substances is finite. There- 
fore the intellect of separated sub- 
stances is not quieted by knowing 
created substances, however great 
and eminent they may be, but still, 
by a natural desire, it strives to 
reach that substance which is of 
infinite greatness, such as the di- 
vine substance." 

"Again: The nearer a being is to 
its end the greater is the desire by 
which it strives to reach it ; hence 
we cbserve that the natural move- 
ment of bodies is accelerated to- 
wards the end to which it is direct- 
ed. Now, the intellect of separat- 
ed substances is nearer to the di- 
vine knowledge than our intellect. 
With much greater intensity, there- 
fore, does it crave after God's 
knowledge. But we, though know- 
ing God's existence and all other 
things spoken of above, are not 
satisfied, but still yearn after the 
knowledge of God's essence. With 
much greater reason, therefore, do 
separate substances naturally yearn 
after the same thing. Hence their 
natural desire is not quieted with 
the above knowledge. From all 
this we must conclude, says St. 
Thomas, that the ultimate happiness 
of separated substances cannot con- 
sist in that knowledge by which 
they know God through their sub- 
stances, since their natural desire 
still urges them to attain God's sub- 
stance. From which reason it is also 
sufficiently manifest that we can- 
not seek for the ultimate happiness 



in anything else than in an act of 
the intellect ; since no desire as- 
pires to such a height, as the crav- 
ing for understanding the truth, 
because all our desires, either after 
pleasure or after something else 
which men may have, may be satis- 
fied by other things ; but the desire 
spoken of is not quieted until it 
reaches the supreme Origin and 
Creator of all things." 

" Erubescant igitur. qui felici- 
tatem hominis tam altissime sitam 
in infimis rebus quaerunt." 

Let the reader take in the whole 
demonstration at a glance before 
we record the last conclusion of 
St. Thomas. He starts with the 
general proposition that to under- 
stand God is the ultimate end of ev- 
ery intellectual substance (ch. xxv.) 
Then he inquires what sort of know- 
ledge can be such an end, and first 
he proves that the ultimate end of 
every intellectual substance can- 
not be that vague, confused know- 
ledge which most men have of God 
(ch. xxxviii.) ; he proceeds to prove 
that this happiness cannot consist in 
the knowledge of God which is arriv- 
ed at by means of demonstration or 
abstractive knowledge (ch. xxxix.) ; 
then he maintains that it cannot 
consist in the knowledge of God 
which we acquire by faith (ch. xl.) ; 
whereupon the holy doctor con- 
cludes, as there is no other kind 
of knowledge of God we are ac- 
quainted with attainable in this life, 
we must arrive at the conclusion 
that man's last happiness cannot 
consist in any knowledge attainable 
here, but must be in such a know- 
ledge as separated substances have 
(ch. xlviii.) But after stating what 
kind of knowledge separated sub- 
stances naturally possess (ch. xlix.) ; 
he proceeds to demonstrate (in ch. 
1.) that the natural desire of sep- 
arated substances is not satisfied 



On -Mans Destiny. 



523 



in their natural knowledge of God, 
but aspires to the vision of his 
essence, and (in ch. li.) draws the 
general conclusion of his whole de- 
monstration as follows : It being 
impossible that the natural desire 
should remain void (which would 
be the case if it were not possible 
to arrive at the intelligencing of 
God's substance a thing which all 
minds naturally desire), we must 
affirm the possibility of God's sub- 
stance being seen, by means of the 
intellect, both by the separated in- 
tellectual substances and by our 
souls. " Quum autem impossibile 
sit naturale desiderium esse inane 
(quod quidem esset si non esset 
, possibile pervenire ad divinam sub- 
stantiam intelligendam, quod na- 
turaliter omnes mentes desiderani], 
necesse est dicere quod possibile 
est substantiam Dei videri per in- 
tellectum, et a substantiis intellec- 

Itualibus separatis, et ab animabus 
nostris." Can there be in the whole 
range of human speech language 
plainer or clearer than is used by 
the holy doctor in the above pas- 
sage ? If he really had wished to 
teach, as he really did, that all in- 
tellectual substances naturally crave 
after the vision of God's essence 
as their ultimate end, could he 
have made use of more explicit 
and forcible language ? Yet if any 
confirmation of the holy doctor's 
mind upon the subject be wanting, 
and upon the correctness of the 
meaning we have put on his de- 
monstration, let the following words 
speak for themselves. In chapter 
Ivii., inquiring whether any intellect, 
whatever be its place in the scale 
of intellectual substances, can par- 
ticipate in the vision of God, he an- 
swers : We have demonstrated al- 
ready (ch. xxv.-l.) that every intel- 
lect naturally desires the vision of 
the divine substance. But the na- 



tural desire cannot be void. There- 
fore every created intellect may 
arrive at the vision of God's sub- 
stance in spite of any inferiority of 
nature. " Supra probatum est (ch. 
xxv.-l.) quod omnis intellectus na- 
turaliter desiderat divinae substan- 
tiae visionem. Naturale autem de- 
siderium non potest esse inane. 
Quilibet igitur intellectus creatus 
potest pervenire ad divinae sub- 
stantise visionem, non impediente 
inferioritate naturae (ch. Ivii.; see 
also ch. Iviii.) We want also to re- 
fer our readers to two passages of 
another work of St. Thomas, called 
Compendium Theologies. 

In these chapters (civ., cv.) the 
holy doctor expresses most clear- 
ly the same doctrine; for in the 
first, entitled Quis sit finis intellectu- 
alis creature ? he concludes in these 
words : " Such is the desire in us 
after knowledge that, once we have 
known the effect of anything, we 
are impatient to know the cause 
thereof; and having ascertained 
certain circumstances in any ob- 
ject, our desire is not satisfied until 
we come to know the essence of 
the same. Therefore our natural 
desire after knowledge cannot be 
satisfied in us until we come to 
know the first cause, and that not 
in any manner, but in its own es- 
sence." The other article has for 
its title, Quovwdo finis ultimus intel- 
lectualis creature est Deum per essen- 
tiam videre, et quomodo hoc possit ? 

We now turn to the Summa T/ieo- 
logicz, St. Thomas' best and last 
work. His question is, Whether any 
created intellect may attain to the 
vision of God's essence (Prima p., 
q. 12, art. i), and he answers as fol- 
lows : " It is to be said that an ob- 
ject being knowable in proportion 
to its actuality, it follows that God, 
being a pure act, without any mix- 
ture of potency, is in himself in the 



524 



On Marfs Destiny. 



highest possible degree knowable. 
But an object which in itself may 
be in the highest degree knowable 
may not be so relatively to some in- 
tellects in consequence of the very 
excess of its intelligibility as the 
sun, whicli is in the highest degree 
visible, cannot be seen by a bat in 
consequence of the very excess of 
its light. For this reason some have 
held that no created intellect can 
be able to see God's essence. But 
that is not rightly said ; because 
man's ultimate happiness consisting 
in his highest act, which is the act 
of the intellect, if no created intel- 
lect could ever see God two wrong 
consequences would result : either 
man would never attain his happi- 
ness, or the latter would consist 
in some object other than God 
which is contrary to faith, because 
the ultimate perfection of a rational 
creature can only be found in that 
being which gave it existence, since 
a being is only perfect when it has 
reached its own principle. 

" The same is shown by another 
reason : There is in man an in- 
born desire to know the cause of 
those effects which it observes, and 
from this fact arises admiration in 
men. If, therefore, the intellect of 
a rational creature could not arrive 
at the knowledge of the first cause, 
its natural desire would remain 
void." 

Let our readers weigh the words 
of St. Thomas well ; let them com- 
pare all the texts we have quoted ; 
let them reflect on the identity of 
the line of arguments which he uses ; 
let them ponder on the principles 
on which he rests; and if they can 
draw any other conclusion from 
his words than these two, that all 
intellectual substances naturally 
crave after the vision of God's es- 
sence, and that, therefore, in that 
vision alone is their ultimate end 



to be found, then we no longer 
perceive how the real meaning of 
an author is to be arrived at, or 
what means are at hand to enable 
us to discover it. 

In support of this opinion, that 
man's natural end consists in the 
vision of God, we have of the Tho- 
mist school Soto (lib. i. De Na- 
tura et Gratia, ch. iv. n. 8, 4 sent. r 
dist. 29, art. i, q. 2) ; also Ferra- 
riensis, Niphus, Corradus, Durandus r 
Paludanus, Contenson, and others. 
Scotus and the Scotist school hold 
the same opinion ; also the Augus- 
tinian school, with Cardinal No- 
ris, Belelli, Berti. Among modern 
theologians we quote Gerdil, De 
Fulgure, La Foret, Gratry. The 
great Bellarmine expresses the same 
opinion as follows : It is not a 
slight question whether the eter- 
nal beatitude, which consists in the 
vision of God, be man's natural or 
supernatural end. But, because the 
explanation of such question is not 
necessary for our purpose, granting 
the affirmative part, we answer that 
the beatitude is the natural end of 
man as to the desire, not as to its 
attainment.* 

Ludovicus Molina, though hold- 
ing the contrary opinion, is free 1o 
admit that ours is the common 
opinion of the schoolmen : " The 
most common opinion of the 
schoolmen asserts that there is in 
us a natural desire for the beatitude 
in particular, and that for this rea- 
son it must be called our natural 
end, not as regards its attainment 
and absolutely for in this respect 
all agree that it is supernatural 
but as to its desire and passive po- 
tency (Comment, in i partem, qu. 12, 
art. i, disp. 3). 

We take up the second question : 

* Respondeo beatitudinem finem homini natura- 
lem esse quoad appetitum, non quoad consecutio- 
nem (De Gratia primi Hominis, ch. vii.) 



On Man's Destiny. 



525 



What is the nature of such desire ? 
And, in the first place, we wish it to 
be carefully observed that in say- 
ing man has a natural, inborn desire 
after the vision of God's essence, 
we do not mean an efficacious desire 
after God's vision and after the 
supernatural means to attain it in 
other words, such a desire which a 
Christian enlightened by his faith 
may elicit because, first, such pro- 
position was condemned in the 
bull Auctorem fidei against the 
Council of Pistoia, which asserted 
that man, left to his natural light, 
could have elevated himself so far 
.as to desire supernatural light and 
help ; second, because it is false 
and absurd, since, though man's 
natural end is the vision of God's 
essence, he cannot attain to it by 
natural means, and consequently 
cannot know naturally either the 
real nature of the end, or the 
nature of the means which may be 
necessary to attain it. This be- 
longs to the supernatural order, and 
is the effect of revelation. Nor is 
this desire which we are vindicat- 
ing a feeling springing from super- 
natural charity, such as a Christian 
in the state of sanctifying grace 
may elicit as when St. Paul cried 
out, Cupio dissolviet esse cum Christo 
because such a feeling is the effect 
of the theological virtue of charity, 
which comes to man only by means 
of the supernatural state to which 
he is elevated by God's bountiful 
mercy and condescension. This 
natural desire we speak of, therefore, 
excludes all true knowledge of the 
nature of the end, and of the means 
which may be necessary to attain 
it, and has nothing whatever in 
common with that feeling of yearn- 
ing after God's bliss which springs 
from supernatural charity. The 
two are as far apart and different 
in their essence as grace and na- 



ture ; the former being altogether 
distinct from, and immensely su- 
perior to, the latter. 

In what, then, does this natural 
desire consist? It is made up of 
two elements, one negative, the 
other positive. The negative ele- 
ment has its root and origin in the 
universality of the intellect, which 
no particular truth can satisfy, not 
even an abstractive knowledge of 
the infinite and supreme Truth. 
Suppose the intellect to have the 
highest possible abstractive know- 
ledge of God ; increase it to its 
utmost limit, it always leaves the 
intellect restless and unsatisfied. 
Without a supernatural revelation 
it does not know what it wants in 
particular, or by what means it may 
get at this something which might 
fill up this void ; yet it knows that 
what it has does not satisfy it, 
nor quiet or appease its boundless 
craving ; it is conscious of a void, 
of a want which it cannot particu- 
larize. The same must be said of 
the will : no finite good can bind 
it or fill its desire ; consequently, 
though it possessed all finite good 
together, though it embraced even 
the supreme good, not in itself, but 
in the abstract and in the ideal 
state, this would leave the will still 
thirsty and unappeased. This, then, 
is the negative element of the na- 
tural desire we are speaking of; 
that void, that absence of full and 
perfect satisfaction of the intellect 
and will of man, even after the at- 
tainment of the utmost and the 
highest abstractive knowledge of 
God. The positive element is an 
inborn tendency in man, a gravi- 
tation towards God, seeking to be 
fully satisfied in his specific facul- 
ties Appetitus seu pondus naturce, 
as Suarez calls it. It is blind, to 
be sure, inasmuch as man does not 
know in particular what is this real 



526 



On Mans Destiny. 



object towards which his faculties 
gravitate, nor the means whereby 
he may attain it ; but it is no less 
real, implanted therein by the hands 
of the Creator when his omnipo- 
tent hand fashioned the nature of 
each of his creatures, and implant- 
ed therein a tendency and an im- 
petus towards their principle. 

We pass to the third point of our 
discussion. Having admitted that 
man's natural end is in the vision 
of God, in consequence of his in- 
born desire just spoken of, does it 
follow that what theologians call 
the state of pure nature that is, a 
state which supposes man to have 
been left merely with his bare na- 
ture, specific faculties, and essen- 
tial properties, and nothing else 
does it follow, we say, from our opin- 
ion that such state would have 
been impossible in every sense ? 
Those who hold an opinion differ- 
ent from ours with regard to the 
natural end of man imagine that, 
once we grant man the vision of 
God as his natural end, the state of 
pure nature becomes impossible in 
every sense, because, they argue, 
man could not have been left with- 
out means to attain his end ; now, 
these means being necessarily su- 
pernatural, it follows that man 
could not have been left in his na- 
tural state. 

We answer that, if we regard the 
omnipotence of God and his infi- 
nite justice, he could have left man 
in his natural state. About God's 
omnipotence there is no dispute ; 
with regard to his justice it is evi- 
dent that it could have left man in 
that state. Because all that strict 
justice owed to man in his creation 
was to endow him with an essence 
and nature, with specific faculties, 
and with those properties necessa- 
rily resulting from his nature, such 
as the freedom of the will. When 



man has received all these things 
he can claim nothing more, in jus- 
tice, as due to his nature. To re- 
quire anything further beyond and 
above nature would have been not 
only a groundless claim, but to de- 
mand an impossibility in the sphere 
of substantial creation. Let us lis- 
ten to St. Thomas in the Summa 
(Th. Prima secundae, q. 5, art. 5, ad 
i). Treating of the question wheth- 
er man could acquire beatitude by 
his own natural forces, and answer- 
ing it in the negative, he proposes 
himself this objection : Nature does 
not fail in necessary things. But 
nothing is so necessary to man as 
the means to acquire his last end. 
Therefore these must not be want- 
ing to human nature, and conse- 
quently man must be able to ac- 
quire his end by his own natural 
energies. He answers the objection 
as follows : " As nature does not fail 
man in necessary things, though it 
gave him neither implements nor 
shelter, as it did with other animals, 
because it gave him reason and arms 
to procure these things ; so it did not 
fail him in necessary things, though 
it did not give him any principle 
whereby to acquire his beatitude, 
since this was impossible j but it did 
give him free-will, whereby he might 
turn to God, who could make him 
blessed." Beautifully and elegantly 
does St. Thomas resolve the whole 
question at hand in the passage 
quoted. Nature must give man 
whatever is necessary to acquire 
his end; and it did give him what- 
ever was necessary and possible 
within the sphere of nature, without 
going outside or beyond or above 
it, when it gave him free-will ; but 
to claim a principle whereby to 
acquire beatitude would be to 
claim an impossibility in the sphere 
of nature, because such a principle 
must necessarily and essentially be 



., 

: 



On Mans Destiny. 



527 






an action of God, not as the author 
of nature, but as the author of 
grace. Consequently, man had no 
right or claim or title to the super- 
natural, and God could, in strict 
justice, have left him in his own 
natural state with his own unaided 
natural forces. It is in this sense, 
and in this sense only, that the 
words of St. Thomas which are 
cited by our opponents are to be 
understood. The words are as fol- 
lows : 

" Poterat Deus a principio quando 
hominem condidit etiam alium hominem 
ex limo terrae formare, quern in condi- 
tione suae naturae relinqueret ut scilicet 
mortalis et passibilis esset et pugnam 
concupiscentiae sentiens, in quj nihil 
humaruz natures derogaretur, quia hoc ex 
principiis naturae consequitur." 

Our opponents quote these words 
of St. Thomas as proving the pos- 
sibility of the state of pure nature 
in every sense. But we contend 
that they are to be understood in 
the sense that, considering the 
question in the light of justice, God 
could have left man to his pure 
nature without doing him any in- 
jury whatever. This interpreta- 
tion is evident from a twofold con- 
sideration. The first is that if St. 
Thomas had asserted the possibi- 
lity of the state of pure nature, ab- 
solutely and in every sense, in this 
and a few more passages where he 
does not treat of the question of 
man's end ex-professo, he would 
come in contradiction with himself, 
and these passages would clash 
with all those which assert and 
prove, beyond all possibility of a 
doubt, that man's natural end is the 
Beatific Vision of God, and which 
he cannot attain without superna- 
tural means. The second reason 
which proves that the sense we at- 
tach to the doctor's words is the 
only true one is found in the argu- 



ment used by St. Thomas to prove 
such possibility of the state of 
pure nature : In quo nihil hu- 
manae naturae derogaretur be- 
cause no injury would thereby 
be done to human nature ; that is 
to say, the state of pure nature is 
possible in the sense of strict jus- 
tice. God could have left man to 
himself without any supernatural 
means, because as his Creator he 
owed his nature nothing more. 
And this is precisely our opinion, 
and therefore did we hold in our 
former article that the superna- 
tural state was not due to man 
in any sense whatever. But we 
hold, furthermore, that God Al- 
mighty having made man an in- 
tellectual substance naturally and 
instinctively gravitating towards 
the Beatific Vision as the only ob- 
ject capable of satisfying his spe- 
cific faculties, there was a reason of 
fitness, of seemliness for elevating 
man to the supernatural state. Our 
opponents cry out that there is no 
real distinction between the abso- 
lute power of God and justice, and 
his providence and infinite good- 
ness and condescension ; that if he 
cannot do a thing in consequence 
of his power and justice, in harmo- 
ny with his other attributes, he can- 
not do it at all. We do not deem 
it necessary to answer this difficul- 
ty, nor feel called upon to do so, 
this being as much the business of 
our opponents as ours. 

There is such a thing, admitted 
by all the Fathers and theologians 
without a single -exception, as the 
argument called Convenienticz et con- 
gruentitz the argument drawn from 
the seemliness of the thing. In 
treating of most of the fundamen- 
tal mysteries of our faith we take 
it for granted as a dogma of faith 
that God was not bound by any 
reason of justice whatever to effect 



528 



On Man's Destiny. 



such mysteries, and therefore he 
could have left them undone ; yet 
the whole Catholic tradition of Fa- 
thers and theologians argues that 
though God was not bound to do 
so, yet there is in every one of them 
a reason of fitness and becoming- 
ness that he should do so. Take, 
for instance, the great mystery of 
the Incarnation. There was no 
reason whatever of justice why the 
Son of God should become incar- 
nate ; yet St. Thomas, with all theo- 
logians, proves that there was a 
great reason of fitness that he should 
do so, because it behoves good to 
communicate itself, and it behoves a 
supreme good to communicate it- 
self in the highest possible degree, 
-such as the Incarnation. Take the 
mystery of the Redemption. God 
was by no means bound to redeem 
mankind after the fall, yet all theo- 
logians argue that, in view of his in- 
finite wisdom, goodness, and mercy, 
it was highly befitting that he 
should do so. The great argument 
in favor of the Immaculate Con- 
ception brought forward by Sco- 
tus and his whole school was the 
celebrated Potuit, decuit, ergo fecit. 
Can any one urge that there is no 
distinction in God between that 
which he can do absolutely and 
in justice, and that which he 
can do in consequence of a fit- 
ness? To be sure, there is no 
such distinction in God himself, 
but the Catholic Church, the whole 
Catholic tradition and theology, 
have always admitted such dis- 
tinction, created by our mind in 
consequence of our limitation of 
apprehension. Before our oppo- 
nents object, then, to our holding 
that, in consequence of a reason of 
fitness, of agreeableness, it behoved 
God, to the honor and glory of his 
infinite attributes, to raise man to 
the supernatural state, they must 



refute the whole series of argu- 
ments drawn from this source in 
the whole domain of Catholic tra- 
dition and science. The principle 
is the same. If it was eminently 
agreeable to the infinite goodness 
of God to pour itself out in the 
highest possible degree by means 
of the Incarnation, it was also emi- 
nently agreeable to the same in- 
finite goodness to raise man to the 
supernatural state, even indepen- 
dently of man's natural craving af- 
ter its own ultimate end. But the 
great and radical 'defect of a great 
many who study theology is just 
this want of perception of the whole 
breadth of the leading theological 
principles, want of penetration into 
their depth ; they study theology 
piecemeal, without any connection, 
and cannot for their lives tell how 
two principles lie to each other, and 
how they apply to any particular 
question, or how far they extend ; 
and yet they claim to be theolo- 
gians, while they are mere collec- 
tors of detached and stray pieces. 

We hold, therefore, that it was 
highly in harmony with the infi- 
nite wisdom of God, still more with 
his infinite goodness and magnifi- 
cent liberality that liberality which 
caused him to pour himself out in 
the creative act and effect intel- 
lectual substances which naturally 
yearn after and gravitate towards 
him, clearly seen in the infinite 
splendor of his Absolute Truth, 
immediately possessed in himself 
in the eternal embraces of his su- 
pereminent Goodness and magni- 
ficent Beauty that he should give 
them means to attain such bliss, to 
bask in and be filled at the foun- 
tain of his joys. Potuit, decuit, 
ergo fecit. 

We come to the last question : 
Has our opinion any affinity what- 
ever with the errors condemned in 



On Mans Destiny. 



529 



Baius and Quesnel, or has the 
church of God ever looked with 
any sign of disapprobation on this 
opinion ? We answer this ques- 
tion by translating a note of Pere 
Gratry in the end of his work, La 
Connaissance de Dieu. After hav- 
ing mentioned the proposition of 
Berti, " Creaturas rati.onali inesse 
naturaliter appetitum innatum ad 
visionem Dei intuitivam," he con- 
tinues: "It is true that this last 
proposition has been attacked, but 
wrongfully. After the affair of 
Jansenism and the admirable bull 
Utrigenitus, winch is a defence of 
reason and human liberty against 
fanaticism and fatalism, some theo- 
logians believed they saw Baianism 
and Jansenism in the doctrine of 
Berti and his teacher, Bdelli, gene- 
ral of the Augustinians. But Belel- 
li, twice brought before the Inqui- 
sition of Rome, was found irre- 
proachable in his writings, and the 
work of Berti, De Theologids Qisti- 
plinis (Rome, 1745), was prosecuted 
in vain before the competent tri- 
bunals. Two French bishops, Sa- 
leon, Bishop of Valence, and Lan- 
guet, Archbishop of Sens, in their 
zeal, more fervent than enlighten- 
ed, for the doctrine of the bull 
Unigenitus, denounced Belelli and 
Berti to Benedict XIV., to the as- 
sembly of the French clergy, 1747, 
and to the University of Vienna. 
Saleon wrote two works, entitled 
Baianismus redivivus and Jansenis- 
mus redivivus, etc. These works 
he addressed to Benedict XIV. 
with a very pressing letter. But 
the theologians named in Rome to 
examine the denunciation unani- 
mously rejected it. The assembly 
of the French clergy, on their part, 
thought it unfounded, and the Uni- 
versity of Vienna passed the same 
judgment. It was then that Berti, 
VOL. xxx. 34 



by order of Benedict XIV., justified 
himself by an apology, printed at 
the Vatican (1749), under the ti- 
tle, Augustinianum Systema de Gra- 
tia de iniqua Baianismi et Jansen- 
ismi err or is insinuations vindication. 
In this work Berti victoriously 
defends this proposition : Nemo 
damnandus Baianismi, si defendat 
creatune rational! inesse naturali- 
ter appetitum innatum ad visionem 
Dei intuitivam. Meanwhile the 
Archbishop of Sens, entering the 
lists in 1750, issued a censure 
against the two Italian theologians, 
and sent it to Benedict XIV., re- 
questing him to approve this cen- 
sure. But Benedict XIV. was too 
enlightened to confound the Au- 
gustinian system with Jansenism, 
and could not accede to the pre- 
late's request. Berti terminated 
this controversy by a new apology. 
We add to all this that Cardinal 
Noris, also an Augustinian, held 
pretty much the same doctrine, and 
particularly this thesis, taught after- 
wards by Gerdil: that there is in 
man a natural capacity for the in- 
tuitive vision, which it behoved and 
becomes God to satisfy (Gerdil, 
t. xix. p. 35) Meram capadtatem 
visionis intuitive, quam decuit et decet 
replere Deum. Now, it was in vain 
that Noris was several times de- 
nounced as Baianist or Jansenist, and 
that his history, On Pelagtanism, 
was kept on the Index of the Span- 
ish Inquisition for ten years. His 
works are irreproachable. Inno- 
cent XII. by naming him cardinal 
after these vain accusations, and 
Benedict XIV. by never ceasing te 
protest against the Spanish Index 
until his name was erased from it, 
have sufficiently justified him."' 



* Gratry, De fa Connaissance de Dicit, vol. 
p. 428. Paris edition. 1864. 



530 



Christian Art. 



CHRISTIAN ART. 



ITALIAN REVIVAL GIOTTO, ANGELICO, PERUGINO. 



WE now pass into Italy the 
country of modern Europe to which 
has been conceded the pre-emi- 
nence in the fine arts, once the 
boast of ancient Greece. Light 
has been thrown on the advanced 
state of its decorative arts in the 
first century of our era by the ex- 
cavations in Pompeii a city which 
had been entombed for ages be- 
neath the sconce, of Vesuvius. In 
Italy mediaeval art was a resurrec- 
tion rather than, as in other coun- 
tries, a new creation. At the break- 
ing-up of the Roman Empire, in- 
deed, Byzantium necessarily be- 
came the capital of the arts, as the 
residence of the court and the 
place where life and property were 
most secure during the convul- 
sions of the Western Empire. From 
Byzantium, again, came the influ- 
ence which restored to Italy her in- 
heritance of art. 

There can be no doubt that in 
its infancy Christianity held itself 
aloof from the fascination of art, 
because art had long been the min- 
ister of idolatrous worship and im- 
pure rites. But as paganism was 
gradually disappearing from the 
civilized world, the objection to the 
use of art passed away with it, and 
the painter's art was called in, ten- 
tatively at first, as circumstances 
permitted. We find its earliest 
traces in the Catacombs of Rome, 
which were at once the receptacles 
of the Christian dead and the sa- 
cred precincts within which the 
mysteries of religion were cele- 
brated in obscurity. On their ven- 
erable walls are still visible the re- 



mains of paintings which, with all 
their technical deficiencies, combine 
in a remarkable manner the solem- 
nity and dignity of ancient art with 
the more cheerful genius of the 
faith which was to renew the face 
of the earth. Christian symbols 
innumerable decorated the recesses 
consecrated to prayer and sacrifice. 
There was the lamb, representing 
the sacrifice of the Redeemer, and 
collectively the simple obedience 
of his disciples. The vine repro- 
duced his own simile of their rela- 
tion to him as branches to the pa- 
rent plant. The fish, formed out of 
the letters of his name, suggested 
the mystic waters of holy baptism. 
The ship and the anchor, the hart 
drinking at the brook, the bra- 
zen serpent, the deliverance of 
Jonas, Daniel among the lions, 
were associated with various as- 
pects of Christianity and its his- 
tory. The evergreen palm-branch 
spoke of the undying life of the 
victorious martyr. The good shep- 
herd represented the great " Pastor 
of the sheep," who gave his life for 
them. In a few rare instances, as 
in the catacombs of St. Calixtus 
and of St. Ponzianus, a portrait of 
the Saviour was attempted, in a man- 
ner full of refined beauty and dignity, 
but, of course, without any value as 
an authentic record of his verum 
eikon his true image. 

To the underground chapels of 
the Catacombs, in time, succeeded 
churches and basilicas ; and we 
hear of St. Paulinus of Nola, in the 
fourth century, as among the first 
to introduce paintings of sacred 



Christian Art. 



531 



subjects into ecclesiastical buildings 
which he had erected. In the fol- 
lowing century a step of immense 
importance was taken in the in- 
troduction of pictures in mosaic 
an invention originally borrowed 
from Alexandria, and employed by 
the Romans for the decoration of 
their pavements. In mosaic-paint- 
ing small cubes of glass, variously 
colored, were introduced into the 
soft plaster in patterns, and after- 
wards in regular pictures, which, 
in the perfection of the art, might 
be taken for paintings, with this 
superiority : that they are indestruc- 
tible by the lapse of time. In the 
fifth century St. Leo decorated the 
choir-apsis of St. Paul's without the 
walls with mosaics which still re- 
main; as his successors, Hilarius 
and Simplicius, did for St. John 
Lateran's and St. Mary Major's re- 
spectively. What the popes did 
for Rome in this way the Emperor 
Maximilian did for Ravenna, and 
her merchant-princes for Venice, 
where, accordingly, mosaic pictures 
may be studied in great abundance 
and variety. They never, indeed, 
attained, at the period we speak of 
at least, a degree of excellence ap- 
proaching later paintings; there is 
a certain amount of stiffness, con- 
ventionality, and ivant of natural 
proportion inseparable from the 
best of them ; but in the suggestive 
and representative character of the 
style they furnished an important 
link in the history we are tracing 
a link which extends over many 
centuries of what is called the dark 
age. 

The testimony afforded by the 
mosaics to the lingering art-sense 
in Italy was continued by that of 
many monasteries, whose inmates, 
like those of St. Gall in Switzer- 
land, were famous as miniature- 
painters, sculptors, and gold-work- 



ers. Their work consisted chiefly 
in illuminating missals, and church 
books, and the great authors of an- 
tiquity, whose writings they were 
employed in copying, and which 
are preserved in many libraries and 
museums at the present day. 

At length, in the year 1204, the 
Venetian Republic gained posses- 
sion of Constantinople (Byzanti- 
um). Art of a certain kind had 
made its home there, and, such 
as it was false to nature in every 
detail, without life or motive, and 
defaced by gaudy gold grounds 
to make up for the brilliancy of 
good color which was wanting had 
at least something to teach the 
awaking art-feeling of Venice, and 
of Italy in general. In one im- 
portant particular Byzantine art 
was in advance namely, in the 
representation of the crucified Re- 
deemer. For many reasons the 
subject had been avoided by ear- 
lier painters ; partly, no doubt, from, 
their notions of reverence, and also 
in part from their feeling that the 
subject, if treated naturally, would 
be "to the Jew a scandal, and to 
the Gentile foolishness." They 
were not disposed to exhibit their 
risen and glorified Lord in the 
" body of his lowness." Later re- 
flection, however, came to modify 
the objection when it was remem- 
bered that "because he humbled 
himself, God also highly exalted 
him"; that "he ascended, because 
he also first descended into the 
lower parts of the earth " (Eph. iv. 
9). Regarded as we now regard 
it, the crucifix, whether painted or 
in sculpture, stands as the epitome 
and summary of all the lessons of 
the Gospel, of all the truths of 
eternity. Divine love, the value 
of the human soul, the fallacy of 
mistaking appearances for reality,' 
the duties of gratitude and charity,. 



532 



Christian Art. 



the counsels of perfection these 
and other kindred verities are im- 
pressed on the mind by the cru- 
cifix as by nothing else in this 
world. Hence, men like St. Bue- 
naventura and St. Philip Benizzi 
spoke of it as their book of instruc- 
tion ; hence, probably, there is not 
one of his sacramentalia (as theo- 
logians call them) from which it 
would cost a Catholic more pain 
to part than his crucifix. What 
a history has it not had during 
all these ages ; what a power has 
it not been for good ! Where 
and whose was the hand that first 
painted it ? Every Catholic may 
remember with thankfulness that 
that hand was trained in the art- 
school of Byzantium. But the 
iconoclastic traditions of Eastern 
Christianity, which excluded the 
use of images, were fatal to the 
development of good art where 
they reigned supreme ; affecting 
the treatment even of paintings, 
which were, in consequence, doom- 
ed to flatness and meagreness, lest, 
by rounder and fuller treatment, 
they should appear to trespass on 
the prohibited field of images. 
This scrupulous fear was undoubt- 
edly one of the principal causes 
of the poor and withered character 
of Byzantine art. 

The opening of the East to Italy, 
consequent on the Venetian con- 
quest of Constantinople, led the 
way to a gradual and increasing 
activity in men's minds, in which 
art and literature participated. 
Greek artists and Greek men of 
letters sought a home in Europe ; 
rhymers and painters competed 
together for fame. The artists at 
first chiefly frequented Venice, 
Pisa, and Sienna. Here and there 
a man of original observation per- 
ceived the necessity of abandon- 
ing the conventional and worn-out 



platitudes into which his art had 
degenerated, and of seeking fresh 
inspiration from nature herself. 
The means of doing so, however, 
came more slowly than the percep- 
tion of its necessity. Much had 
to be learnt, and perhaps even 
more to be unlearnt, before the 
way was cleared. Much of the 
credit of this early resuscitation 
of the true principles of art has 
been claimed for the school of 
Florence ; more, perhaps, than was 
warranted, in justice to other cen- 
tres of influence, such as Venice 
and the Tuscan cities above-nam- 
ed. One of the early efforts to 
work back to nature was made by 
a Guido of Sienna ; his " Madon- 
na," dated 1221, which hangs in 
the church of St. Domenico, Sien- 
na, is recommended by its histo- 
torical rather than by its artistic 
interest. Giunta of Pisa painted 
in tempera a "Crucifixion" for a 
church at Assisi, circa 1236, which 
deserves mention for the period 
of its execution. To Margaritone 
of Arezzo, also, a sculptor and 
painter, belongs the credit of ad- 
vancing beyond the limit of his 
Byzantine training; a fine exam- 
ple of his style has been acquired 
by the National Gallery, London. 
Not to dwell too long on this pe- 
riod of transition, we come next 
to the artist commonly cited as the 
last of the old, and chief founder 
of the new, style Giovanni Gual- 
tieri, better known as Cimabue ; a 
native of Florence, and believed 
to have been a pupil of Giunta of 
Pisa. The year of his birth was 
1240. Vasari, his biographer, has 
mixed up invention with fact to a 
provoking extent in the account 
of his life and work. He was un- 
doubtedly the painter of a colossal 
"Madonna and Child," enthroned, 
in the church of Santa Maria Nc- 



Christian Art. 



533 



vella, Florence, surrounded by six 
angels in adoration ; the frame of 
the picture being adorned with 
numerous medallions bearing the 
heads of saints. The picture was 
painted circa 1270, and so charm- 
ed the Florentines by its unwont- 
ed softness and grace that they 
carried it, when finished, with great 
pomp and with music, from the 
painter's house to the church, the 
city magistrates and an immense 
crowd following it. Other authen- 
tic works of Cimabue exist in sev- 
eral Florentine churches, in the 
Louvre, Paris, and the National 
Collection, London, all possessing 
a strong family likeness, and a his- 
torical importance in addition to 
their artistic qualities. The artist 
attained the pinnacle of fame; his 
school in Florence was much fre- 
quented by pupils. While he was 
engaged in executing mosaic pic- 
tures in the Duomo at Pisa death 
overtook him, in 1302, and he was 
interred in Sta. Maria del Fiore, 
Florence, with the following in- 
scription on his tomb : 

Credidit ut Cimabos picttira: castra teneret, 
Sic tenuit vivens mine tenet astro, polL* 

Meanwhile a greater influence 
than Byzantine rules and practice 
was preparing to mould, direct, and 
fashion the immediate future of 
Italian art. We mean the literary 
and artistic power of Dante, the 
master-mind of his age. Born in 
Florence, 1265, the last twenty 
years of his life were passed in 
exile, and he died 1321. Had he 
not been a great poet and philoso- 
pher his name might have descend- 
ed to posterity as that of a great 
artist. His biographer, Bruni, tells 
us that he was 'an excellent 

* Incorporated in Purgatorio, xi. 94 : 

" Credette Cimabue nella pintura 
Tener lo campo." 



draughtsman. He studied paint- 
ing in the studio of Cimabue, to- 
gether with Oderigi of Gubbio, a 
celebrated miniaturist, and with 
Giotto, Dante's intimate friend, of 
whom we shall speak immediately. 
In an affecting passage in his Vita 
Nuova the poet relates that, on 
the first anniversary of Beatrice's 
death, June 9, 1291, he was sitting 
by himself, sketching figures of 
angels on certain tablets, and mus- 
ing on the lady of his love. So ab- 
sorbed was he as not to notice one 
or two friends who had come to 
visit him. When he at last observ- 
ed them he rose from his seat and 
saluted them, with apologies for his 
abstraction, saying : " It was once 
otherwise with me, and for that 
reason I was musing." As soon as 
they were gone he fell to his 
sketching again. His artistic in- 
stincts dictated his graphic de- 
scription of his meeting with his 
fellow-pupil, Oderigi, in the round 
of Purgatory on which pride was 
expiated. The deceased painter's 
soul was embittered, he confessed, 
by finding that his own pupil, 
Franco of Bologna, had supplant- 
ed him in public estimation, leav- 
ing him only the empty honor im- 
plied in his being Franco's master. 
Even this admission of inferiority 
he would have scorned to make in 
his lifetime, so consuming was the 
desire to be first, on which his 
heart had been set. " O empty 
boast !" he cried, 

" O empty boast of all man can achieve ! 
Even when newest, brief its hope of life, 
If not succeeded by less cultured times. 
In painting, Cimabue thought to stay 
Lord of the field : now Giotto is the rage, 
Dimming the glory of his master's fame." 

Purg, xi. 79. 

To pursue this matter a little 
further, on account of its impor- 
tant bearing on the progress of the 
Italian art-revival, -it was with a 



534- 



Christian Art. 



painter's or a sculptor's invention 
quite as much as with a poet's that 
Dante composed the marvellous 
groups of statuary in Purgatorio, x. 
and xii. The whole of his great 
poem, indeed, might be regarded, 
from an artistic point of view, as a 
gallery of art, filled with sketches 
and finished pictures of various 
elaboration or rapid execution. 
The gorgeous pageant which pre- 
ceded the arrival of Beatrice's 
chariot might have tasked the pro- 
cession-loving genius of Mantegna 
(Purg. xxix.) Orcagna and An- 
gelico never surpassed scenes de- 
scribed in Paradiso, if these were 
not actually present to their minds 
while they painted. Nor is this 
great gallery wanting in cabinet- 
pictures of miniature delicacy, as 
the " Martyrdom of St. Stephen " 
(Purg. xv.) and the " Transfigura- 
tion " (ib. xxxii.) Landscape-art, 
again, is not unrepresented, but al- 
ways as an accessory to scenes of 
intensely human interest, as the deli- 
cious evening picture (Purg. viii. 
8) and the noonday panorama of 
the terrestrial paradise, to which 
the pine-forest of Chiassi, " Raven- 
na's immemorial wood," furnished 
a parallel in nature. Have we 
made out a case for Dante's artistic 
eminence? We think we have. 
But he had his theory as well as 
his visions of art. Two passages 
will show very clearly what his 
theory was. When he wished to 
express the exceeding beauty of 
the sculptured cornice (Purg. ::.) 
he said that its carved groups, in 
their loveliness, would have put 
.to shame, not the famous Greek 
sculptor, Polycletus, alone, but 
ev<en nature herself; thus taking for 
granted that to nature was the ulti- 
mate appeal in every such compari- 
son a principle, it may be safely 
asserted, lying .at the foundation 



of art of whatever kind. Not the 
achievements of this or that artist, 
however eminent in his day, is the 
final standard of excellence, but the 
broad and simple standard of 
nature. Here the friezes of the 
Parthenon and the cartoons of 
Raphael stand upon common 
ground. 

Once more Dante shows us his 
artistic perception in another strik- 
ing passage (Convito, iv. 25). In 
discussing the four ages of man's 
life he takes occasion to remark 
that the possession of a noble na- 
ture in youth manifests itself not 
only by gentleness and modesty, 
but also in corporeal beauty and 
activity, thus adding grace even 
to the outward person. Since the 
soul must to a great extent partici- 
pate in the bodily actions, a good 
life will have the effect described ; 
when the soul acts well, the body, 
for its share, is well regulated and 
disposed ; and when it is so it is 
then beautiful as a whole and in its 
several parts, " because the due 
order of its members communicates 
a sense of pleasure analogous to I 
know not what admirable harmo- 
ny, and their healthfulness clothes 
them in a color delightful to the 
eye." Without undue forcing of 
the poet's meaning, we may imagine 
that he included the whole gift of 
art and its treasures to mankind 
when he said : " God, to whom no- 
thing can be new, called into being 
this speech to the eye, which to us 
only is new because hitherto un- 
discovered " (Purg. x. 94). 

Such were the cardinal princi- 
ples enunciated by Dante : that 
nature was the standard model to 
work up to in art, and that the 
eye was susceptible of harmony 
from impressions of order and pro- 
portion, similar to that addressed 
to the ear by a concord of musical 



Christian Art. 



535 



sounds. What his written works 
taught his living conversation, no 
doubt, repeated and enforced on 
the artists about him, and more 
particularly on his friend Giotto, 
who was some eleven years young- 
er. With his pen, also, he showed 
them how to compose a picture 
with a brilliant motive, as when he 
described "The Annunciation," 
and, in fact, laid down the lines on 
which Angelico and others after- 
wards executed some of their fa- 
mous pictures. 

The Angel, who to earth bore the decree 
Of peace (thro' centuries besought with tears), 
That opened heaven after long banishment, 
Appeared, so true to life before us, there, 
Sculptured in attitude of perfect grace, 
A no mere silent image to be deemed ; 

PThat A ve he was saying one could have sworn. 
And there, too, was her semblance who the key 
First turned about to open the High Love. 
Her attitude so filled to the word 
Behold the handmaid of the Lord, as on 

The wax is stamped the image of the seal. 
Purg. x. 34-45. 

One or two of Cimabue's con- 
temporaries call for a word of no- 
tice in passing. Duccio of Sienna 
was also a student of nature, and 
managed to throw off many of the 

I trammels of the Byzantine style, 
as his extant works testify ; so 
much so that it seemed as though 
art had all but reached its com- 
plete emancipation from the old 
bondage. Yet two centuries more 
had to elapse before that auspicious 
event could take place. Duccio, 
whose position at Sienna very much 
resembled that of Cimabue at Flo- 
rence, executed his principal work 
for the Sienna cathedral. 

The Florentine master's style 
was adopted in great part by 
Toriti in the mosaic pictures he 
executed about the same time for 
the apses of St. John Lateran's 
and St. Mary Major's, Rome. A 
comparison of these with similar 
work, eight centuries earlier, will 
enable a student almost at a glance 



to measure the progress of Italian 
art in the interval. No less full 
of promise were the sculptures of 
Niccola of Pisa on the pulpit of 
the cathedral in his native city, 
and on the Duoino of Orvieto. 

As Sir Humphry Davy used to 
say that the best service he ever 
rendered to science was his dis- 
covery of Faraday, so it may be 
said that Cimabue never did a 
greater thing for art than when he 
discovered Giotto. Young Giotto 
(or Ambrogiotto) Bondone was a 
shepherd-boy, whom Cimabue, in 
one of his rides about Florence, 
found in the act of sketching a 
sheep on a stone in his native val- 
ley of Mugello, some fifteen miles 
from Florence, on the road to Bo- 
logna. The elder painter took the 
younger into his studio at the time 
Oderigi and Dante were frequent- 
ing it. 

Whether Cimabue's hand was 
employed in decorating the church 
of St. Francis at Assisi or not is a 
matter of considerable doubt ; but 
an important part of his pupil's, 
Giotto's, work which has come 
down to our time is attached to 
those venerable walls. The church, 
like that of St. Clement at Rome, 
is double, one being underneath 
the other. Giotto's 'prentice-hand 
was trained in the upper church; 
his matured skill is evinced by its 
record in the lower, which con- 
tains the tomb of the saint. On 
the groined vault are representa- 
tions of the three vows of perfec- 
tion poverty, chastity, and obedi- 
ence. A tradition remains that 
the allegorical forms employed in 
each compartment were sketched 
for the painter by his friend Dante. 
At all events, one of them Pover- 
ty is an amplification of the pas- 
sage in Paradiso (xi. 58, ct seq.} in 
which the saint's vocation is symbo- 



536 



Christian Art. 



lized by bis devoted love to the 
lady Poverty ; for her sake he 
braved the displeasure of his father, 

11 And before all the spiritual court, 
And his own father, was united to her, 
Loving her, thenceforth, daily more and more." 

Christ himself is uniting the pair 
in presence of troops of angels. 
A fourth compartment shows St. 
Francis, enthroned, in the rich robes 
of a deacon, having the cross and 
the rule, and surrounded by nu- 
merous choirs of angels, who hymn 
his praises to the accompaniment of 
musical instruments. Several other 
works of Giotto still exist, though 
many more have perished by acci- 
dent or decay. In the porch of 
St. Peter's, Rome, facing the great 
door, a large mosaic representing 
the church of Christ as the ship, 
or " Navicella," was originally the 
work of Giotto, executed for the 
old basilica, but has been so often 
removed and " restored " as to 
possess but little more than its 
general design to recall the painter. 
Christ is approaching on the stormy 
sea; St. Peter, as he sinks, is res- 
cued by the Master's hand. An- 
other rich collection of Giotto's 
works, illustrating his earlier style, 
exists at Padua in the chapel of the 
Madonna dell' Arena. A series of 
forty pictures represents the life of 
the Madonna from her parentage 
to her coronation, combined with 
allegorical single figures of the vir- 
tues and vices. The church of 
Santa Croce, Florence, once pos- 
sessed a gallery of Giotto's works 
(now transferred to the Academy 
of Arts) illustrating in parallel series 
the lives of Christ and St. Francis. 
The painter was for a long time 
credited with a series of the "Sacra- 
ments " in the church of the Incoro- 
nata, Naples ; but, though full of 
beauty, it does not approve itself 
to later criticism as the work of 



Giotto. During his visit to Na- 
ples, however, in 1330, he execut- 
ed a fresco of the miraculous loaves 
and fishes in the convent of Santa 
Chiara. 

A deeply interesting example of 
Giotto's portraiture was brought to 
light in 1840 in his head of Dante 
in the Bargello Chapel, Florence, 
chiefly through the energy of Mr. 
Wilde, an American gentleman, and 
Mr. Kirkup, an Englishman. It 
had been covered up with white- 
wash ever since the poet's political 
disgrace. The features perfectly 
corresponded with those of another 
contemporary portrait, in marble, 
attached to his tomb at Ravenna, 
and his penetrating mind and char- 
acter were reflected from the fresco. 
It was painted in the colors of 
Beatrice (Purg. xxx. 31), intended 
also to allegorize the cardinal vir- 
tues. Under a green mantle the 
poet wore a crimson dress, and on 
his head a white hood bound with 
an olive-branch, the symbol of wis- 
dom. Unfortunately, an eye had 
been injured in the act of removing 
the whitewash; and the colors were 
displeasing to the Tuscan govern- 
ment of the day as, curiously enough, 
those of the revolutionary party. 
The whole of Giotto's work, there- 
fore, was repainted ; the green man- 
tle was changed to chocolate, and a 
sort of turban substituted for the 
hood. We have not yet entirely 
exhausted the list of Giotto's ar- 
tistic accomplishments. It was he 
who designed the Campanile at 
Florence, though its erection was 
hardly begun at the time of his 
death, in 1337. Many of the sta- 
tues intended for its enrichment 
were executed as well as designed 
by his hand. It was he who furnished 
Niccola of Pisa with designs for the 
sculptured groups on the doors of 
the Baptistery at Florence. As an 



Christian Art. 



537 



instance how one thing often grows 
out of another, we may mention 
that it was a crucifix in bronze 
made by Niccola, and carried by 
Giotto to Pope Clement V. at Avi- 
gnon, which led to the pope's giv- 
ing the sculptor a commission for 
the Baptistery doors. They were 
finished by Ghiberti in the following 
century. The papal commission gave 
a fresh impulse to art an impulse 
which, falling under the control of a 
painter like Giotto, stamped on Ital- 
ian sculpture the picture-like charac- 
ter which distinguishes it from the 
antique; and the links arefewvvhich 
connect those memorable doors 
(which Michael Angelo pronounced 
to be worthy to be the doors of Pa- 
radise) with Dante's sculptured vi- 
sions in Purgatorto. 

The style of Giotto marks the pe- 
riod of transition from Byzantine 
forms to the perfect naturalism of 
later art. Thoroughly to under- 
stand the change effected, we must 
pause a moment to remark the dis- 
tinction between art which is rep- 
resentative or suggestive of a 
scene, and that which aims at 
being also imitative of objects in 
it. The Catacomb paintings 
were nearly all of them allegori- 
cal or symbolical ; the Byzantine, 
though not quite so far removed 
from the truth of nature, were more 
or less conventional, and could 
never be mistaken for transcripts 
of human forms. A good exam- 
ple of the distinction between re- 
presentation and imitation is af- 
forded by the history of attempts 
to depict the Transfiguration of 
our Lord. The early mosaic ar- 
tist who tried to represent it in the 
dome-apse of St. Apollinare at Ra- 
venna, in the sixth century, could 
only do so by conventional sym- 
bols. In the centre he placed a 
large cross set with jewels, bearing 



on it the head of Christ. On either 
side of it were the busts of Moses 
and Elias, and underneath it three 
sheep to suggest the apostles. Nine 
centuries later Beato Angelico es- 
sayed the same subject by portray- 
ing the Redeemer as standing on a 
slight eminence within the allego- 
rical Mahdola, or Vesica Piscis, his 
arms extended as if on the cross. 
The three apostles kneel at his feet, 
in various attitudes of agitation un- 
der the influence of the intolerable 
glory. The mere head of Moses 
appears on the right hand of the 
Saviour, that of Elias on his left. 
Below all kneel half-figures of the 
Madonna and the artist's patron, St. 
Dominic. Even here the treat- 
ment is hardly more than represen- 
tative. If now we turn to Raphael's 
great picture in the Vatican, or a 
good copy or engraving of it, we 
shall at once perceive the differ- 
ence between the only possible me- 
thod within reach of the older 
painters, and the fully-developed 
manner of imitation as far, that is 
to say, as it was possible for the 
pencil of man to imitate a scene so 
far transcending the highest effort 
of imagination. Something of the 
same distinction marked the style 
of Giotto as compared with that of 
his predecessors, with this differ- 
ence : that he was only striving to 
reach the full perfection of nature 
a goal not to be attained in one 
lifetime. Yet, as the first to point 
to it and aim at it, his life consti- 
tutes an epoch in the history of 
painting. 

He for ever emancipated Italian 
art from the Byzantine thraldom ; 
roundness and flexibility took the 
place of mummified anatomies, par- 
ticularly in the ample and mani- 
fold draperies. The nude figure 
was still an unknown object to the 
artist ; even his feet and hands 



538 



Christian Art. 



were far from irreproachable. He 
made mere beauty less of an ob- 
ject than expression of character ; 
even Duccio surpassed him in 
sweetness and gracefulness. Here 
and there Giotto could paint a 
graceful head ; more often his pic- 
tures depend for their excellence 
on their general composition and 
the disposition of their masses. 
When the subject called for it he 
could treat it in a peculiarly sol- 
emn, simple, and harmonious man- 
ner. It "is impossible to over-rate 
his influence in the history of art. 
His original invention opened up 
the avenues to nature which all 
subsequent artists have been striv- 
ing to pass through and, as a 
natural consequence, he attracted 
a train of imitators, who sometimes 
exaggerated his effects to such a 
point as to lay themselves open 
to ridicule. What his contempora- 
ries thought of him is incidentally 
shown by a passage in Boccaccio's 
Decamerone (vi. 5). The author of 
the hundred tales lived in Florence 
at the same time, and was twen- 
ty-three years old at the date of 
Giotto's death. He speaks of the 
painter as a man of such surpassing 
genius that there was nothing Dame 
Nature produced which he could 
not, with his brush or his chisel, re- 
produce in fac-simile (not to say 
imitate), and make his work look 
the very thing itself. The eye was 
often thus deceived and took the 
copy fpr the reality. The man who 
thus restored to light the art of 
painting, after itslongobscuration by 
blundering daubers (who painted to 
please the eye of the ignorant mul- 
titude rather than gratify the minds 
of the wise), deserved, in Boccac- 
cio's opinion, to be enrolled among 
the glorious lights of Florence ; and 
the rather because, supreme mas- 
ter us he was in that field, his great 



humility had always declined the 
title of master an act of modesty 
in striking contrast to the audacity 
with which it was claimed by men 
far his inferior in knowledge," and 
even by some of his own pupils. 

Like the concentric wavelets 
propagated around a stone which 
has been dropped upon the surface 
of a lake, the influence of Giotto's 
original genius extended far and 
wide to other artistic centres and 
schools in Italy. So far as our 
limits will permit, we shall refer to 
the most eminent of his successors 
and their principal works. The 
first name of note occurring in the 
order of time is that of Orcagna, 
who also belonged to the school of 
Florence. Andrea di Cione was 
his name; his sobriquet, L'Arca- 
gnuolo, abbreviated to Orcagna. 
Like Giotto, he was a painter, 
sculptor, and architect in one ; and 
like Francia, another painter-sculp- 
tor, he used, in signing his sculp- 
tures, to designate himself as a paint- 
er, and as a sculptor when he signed 
his paintings. The works by which 
he is now best known are his fres- 
coes, the " Triumph of Death " and 
the " Last Judgment," in the Cam- 
po Santo, an ancient burying- 
ground at Pisa, along the cloister- 
ed walls of which the artists of 
the time, during a period of two 
centuries, were commissioned to 
paint a series of religious subjects 
In the fresco first named the wing- 
ed figure of Death sweeps over the 
world of life, mowing down with 
her scythe old and young, rich 
and poor, nations and races, com- 
ing upon her prey always when 
least expected, and cutting short 
many unprofitable projects, or, 
perhaps, snatching away the fortu- 
nate before misfortune had time 
to mingle bitterness with the sweet- 
ness of their lives as the gaunt 



Christian Art. 



539 






form of Petrarca's " Death " boast- 
ed that it was her business to do, 
from whom the painter is supposed 
to have caught the motive of his 
work (Trtetrfo del la Morte, i. 44). 
His " Last Judgment " is a sublimer 
scene. The Redeemer and Judge 
is seated among the celestial choirs 
on his throne, his Blessed Mother 
on his right hand, while he pro- 
nounces the doom of the reprobate. 
St. Michael, the archangel of judg- 
ment, stands at their feet between 
two angels who blow their trum- 
pets : Awake, ye dead ! and come to 
judgment. Other archangels, dis- 
tinguished by their taller figures, 
their wings and swords, sweep 
among the awaking dead and 
u separate the wicked from among 
the just." One archangel alone, 
St. Raphael, the guardian spirit of 
all humanity, cowers down at the 
feet of St. Michael, appalled by the 
scene, and folds his robe as if 
about to shut it out from view a 
grand and imposing figure, which, 
once seen, can never be forgotten. 
To it the painter probably owed 
his name of L'Arcagmtolo. He and 
his brothers, one of whom was a 
sculptor and the other a paint- 
er, contributed works to several 
churches in Florence, in which ideas 
derived from Dante may be clearly 
traced. Orcagna died circa 1376, 
about the age of sixty. 

Another critical epoch in Italian 
art was the commission given (1400) 
to Lorenzo Ghiberti to complete 
the sculptures on the gates of the 
Florence Baptistery, begun, as we 
have seen, by Niccola of Pisa in 
the preceding century. Two gates 
remained to be completed ; one of 
them was filled with groups in relief 
representing scenes in the New Tes- 
tament, as the other with scenes 
taken from the Old. The work 
lasted forty years, and conferred an 



immortality of fame on the sculptor 
and designer. Its collateral influ- 
ence, ajso, on the progress of art 
was very great, in consequence of 
the succession of young students 
who were trained to draw and 
model in the master's school, and 
who there learned secrets of nature 
hitherto veiled to their predeces- 
sors. The most distinguished stu- 
dent in Ghiberti's school was Tom- 
maso Guidi, better known as Ma- 
saccio (or Slovenly Tom). He 
was born in the same year as the 
famous gates were begun, and lived 
only a year or two after the comple- 
tion of the first. His great genius 
carried him forward many stages 
on the progressive road to excel- 
lence, in drawing and modelling 
the human figure, in using light 
and shade to make his figures stand 
out from the canvas; simplicity 
was the rule in his draperies, and 
truth to nature in every detail. 
He may be best studied in a series 
of frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel 
of the Carmelite church, Florence, 
illustrating the life of St. Peter. 
One of the best known, through 
engravings, is the restoration of a 
youth to life by SS. Peter and Paul. 
Some of the figures, however, were 
the work of the younger Lippi, par- 
ticularly the grand attitude of St. 
Paul as he commands the youth to 
return to life a figure which Ra- 
phael afterwards adopted, with a 
difference, in his cartoon of St. 
Paul preaching before the -Athe- 
nian Areopagus. Masaccio has 
been pronounced by a popular 
critic to have been "the first who 
discovered the path that leads to 
every excellence at which art after- 
wards arrived, and therefore just- 
ly to be considered as one of the 
great fathers of modern art." Yet 
Charles Leslie points out that 
in the fresco referred to a little ago 



540 



Christian Art. 



the stupendous miracle supposed to 
be taking place calls up no emo- 
tion among the people who are 
looking on ; a little girl clasps her 
hands, indeed, but no one else 
seems aware that anything unusual 
is in progress. The life and nature 
of Masaccio, and still more of his 
contemporaries, were life and na- 
ture asleep; further progress had 
to be made before the utmost reach 
of high art could be attained. 

We now arrive at a name which 
must always stand apart and alone 
in the history of art as that of a 
man who was, indeed, among the 
foremost painters of his age, admired 
for his technical excellence, for the 
sweetness and purity of his style. 
Even secular critics admit that his 
compositions excelled in harmony 
of outlines and of colors, and in 
the beauty of the draperies. The 
varieties of human facial expres- 
sion were caught and represented 
by him with marvellous dexterity 
and truth. No one ever painted 
angels more beautifully as the 
gentle guardians of man. But he 
was more than a mere painter. 
With his art-studies he combined 
pious meditations and an ascetic 
life. His themes and motives were 
invariably incidents in the super- 
natural past or in the future glory. 
We refer to Giovanni da Fiesole, 
more commonly known as Beato, 
or Fra, Angelico. In him, as in no 
other painter so fully, was accom- 
plished even in this life the pro- 
mise of the Gospel that the clean 
of heart shall see God, in art, in 
external beauty, in heavenly con- 
templation. It is often asked, with 
some bewilderment, how it happens 
that our mechanical art, for exam- 



element in the difference is un- 
doubtedly due to the lower view 
that is taken of Christian art. A 
power so intimately connected with 
the feelings and emotions of an art- 
ist as is his art necessarily partakes 
of his moral tone quite as much as 
of his intellectual. Of two men 
equally skilled in the technical de- 
partment of painting or sculpture, 
the man who lives best is certain 
to be the best interpreter of a reli- 
gious subject. And, a fortiori, a 
skilled artist who is also leading 
a supernatural life on earth, feed- 
ing his lofty heart with the con- 
templation of the unseen world and 
its eternal truths, will be found to 
excel in his manner of reproducing 
scenes and events connected with 
it on which he has long and inti- 
mately meditated. Such a man 
was Beato Angelico. A native of 
the same part of Tuscany that gave 
birtli to Giotto, he early displayed 
his taste for art, and learned its 
rudiments from his brother, Fra 
Benedetto, an illuminator of MSS. 
At the age of twenty he renounced 
the world and entered the Domi- 
nican convent at Fiesole, of which 
his brother was prior, in 1407. A 
great part of his life was passed in 
that of San Marco at Florence. 
His chief works were executed for 
churches there ; a history of the 
Passion of Christ in San Marco's 
Convent engaged him for nine 
years. Foligno and Cortona also 
possess works which he executed 
during a temporary residence at 
those places. He visited Rome for 
the first time at the invitation of 
the pope, and was commissioned 
to illustrate the parallel lives of St. 
Stephen and St. Lawrence in the 



pie, our science 'and its appliances, chapel of San Lorenzo in the Vati 

are so vastly in advance of any can. This he accomplished in a 

former age, while our fine art is so double series, each consisting of 

ludicrously inferior. One secret five pictures of surpassing delica- 



Christian Art. 



541 



cy and beauty. It is remarkable 
that their existence was lost sight 
of for two centuries, and so lately 
as 1769 visitors to the chapel had 
to enter it by a window. The 
Florentine Academy of Fine Arts 
possesses a good collection of Fra 
Angelico's smaller works, others 
of which are distributed in several 
of the national galleries in Europe. 
The pure spirit of the painter is 
breathed in every line he drew. 
When he undertook an important 
work it was not till after prayer 
and ascetic exercises and the v holy 
Mass. The figure of the crucified 
Redeemer he never painted but on 
his knees and with many tears. 
Every work he executed was under 
religious obedience and for the love 
of God. His representations of the 
celestial world and its inhabitants 
reflect an exquisite and inimitable 
grace and loveliness. So impress- 
ed with these was the massive ge- 
nius of Michael Angelo that he 
composed the following epigram on 
Angelico : 

u O Giovanni e salito in Paradise 
II volto di Maria a vagheggiare ; 
O Ella e scesa in terra, e il bel viso 
A lui venne ad espor per ricavare." * 

The beauty Angelico infused in- 
to those figures was reflected in his 
own spotless character, and further 
heightened by the most retiring hu- 
mility. The pope desired to make 
him Archbishop of Florence; but 
he declined the honor, and be- 
sought His Holiness to appoint Fra 
Antonio, of San Marco, a brother 
friar, which was done, and with ex- 
cellent results. Fra Angelico died 
in Rome, 1455, passing away to 
the society of the blessed beings 
his whole life had been spent in 
contemplating and imitating. His 

* The painter up to Paradise has been 
To look upon Madonna s beauteous face ; 
Or she has visited this earthly scene 
To aid his portrait of her matchless grace. 



tomb remains in the Dominican 
church of the Minerva, bearing this 
epitaph : 

" Non mihi sit laudi quod eram velut 
alter Apelles, 

Sed quod lucra tuis omnia, Christe, da- 
bam : 

Altera nam terris opera exstant, altera 
coelo. 

Urbs me Johannem flos tulit Etrurise."* 

Fra Angelico was not the only 
religious who consecrated his tal- 
ent to the service of God. The 
Dominican Order claims another 
celebrated painter in Fra Bartolo- 
meo, the friend of Savonarola. 
Fra Filippo Lippi was a Carmelite 
friar endowed with the rarest ar- 
tistic gifts. Don Lorenzo, called 
// Monaco, belonged to the order 
of Camaldoli, a reform of the Bene- 
dictine. Fra Antonio da Negro- 
ponte, a comparatively little known 
painter, but a master of his art, was 
a Franciscan friar in Venice in the 
fifteenth century. Much nearer 
our own times Daniel Zeghers 
(1590-1661), of Antwerp, exercised 
his unsurpassed mastery of flower- 
painting in the Society of Jesus, 
and executed wreaths and garlands 
of the choicest flowers, within which 
other hands painted the busts of 
the Madonna and Child, or of St. 
Ignatius, the great founder of the 
society. 

In our very brief survey of early 
Italian art and its progress it has 
manifestly been impossible to do 
more than sketch the outlines of 
an extensive subject, and supply a 
few landmarks for the student in 
the names of some of the most 
eminent artists of the period. The 
annals of other schools than we 
have mentioned would furnish ma- 

* Praise me not because I was, as it were, a se- 
cond Apellos, but because I gave all my gains to 
thy children, O Christ ! Some work for the earth, 
and some for heaven. The flower-city of Etruria 
gave me birth. 



542 



Cliristian Art. 



terials for equally interesting study ; 
as, for example, the Venetian school, 
with Antonello of Messina, Viva- 
rini, Crivelli, and Bellini among its 
early lights. The schools of Padua, 
Bologna, and other historical cen- 
tres of art must be studied in the 
numerous systematic works devot- 
ed to their illustration, and will 
well repay the requisite trouble. 
Before concluding this paper we 
propose to say something of one of 
the last of the mediaeval, or " pre- 
Raphaelite," painters, as they have 
been called; for the period of the 
Renaissance had arrived, and new 
life was kindling in art, as in lit- 
erature and other interests of civ- 
ilization. Pietro Vannucci or Pe- 
rugino, as he was named from Pe- 
rugia, the city of his residence was 
born in 1446, and rose to be the 
chief of the Umbrian school; no 
small honor also fell to his share 
by reflection from the fame of his 
more eminent pupil, Raphael. He 
lived long enough to see the new 
style arise which was to eclipse his 
own in the works of Leonardo da 
Vinci and Michael Angelo ; and he 
died in 1524, three years later than 
his great pupil. He learned the 
rudiments of painting in Florence, 
in the face of poverty and priva- 
tions which would have baffled a 
less energetic character. His art 
took the direction of sacred sub- 
jects, in which he soon distinguish- 
ed himself by devotional feeling 
and his brilliant coloring. He was 
called to Rome by the pope, and 
executed commissions in the Sistine 
Chapel, which, however, were after- 
wards superseded by the greater 
works of Michael Angelo. His pic- 
tures are numerous in Italy and 
European art collections ; they are 
highly valued for certain qualities 
which are to some extent indepen- 
dent of their imperfect drawing and 



general formality. A large trip- 
tych in the National Collection, 
London, represents, in the central 
panel, the Madonna and her Child, 
and to the right and left St. Mi- 
chael and St. Raphael presenting 
the young Tobias to the Madonna. 
The picture was painted in 1501 
for the Carthusian church at Pavia, 
and has the further interest at- 
taching to traces of Raphael's hand 
which are said to be found in it. 
A fresco of Perugino's, still remain- 
ing in the Sistine Chapel, has been 
frequently engraved, representing 
the delivery of the keys to St. Pe- 
ter at the foot of a flight of steps 
leading up to the Temple. The 
museum at Caen, in Normandy, pos- 
sesses a picture, by his hand, of 
the " Sposalizio,"or marriage of the 
Madonna and St. Joseph, which 
Raphael must have had in his mind 
when he painted the same subject 
a work now in the Brera collection 
at Milan. In Raphael's picture, 
however, the order in which the 
group is arranged before the high- 
priest is inverted. 

Such was the infancy and the 
early youth of modern sacred art 
in Italy. We have for the most 
part confined our remarks to facts, 
leaving appropriate reflections very 
much to suggest themselves. That 
so much fertility of invention and 
skill in execution should, in so 
many centres of art at one time, 
be dedicated to the service of re- 
ligion may appear scarcely credi- 
ble. Enough, however, of what 
was actually done survives to place 
it beyond a doubt. Nay, we have 
more convincing evidence still in 
the lives and works of Italy's four 
greatest masters Da Vinci, Buo- 
narroti, Raphael, and Titian to 
prove the amazing fecundity of 
sacred art in Italy in the sixteentli 
century. In the period covered by 



Lord Castlereagh. 



543 



these four lives it attained its full 
growth and perfection; after that 
the historian has little to record 
but gradual and inevitable decline, 
but such beauty in decline as would 
put to shame the highest art- 
achievements of almost any country 
but Italy. The Carraccis, Domeni- 
chino, and Guercino might have 
been " lords of the field " but for 



the supreme four just named. 
Hence the student may learn how 
precious a thing is art in its highest 
perfection ; how entirely removed 
beyond all human calculation is 
the chance of its recurrence in any 
age or period; and, if for no other 
reason, how well worthy of study 
is its birth and growth, and even 
its decay. 



LORD CASTLEREAGH 



THE name which stands at the 
head of this page brings to the 
minds of Irishmen no pleasing re- 
collections. Associated as that 
name is with the sanguinary re- 
pression of a great rebellion and 
with the corruption and betrayal 
)f their national legislature, little 
room for wonder is there in the 
fact that it is regarded with feel- 
ings such as no other has ever 
evoked in the memories of men of 
the much-suffering, much-forgiving 
Irish race. Yet withal there can- 
not but be a little of another feel- 
ing aroused in the hearts of Irish- 
len when they remember the proud 
positions held by its bearer, and 
think how different might have 
been the later story of their nation 
had the ability of Castlereagh and 
the sword of Wellington been given 
to the service of their native land. 

Robert Stewart, the future Lord 
Castlereagh, was born on the i8th 
of June, 1769, the same year which 
saw the birth of Napoleon and of 
his conqueror. The family of the 
Stewarts was of Scotch extraction, 
one of their ancestors having come 
from that country to Ireland in the 
reign of James I., and obtained, as 
many another adventurer did be- 



fore and since, a large tract of con- 
fiscated land which had been grant- 
ed to the Duke of Lennox. Add- 
ing to their possessions and their 
wealth, they became people of im- 
portance. Always supporters of 
what men had come to call the 
"Protestant interest " transplant- 
ing Scotch Protestants to people 
their Irish estates and to supplant 
Irish Catholics, raising troopers for 
King William and riding at their 
head always on the government 
side in Parliamentary divisions, 
they yet remained untitled coun- 
try gentlemen until the time of 
the father of the future statesman. 
This Robert Stewart for his son 
was christened after him was born 
in 1739. He represented the Coun- 
ty Down in two Parliaments, and 
was made a member of the Privy 
Council and created Baron of Lon- 
donderry in 1789. A veritable 
glutton for titles, which came to 
him quickly and thickly, more as 
the rewards of his son's services to 
England than the guerdon of his 
own, he was raised to the digni- 
ty of Viscount Castlereagh in 1795, 
made Earl of Londonderry in 1796, 
and created Marquis of London- 
derry 1816. He was married twice, 



544 



Lord Castlereagh. 



first to a daughter of the then Earl 
of Hertford, and secondly to the 
sister of Lord Camden. By his 
first marriage he had two sons : one 
died while yet but an infant; the 
other lived to have the best-exe- 
crated name of his generation, to 
descend to the grave " unwept, 
unhonored, and unsung." Robert 
Stewart the younger received his 
early education at Armagh, and at 
the age of seventeen, in the year 
1786, he was sent to Cambridge. 
He left college in the following 
year; but, short as was his stay, it 
is stated to have been not undis- 
tinguished. On leaving college he 
started upon the then inevitable 
"grand tour." Upon his return 
he evinced such a decided predi- 
lection for a political career that 
his father determined to have him 
nominated for the County Down at 
the next election. Lord Hillsbor- 
ough, afterwards Marquis of Down- 
shire, had been anxious to secure 
the two seats for the county for 
his own nominees, and all the influ- 
ence he could command was put 
forth in order to secure this result. 
The contest was a long and doubt- 
ful one, but ended in the return of 
young Stewart for one of the seats. 
The expense of a Parliamentary 
election in those days was always 
considerable, but so intense had 
been this struggle that the cost of 
Mr. Stewart's election came to the 
enormous total of sixty thousand 
pounds.* This great expenditure 
fell with crushing force upon his 
family, and came at a particularly 
awkward moment for Lord London- 
derry; for, having just before the 
election determined upon erecting 
a new and magnificent family man- 
sion at Mount Stewart, he had de- 
molished his old residence, and now, 

* Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Castle- 
reagh^ vol. i. p. 7. 



having exhausted the funds with 
which he had intended to defray 
the cost of the new edifice, having 
even been compelled to part with 
his magnificent and valuable col- 
lection of paintings, he was obliged 
to make some cheap additions to 
an old barn, and to doom himself 
to it as a residence for the remain- 
der of his life.* In the fierce de- 
termination evinced by the father 
to secure this election one per- 
haps sees foreshadowed that equal- 
ly determined persistence which 
the son was to display whenever 
he had an object to obtain or a ri- 
val to surpass. 

Gifted with a handsome and pleas- 
ing exterior, with a remarkably cour- 
teous and, when he chose to dis- 
play it, winning demeanor, he on 
his entrance to the Irish House of 
Commonsmademany friends. Pro- 
fessing liberal sentiments, advocat- 
ing Parliamentary reform, support- 
ing the claims of Ireland to free and 
untrammelled trading, he seemed 
destined to add another name to 
the list of those Irish statesmen 
and patriots who, despite govern- 
ment corruption and bribery of 
every kind, were seeking to uphold 
the liberties of their native land. 
But this was not to be. In 1791, 
speaking and voting for a motion 
of Grattan's in favor of free trading 
between Ireland and the East In- 
dies, he in the following yearspok< 
and voted against a resolution 
brought forward by Ponsonby with 
the same object. His political con- 
duct at this period we have summed 
up for us by his half-brother : "For 
a few sessions Mr. Stewart voted 
generally with the opposition. How- 
ever, the turbulent development of 
the state of Ireland rendered it ne- 
cessary for him to come to some 
decided conclusion. Accordingly, 
* ibid. 



Lord Castlercagh. 



545 



when the system of strong measures 
was adopted by the Irish adminis- 
tration, in order to silence rebel- 
lion by terror or extinguish it by 
severity, we find Lord Castlereagh 
amongst its warmest supporters." 5 
This paragraph not unfairly epito- 
mizes Castlereagh's conduct. From 
being the advocate of reform he 
became the supporter of coercion ; 
from being an upholder of popular 
rights he became a fierce denouncer 
of any political agitation on the 
part of the masses ; and though 
he still expressed a desire for the 
emancipation of the Roman Catho- 
lics, it was to be given only as a 
bribe for the surrender of their 
country's nationality. It must, how- 
ever, be admitted that, guilty of his 
first inconsistency, no man could 
ever again lay such a charge against 
him. There was to be no incon- 
sistency ever again displayed by 
him who was to be perhaps the 
most consistently one-ideaed states- 
man who ever sought to guard, to 
mar, or guide the destinies of a 
nation. There was to be no incon- 
sistency, no weak feeling of mercy, 
displayed in the character of the 
man who dyed red with Irish blood 
the scaffold and triangles; who ap- 
proved, if he did not devise, the 
sending of a brutal soldiery to live 
at " free quarters " upon the unfor- 
tunate peasantry of Ireland; who in 
that country dictated edicts which 
would not have belied the fame of 
Alva; and who in England demand- 
ed and procured the passage of the 

* Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount 
Castlereagh, vol. i. p. 9. The style of composi- 
tion favored by this half-brother of Lord Castlereagh 
was, as will be seen by this quotation, where he 
speaks, almost in the one sentence, of " Mr. Stewart" 
and " Lord Castlereagh," unnecessarily confusing. 
A beau sabreur, a dashing cavalry soldier, he had a 
fancy for authorship, but few of the requisite quali- 
fications. In a work describing his travels, after 
mentioning his arrival at a town he adds : " Here 
I learned that Almighty God, for reasons best known 
to himself, had been pleased to burn down my 
house in the county of Durham.'' 

VOL. xxx. 35 



" Gagging Acts " and the suspen- 
sion of the Habeas Corpus. Once 
he adopted the role, he was a con- 
sistent Tory, a consistent supporter 
of oligarchy and tyranny, a con- 
sistent enemy of free institutions ; 
and on careful inquiry we will find 
that his only inconsistency lay in 
having once been guilty of a gen- 
erous impulse, of having for a brief 
moment, by his actions, owned that 
he knew he owed a duty to his 
unfortunate motherland. He could 
preserve a smooth exterior while 
his mind was deeply engaged in 
the tangles of some political ar- 
rangements the results of which 
would be felt from the halls of the 
Kremlin to the courts of the Al- 
hambra ; and he could be courteous, 
smile, and bandy compliments while 
he knew that he was about to 

" Dabble his sleek young hands in Erin's gore."' 

Yet, in saying so much, one cannot 
help at the same time expressing 
some admiration for the great talen ts, 
industry, and determination which 
Castlereagh ever displayed in seek- 
ing the attainment of his ends. He 
accomplished the destruction of 
Irish Parliamentary independence 
by means of mingled corruption and 
terrorism. " Fifteen years afterwards 
he and the two brothers Wellesley 
concluded that awful contest in 
which Pitt himself had succumbed. 
Its secret history is that of an al- 
liance between these three Irish 
adventurers. It was Castlereagh 
who appointed and maintained the 
Duke of Wellington as British gen- 
eralissimo ; Wellesley who suggest- 
ed, and Castlereagh who conducted, 
the diplomatic arrangements which 
banded all Europe against Napo- 
leon." '' In private life he possess- 
ed many attached friends. " Elegant 

*M moir of Lord Plitnket, by J. Cashel Hoey, 
p. 10. 



54<5 



Lord Castlercagh'. 



and courteous in his manners, with 
a noble figure and finely-chiselled 
countenance, he was beloved in his 
family circle and by all his friends."* 
Certain it is that no man had ever 
more attached followers ; but equal- 
ly certain is it that no man ever re- 
warded more richly those who car- 
ried out his behests. Trampling 
all feeling of shame beneath his 
feet, regardless of the records and 
verdict of history, disregarding the 
staining of his own name, he re- 
warded, as traitors never were re- 
warded before, all those who assist- 
ed him in the betrayal of Ireland. 
The feeling of admiration which he 
inspired in those whose work he 
did, whose cause " the Irish adven- 
turer" had made his own, is not 
difficult to understand, but few will 
be prepared to find one of Eng- 
land's oldest nobility writing: " As 
a statesman, as a gentleman, as a 
man, the Marquis of Londonderry 
was the Bayard of political chivalry 
sans peur et sans reproche" \ A 
perfect man of business, his private 
expenditure was carefully kept with- 
in the limits which a prudent re- 
gard to his income dictated ; and 
while during his life no man could 
.call him niggard, at his death he 
left no debts behind him, as so 
many of his contemporary nobles 
did, to harass his descendants to 
the third generation. His hospi- 
tality was at all times generous; he 
maintained all the state his position 
fairly called for; he was a faithful 
husband, a good master; and if he 
seldom forgave an enemy, he never 
forsook a friend. 

It was in 1797 that Robert Stew- 
art first became entitled, owing to 
the promotion of his father in the 
peerage, to that title of Viscount 



* Allison's History of Europe, vol. ii. p. 526. 
f Duke of Buckingham's Memoirs of the Court 
of George IV. , vol. i, p. 357. 



Castlereagh which he was to make 
so notorious. It was also in this 
year that he received his first pub- 
lic appointment at tiie hands of 
the then lord lieutenant, his step- 
uncle, Lord Camden, who created 
him Keeper of the Privy Seal in 
Ireland. Soon afterwards he was 
appointed, as locum teticns for Pel- 
ham, to the position of chief secre- 
tary to the viceroy a position fully 
conferred upon him when Pelham 
resigned in 1799. The history of 
Ireland during the two years 1798- 
99 is that of Castlereagh's admin- 
istration. To travel over it again 
here is not necessary. Known by a 
terrible and sad notoriety, it needs 
no recalling; while the stories of 
nations are told, while the records 
of history are preserved, the fate 
of Ireland and the treatment of 
her people during those two ter- 
rible years will be remembered as 
one of the cruellest of the many 
cruel trials to which the much-en- 
during children of Erin have had 
to submit. During those two years 
no pains were spared to goad into 
rebellion the mass of the Catho- 
lic people; they were tempted to 
acts of desperation by deeds of 
torture, and almost driven to hurl 
themselves unarmed, with the wild 
valor of despair, on the bayonet- 
bristling ranks of the Orange yeo- 
manry and Hessian auxiliaries of 
England. Thanks, however, to the 
efforts of their prelates and their 
priests, they were saved from a 
course of action which, undisci- 
plined and unarmed as they were, 
could only have resulted in dis- 
aster; for had the Catholics, as Ca- 
tholics, been found on the side of 
the rebels, the close of the struggle 
would not have been different to 
what it was, while there would un- 
doubtedly have been superadded 
to the horrors of the period the re- 



Lord Castlereagh. 



547 



enactment of the penal laws, the 
renewal of the hideous persecu- 
tions of the earlier portions of the 
century, and the suppression and 
destruction of the various religious 
institutions which were just begin- 
ning to take root, and which would 
have been the first to be assailed 
had bigotry the least plausible ex- 
cuse.* Therefore it was well for 
the Catholic people of Ireland that, 
while their enemies might speak 
of the rebellion as that of the Irish, 
they could not charge it to " the 
Papists." The pure-minded, gen- 
erous-hearted young noble who was 
to have been its head was not a 
Roman Catholic. Wolfe Tone, the 
Shearses, Bagnal Harvey, or Nap- 
per Tandy were none of them Ro- 
man Catholics. Yet amongst the 
Catholic people of Ireland 

"Who fears to speak of ninety-eight? 

Who blushes at the name? 
When cowards mock the patriot's fate, 
Who hangs his head for shame ?" 

Amongst them are but few who 
do not honor the memory of the 
valiant-hearted leaders of "ninety- 
eight," who faced the- scaffold, the 
dungeon, and dangers of battle, 
both at home and in exile, as 
stoutly as the chiefs of the olden 
days. 

It were a useless task to here 
again retell the story of the corrup- 
tion and degradation of Ireland's 
national legislature by Castlereagh. 
How he induced her sons to be 
faithless to her, and taught them 

* How feeble these just rising institutions were 
at the time of the rebellion may be gathered from 
the fact that three y ars later, in i8o, there were 
but five convents in Dublin : viz , one belonging to 
the Dominican nuns in Brunswick Street, one to the 
Poor Clares in Dorset Street, another belonging to 
the same order in North King Street, one to the 
Ursulines on George's Hill, and another to the Car- 
melites at Ranelagh. How different the;e so-called 
*' convents " were from our modern notions of what 
such institutions shoul 1 be may be concluded from 
the fact that the total number of nuns in the five 
was only forty-six (CastlereagJi s Correspondence, 
vol. iv. p. 172). 



that honor, power, and wealth were 
best attained by treachery to their 
native land, has been often told. 
On the passage of the Act of Union, 
or shortly afterwards, Castlereagh 
removed his residence to England, 
and in 1802 was first admitted to 
a seat in the English cabinet as 
President of the Board of Control in 
the Addington administration. In 
1804,011 the formation of Pitt's min- 
istry, Castlereagh was one of those 
chosen by the great statesman to as- 
sist him in the task he had set him- 
self of waging a war to death against 
the conqueror of Europe. It is 
not difficult to account for the un- 
swerving support which the great 
majority of the peers and people 
of England gave this and the vari- 
ous following administrations dur- 
ing the great struggle which they 
carried on so long, at such a cost 
in blood and money. At the be- 
ginning of the French Revolution, 
when the first germs of that strange- 
fermentation began to float fromi 
the salons of Paris and the desks- 
of the philosophers, men were- 
caught and deceived by the high- 
sounding words of the pseudo-phi- 
lanthropists of the period, who de- 
luded their followers with hollow 
platitudes, and seem to have really 
thought themselves that the mise- 
ries of peoples could be healed by 
phrases. The rights of man and' 
the powers of reason were claimed 
and extolled, but never a voice 
was raised to remind the ta>kers- 
that the rights of men had some- 
where a just limit, that the powers 
of reason might easily be over-rat- 
ed. Englishmen were flattered by 
the praises lavished on their gov- 
ernmental and social systems, their 
laws and institutions, and even by 
the copying of their national sports ; 
and amongst them was to be even 
found a section who for a space 



548 



Lord Castlereagh. 



hoped that some of the wildest of 
the dreams of the philosophers of 
Paris might be realized on the 
banks of the Thames. How rudely 
these hopes were blasted, and how 
quickly the atrocities committed in 
the name of freedom produced a 
revulsion in English popular opin- 
ion, is well known. From being 
disposed to give the hand of fel- 
lowship to French democracy the 
majority of Englishmen became its 
most bitter opponents. The ex- 
cesses of the French revolutionists 
tended to defeat their own cause ; 
and not only that, but, unfortunate- 
ly, the cause of rational liberty in 
every land. They prevented Par- 
liamentary reforms for many years 
in England, and gave on the Con- 
tinent seeming justification to sys- 
tems of repression which only serv- 
ed to produce the results they were 
intended to prevent. Macaulay, 
writing of those public men who 
were at one time admirers of the 
revolutionists and afterwards their 
opponents, says : " It was natural 
that such men should see in the 
victory of the Third Estate of France 
the dawn of a new Saturnian age. 
It was natural that the rage of their 
disappointment should be propor- 
tioned to the extravagance of their 
hopes. Though the direction of 
their passions was altered, the vio- 
lence of those passions was the 
same. The force of the rebound 
was proportioned to the force of 
the original impulse. The pendu- 
lum swung furiously to the left, 
because it had been drawn too far 
to the right." * 

In 1805 Lord Castlereagh was 
appointed Secretary of State for 
War, but in the following year, on 
the death of Pitt and the forma- 
tion of the Grey and Grenville ad- 

* Essay on Sir "James Mackintosh's History of 
the English Re-volution. 



ministration, he lost his office. The 
new administration entered office 
pledged to principles of liberality 
and bound by past promises to give 
freedom not only to the black serfs 
in the colonies of England, but 
also to the Catholics at home. The 
first object they made a great effort 
to accomplish, and did succeed in 
securing the passage of a stringent 
law prohibiting the continuance of 
the traffic in slaves ; but the second 
they were not able to even partly 
attain, for the prejudices and fears 
of the obstinate and semi-insane 
old king, worked upon by secret 
influences, induced him to require 
the ministry to withdraw a measure 
which they had introduced open- 
ing commissions in the army and 
navy to -Roman Catholics. This, at 
his bidding, they did ; but when he 
afterwards sent for them, and re- 
quired a written pledge that they 
would never again introduce a 
measure favorable to the Roman 
Catholics, they tendered their re- 
signations, which were accepted. 

The new ministry was formed 
under the presidency of the Duke 
of Portland. Canning, on being in- 
vited to join it, for some reason 
never yet clearly divulged for the 
reason assigned, viz., a sense of 
Castlereagh's incompetence, is ridi- 
culous made it the chief condition 
of his doing so that a certain por- 
tion of the ordinary duties of the 
Secretary of War should be trans- 
ferred to him in addition to his own 
as Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 
or that Castlereagh's resignation 
should be obtained and the Marquis 
of Wellesley appointed in his stead. 
This request must have had its 
origin in some personal ill-feeling; 
but, be this as it may have been, 
Canning made either of such ar- 
rangements an indispensable con- 
dition, and expressed a desire that 






Lord Castlcrcagli. 



549 



his determination should be made 
known to Castlereagh. Apparent- 
ly thinking that this had been done, 
and that his own relation, Lord 
Camden, had discharged the un- 
pleasant task, Canning sat in coun- 
cil with Castlereagh, and permitted 
him"tD engage in a new expedi- 
tion to Walcheren of the most im- 
portant, extensive, and complicated 
nature, under the full persuasion 
that he enjoyed his liberal and bona 
fide support." * When Castlereagh 
discovered the manner in which 
he had been treated, and that the 
man whom he had regarded as a 
faithful colleague had his dismis- 
sal in his pocket, he felt naturally 
irate ; but his anger developed a 
strange fierceness, and he display- 
ed a savage thirst for blood as a 
salve for his self-respect that can 
only be condemned. He, through 
his friend, the then Marquis of 
Hertford, sent a challenge to Can- 
ning; and at the meeting, as the 
first fire proved ineffective, he, de- 
spite the expostulations of the se- 
conds, insisted upon another inter- 
change of shots, when Canning fell 
wounded. There is nothing more 
certain than that on this occasion 
Castlereagh was determined to 
make Canning pay the penalty of 
his life for his offence. Both the 
ministers now resigned their respec- 
tive offices, but before the end of 
the year Castlereagh was called to 
the office which Canning had held. 
The almost wild courage of the man 
was shown in this duel, as on. an- 
other occasion when two large and 
savage mastiffs belonging to Lady 
Castlereagh engaged in furious 
combat, and when, in spite of en- 
treaties and every effort to restrain 
him, he sprang between them, un- 
armed, to stop the fight. In doing 

* Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Castle- 
reagh , vol. i. p. 17. 



this he had naturally to sustain the 
combined attacks of the huge ani- 
mals; and though after a terrible 
struggle he attained his object, it 
was at the expense of hideously 
lacerated hands and arms, and of 
wounds from which he suffered 
long. 

Once at the head of the depart- 
ment of foreign affairs, Castlereagh 
was enabled to give his best efforts to 
the prosecution of the war against 
Napoleon, and to the organization 
of that great coalition before which 
the " mighty man of war " was at 
last to fall. At his bidding the 
purse-strings of Britain were open- 
ed as they were at Pitt's, and the 
hard-earned money of her peoples 
went to sustain foreign powers in 
contests which they lacked the 
monetary means to support them- 
selves. In 1813 it was deemed ne- 
cessary that England should be 
more effectively represented at the 
camp-councils of the army of the 
Alliance, and therefore, in the 
month of December in that year, 
Castlereagh left London and pro- 
ceeded through Holland to the 
headquarters of the army that 
army which numbered within its 
ranks soldiers of so many and so 
diverse nationalities, in whose ranks 
stood the cultured-looking Italian 
and native of the south, the coarse 
and savage, semi-Asiatic Russian, 
the phlegmatic but stout-hearted 
children of Holland, the warrior- 
student sons of Germany ; in whose 
camps floated the banners of so 
many different peoples, who were 
all actuated by the one determina- 
tion, who were banded together by 
the memory of common wrongs, of 
mutual injuries, and the united re- 
solution to spare neither blood nor 
valor to hurl from his throne that 
man for the satisfaction of whose 
ambition such hecatombs of human 



550 



Lord Castlereagh. 



lives had been made, whose word 
and will had wrought misery from 
one end of Europe to the other, 
whose fame was burnt into the 
hearts of childless mothers, widow- 
ed wives, and weeping children in 
every hamlet from the shores of 
the Mediterranean to those of the 
German Ocean, from the Atlantic 
to the Caspian. 

Relentless amongst the relentless, 
none at the conferences of the 
monarchs and their great statesmen 
insisted more emphatically than 
Castlereagh upon the impossibility 
of making peace with Napoleon. 
He more accurately than otliers 
there had measured the depth and 
breadth of the great soldier's ambi- 
tion, and he would not have allow- 
ed any chivalrous feeling of gene- 
rosity towards a fallen foe to in- 
duce him to leave him the hollow 
satisfaction of being still styled 
emperor, or to allow him a resi- 
dence within sight of the shores 
of that great continent which had 
been the arena of his triumphs. 
He therefore refused to sign the 
treaty by which Napoleon exchang- 
ed the throne and crown of France 
lor the mocking one of Elba; but 
lie did, as minister plenipotentiary 
for England, sign the treaty of 
Paris on the 3oth of March, 1814, 
and afterwards proceeded to the 
Congress of Vienna that con- 
gress at which so many acts of res- 
titution were to be made; at which 
the marvellous talents of that 
strange being, Talleyrand now, as 
he had ever been, and was destined 
to be even in his hour of death, on 
the winning side were displayed 
perhaps more than ever before; and 
which was to be so rudely disturb- 
ed in its deliberations by the news 
of dire portent that Napoleon 
again trod the soil of France, that 
iihe soldiers sent against him had 



.been conquered by their old love 
and old associations, and had failed 
to point their bayonets at the breast 
of him whose genius had brought 
glory on the valor of France. 

Napoleon's final defeat and exile 
left Castlereagh at liberty to return 
to England. He returned to be 
received with well-merited honors, 
to be greeted with loud acclaim as 
the man to whom above all others 
with one exception was due the 
downfall of Napoleon, the proud 
position held by England on the 
night when the sun set on the 
blood-stained field of Waterloo. 
On the night when he first revisit- 
ed the House of Commons that 
assembly presented an aspect only 
paralleled by that which it exhibit- 
ed on the occasion when another 
Irishman entered it and received 
from its Speaker the thank-offering 
of a nation grateful to him who had 
saved it from grievous peril. Ar- 
thur, Duke of Wellington, knew the 
value of popular applause ; lie had 
fully measured it, for he had seen 
how fickle a people can be in their 
bestowal of praise or blame ; but 
even he could not be blind or deaf 
to the honors paid him, and the 
iron-hearted, iron-minded soldier 
had bent low before the representa- 
tive assembly of England when it 
thanked him for the deeds he had 
done. So with Castlereagh ; callous 
and cold though the man may have 
been, the proudest moments of his 
life, as men value their lives, must 
have been those wherein he passed 
up the historic chamber of the 
senate of England, and saw tier 
after tier of members supporters 
of the opposition as well as of the 
government, Whigs as well as To- 
ries rise to do him honor ; when 
cheer after cheer rang forth, and 
the vaulted roof echoed and re- 
echoed back the applauding shouts 



Lord Castlereagh. 



55* 



which greeted the " Irish adven- 
turer." Well would it have been 
for him if the dark clouds of re- 
morseful memories had not over- 
shadowed his mind, and if a never- 
ceasing dread of popular vengeance 
had not so acted upon his imagina- 
tion as to make him, once the ex- 
citement of the great contest in 
which he had acted so great a part 
was past, incapable of dealing tem- 
perately with popular discontent 
or wisely with popular agitations. 
Within almost the shortest possible 
space the feeling of admiration en- 
tertained throughout England for 
Castlereagh changed to one " of 
deep hostility, almost of disgust." * 

i'l'he manner in which this change 
of feeling was brought about is well 
known. During the continuance 
of the war the nation had freely 
paid such taxes as its governors 
demanded, and had uncomplaining- 
ly accepted from the hands of Cas- 
tlereagh and his brother ministers 
burdens which still hang upon it; 
but once the war ceased, a strong 
impression began to prevail that 
with the cessation of strife should, 
come a relaxation of the demands 
of the tax-gatherer, and when once 
the people were enabled to direct 
their gaze and attention from for- 
eign battle-fields to their own more 
intimate concerns an equally strong 
impression had come to prevail that 
Parliamentary representation and 
popular taxation should proceed 
part passu. With these feelings 
. and impressions Castlereagh was in 
no way fitted to deal wisely. Accus- 
tomed in Ireland to treat popular 
wishes in an autocratic manner, and 
actuated by an unreasoning dread 
of popular power, he was incapable 
of meeting agitation in any way but 
by measures of stern repression 
and merciless coercion. The popu- 

* Knight ; s History of England, vol. viii. p. 52. 



lar expressions of feeling had al- 
ready produced much effect, and a 
large number of members of the 
House of Commons were decided 
in their opposition to the reimpnsi- 
tion, in time of peace, of the war 
taxes a step which the ministers 
had absolutely the audacity to pro- 
pose. The representatives of the peo- 
ple were determined that, if they 
were to be deprived of their liberties, 
they would not continue to oil with 
their hardly-earned savings the 
wheels of the huge military machine 
which only could do this. There- 
fore it was that the budget, when 
brought forward, was minutely criti- 
cised, and that the votes in Com- 
mittee of Supply were often hotly 
contested. In one of these com- 
mittee debates Castlereagh spoke 
of the people of -England as dis- 
playing " an ignorant impatience " 
of taxation. These words roused 
at once an almost uncalled-for bit- 
terness of feeling towards him. In 
every city, town, and village men 
heard the words with wonder, and 
marvelled at the quick forgetful- 
ness of the statesman in pursuance 
of whose policy England and Eng- 
lishmen had made such sacrifices. 
At this period the action of the 
corn laws, benefiting the few at the 
expense of the many, superadded to 
the distresses consequent upon the 
long struggle just terminated, natu- 
rally tended to produce not only 
poverty but its too often close fol- 
lowers, discontent and rebellion. 
" The people were starving. Mise- 
ry and insurrection filled the land."* 
At Brandon, at Bury, at Norwich 
and Ely the starving people assem- . 
bled, bearing banners calling for 
"Bread or blood." They plun- 
dered the shops, and drove in ter- 
ror from those towns all who had 
anything to lose. The aid of the 

* Ibid., vol. viii. p. 55. 



55? 



Lord CastJereagh* 



military was invoked; blood flowed 
on both sides; eventually the mobs 
were dispersed and order restored. 
Then Castlereagh set to work to 
punish in the only way the ex-Irish 
secretary seems to have known. A 
special commission was issued, and 
the judge and the hangman went 
circuit together. Thirty-four per- 
sons were convicted and sentenced 
to death, but "justice " was satisfied 
by the hanging of six. In other 
districts of England distress equal- 
ly terrible and disorder equally la- 
mentable prevailed. The iron- 
works were closed and their work- 
ers idle. The coal-pits were closed 
and the colliers pauperized. Glory 
abroad had begotten poverty at 
home, and yet Castlereagh could 
taunt the people with their " igno- 
rant impatience." Now came the 
writings of Cobbett to tell the la- 
boring classes that they had more 
rights than their masters gave 
them. His Register, penetrating to 
every village, entering every cot- 
tage, read in every ale-house, de- 
nouncing those who wronged them, 
demanding the rights of freemen 
for the workers, set on foot an agi- 
tation of enormous extent for Par- 
liamentary reform. As usual in 
times of popular excitement, the 
most extravagant talkers had the 
largest followings, and those whose 
schemes promised most to those 
who had least could boast the 
greatest audience. Socialistic ideas 
were openly promulgated, and a 
small sect for a period took them 
as a creed. A London mob rushed 
from a "reform" meeting in the 
Spafields to plunder the gun-shops 
in the Minories, to call for the sur- 
render of the Tower. The crowd 
was dispersed ; then came the trial 
and the hanging. 

Castlereagh and his colleagues, 
deeming themselves unable to cope 



with the existing disorder and d?s- 
loyalty without additional powers 
of repression, asked Parliament to 
pass an act suspending the opera- 
tion of the Habeas Corpus Act. 
This enabled them to arrest any 
man whom the worthless hired 
spies whom they sent over the 
country chose to " suspect " to ar- 
rest any man, to imprison him 
without trial, without even the for- 
mality of an accusation, and to 
turn him out from the jail-gates, 
after, it might be, a lengthened im- 
prisonment, without compensation 
or satisfaction. In Nottingham, 
Leicester, and Derby the year 1817 
witnessed tumults. Order was re- 
stored by the military, and then 
came the visit of the twin uphold- 
ers of the law. Trial, sentence, and 
execution followed, and five men 
hanged told of the "ignorant im- 
patience " of the people. A luna- 
tic named Brandreth raised a mob 
in Derbyshire. The crowd was dis- 
persed by the Hussars ; the gib- 
bet claimed three of their number, 
and eleven were transported for 
life. Canning and Castlereagh, and 
the other leading ministers, went in 
daily fear of assassination, and this 
fear prevented their dealing wisely 
with the discontents of the people. 
It might not have been well for 
England that the reformers should 
have succeeded in their cause just 
then ; heated as were the angry pas- 
sions of the people, fallen as they 
had, in too many places, into the 
hands of bad leaders, their success 
would clearly not have been an 
unmixed good. The days of 
Brougham's overshadowing leader 
ship had not come, any more than 
those of Bright or Gladstone. The 
great middle class of England, the 
merchants and manufacturers of 
her great seats of commerce, had 
not as yet realized the position as- 






Lord Castlereagh. 



553 



signed to them in the body politic 
a position which they were to fill 
with such credit to themselves, 
snch benefit to their native land, 
afterwards. In 1819 occurred the 
" Manchester massacre," when the 
troops charged and dispersed a 
reform meeting; and six corpses, 
borne shoulder-high through the 
streets of Manchester, spoke again 
of the " ignorant impatience " of 
the people. The old king died in 
1820, and the worthless roue\ 
George IV., ascended the throne. 
It was in the previous session 
that Castlereagh obtained the pas- 
sage of the so-called " Six Acts," or 
" Gagging Acts " measures which 
tended to make him still more 
unpopular with the discontented. 
That he acted rightly in not yielding 
to mob violence none can doubt ; 
but that he could have dealt with 
the disturbances more wisely, more 
gently, yet equally efficaciously, 
none can doubt either. He would 
have been more fitted for his high 
position had he, in Ins dealings with 
popular discontent, looked to the 
cause as much as to the effect. 
Soon after came the silly though 
atrocious " Cato Street conspiracy." 
The project of the conspirators 
the proposed murder of the mem- 
bers of the ministry while at a cabi- 
net dinner at the house of Lord 
Harrowby is well known. Their 
intentions were divulged to the 
government and the would-be as- 
sassins arrested. Castlereagh on 
this occasion displayed his old 
spirit and entire contempt of dan- 
ger ; for while even the Duke of 
Wellington counselled the step ac- 
tually taken i.e., the arrest of the 
conspirators at their place of meet- 
ing Castlereagh " was for going to 
dinner in face of it all, at the hour 
invited, and letting each gentleman 



arm himself if he thought proper."* 
Shortly afterwards began the trial 
of the queen of George IV., who 
was only as fit to be queen of Eng- 
land as her husband was to be its 
king, yet who was a favorite with 
the crowd because she was the 
enemy of a government which it 
disliked. Disorder and repression, 
turmoil, worry, and confusion, per- 
petual fear of assassination, told 
severely on Castlereagh. Racked 
by the gout and, it may have been, 
regrets, few would have recognized 
in the Marquis of Londonderry of 
the Parliamentary session of 1822 
the Lord Castlereagh of that of 
1815. Delegated to attend, as rep- 
resentative of England, the Con- 
gress of Verona, the man could 
hardly help comparing what Ins 
own position would be there with 
that which he occupied at that of 
Vienna. At the one he represent- 
ed a nation ; at this a ministry. At 
the one he was supported by the 
magnificent army of Wellington ; at 
this he was to face those who knew 
that that army was dispersed and 
dissolved. Retiring to his seat at 
North Cray, in Kent, on the rising 
of Parliament, suffering much and 
grievously, bodily as well as men- 
tally, the mind of the great states- 
man at length gave way beneath 
the burden of his thoughts, and he 
died by his own hand on the i5th 
of August, 1822. 

Four days afterwards his remains 
were removed to be interred with 
such honors as England reserves 
for her greatest dead. But through 
the streets of London the funeral- 
car was followed by a cursing mob ; 
and when the shades of evening 
were darkening the narrow streets 
about Westminster, and when the 

* Rush, Residence at the Court of London, 
vol. i. p. 289. 



554 



Italy's Reply to the Res Italics. 



massive gates of the grand old ab- the crowd outside, and the requiem 

bey had opened and were about of Robert Stewart was the expres- 

to close, there mingled with the sion of the hatred of the people to 

solemn notes of the great organ whom he had betrayed his native 

pealing through its ancient aisles land. 
a hideous cry of execration from 



ITALY'S REPLY TO THE RES ITALICS. 



ROME, November 17, 1879. 
No one at all acquainted with the 
character of the Italian people, and es- 
pecially of the Italian politicians, ima- 
gined for a moment that a pamphlet 
which caused so much sensation in the 
political circles of Europe, and which 
flagellated so mercilessly, and yet so 
majestically, the Italian government, as 
the Res Ital cce of Co'onel Haymerle 
would remain unanswered. Legal Italy 
abounds in political declaimers. They 
are. too, a more numerous and less suf- 
ferable class than the improviscrs who 
monopolize the market places on fair- 
days. A mercy it is for the common- 
wealth that public banquets are almost 
equally as numerous, whereat their effer- 
vescent eloquence is vented and ap- 
plauded. The press of the Repti/e Fti/id 
has prevented many an explosion, too. 
But a subject like the Res Italics, drop- 
ped among the legal Italians at a mo- 
ment when, there being no particular 
form, dogma, institution, or prerogative 
of the Catholic Church signali/.ed for 
common attack, they were patriotically 
devouring each other, was indeed a 
windfall. And, to speak of General 
Mezzacapo in particular, I am disposed 
to the charitable belief that, in view, and 
because, of this very subject, he will live 
hereafter "ignominious and contented," 
for he has already produced no less 
than two replies to the Res Italics. Pro- 
bably with the desire of nffecting a hcfti- 
ness of style beseeming the occasion, he 
gave a Latin title to his first emana- 
tion, naming it, Quid faciendum? It is 
considered a categorical and summary 
reply to the work of the matter-of-fact 
and irrefragably logical Austrian ; be- 
cause Sig. Mezzacapo is an ex-Minister 
of War, and he will probably be minister 
again when the nation mskes another 



gyration in the vicious circle of its min- 
isterial crises. The title of Mc/zacapo's 
second effusion is also weighty : Siatno 
prated! let us be practical. But he 
was far from being practical in either 
essay. Both might be written for any 
occasion but the present. He does not 
answer Colonel Haymerle's statements 
and conclusions, for the redoubtable 
reason that they are positively unan- 
swerable. But something was to be 
said, and this is the sum and substance 
of what he said in both essays : "We 
must fortify with all solidity ihe passes 
on the Austrian confines and every- 
where ; begin without delay the strate- 
getical railroads of the confines. The 
grist-tax will be abolished in ten years 
they who eat polenta will not die in the 
meantime. The new railroads of a pure- 
ly economical and political character 
will be deferred. It is better to pay 
taxes to prepare for war than to pay the 
indemnity of war after a defeat. Soldiers, 
cannons, fortifications, and then again 
fortifications, cannons, soldiers behold 
everything." I have used the words of 
the Hon. Petrucelli della Gattina, but 
the sentiments are those of General Mez- 
zacapo, and he simply wasted many 
pages of the Nuova Antologia to give 
them expression. The utter impractica- 
bility, not to say madness, of Mezza- 
capo's project will appear ; and it is also 
needless to devote even a modicum of 
argument to proving how stupidly irre- 
levant his emanations are to the Res 
Italics. 

The League for the Redemption of 
Trent and Trieste met the assault of Col- 
onel Haymerle fairly. In their brochure, 
Pro Italia, they regard the Res Itilica as 
a glove of challenge thrown at them 
by Austria. Their reply is a tissue of 
insulting recriminations a la Garibal- 






Italy s Reply to the Res Italicce. 



555 



di. The Garibaldian General Stefano 
Canzio, leader ol the Italian Carbineers 
for the redemption of Trent and 
Trieste, has been most explicit in re 
plying to Colonel Haymerle's pamph- 
let. At Vultri, where the Carbineers had 
met on the i4th of October to practise 
target-sh >oting, he published the follow- 
ing order of the day : " Italian Carbi- 
neers ! reunited in arms ; remember- 
ing that the blood of the Italians is irre- 
vocably consecrated to the redemption 
of Italy ; remembering that this holy en- 
terprise is not finished as long as Aus- 
tria has in Italy a Bosnia and a Herze- 
govina which are called Trieste and 
Trent ; despising the vain artifice of a 
decrepit diplomacy and its cowardly 
falsehoods prove before the world, by the 
beat of every Italian pulse, that you will 
not desist from the cry of war. that you 
will not lay down the arms of Varese, of 
Calatafimi, of Volturno, of Bezzecca, as 
long as there is a gem wanting in that 
magnificent garland of seas and moun- 
tains with which nature and history 
crowned your Italy. Italian Carbineers ! 
let this oath which twenty battle-fields 
prove unchangeable be your reply to the 
Coasts with which the enemy deludes 
limself and his own terrors. And let the 
reply be of blood.-The president, 

" S. CANZIO." 

There were three hundred of these 
Carbineers at the encampment of Voltri. 
After rations on the last day of the rifle- 
shooting the general delivered an ad- 
dress in which he complimented the 
young men on their proficiency in the 
use of the carbine. He regarded the 
carbine as the only pen with which the 
Italian people can reply to the intimida- 
tions of Austrian diplomacy. If official 
Italy fails in its duty of defending the 
dignity of the nation, the people, the 
Italian Carbineers, will pick up the 
glove which comes from beyond the 
Alps. The people know neither policy 
nor opportunism. The Italians are 
ready. " I drink," he concluded, " to 
the fortune of those first heroes who will 
soon range themselves there on the 
Julian and Rhetian Alps, with the car- 
bine, to write the first page of the Italian 
pamphlet in reply to the Austrian one of 
Haymerle. Long live Trent and Trieste 
restored to Italy !" 

Of this domestic demonstration the 
Italian government took no notice a 
modest circumstance in its own way, 



but not without significance when placed 
beside others of the same laiscez f^irc 
order. 

So much for what may be considered 
the categorical reply of Italy to Colonel 
Haymcr'e's work. But it i- strictly un- 
official. A review of the indirect reply 
embraces a general outlook in Italy. 
United Italy is a chronic invalid, and, as 
such, has need of p riodical diagnoses, 
each succeeding diagnosis being more 
necessary and interesting than its pre- 
decessor. The first disorder coming 
under observation is political isolation. 
Symptoms a nervous uncertainty at 
home ; slights abroad. Witness con- 
duct of Bismarck while at Vienna. He 
visited every foreign ambassador but 
the Italian ! Petrucelli della Gattina 
published a little philippic on this inci- 
dent, from which it is not out of place to 
cite : '' Bismarck had already edified us 
by the esteem he has for us, when he 
delayed .thirty-two hours when Victor 
Emanuel went to Berlin, and when, 
speaking of the cession of Venice after 
Sadowa, he said, ' Let us throw this bone 
to Italy.' Now he has crowned with the 
effrontery and boorishness of a hcbereau 
though he has become a Most Serene 
Highness the measure of his imperti- 
nence by pas-ing by the palace of the 
ambassador of Italy without visit ng him, 
though he went to that of Turkey and 
of the Vatican !" Italy meets with equal- 
ly uncomplimentary deference in France 
and England. This rings me, by a most 
natural transition, to the affair of General 
Cialdini. A royal decree of November 
2 has finally accepted his resignation as 
Italian ambassador to Paris. The king 
has nominated him extraordinary ambas- 
sador to the court of Madrid, to repre- 
sent him at the wedding of the King of 
Spain and the Archduchess of Austria. 

The cause of General Cialdini's resig- 
nation is no longer a secret. Some months 
ago he received instructions from Cai- 
roli, President of the Cabinet, and Minis- 
ter of Foreign Altars ad ini,rim, to con- 
fer with M. Waddington, and obtain, if 
possible, for Italy a representative part 
in the international cabinet of Egypt. 
The French Minister of Foreign Affairs 
informed Cialdini that such was impos- 
sible in consequence of a prior under- 
standing with England. He added, be- 
sides, that, even in the hypothesis of no 
such understanding, the interests of Italy 
in Egypt were not of sufficient impor- 



556 



Italy's Reply to the Res Italiccz. 



tance to establish a claim to a representa- 
tion in the international cabinet. Cial- 
dini communicated to his government 
the result of this interview. He receiv- 
ed an answer that he must insist with 
M. Waddington, representing to him, 
moreover, that Lord Salisbury had not 
only acceded to a similar request from 
General Menabrea, the Italian ambassa- 
dor at London, but had even met him 
halfway, saying: " The Italians arevery 
competent in juridical matters. It is the 
portfolio of justice we must reserve for 
you. " " Having received this despatch," 
said Cialdini, in an authenticated con- 
versation with a representative of the 
Figaro, " I returned to M. Waddington, 
and, after a long interview with your 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, I became 
convinced that Lord Salisbury could 
not have been very frank with General 
Menabrea, and that an understanding 
really existed between France and Eng- 
land relative to the exclusion of Italian 
representation from the Egyptian minis- 
try." Cialdini, in a confidential note, 
apprised Cairoli of his convictions. He 
received in turn a severe reprimand in 
substance, that he should not have re- 
presented to M. Waddington that his re- 
fusal to admit Italy into the affairs of 
Egypt was of a nature to compromise the 
good relations existing between France 
and Italy. At this stage of the affair the 
Libra Verde of Italy was published, and, 
contrary to all diplomatic usages, the 
private despatches of Cialdini were pub- 
lished also. He resigned at once. 

The more trifling this incident ap- 
pears, both in cause and results, the 
more serious is the humiliation of Italy. 
It is certainly mortifying to a nation 
which aspires to sit at the banquet of 
the great nations to be told frankly, de- 
liberately, that its exclusion has already 
been resolved upon. It is doubly morti- 
fying to perceive that it has been hood- 
winked, nay, trifled with. Mark the 
mockery in Lord Salisbury's flattering 
speech to Menabrea : " The Italians are 
very competent in juridical matters. It 
is the portfolio of justice we must reserve 
for you." On the other hand, there is 
something pitiable, bordering dn the 
contemptible, in the ungainly efforts of 
Italy to enter the great international cir- 
cles. They remind one of the struggles 
of a parvenu to be admitted into distin- 
guished society. 

Let us glance at the internal condition 



of the country. It is now a generally- 
acknowledged fact, supported and at- 
tested by the ministers themselves in 
their yearly discourses to their consti- 
tuents, that Italy holds the primacy in 
crime. This is indisputable, and it is 
more harrowing than edifying to enter 
into statistical details. But she has of 
late acquired another primacy, and it is 
that of misery. There is not a nation un- 
der the sun whose poorer classes groan 
in more abject misery than the Italians, 
where the commonest and meagrest ne- 
cessities of life are procured with more 
terrific toil and hardship. And yet there 
is not a people under the sun more ex- 
orbitantly, remorselessly, and brutally 
taxed than these miserable creatures. 
They are a long-suffering people, too, 
otherwise at this hour a stone would not 
be left on a stone to mark that such a 
foul fabric ever blackened the face of the 
earth as Italy, One and United. The re- 
volutionists have built up their fabric on 
a hecatomb of social peace, contented- 
ness, and prosperity. Within the month 
of October 5,000 unfortunates embarked 
at Genoa for South America. Fanfulla, 
the court fool, wonders at this exodus, 
" s,pite of the precautions of the govern- 
ment to prevent emigration." But among 
the precautions of te government the 
umim nccessarium, bread, is not includ- 
ed. During the past seven years 40,- 
ooo families that were once in easy cir- 
cumstances had their property confiscat- 
ed for unpaid taxes. It is the nature of 
Italian taxes to increase and multiply. 
"In 1863," said the Hon. Rizzari three 
years ago in a Parliamentary inquiry 
into the condition of the working-classes 
" the general and local taxes amounted 
to 662,000,000. To-day (in 1875) they 
have reached the enormous figure of i,- 
824,000,000 that is, an increase in twelve 
years of 1,162,000,000 of francs " (yearly). 
" To this incredible increase," adds the 
Civilta Catiolica, *' which has arisen in 
the four successive years to the sum of 
two milliards, owing to the new and mul- 
tifold taxes decreed by the state, the 
province, and the municipalities, we 
must add the forced circulation of paper 
money, which of itself, owing to the pre- 
mium in exchange, amounts to a weighty 
impost upon each and every citizen ; be- 
cause from calculations made we deduce 
that, during the fourteen years that we 
have had paper instead of gold, the nation 
has lost in exchange probably more than 






Italy s Reply to the Res Italica. 



557 



900,000,000." The Opinion*, a respecta- 
ble liberal sheet, published the follow- 
ing on the ist of October : " L'Amico 
dd Popolo has written that in Misilmeri 
the entire revenue that could be got out 
of the income-tax amounted in 1878 to 
35,000 francs. In 1879 it was reduced to 
34,000. But in the new rolls (for 1880) 
they have raised it to 240,000 ! It seems 
incredible, but it is too true. The same 
Amico dd Popoh publishes a correspon- 
dence from Siricusa, in effect that the 
already exorbitant taxes established in 
1879 have neither been doubled nor 
tripled, but simply decupled !" The in- 
come tax is the most terrible scourge of 
the Italians. The government exacts 
thirteen per cent, on what they earn, not 
on what they save. Every living creature 
that earns over and above eighty dollars 
per annum is the victim of this remorse- 
less, inexorable monster. If a man in- 
creases his industry the assessor taxes 
the increase. It is not enough that a 
tradesman pays a tax, and a heavy one, 
too, for the exercise of his profession. 
The thirteen-per-cent. monster dogs him 
in his industry, spieshim, and if he make 
a centime more than in the previous year 
it must have its tribute. I know a dealer 
in chinaware who exhibited recently at 
the provincial exposition of Perugia. 
He incurred an expense of one thousand 
francs to show his wares to the best ad- 
vantage for the honor of the city. He 
was rewarded with a bronze medal. But 
another reward was also in store for 
him. Pie received a note from the as- 
sessor of the income-tax, in which he 
was informed that, owing to the increase 
he had made in his industry, as was 
manifest at the exposition, he would in 
the next year be assessed for two hun- 
dred francs more. Of the tax on real es- 
' tate I cannot treat at present with any 
definite knowledge of statistics. An in- 
stance taken at random from the vast 
ocean of exorbitances will give the 
reader a pretty adequate notion of this 
particular engine of the great national 
inquisition. A gentleman of Perugia, 
who is the owner of a respectable resi- 
dence, informed me that under the papal 
regime the tax on his property the house 
was six scudi, or thirty francs, per an- 
num. He now pays one hundred and 
twenty scudi, or six hundred francs ! 

Shall I mention another impost that 
of the confiscations of the property of 
the church ? I w'll be very brief, for I 



have the figures before me. From the 
statistics published by the Official Gazette 
I gather that from the 26th of October, 
1867, to the end of October, 1879, the 
Italian government confiscated and sold 
at public auction 130,736 lots of church 
property, from which it realized the sum 
of 546,697,050 francs, or more than one 
hundred million dollars ! And yet the 
Minister of Finance announces that 
there will be a deficit in the year iSSo of 
five millions, even if but one-fourth of 
the grist-tax be abolished. But the inte- 
gral item in the programme of the present 
ministry is the tjtal abolition of the grist- 
tax. A foreign loan is inevitable, and 
is already mooted in the political circles. 
And it is in the face of these appalling 
facts that General Mezzacapo rises up to 
preach about " soldiers, cannons, fortifi- 
cations, and then again fortifications, 
cannons, soldiers." Behold the reply to 
Colonel Haymerle's brochtire ! 

Meanwhile where are the rulers, and 
what are they about? They are every- 
where in the peninsula but in Rome, 
and they are discussing the interests of 
their respective parties, to the total anni- 
hilation of the interests of the nation. 
Rome is a fatal city to the new-comers, 
and they have already acknowledged the 
" fatal error" of making it the capital of 
Italy. The royal family shirk it, the de- 
puties shirk it, the ministers shirk it. 
Petrucelli della Gattina has for the past 
few months been writing vigorously in 
the Gazzetta di Torino on the expediency 
of removing the capital northward. He 
calls Rome a Bagno i.e., a galley-prison. 
Here is his latest emanation on the sub- 
ject: " Yes, I comprehend, we must fly 
from that bagno government. People die 
there of the malaria, which the Times 
calls an old institution of Rome. We are 
uncomfortable there ; flayed alive by 
every one who can most easily take a 
handful of the flesh, of the skin of the 
forastieti. And here we are all for as fieri 
for the Romans, hence matter to be 
passed under the screws, matter from 
which life and substance are to be 
squeezed. House-owners, room-letters, 
hotel-keepers, shop-keepers of every 
kind run in the ranks. Give it to the 
Italians! Ah! Rome has never belied 
her origin. She was founded by bri- 
gands. She lived in a republic of bri- 
gandage. Under the empire of the 
Caesars that brigandage was extended 
over the barbarians, the forastieri, the 



553 



Italy's Reply to the Res Italics. 



Italians of those times. She grew worse 
under the popes. And the air has not 
grown sounder since Rome has been 
restored to Ilaly and the Ita ians encamp 
there. Why delude ourselves? The 
nerve of the people is clerical. The 
best are the av ivtd Clericals y the most 
dangerous and fatal the cLrical hypo- 
crites, masked as Italians. One feels 
this pressure on all sides, and he that 
can liberate himself loses no time if he 
flees. How can we pretend that the 
ministers will remain there, when the 
court gives the example? How can the 
court remain when both branches of 
Parliament have taken flight? How can 
the entire fabric of government stand it 
when heaven and earth conspire to drive 
it away? Therefore government has its 
foot in the stirrup. We administer by 
cxpifss ; we govern in the banquets. We 
adjourn evetytidng a general suspen- 
sion of life for six months. I blame no 
one. The force of things imposes it. 
We are all the galley-slaves of Rome, 
whither, in a moment of delirium t>'einens 
of historic reminiscences, we met, and 
decreed her the capita!." 

I observed that the rulers are occu- 
pied with the interests of their respec- 
tive parties, to the exclusion of national 
interests. At present Cairoli is making 
desperate efforts to conciliate and unite 
in favor of his ministry the leaders of 
the Left. We read of reunions daily. 
But ncything is accomplished. Each 
chieftain of a fraction wants to become 
prime min-ster h : mself. Crispi will not 
adhere, Nicoiera is "full of desire" to 
return to the ministerial bench, and 
De Prctis is dreaming of a De Pretis 
Ministry Number Four. They are all 
Babelites, like the French Republicans ; 
and, like these, apa.t from their own 
dissensions, they swear to one watch- 
word, Ecraiso is fin fame! meaning the 
clericals. In a recent speech on the 
extension of the elective franchise De 
Pretis said : " I desire the extension of 
the vote, but I desire it in such a form 
that the priest can derive no advantage 
from it. For the priest is the only 
enemy Italy has to fear to-day. From 
the ballot-box he may rise to the minis- 
try." This is the speech of a liberal, 
who swears by liberal institutions, and 
-prates in Parliament about libcrt}- and 
equality for all. 

And vvh.it have those dreadful cleri- 
cals been doing? Their latest public 



manifestation was the Fifth Italian Con- 
gress of Modena, which was brought to 
a happv c'ose on the 24th ult. They 
discussed the ways and means of extend- 
in? Christian charity and the beneficent 
influence of the church to the pressing 
needs ol the day. They compared views 
and formed resolutions on the perfect 
liberty of education. They reasoned on 
the apostolate of the press and on 
Christian art. But they carefully ex- 
cluded the great question of the Catho- 
lics participating in the political elec- 
tions. This was part of their programme. 
Still, the Baron D'Ondes Reggio pro- 
nounced a learned and momentous dis- 
course on the National Conservative 
party, to form which, with the interven- 
tion of the Catholics, an attempt was 
made last winter under the auspices of 
the moderate liberals and the immedi- 
ate direction of Robert Stuart. The dis- 
course showed what was the true a'm 
of that party viz, the rehabi'itation in 
power of the Right. In effect, the Baron 
D'Ondes Reggio pronounced the funeral 
oration of the nascent National Conser- 
vatives, for the Catholics of Italy have 
been enlightened as to their character 
and purpose. 

Still and withal con=ervativism is fast 
developing itself among the Italians. 
What form it will take finally for its ex- 
isten- e is already a m;itter of fact and 
under the segis of what power it will be- 
gin to do its work of saving Italy from 
the great crisis which is impending, is 
still a matter of speculation. But con- 
servativism is an existent element, and 
has become the subject of serious reflec- 
tion to more than one of the liberal 
statesmen. One of the most conspicuous 
of these, Senator | acini, has just pub- 
lished a work of considerable import, 
entitled I conserv 'tin e Vivc-hizicnc nalu- 
rale dei pirtiti politici in Italia the con- 
servatives and the natural evolution of 
the political parties in Italy. Needless 
to observe in the outset that Signer Ja- 
cini desires a conservative Parliament 
and a conservative government gene- 
rally. Particularly docs he desire a con- 
servative government for the solution of 
the famous Roman question. Of this in 
particular would I speak ; and in giving 
a notion of this most important and 
really creditable and portentous chapter 
of jacini's publication, b-evis simu ! qit-e 
clarus esse lab raho. The chapter in 
question seems to have been added as a 



Italy s Reply to tJie Res Italics. 



559 



codicil ; but, like many codicils, it is the 
principal, not the accessory, of the entire 
document. He begins by intimating 
that " a fo >ei*n question presents itself 
to us, most delicate, most difficult, which 
\ve would willingly put aside, if by put- 
ting it aside we could suppress its exist- 
ence." He compares it to the question 
of Northern Schleswig, in which Bis- 
marck, despite his victories, was not con- 
tent until he obtained from Austria the 
formal abrogation of ai tide 5 of the treaty 
of Prague, and to the uneasiness of 
Gortchakoff, who finally procured, in 
1871, the Abolition of that clause of the 
treaty of Paris, 1856, which .forbade Rus- 
sia to build fortifications and men-of- 
war. The author holds that "to assume 
a distraught and thoughtless air before 
a disagreeable problem, and to profess 
living for the day unmindiul of the mor- 
row, may lead to popularity for those 
who love that atmosphere ; but it is not 
a proof of good sense. We allude to the 
question of the independence of the 
Papacy, considered in its relations with 
Italy." Putting aside the relations of 
church and state, which are internal, he 
comes to the independency cf the Papacy, 
which is a foreign question, superior to 
that of parties. The Papacy is a super- 
national, universal power, which, in vir- 
tue o! its great political influence over the 
whole Catholic world, must be indepen- 
dent, and this in the interests not only of 
Catholic statts, but of others having Ca- 
tholic subjects. As such the powers Ca- 
tholic or non-Catholic, enumerate it in 
their diplomatic relationships, and such 
has it been recognized by Italy in the 
Law of the Guarantees. But the Papacy 
protests against the condition created 
for it by Italy, and declares that it is not 
free and independent; and the states of 
Europe, in their good-will for Italy, have 
carefully abstained from declaring for- 
mally " that the Italian government is 
right, or the Sovereign Pontiff wrong." 
The author remarks with some sig- 
nificance that it was probably not the 
work of chance that the visits paid by 
Savoy to the emperors of Prussia and 
Austria were returned at Milan and 
Venice, and not at Rome ! 

The author proceeds to examine the 
question coolly. The Italian govern- 
ment occupied Rome in 1870. No Eu- 
ropean state offered opposition. That is 
something. It gave the pope the Lavvs 
of the Guarantees, and has faithfully ob- 



served them. But these laws have no 
international vouchers. They may be 
modified or revoked at pleasure by the 
Italian state. The states of Europe have 
said nothing. But the long and short of 
it is, the question is still suspended in 
mid-air, and the Law of the Guarantees 
is a cartd blanche, launched abroad by 
Italy, which may or may not at a future 
date, owing to unforeseen complications, 
be taken up by some power not friendly 
to Italy, and payment demanded. At pre- 
sent the carte blanche seems to be in 
friendly hands. Therefore a friendly, 
formal, and definite solution of the ques- 
tion is desirable for Italy finds itself in 
the same predicament as Prussia relative 
to the treaty of Prague, and as Russia in 
view of the treaty of Paris, though both 
had violated the article of the treaty 
which concerned them before its final ab- 
rogation. Jacini then proposes several 
solutions of the question which would 
at the same time provide for the perfect 
independence of the Papacy: ist. That 
the Papacy end by accepting the Guaran- 
tees and coming to a direct understand- 
ing with the Italian government a so- 
lution desired by many, but impossible 
in the present pontificate ; hence hope 
deferred, and the question stiil open, in 
one sense at home, in another abroad. 
2d. The institution of the Papacy is fall- 
ing under the blows of rationalism and 
indifferentism. Jacini observes that 
they who reason thus condemn them- 
selves to wait for a long time. They do 
not see that the mind satisfies but one 
need of man that of thought. But men 
must believe and hope. Between science, 
which offers nothing in the end, and 
faith, which offers everything, there can 
be no choice. Besides, the genius of the 
Italian nation is Catholic, and, though 
the Papacy may be susceptible of (exter- 
nal, disciplinary) modifications, it is al- 
ways the pivot of the Catholic Church. 
Besides the rationalists are greatly in 
the minority, and in the greater part of 
Europe 'there is a notable movement in 
favor of the Papacy. 3d. That the Papa- 
cy transform itself in such a manner 
that the Pope become like a constitu- 
tional king compared with the absolute 
king; in which case the Bishop of 
Rome would reign, but would not^v.-zv;-;*, 
hence not much need oi Guarantees. 
But where is the principle of such a 
transformation ? The Old Catholics have 
failed signally. 4th. That Italy become 



560 



Italy's Reply to the Res Italics. 



a nation so profoundly institutional that 
the Papacy will exist like other denom- 
inations under the common law. " Vain 
ideal," says Jacini. 5th. The Italian 
Catholic party, having become, through 
legal means, the most powerful party, 
will subordinate internal legislation to 
the church, and make of Italy a theo- 
cratic state ; the Pope will make the 
king his lieutenant an Utopia, to 
realize which the nature of the Italians 
must be changed. The idea is absurd 
for many reasons, says Jacini. 6th. Let 
the principle of the independence of the 
Pope founded upon territorial sovereign- 
ty remain. It is not a question of num- 
bers. It is sufficient that the Pope be 
sovereign in Rome. Rome is the capi- 
tal of Italy, says the author, hence it is a 
waste of time to discuss such an ex- 
pedient. 7th. Let the principal powers 
subscribe to the Laws of the Guarantees, 
and thus make of them an international 
document. In this case the Pope might 
protest pro forma in the beginning, but 
would end by submitting, seeing that his 
independence would be secured. " But 
in this case," adds Jacini, "it should be 
ourselves who would refuse. We would 
grant to the other powers the right to in- 
terfere in our affairs, to see if we faith- 
fully maintain the obligations assumed 
in the Law of the Guarantees, albeit some 
of those obligations would only affect 
the internal conditions of our state. 
They would even have the right to exer- 
cise a comptrollery over the manner in 
which we spend our money ; because if 
we spent it badly we would be unable 
to pay to the Sovereign Pontiff the ap- 
panage promised." 8th. "The last so- 
lution imaginable would be that we take 
from the Law of the Guarantees those 
dispositions which refer to the extra-na- 
tional position of the Papacy, and con- 
sider it apart ; and, as to the yearly 



stipend, that it be converted into a cor- 
responding capital, constituted in in- 
alienable possessions, upon which the 
Italian government would engage not to 
levy any impost, or constituted under 
some other form, independent of the ac- 
tion of the Italian finances ; and that the 
part of the Law of the Guarantees thus 
considered separately be consecrated 
through the means of a formal diplo- 
matic responsibility." 

Jacini concludes: "We confess that, 
in the present state, this last solution, or, 
to speak more exactly, this simple ame- 
lioration brought to the situation of the 
actual fact, seems to us worthy of con- 
sideration. We are not so hasty as to 
imagine a definite solution of the prob- 
lem of the Papacy. The grand institu- 
tion of the Papacy has never been im- 
movable, but has been always in the 
way of formation and progress, in which 
is revealed its prodigious force. Its ex- 
ternal form is flexible, and renews itself 
on the models of political and civil so- 
cieties. The government of the church 
was simple, severe, democratic in its be- 
ginning ; Unitarian with the last of the 
Caesars ; feudal, federal, and fractional 
in the middle ages ; constitutional with 
the Councils, real deliberative assem- 
blies ; finally absolute and concentrated 
with the great modern monarchies." I 
will cite no farther. Jacini reasons here 
like an ignorant Protestant. He con- 
founds dogma, ecclesiastical discipline, 
and temporal sovereignty in one para- 
graph. I pronounce no judgment on 
his "amelioration," number eight, be- 
cause it is incompatible with the justice 
of St. Peter, and with the last solemn 
declaration of Leo XIII., made last 
February to the Catholic journalists, 
that the temporal sovereignty of the 
Roman Pontiff is necessary to his per- 
fect independence. 



The Beatitudes. 561 

THE BEATITUDES. 

I'.KATI PAUPERES SPIRITU. 

CHILDREN of nature, counted wise, 

Honor, and wealth, and fame. 
And ministries of comfort, prize, 

Sin fearing less than shame. 
But ours the Master who made choice 

Of poverty and pain; 
And, being Truth itself, his voice 

Cannot have spoke in vain. 

There are who rob themselves of ease, 

Of wealth, and even of will; 
Their souls his sorrows better please 

Than of earth's good their fill. 
For all they leave he will restore 

His All in heaven no less ; 
And here, than kings or princes more, 

Doth peace their souls possess. 

BEATI MITES. 

Two passions, in a world of sin, 

Smoulder, a dangerous fire, 
Each striving in its turn to win 

Anger and low desire.* 
Either, in breaking forth, will make 

The hardiest spirit weak ; 
None are exempt but, for His sake, 

Who join the blessed meek. 

Upon their hearts' unruffled calm 

Heaven's lights are mirrored clear, 
Choice graces fall on them like balm, 

Nor storm nor cloud they fear 
A foretaste of the perfect peace 

Awaiting them above, 
Where all unruly motions cease, 

In order and in love. 

BEATI QUI LUCENT. 

In the wide world of human woe 

The fount of tears how deep ! 
Whether for my own sins they flow, 

Or I my brother's weep, 

* Irascibile^ concuf>iscibue. 
VOL. XXX. 36 



562 



The Year of Our Lord 1879. 



Or on the Father's house afar 
Muse with half-hopeful eye, 

And scan the perilous wastes that bar 
The arduous road on high. 

Ah ! blessed is the holy tear 

God's hand will charm away, 
From every face to disappear 

In joy's unending day. 
And blessings upon weeping wait, 

Even in the exile's life, 
The joy to come anticipate, 

A truce amid the strife. 



THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1879. 



IT was a peaceful if not altogether a 
quiet year. The nations have been con- 
cerned chiefly with their own affairs. 
Nor have they been at all empty-handed. 
It is now manifest enough, if ever there 
was reason to doubt it, that nations great 
as well as small have abundant occupa- 
tion in strictly attending to their own 
business, in stopping up the leaks in 
their vessels of state, and curing the dis- 
orders of their bodies politic, without 
going abroad to watch over other inte- 
rests, or, as a distinguished statesman 
once put it, to "meddle and muddle." 
To the clash of arms has succeeded the 
cooler yet not less effectual play of 
diplomacy. Beyond the minor wars of 
England in Africa and Afghanistan, the 
questions that have chiefly occupied the 
minds of statesmen have been of a finan- 
cial or social nature. The latter espe- 
cially are of the deepest interest to man- 
kind at large, since they are human 
rather than dynastic or national ; and to 
these, therefore, we devote special atten- 
tion in this annual review. There will 
be a new emperor of Germany or of 
Russia, and new chancellors and poli- 
cies, probably, within a few years ; but 
the Russian people and the German 
people will remain to play important 
parts in the history of the world, and to 
shape that history for better or worse. 
It is the condition and future of these, 
the peoples, that most deeply interest 
the minds of thinking men, and not the 



immediate glory or success or failure of 
this or that monarch, of this or that 
statesman. It is a good sign that ques- 
tions of this kind have been uppermost 
in the councils of the nations during the 
past year. They may not always have 
been discussed with becoming calmness 
or in a right spirit, or decided, if at all, 
even temporarily in the best way. But 
it is well that they are discussed at all ; 
that they are forcing themselves, never 
more strenuously than now, on the at- 
tention of the rulers of nations ; for on 
their adjustment or equitable solution 
depends in a very large degree the future 
of the world. 

The days are gone, or, more properly 
speaking, are going, when the peoples 
allowed themselves to be regarded 
by rulers as personal property, to do 
with as they pleased to convert into 
military machines and set to murderous 
work for a royal fancy, or whim, or at 
the whisper of a royal favorite. The 
peoples are surely but gradually en- 
croaching on the thrones and calling 
rulers to proper account. When asked 
to fight nowadays they waflt to know 
why, and require very good reasons be- 
fore entering into a contest. They be- 
gin to question more and more why so 
much of their blood, and time, and means 
should be expended on military arma- 
ments that are at once a grievous burden 
to themselves and a menace to their 
neighbors. They see much poverty and 



The Year of Our Lord 1879. 



563 



i a 



misery round about "unrelieved, while 
money is being poured into the trea- 
suries, an enormous amount of which 
goes annually to build ships and arma- 
ments of war, and set millions of men 
at constant drill who might be at the 
desk or in the field. And they are ques- 
tioning into these things. It only needs 
the sense of the radical wrong of this 
state of things to take possession of the 
minds and hearts of the people in order 
to bring about a revolution in certain 
departments of government. This revo- 
lution may not come in a day or in many 
years ; accident or the will of strong 
men may retard or turn it aside for a 
long period. But it is there, working 
and shaping itself ; it will not die ; and 
its growing expression forms one of the 
most significant features of the past year. 
Right in the face of this comes its 
direct opposite. While these problems 
are troubling the brains of men on the 
one side, on the other Europe never 
presented so alarming an aspect as it 
does at the close of the year 1879. It 
never possessed such large and effective 
armies and navies, furnished so com- 
pletely with all the appliances of war 
and instruments of destruction on which 
the ingenuity of man continues to ex- 
haust itself. A quarter of a century ago 
Mr. Disraeli described Europe as an 
armed camp. If that was Mr. Disraeli's 
description a quarter of a century back, 
hat must Lord Beaconsfield's thought 
to-day ? The military forces of that 
period could in no sense compare with 
the tremendous armaments that now 
cumber Europe. In his speech at Guild- 
hall recently the British premier, striv- 
ing hard to give an upward tone to pub- 
lic confidence and not without some 
measure of success said : " Although 
Europe is covered with armed millions 
of men, we still hope, and I will ven- 
ture to say believe, that peace will be 
maintained." And on what grounds did 
the British premier base his hope and be- 
lief? On two : i. " We are of that opinion 
because it seems to us that peace is the 
interest of all the great Powers," which 
is only stating a truism ; and 2. " So 
long as the power and advice of Eng- 
land are felt in the councils of Europe, 
peace, I believe, will be maintained, and 
maintained for a long period." Such 
are the highest grounds that one of the 
leading European statesmen can give 
the world for the maintenance of peace : 



self-interest and English influence ! But 
self-interest is apt to change its objects, 
and English influence is by no means a 
permanent quantity. 

So far, however, it is beyond question, 
though not beyond cavil, that England 
has maintained the position in Europe 
that Lord Beaconsfield's diplomacy secur- 
ed for her at the Berlin Congress. The 
year has witnessed the faithful, and in the 
main peaceful, carrying out of the pro- 
visions of the Berlin treaty in Europe. 
The Powers have acted together and held 
to their agreements regarding the division 
and settlement of the provinces set up 
and taken from Turkey. The one great 
feat yet to be accomplished is the reform 
in Turkish government and affairs which 
England took upon herself. That is as 
far from completion as it ever was, and 
the attempt to force it through is as like- 
ly as not to open up the whole Eastern 
question afresh a method of settlement 
to which Turkey would seern not averse, 
though it would probably end in her 
final disappearance from the European 
stage as even the shadow of a Power. In- 
deed, that disappearance may be regard- 
ed as a certainty of no remote date in the 
politics of Europe. It is impossible that 
a Power which is of its nature alien to 
Europe and politically dead should be 
allowed to linger on in rottenness and 
decay on one of the fairest European 
provinces, that the enterprise of an ener- 
getic race could soon elevate into the 
heart and the seat of a great commercial 
empire ; at a period, too, in history when 
European commerce is crippled and ac- 
tive hands are idle for sheer lack of em- 
ployment and of outlets for their energy. 
So soon as the Powers can come to an 
agreement Turkey in Europe is doomedJ 
She only continues her lingering death 
by their sufferance and the rival jealousies 
of her physicians. The coup dc grace will 
be given by some hand. Reform in Tur- 
key is impossible, for the simple reason 
that the Turkish administration will not 
permit it to be possible. Turkish ad- 
ministra'ion is a home of traditional cor- 
ruption The attempt to purify such a 
body is a? easible as to quicken a corpse 
by letting jlood into its veins. We on 
this side of the ocean know something of 
the difficulty of converting to honesty 
men schooled in corruption, who know 
no other method of securing their emolu- 
ments and making " an honest living" 
than by corrupt administration and prac- 



564 



The Year of Our Lord 1879. 



tices. But in Turkey the attempt is 
hopeless, for the simple reason that there 
is no ground on which to work, and the 
Turk seems not to be alive to the neces- 
sity of it. 

the spirited foreign policy of the Bea- 
consfield administration has brought 
England into a prominence in European 
affairs which it had not enjoyed since 
the days of Palmerston. This spirited 
policy has met with unrelenting opposi- 
tion from English statesmen of the Lib- 
eral school. It is not for us to decide 
whether the line of policy has been well 
or ill chosen. Englishmen will sooner 
or later decide that question, for them- 
selves. So far as appearances indicate, 
the English people have in the main 
cheerfully accepted the new order of 
things, and the government has on all 
crucial questions been sustained thus far 
by increasing rather than diminishing 
majorities. This is significant when it 
is borne in mind that two years ago a 
Berlin Congress was scarcely dreamed 
of, and the resolute interference of Lord 
Heaconsfield in European affairs did not 
even present itself to the minds of Eng- 
lishmen who had already been schooled 
in the non-committal policy of the Lib- 
erals. The whole tone of English pub- 
lic opinion has been changed since the 
Berlin Congress, to the amazement of 
statesmen like Mr. Gladstone, Mr. 
Bright, Mr. Lowe, or the Duke of 
Argyll. Whether by good fortune, by 
the jealousy of other Powers, or by a 
secret sense of the real power and vast 
resources of the British Empire, making 
it a very dangerous foe once it actually- 
entered on a struggle, certain it is that 
up to the present England has maintain- 
ed its newly-acquired eminence unim- 
paired. It counts as a great factor in the 
councils of Europe, whereas previous to 
the congress it was practically rated as 
an indifferent or second-rate power, by 
position and of its own will outside the 
range of European politics. Few men, 
for instance, thought of comparing it with 
Russia, as few men, previous to the down- 
fall of the empire, thought of comparing 
it with France. The Franco-German 
war destroyed at once the pre-eminence 
of France and what was called the Na- 
poleonic legend. The death of the ill- 
fated Prince Louis Napoleon during the 
year has formed a fitting closing chapter 
to the Napoleonic legend. The war be- 
tween Russia and Turkey revealed the 



weakness of Russia and gave vent to the 
powerful social forces that were seething 
under that historic tyranny. Then Eng- 
land stepped in, and Lord Beaconsficld 
insists on maintaining what his oppo- 
nents insist on calling an unnecessary 
and aggressive attitude. On this atti- 
tude he stakes the peace of Europe at 
a time when Europe is armed to the 
teeth. It is a dangerous, a trying, and a 
. costly eminence, but an eminence, it 
seems to us, that ought to be welcomed 
by men who have the cause of freedom 
and the advancement of humanity at 
heart. 

We do not stop to argue or anticipate- 
all that may be said about the cruelty 
and traditional rapacity of this great 
Anglo-Saxon Power. Looking abroad 
over the world, we behold all nations in 
turmoil. Men are struggling up to 
something, they scarcely seem to knew 
to what. There is a vague unrest every- 
where, that in Russia, Germany, Italy, 
France, and other nations expresses it- 
self by social tumult, often by disorderly 
excess. The peoples are not satisfied 
with their condition. They are looking 
for something new. They seek a new 
order at any cost, and the first step to- 
wards that new order seems to them to 
strike at the existing order of things. 
It is this wide-spread feeling, added to 
great sufferings on the part of vast mass- 
es of people, that gives its strength to the 
leaders of the spirit of anarchical revolt 
which aims at overthrowing everything 
that is. 

Looking around us, then, we see free- 
dom and free institutions, where they 
exist at all, borne along and sustained 
by \ and among the English-speaking 
peoples. On this side of the ocean we 
hold our own and keep to ourselves, 
though our ideas and principles travel 
farther than we think, and have their 
force. On the other side, in the very 
midst of the conflict, stands England 
alone, the sole representative of freedom 
and free institutions. As we contrast 
with the governments of South America, 
so does England with the governments 
of Europe. She, like ourselves, has 
discovered and utilized the secret of 
combining freedom with order, which is 
just what the nations desire. This is at 
least true of her in her home govern- 
ment. Her people are not compelled 
into a military service. They may wor 
ship God as they will, and no man inter- 



The Year of Our Lord 1879. 



11 

li 



feres with them. The Pope or the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, or the chief of any 
religious body, may issue his orders to 
those who accept the rule which he em- 
bodies, and no man interferes. The peo- 
ple have a voice in their government. 
As soon as an administration ceases to 
be acceptable to the people it is sent 
about its business, and no power can 
keep it in its place. In a word, there is 
free government in a free state. It 
therefore seems to us in every way de- 
sirable that such a Power should lead 
and not lag in the family of European 
nations ; and it would be a calamity to 
mankind were its influence to wane. 

While we rejoice at seeing the only 
great European Power that respects 
freedom and free government thus forc- 
ing its way into the thick of European 
affairs, we cannot shut our eyes to the 
sharp contrasts it offers at home in its 
dealings with the Irish people. Here 
all its statesmanship and love of free- 
dom seem at fault. In its own house- 
hold it nourishes a political enemy on 
the sourest and direst physic, where a 
little kindly and generous treatment, the 
mere carrying out of its own political 
rinciples, would convert that enemy 
nto a strong friend and the right arm of 
:he British Empire. The Irish people 
have in an eminent degree faith, loyalty, 
reverence, intelligence, and valor all 
the qualities that go to make a people 
great and assert their right to the free 
pursuit of happiness in this world. It 
is these very qualities that have preserv- 
ed to them a national existence through a 
long history of unexampled trial and op- 
pression. It is these noble qualities 
that make them rightly restive at injus- 
tice and an unjust and inadequate sys- 
tem of government. At the door of the 
Power that we recognize and regard as 
the pioneer in the Old World of free- 
dom, free government, and free ways, 
we see a sad example of the very oppo- 
site. What have we witnessed this very 
year ? The crooked concession, after a 
tremendous political tumult, to Irish 
Catholics, who form the bulk of the 
population of Ireland, of the right to 
form a Catholic university ! Such is a 
specimen of the freedom granted by 
England to Ireland,, If such absurd and 
outrageous restrictions exist in the mat- 
ter of free education, what is to be 
thought of legislation generally in Ire- 
land ? Is it possible to think that those 



who are now agitating for a reform of 
the laws regarding the tenure of land 
and the rights of tenantry have no 
ground of complaint? Mr. Gladstone 
recently expressed himself in favor of 
home rule for Ireland in local matters. 
What that means precisely does not ap- 
pear. What the Irish want is such free- 
dom in Ireland as the English enjoy. 
That they have not. They are not al- 
lowed even to conduct their own affairs. 
The concession of such freedom is the 
only cure possible for the radical disease- 
that afflicts the Irish people, and that 
shows itself in a thousand varied forms. 
England, if it only has the courage and 
the conscience to take it, would find the 
right road the safest, quickest, and best, 
as well as the cheapest. Adequate con- 
cessions to reasonable demands would 
cure discontent and put an end once for 
all to periodic revolt. The surest way 
to win Irish allegiance is to give the 
Irish people what they -want and what 
they are entitled to civil independence. 
That does not mean separation. It 
means union of the closest kind ; the 
union of mutual respect and esteem, 
and of common interests. 

Returning to the larger field of Euro- 
pean politics, it is strange to us to see 
so many of our leading public journals 
in this country siding with Russia as 
against England. What would they 
have ? That Russia should have the 
preponderance and be a greater Power 
in the world's affairs than England ? As 
soon as Russia, or any other Power, 
shows itself as liberal and enlightened 
as England, we will bid it God-speecl in 
all honesty and sincerity ; but not be- 
fore. At the same time we refuse to 
wait on the event. What kind of a 
power Russia is has been made start- 
lingly manifest during the past year. 

The year will ever be memorable in 
Russian annals as one in which revolt 
against the administration showed itself 
in a manner at once as lawless as it was 
desperate and sustained. The Nihilists, 
whose name had come to us vaguely and 
transiently before, secured for them- 
selves an important and suggestive chap- 
ter in universal history. They rose up 
with a cry of despair, and hurled them- 
selves, not in a body, but in isolated ones 
and twos and threes, against the whole 
form and system of Russian government. 
They had nothing to appeal to. There 
is no representation of the people in this 



565 



TJie Year of Our Lord 1879. 



government that rules over the vastest 
empire that Europe knows. Petitions 
were treated as sedition. There is not a 
vote in all Russia. The government is 
by appointment, and the appointments 
centre in the person of one man the czar. 
There is no parliament, no public dis- 
cussion, no liberty of thought or action. 



tative government to her? The emanci- 
pation of the serfs under the present em- 
peror was little more than a sop to a starv- 
ing people. It effected nothing practical- 
ly. The system of government, which is 
essentially and formally tyrannical, was 
not altered a jot by it. There were 
more than serfs to be emancipated. 






The press dare not lift its voice against There remained the whole Russian peo- 
ple in a state of practical servitude. 
To them no helping hand has been ex- 
tended. The czar has steadily refused, 
or perhaps, more truly speaking, has 
beneath the dagger or the pistol of the never dreamed of parting with his abso- 
assassin. Officials of all kinds were lute power, or sharing a portion of it 
slain. The emperor himself escaped with the people whom he governs. Ni- 



the evils that prevail. If it dare it is 
choked. There was only one appeal 
left to violence; and violence was re- 
sorted to. One victim after another fell 



only by what looks like a miracle of 
God's grace. Seditious pamphlets and 



hilism has not found its strength in the 
ranks of the serf-class that was, but in 



papers were showered among the peo- all ranks of men, who see other peoples 
pie, regardless of threat or prohibition, endowed with liberties which have per- 
sistently been denied to their natural 
and lawful aspirations. Russia to-day 



When the secret printing-presses were 
seized, those who worked them many 



of them girls fought against the gen- is many centuries behind the most lag- 



darmerie to the death. 

What was the result ? The govern- 



gard of European peoples, and it has 
been*kept so by its rulers. It is infinite- 



ment laid large districts tinder siege, as ly less free than the new principalities 



though at a military occupation. The 
Russian people were subjected by the 
government to the most degrading kind 
of surveillance. Wholesale arrests fol- 
lowed. It was found that the conspi- 
racy had spread to all ranks, even the 
military and naval. The police them- 
selves were not above suspicion, and the 
very hot-beds of sedition were the seats 
of learning the colleges and universi- 



that it lavished its blood and treasure to 
free from Turkish rule. Russia has a 
vast army, a vast police, and a czar ; and 
there its government ends. 

The latest empire, Germany, differs 
from Russia in this : that it has at least 
the show, and something of the reality, 
of representative government. To be 
sure, Prince Bismarck's administration 
has been defeated at the polls time and 



ties which are ordinarily regarded as again, yet he continues to conduct the 
the focus of the intelligence of a people, government. In a really representative 



where it centres and whence it radiates. 
Officials, officers of rank in the army and 
navy, common soldiers and sailors, uni- 



system he would have been dismissed 
from power long since. He was, as far 
as votes went, often dismissed ; but he 



versity students, school-teachers, girls refused to abandon his position. And 

even to-day, with the successes that a> 
tended him at the recent elections, he is 
compelled to seek a majority in alliance 
with either the Centre, or Catholic, party 
or the National Liberals, both of whom 
are opposed to him on points of vital 
principle. The tendency of events in 
Germany ought to teach, and probably 
has by this time taught, him a lesson. It 
is this : that mere military glory and di- 
plomatic prestige are not enough to en- 
sure a man perpetuity in the government 
of a civilized people. Military glory is 
costly as well as transient, and diplo- 
matic prestige is fallacious, or disap- 
pears often with the man who achieved 
it. Germany has already felt in the 
keenest way part of this truth. It Costs 



of every condition of life, merchants, 
peasants, men from all ranks, were 
members of the conspiracy. They were 
sent to prison in batches ; tried in 
batches ; condemned in batches. Some 
were executed, thousands sent into 
exile ; and the prisons are to-day even 
glutted with this human harvest. Not a 
few committed horrible suicides to end 
their miserable existence. Such is the 
picture that Russia presents to the admi- 
ration of a world. 

It is not in a free nature to accept or 
welcome such rule. The excuse that 
Russia is not prepared as other nations 
for representative government will no 
longer hold. Has she been tried ? Has 
an attempt been made to extend represen- 



The Year of Our Lord 1879. 



567 



her now more to keep the peace than it 
cost her to make and win her wars. Her 
treasury is diminishing, her commerce is 
dwindling, but her armies and armaments 
are ever on the increase. As has been 
well said : " You can do everything with 
bayonets but sit down on them," and the 
truth of this Germany realizes. Unless 
the German people are prepared to fight 
for ever, as they plainly are not inclined 
to do, they must follow out Prince Bis- 
marck's plans, and, at an already insuf- 
ferable cost, maintain themselves as the 
leading military Power in Europe. They 
must for ever stand by their arms, and 
watch all their borders with a force pre- 
pared to meet and overwhelm any force 
sent against them. This is, to say the 
least, not a cheerful outlook for a Power 
that has made for itself many bitter ene- 
mies, yet is anxious to tread the ways 
of peace unmolested. 

Prince Bismarck seems at last to have 
realized something of the weakness of 
his position. He has made an effort to 
be more conciliatory. This does not 
mean that he is a whit more honest than 
he ever was. He believes in winning ; 
his God is success ; and provided he at- 
tains the object of his worship, it trou- 
bles him little how he comes by it. He 
is just the man to ride into heaven on 
the devil's back, if he could. Early in 
the year he made a dead set against the 
Socialists. He devised a gag-law for the 
press, and even for members of the 
Reichstag, that if carried would have de- 
prived the German people of the last 
vestige of their liberty. Thanks to the 
steadfastness of the Catholic party in the 
Reichstag, the measure was defeated, at 
least in the intolerant form in which it 
was first drawn up. The very idea of 
such a scheme shows the kind of govern- 
ment that Prince Bismarck would favor 
had he his own way, which, thank Hea- 
ven ! he has not, at least altogether. It 
was in the debates on these subjects that 
the National Liberals weakened. Many 
of them sided with the chancellor ; in 
other words, they expressed themselves 
ready to part with the liberties of the 
people at the bidding of the prince, 
which speaks volumes for liberalism that 
has no true principle at bottom. That 
lost them the confidence of the people 
and over a hundred seats at the last 
elections. On the other hand, the Catho- 
lics continued their steady gains, and 
came out stronger this year than ever. 



Between them and the National Liberals 
lies the turning vote in the Reichstag. 

The long-looked-for reconciliation of 
the German government with its Catho- 
lic subjects has not yet come. All that 
has been ostensibly effected by the pro- 
tracted negotiations with Rome is the 
substitution of Herr von Puttkammer, a 
conservative and at least a professing 
Christian Protestant, for the atheist Dr. 
Falk as Minister of Public Worship. But 
Catholics are as far as ever from being 
free in Germany. The sees are still 
vacant and their bishops dead or in 
exile. Take the diocese of Posen, for 
instance. The number of vacant par- 
ishes there is now 113, and the Catholic 
population in this single diocese depriv- 
ed of all pastoral care is 150,000. This 
lamentable state of things is characteris- 
tic of other dioceses in like degree ; so 
that the Catholics have yet to thank the 
government for small mercies. And 
where lies their hope of redress? Not 
in their right, not in the sense of justice 
on the part of their rulers, but simply 
and solely in their political strength. 
Prince Bismarck is troubled by no senti- 
mentalism unless it tells on his own 
side. Small compunction afflicts his 
conscience at the sorrows he has wrought 
on German Catholics and the havoc he 
has made in the Catholic fold. He set 
out just to do that, and he resolutely did 
it. He is simply amazed and disap- 
pointed that his most strenuous efforts 
have proved ineffectual. He did not 
enter on his anti-Catholic campaign at 
all in the spirit of a disciplinarian, and 
with a view to uniting and strengthen- 
ing the Catholic body. He set out with 
the fixed purpose of destroying that body 
in Germany. He sees and recognizes 
his failure. If he relaxes and veers 
now, it is only because the wind sets in 
the Catholic quarter and the Catholic 
vote in, the Reichstag is worth purchas- 
ing. He still wavers between the Centre 
and the National Liberals, and is proba- 
bly making bids to both. 

Meanwhile the deficit in the national 
treasury is deepening ; but the war esti- 
mates are increasing. It is now a race 
between Germany and France which 
shall have the larger and stronger army 
and the strongest lines of defence. It is 
a matter of money as well as of military 
skill, and in money France his an over- 
whelming advantage. She is rich and 
growing richer ; Germany is poor and 



568 



The Year of Our Lord 1879. 



Crowing poorer. France has done much 
in the way of military reorganization ; the 
fashion is to say she has done wonders, 
but it is just as well to wait till the won- 
ders prove themselves. There has been 
not a little tinkering with the service and 
high appointments during the year, and, 
in consequence, if France were called 
upon to-day to fight the chances are that 
she would display as lamentable a state 
of military disorganization in high places 
as she did at the opening of the war with 
Germany. However that may be, with 
her money and resources, and such re- 
organization of military affairs as has 
been really effected, France undoubtedly 
presents a far more formidable front to 
Germany to-day than she did under the 
empire, with all its goodly show but rot- 
ten-heartedness. And this is felt in Ger- 
many. We hear fewer of those peremp- 
tory orders that were so frequently ad- 
dressed to France for some time after the 
war. We hear no threats of new inva- 
sion now. Instead Germany is strength- 
ening herself at horns by drawing closer 
her lines of defence, and_abroad by_al- 
liance, as with Austria. She tries to 
conciliate Alsace-Lorraine t>y grantmg_a 
species of home-rule to the inhabitants, 
thus aiming at winning their love and 
allegiance in the event of a future con- 
test. 

A curious and important episode of 
the year is the formal falling-out of Rus- 
sia and Germany that is to say, of Prince 
Gortchakoff and Prince Bismarck. At 
the Berlin Congress Prince Gortchakoff 
confessed that Russia had made conces- 
sions in the interests of peace which he 
had never dreamed of making. In other 
words, he was compelled to make them 
by the coalition of the other Powers, and 
th3 head of the coalition was his old 
friend Prince Bismarck, who played the 
part of the "honest broker" to perfec- 
tion. Germany got nothing and asked 
for nothing ; and men wondered where 
the "honest broker's" percentage was 
to come in. It now begins to appear. 
The broker had a friend, Austria ; and 
by some manner of means the friend con- 
trived to get a great deal more than he 
had any right or reason to expect. He 
got much of what Russia conceived to 
be hers by right of conquest. 

Prince Gortchakoff never forgave the 
honest broker for being so honest as 
this. The honesty was altogether too 
one-sided for his liking, inasmuch as 



Austria, without shedding a drop of blood 
or expending an ounce of treasure, was 
rather better rewarded than Russia after 
the latter had wasted her strength in an 
exhaustive war. The monkey stole the 
chestnuts after all. As this became more 
apparent the anger of the Russian chan- 
cellor, on whom years are beginning to 
tell, grew in intensity. He gave tre cue- 
to his press, and a furious onslaught 
against Prince Bismarck and all things 
German suddenly sprang up in the Rus- 
sian newspapers. Prince Gortchakoft 
even went so far as to court open al- 
liance with the French. France, thanks 
to the incapacity of her Foreign Minister, 
Waddington, had notoriously cut a very 
small figure at the congress. Indeed, it 
had practically nothing to say in the set- 
tlement ; far less did it receive any of 
the good things that were being passed 
around in the shape of territories and 
principalities. It was all England, Rus- 
sia, and Austria. Everybody else had to 
regale themselves as best they could on 
humble-pie. So one day, not very long 
ago, Prince Gortchakoff called to him a 
reporter of the Soleil, with whom he had 
a very instructive interview. The Rus- 
sian chancellor was anxious above all 
things to see France restored to her 
proper place in the councils of Europe 
a plain intimation, if any were need- 
ed, that in Prince Gortchakoffs opinion 
France had been deprived of her proper 
place in the councils of Europe. Such 
a restoration would be of the greatest 
possible benefit to Europe, as it certain- 
ly would not be to the detriment of 
France. Russia and France were na- 
tural allies (how these politicians can 
swallow unpleasant recollections when 
it suits them !), and much more in the 
same strain. The English of all this fine 
talk was that, as Germany had deserted 
Russia, Russia would seek for an ally 
in the natural enemy of Germany. 

This was interesting news for Pri net- 
Bismarck, who is scarcely the man to let 
the grass grow under his feet. Count 
Andrassy, for whom he had played the 
pafrt of honest broker to such excellent 
purpose, was just resigning his office and 
a new man coming in. So the prince 
hurried to Vienna, and, after a few busy 
days, returned with a certain agreement 
in his pocket, to which the Austrian 
emperor, Andrassy, and Andrassy's suc- 
cessor had subscribed. 

What the agreement precisely wa> 



The Year of Our Lord 1879. 



569 



has not appeared. It is stated, on what 
professes to be good authority, that the 
German emperor signed it with much re- 
luctance. Whatever may have been the 
exact agreement, it is certain that Prince 
Bismarck's hurried trip to Vienna at so 
critical a time his first visit, by the bye, 
to the Austrian capital since Sadowa 
was not a mere pleasure-jaunt. Public 
opinion fastened at once on what is 
doubtless its real significance an al- 
liance, defensive if not offensive, be- 
tween Germany and Austria. And here 
comes in the far-seeing broker's percent- 
age. To strengthen Austria is to weak- 
en Russia, whose onward march threat- 
ens both the Austrian and German em- 
pires. A hard and fast union between the 
German-speaking peoples is also a check 
to the Panslavic wave, while two such 
powerful empires as Austria and Ger- 
many could afford to laugh for a long 
time to come at a union between crip- 
pled and impoverished Russia and still 
disorganized France. At the same time 
they would have an ally in England, 
which, in the incautious words of the 
Marquis of Salisbury, received the news 
of the alliance as "good tidings of great 

jy-" 

That is the great diplomatic feat of the 
year. Of course alliances of this kind 
are just as liable to be broken as to be 
made, and Prince Bismarck is just the 
man to find excuses to break his engage- 
ments when they prove irksome or in- 
convenient. The rupture of the Triple 
Alliance is a case in point. In the pres- 
ent state of Europe, however, an al- 
liance between Austria and Germany 
seems natural and in every way desira- 
ble for both parties. As has been shown, 
it strengthens Germany against Russia 
and France. On the other hand, it helps 
very materially to secure Austria in her 
newly-acquired possessions, while it 
strengthens her against Russia on the 
one hand and Italy on the other. Italy, 
or a noisy faction in Italy, continues to 
shriek for Italia irredenta, whatever that 
conveniently vague term may be said to 
cover. It certainly embraces the Italian 
provinces that have grown into the posses- 
sion of Austria. The meaning and force 
of this cry for the " lost " provinces was 
set forth in very awkward clearness by 
Colonel Haymerle, of the Austrian em- 
bassy in Italy. The matter has been suf- 
ficiently dealt with in this magazine to 
need no repetition now. Various replies 



to the Austrian pamphlet have appeared. 
General Mezzacapo has contributed two, 
which seem to have met with favor as 
insisting on the strengthening of Italy's 
arm}' and navy and natural defences. 
Anna virosque chants this new Virgil to 
his native countrymen. What a condi- 
tion Italy is in to go on multiplying her 
armaments may be gathered from the 
letter of our Roman correspondent which 
we publish this month. It presents a 
most deplorable and disheartening pic- 
ture of the condition of public affairs in 
a country which in four years has ex- 
perienced six changes of ministry. The 
land is cursed with grinding poverty, 
grinding taxes, systematic conspiracy 
which the government half favors, and 
naturally, for the very throne that Hum- 
bert occupies is built on as vile a con- 
spiracy as was ever hatched. In addi- 
tion there is a lamentable lack of in- 
dustry among the people ; a laissez-faire 
method about the conduct of their es- 
tates by the great landholders compared 
with which the landlord system in Ire- 
land is patriotic activity itself, and a 
distribution of the franchise that is sim- 
ply no distribution at all. For such a 
country to accept General Mezzacapo's 
advice is to commit suicide ; and to 
dream, single-handed, of fighting Aus- 
tria is to assail the moon. At the same 
time nations who have something to 
lose France, for instance are apt to 
fight shy of a beggarly ally, however pic- 
turesque may be his rags and enticing 
the tones of his voice. 

France has presented a most interest- 
ing spectacle during the year. There is 
certainly no lack of serious business to 
occupy the minds of statesmen in France. 
The Republican party, as it chooses to 
call itself, has had no effectual opposi- 
tion to its scherhes. The elections re- 
turned to it an overwhelming majority 
in both Chambers. All was plain sail- 
ing for the government so long as tht 
Republicans themselves were agreed as 
to what was best for France. 

And what were the great measures 
that these patriotic gentlemen found best 
for France? A change in the school 
system, so as to exclude all Catholic 
teachers. That is the gist of the Loi 
Ferry. A change in the army, so as to 
remove the generals and officers who 
were, or were considered to be by M. 
Gambetta, inimical to the republic. A 
similar change in the police, in the 



570 



The Year of Our Lord 1879. 



maires, and in officials generally. Am- 
nesty to the Communists. A return of 
the Chambers to Paris such are the 
main heads of the year's legislation in 
France. 

Discussion of the Ferry bill in all its 
phases has been so wide-spread that but 
slight allusion needs to be made to it 
here. It passed the Chamber of Depu- 
ties, and was rejecied, in its seventh arti- 
cle, by the Senate. All France raged 
over it, and continues still to rage over 
it. And there the matter stands still 
.undecided. 

An anti-Catholic scheme of education 
which is condemned by such un-Catho- 
lic journals as the London Times, Daily 
News, Standard all the London dailies, 
in fact Saturday Review, Spectator, Eco- 
nomist, New York Nation, etc., needs 
but little treatment at our hands. It 
stands self condemned beforehand by 
the sense and conscience of all honest 
and liberal-minded men ; and states- 
men who choose to risk their place on 
a scheme so universally condemned by 
free public opinion deserve to lose it. 

The only thing now that we would 
call attention to in connection with it 
is that it is the one measure that served 
to unite Catholic Frenchmen of all par- 
ties. The lesson ought to serve them as 
well as their opponents. It showed 
them what their strengh is, if only they 
choose to sink party lines ; and is a hint 
as to what they might do in other mat- 
ters, if they have the will. If Catholics 
are the most numerous in France, and if 
they are in earnest, why should not they 
have possession of the government? We 
all know the answer. It is the old story 
of the divided bundle of faggots. 

The government that showed itself so 
bitterly and absurdly opposed to every- 
thing Catholic was proportionately lenient 
to the exiled Communists, and the cry 
of plenary amnesty for these condemned 
criminals has become a rallying-cry with 
the French Republicans. It is favored 
by M. Gambetta, the strongest man of 
them all, and the real power who stands 
behind the actual government. The R4- 
piiblique Fran^aise, Gambetta's recogniz- 
ed organ has strenuously favored plenary 
amnesty for some time past. France, it 
is to be hoped, is still a Catholic coun- 
try. Its traditions, history, and national 
feeling are Catholic or nothing. The 
majority of its people, if belonging 
to any religion, are Catholic. Yet this 



Catholic country rejoices to day in 
one of the most bitterly anti-Catholic 
governments that exists a government 
that witli one hand drives Catholic 
teachers from the schools of France, 
while with the other it welcomes the ex- 
iled members of the Commune. And 
what these exiles are may be told in the 
words of a journal that will certainly not 
be accused of Catholic leanings. " Am- 
nesty for the Communists," says the New 
York Herald, November 29, 1879, " is 
now rather an issue forced for the em- 
barrassment of the government by re- 
publicans of advanced views than a real 
division of opinion." And the Herald 
goes on to explain the situation : "These 
men argue their case a great deal upon 
the example of the clemency shown in 
this country after our great civil war 
toward the men who had been in arms 
against the government. They hold our 
history up as presenting an example 
which France should magnanimously 
follow in extending lull forgiveness and 
restoration to political rights to those 
who helped to make Paris a mere sham- 
bles with their fierce social passions 
while the public enemy was yet at its 
gates. The brave men of the Southern 
Confederacy who, in a spirit of heroic 
manhood, faced our armies in many 
hard and well-fought battles, can scarce- 
ly feel proud of the comparison thus in- 
stituted between tlum and the vile, 
bloodthirsty, and cowardly wretches of 
the Paris slums ; nor could this com- 
parison have ever been honestly made 
by any man who understood either cur 
war or the Paris Commune. We did 
not punish as traitors prisoners of war, 
nor the civil officers of a government rc- 
recornized by foreign powers ; but in 
every case in which Southern men in the 
pretended service of the Confederacy 
were found guilty of such common 
crimes as murder, incendiarism, or piracy 
we hanged them. The cases of the Com- 
munists are parallel to these, if to any in 
our history." 

Yet these Communists are the very 
men whom Gambetta who before many 
months will probably make the attempt 
to become President and master of 
France, welcomes back in his paper, 
while he declares that Catholicity, or, as 
he calls it, "clericalism," is the enemy 
of France. He drives from the schools 
the priests, the sisters, the religious, who 
enabled their pupils to gain most of the 



The Year of Our Lord 18/9. 



571 



piizes offered in Paris and elsewhere to 
open competition, while he welcomes 
back as men well deserving of the Re- 
public u those who helped to make Paris 
a mere shambles with their fierce soc ; al 
passions while the public enemy was yet 
at its gates, ... the vile, bloodthirsty, 
and cowardly wretches of the Paris 
slums." 

And what has been the action of the 
returned Communists under such dis- 
tinguished patronage ? Some of their 
number, hardly back from a deserved 
penal exile, have been elected to muni- 
cipal offices under the republic, and 
named for seats in the legislature. True, 
their appointments, as in the case of 
Humbert, one of the editors of the vile 
Pcre Dnchene, have been annulled ; but 
on what ground and for how long, if their 
return and complete amnesty are so 
strenuously advocated by Gambetta, the 
prospective President of the French Re- 
public ? 

Let it not be thought that we disfavor 
a republic for France. By a republic 
we understand the truest form of popu- 
lar government. But before giving in 
our adherence we first want to see this 
form of government established in 
France. We cannot so regard the actual 
government, which exhausts itself in 
petty spites against the common religion 
of the French people, and suffers its 
leading members and most ardent sup- 
porters to attack the Christian religion 
in the most revolting manner with im- 
punity, while it threatens a Catholic bi- 
shop or priest for daring to stand up in 
his pulpit or private office, nnd denounce 
such assaults upon the Christian reli- 
gion. We cannot regard as a true re- 
public a government that claims the mo- 
nopoly of education, and absolutely for- 
bids parents to educate their children as 
they wish ; which drives religious teach- 
ers from thousands of schools to which 
they have proved their title by all possi- 
ble tests ; which closes all free universi- 
ties and prohibits free teaching ; which, 
in a Catholic country that undertakes to 
guard public worship, cuts down the 
miserable salaries of the prelates and 
clergy whom it professes to employ in 
the dissemination of Christian doctrine 
and office of Christian worship. If this 
be republicanism and freedom commend 
us rather to the open persecution of the 
German government or the avowed tyran- 
ny of the Russian czar. The gorge of a 



free man rises at the revolting impudence 
of a set of atheists who legislate God and 
God's worship out of a great, historic 
Christian nation. 

A similar attempt is being made in 
Belgium. It is singular, and significant 
as it is singular, that the first legislative 
step of a misnamed liberal government on 
entering into power in a Catholic coun- 
try should invariably be to drive Christian 
teaching out of the schools. Religion, ac- 
cording to them, should have nothing at 
all to do with schooling. We need not 
here rehearse their worn and flimsy ar- 
gument. Surely, if religion or religious 
teaching is good anywhere it is good in 
the school ; and a child will learn that 
two and two make four, or that the world 
is composed of land and water, none the 
less readily for being taught at the same 
time that God made him and that Christ 
died for him. It is complained that the 
atmosphere of a Christian school is en- 
ervating ; there is too much crucifix and 
pious picture. We can see nothing en- 
ervating in teaching a child to bow its 
head to the image of its crucified Re- 
deemer, and nothing to blush at in doing 
reverence to the picture of the Mother 
of God. With nonsense of this kind we 
have no patience. If these people who 
call themselves liberal can show that the 
teaching in Christian schools is inferior 
to that in purely secular schools, they 
have a fair argument and just ground of 
complaint. In France, however, just 
the contrary is proved. The pupils of the 
Christian schools have in variably carried 
off the chief honors at public competition. 
The schools themselves and the system 
of education have been tested and ap- 
proved in the highest manner by compe- 
tent authorities of every creed. They 
were the most favored by the parents. 
But all is to be changed ; religion and 
the religious are to be thrown out, not 
because the parents or children so de- 
sire, but because M. Gambetta, or M. 
Ferry, or M. Hurnbeeck thinks it very 
much better that the Christian religion 
should have no place in the schools 
of Christian people. Catechism should 
not be taught in school hours. Indeed ? 
Children may very easily learn many 
worse things than their catechism. They 
can certainly learn nothing better. 

It is needless to call the roll of the 
nations and touch further on their inter- 
nal affairs. The matters already touched 
upon are those which chiefly move all 



572 



The Year of Our Lord 1879. 



civilized peoples over and above affairs 
of purely local interest. To those who 
watch the years and the tendency of 
events one great fact is always growing. 
It is this : The peoples of countries that 
claim to be civilized are to-day, more 
than they ever were, striving up to free- 
dom and right government. As the 
tendency of things goes, men, generally 
speaking, will, not many years from now, 
be more clamorous for human rights 
than they ever were before. They will 
be so clamorous that governments dare 
not withstand their demands. Even 
Russia will, doubtless, by that time have 
a very different constitution from what it 
has to-day. The masses are surging 
around the units, and if not led by them 
will absorb and destroy them. The 
reverence for the queen bees of society, 
the sufferance of established drones, will 
disappear, save in so far as these satisfy 
certain public needs. Every man of in- 
telligence and right feeling will demand 
a certain voice in the government that 
legislates for him and his fellows. " You 
rule me," he will say. "Why? What 
return do you make for my service? 1 ' 
The government of pure autocracy is 
destined to pass away with the spread 
of education and intelligence, as it has 
passed in England and among ourselves, 
the very representatives of free govern- 
ment to-day. Cynics say that the govern- 
ment of plutocracy succeeds to that of 
aristocracy ; but the plutocracy of its 
very nature is shifting and has no per- 
manent rights outside of the individual. 
It is of its nature temporary and open to 
many changes. The real danger in the 
changing order is that the advancing tide 
may sweep too far. Some authoritative 
voice must say, " Thus far shalt thou go, 
and no farther." The power of God, and 
the sense among men that God speaks 
somewhere, can alone give authority to 
such voice. 

What we mean is this: the tide of de- 
mocracy is rising in all lands, and is des- 
tined to rise. In other words, the people 
are coming into the power that was for- 
merly held, and allowed to be held, by 
the few. But th people are just as 
likely to " govern wrong " as the monarch, 
unless they are ruled by right principles. 
And where are they to find these right 
principles? In the religion of the divine 
Saviour and teacher of humanity no- 
where else. The highest human, purely 
human, authority in this sphere is falli- 



ble, and has always proved itself so. The 
laws of men, excellently adapted for one 
age or for one clime, are ill-adapted for 
an after-clime or another people. That 
is the teaching of history. The laws of 
Christ, which constitute the very founda- 
tion and safeguard of morality, are alone- 
eternal, adapted equally, and equally 
necessary, to all climes and peoples, for 
they have their seat in the human soul 
that God himself breathed into us. They 
are of his essence, and we are of his crea- 
tion. 

Laws founded on this Christian law 
can alone satisfy the hearts and aspira- 
tions of men. Outside of that is human 
tyranny, or disturbance, or anarchy; 
revolt on the one side, oppression on 
the other. History teaches that lesson. 
A striking instance is afforded by the 
freest of European governments which 
we have singled out to eulogize. The 
English government to-day, after the in- 
timate relations of seven centuries, is in 
dangerous conflict with its neighbor, 
that ought to be its co-worker, Ireland ; 
and why? Simply because from first to 
last it has persistently dealt with it on 
anti-Christian principles. It has sub- 
stituted the law of human force for the 
sweet and binding law of Christ. It 
has systematically terrorized and wrong- 
ed instead of honestly attempting to win. 
And so it has been with most conquer- 
ing powers, particularly those that have 
within three centuries separated them- 
selves from the heart and seat of Chris- 
tendom. 

But where are men to find the authorita- 
tive voice that is to speak in the name of 
Christ? Where but where Christ him- 
self has placed it ? In the contradictions 
and delirium of the sects calling them- 
selves Christian ? Not there. God is 
not the author of confusion. Early in 
the past year the Holy Father, Leo 
XIII., devoted his first Encyclical Let- 
ter to this question of questions to the 
government and tendency of peoples. 
He did not disguise their duty from 
rulers, while he called their attention to 
the inevitable tendency of peoples and 
of the times. The tide of what is called 
democracy is swelling. But the aspi- 
rations of the people are right and just. 
They may very easily be carried in a 
wrong direction through lack of com- 
prehension on the part of rulers and 
through deception on the part of leaders. 
If the rulers would stand fast they must 



Ntw Publications. 



573 






unite, but unite to govern rightly ; and 
there is only one right government, as 
we have said that based on the law of 
rhrist. This law has but one authorita- 
tive voice in the world : the voice of the 
successor of him to whom Christ con- 
fided the primacy of his church, to which 
lie gave the promise of inerrancy. Men 
may not accept this rule, but outside of 
it the)- will find nothing but change 'and 
turmoil. Nor does this rule, or spiritual 
guidance rather, mean interference with 
the offices of civil government. It means 
simply an unfailing guide in questions 
of morals and of divine faith. If men 
refuse to reject it, why, on their heads 
be the penalty. Man is free to take or 
refuse. The Pope does not command 
those who refuse to accept him as the 
spiritual head of Christendom. He sim- 
ply says : I will help you, as far as I 
can, to make men more Christian. I 
will teach them to be obedient, to be 
true, to be chaste, to be honest, to be 
Christian. I am not your enemy, but 
your friend. Go your way ; only let 
Christians be Christians. Give them 
room to worship God, and to teach their 
children to worship him. That is all 
I ask. 

We cannot conclude without a word 
to our own people. The past year has 
been one of general prosperity crowning 
many a year of financial disaster. We 
are at peace. Let us keep so. We see 
the Old World, from which we or our 
sires came, convulsed with social tumult, 
threatened with war, and impoverished 



by bad harvests and the necessities of 
governments, which, anxious for peace, 
must ever be ready for war. Our field* 
teem with rich harvests ; our soil with 
every kind of production. We have still 
unoccupied tracts capable of giving sus- 
tenance and employment to a continent. 
We are a nation, occupying territories 
such as were never given by heaven to 
nations before. Our creeds are many, 
yet we live at peace. No man personal- 
ly encroaches on the other. We have 
our problems before us, religious and 
social ; but the government of the coun- 
try, if we are only content to stand by it, 
is equal to the solution of such problems, 
We are free, and heaven blesses us in 
corn and wine and oil. We are self-suf- 
ficient and competent for all emergencies, 
if we are content to look to ourselves. 
Our government, state and national, is 
at once strong enough and free enough 
for all honest men. Let us not be mis- 
led by the dishonest and wicked men 
who make a profession of politics, and 
turn what ought to be the highest civic- 
privilege into a school of chicanery and 
deceit. We are strong enough, and the 
Constitution is strong enough, if only we 
adhere to it. There is no need of " a 
strong man " to rule us. A free and 
manly people feel no such want. If we 
are honest and true to what has been 
handed down to us, that is enough. But 
if we allow ourselves to be pulled like 
puppets our liberties as well as our na- 
tional existence are indeed in clanger. 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



PKAKL. By Kathleen O'Meara, author 

of Life of Ozanam, Are You My IVif. ? 
etc., etc. New York: The Catholic 
Publication Society Co. 1879. 

Those who have already read this 
charming story as it appeared in the 
pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will be 
pleased to see it published in book-form. 
It is a story that will repay reperusal ; 
for it is not only full of a growing inter- 
est to the last chapter, but is, moreover, 
a very close, keen, and clever study of 



men, women, and manners as they exist 
in the better form of French and English 
society. It is not what vvquld be strictly 
called a pious story; it will be more 
welcome on this account to those who 
from a long experience fight shy of that 
peculiar and not encouraging class of 
fiction; but it only needs the author's 
name to assure a Catholic reader that 
Pearl, while often depicting life that is 
as hard and selfish as it is outwardly re- 
fined and brilliant, is never coarse, is es- 
sentially high and pure in its purpose, is 



574 



Publications. 



based on right Christian morals and on 
the best instincts of human nature, 

It is a novel of English and French 
society of the period when Napoleon 
III. was still flourishing in France. The 
French circle is that assertive one that 
moved around the imperial adventurer's 
throne, faintly touched with the benedic- 
tional presence of a most amusing cou- 
ple who are allowed to shiver in the aus- 
tere outskirts of the Faubourg St. Ger- 
main. This pair frequent the Napoleon- 
ic circles, because they find a welcome, 
life, and fun there. But they always do 
it under protest, and with fear and trem- 
bling lest by any chance the news should 
penetrate to the centre of the Faubourg, 
to their final excommunication from that 
sanctified precinct. All this is very cle- 
ver, and touched with the delicate fine se 
ofacleverand witty woman. The English 
people met are of the conventional type. 

Pearl we think superior to any story 
Miss O'Meara has yet given us, for the 
reason that it is more rounded and full. 
There is a break nowhere. The interest 
deepens constantly with the progress of 
the story. The dialogue has the crisp 
brilliancy of the French. The situations, 
as the playwrights say, are wrought out 
with much naturalness, yet with great 
power and strength. The contrast of 
character, too, is very complete. The 
two sisters, Pearl and Polly, offer excel- 
lent foils to each other, as do Leopold 
and Darvallon. The Count and Count- 
ess de Kerbec, our friends of the Fau- 
bourg, are completely distinct from M. 
and Mme. Leopold, yet one group is 
every whit as amusing as the other. As 
for Mrs. Monteagle, with her biting 
tongue, terrible common sense, yet jewel 
of a heart, she is a creation. Even the 
minor characters are drawn with the 
firm hand of one conscious of her pow 
er, who knows just how far they ought 
to be obtruded on the main action of the 
story. 

The life depicted is, as we said, hard 
and selfish enough under its brilliant 
glitter; still there are hard and selfish 
people in the world, and it is necessary 
sometimes to be introduced to them. 
Miss O'Meara uses her characters very 
cleverly. She does not write at them or 
abuse them, or do anything with them 
but just let them have their own way. 
She allows them rope enough, and thev 
all hang themselves in the most becom- 
ing manner possible, without the faintest 



consciousness that they are committing 
moral suicide. In contrast with these 
stand out the nobler characters, and the 
proofs to which they are put are shown 
in scenes as strong, as tender, and as 
pathetic as few stories indeed can fur- 
nish. 

The author's natural kindness of heart 
causes her to relent at times and find ex- 
cuses for the meanness and selfishness 
of some of her characters, as in the fol- 
lowing beautiful apology for the worldly 
Mme. Leopold, who was bound to make 
the best possible match, in a worldly 
sense, for her son and daughter : 

" When ces chers enfants were in ques- 
tion nothing was too much for Mme. 
Leopold's audacity. In this instance, 
however, she really believed what she 
said that Pearl was in love with Leon 
and it had kept her awake many a nicht 
wondering whether Leon was in luvc 
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 follies, of his debts, the troubles 
of his heart, his conscience, and his bet- 
ting-book ; she knows it all ; he will hide- 
many things from his father, but he hides 
nothing from his mother. And the mo- 
ther, on her side, repays this confidence 
by boundless indulgence and sympathy 
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 an)' other, re- 
sembles the priest. The mantle of ma- 
ternity is made of sacramental threads, 
making every mother rich in strength 
and mercy ; but nowhere is this truth so 
manifest as in France. The French mo- 
ther, with a heart pure as the morning- 
dew, can gaze unshrinking into a heart 
as black as night, and listen, apparently 
undismayed, to the darkest revelations, 
never recoiling, never despairing ; seeing 
through all present corruption the beauty 
of innocence that once was there, of re- 
pentance that may yet be there. No 
wonder this deep, strong, all-embracing 
compassion in the mother calls forth a 
lull response from the son. Lton Leo- 
pold had never concealed anything from 
his mother. . , . He knew that she had 






New Publications. 



5/5 



pity and indulgence for every enormity 
of folly he could commit, except one : 
she would never forgive his marrying 
foolishly marrying, that is, any one she 
did not approve of. . . ." 

This is the mother who bursts into her 
daughter's room one morning with a let- 
ter in her hand. 

"I want to speak to mademoiselle. 
Wait in my room a moment,' she said, 
and the maid went out and closed the 
door. 

" ' What is it, mamma?' 

" ' My child, kneel down and make an 



FOUR MONTHS IN A SNEAK-BOX. A 
Boat Voyage of Twenty-six Hundred 
Miles down the Ohio and Mississippi 
Rivers and along the Gulf of Mexico. 
By Nathaniel H. Bishop, author of A 
Thousand Miles' Walk Across South 
America and Voyage of the Paper Canoe. 
Boston : Lee & Shepard, publishers ; 
New York : Charles T. Dillingham. 
1879. 

In a previous number we Ind the plea- 
sure of noticing Mr. Bishop's Voyage of 
the Paper Canoe, certainly one of the 



act of thanksgiving: the Marquis de most interesting and instructive books 



Cholcourt asks you in marriage.' 
Oh !' 



of travel ever published, and which, we 
are happy to say, has met with well-de- 



Blanche clasped her hands and sat served success. It has been not only 



down on the edge of the bed. 

" ' Here it is : a letter from Darvallon 
to your father, saying M. de Cholcourt 
has charged him to make the demand.' 

" ' Est-ce possible!' murmured Blanche, 
her hands locked together on her knees, 
and her eyes fixed in happy bewilder- 
ment on her mother's face. 



favorably received in this country, but 
republished in Great Britain and France. 
The present volume is a companion to 
it, being an account of a voyage from 
Pittsburgh down the Ohio and Missis- 
sippi Rivers, and along the coast of the 
Gulf of Mexico as far as the mouth of 
the Suwanee River in Florida, where the 



" ' My child, the bon Dieu is very author's previous voyage in the paper 



good to us !' said Mme. Leopold, em- 
bracing her with emotion. 



"'What answer has papa sent?' she 
said at last, when her power of speech 
returned. 

44 ' I have not seen him yet ; he is en- 



canoe also terminated. The two to- 
gether give a complete account of al- 
most our whole Atlantic coast, and of 
the principal water-way of our inland 
commerce. 

Doubtless many of our readers ima- 
gine that there is not much to be said 
on these subjects with which they are 



gaged, but he sent me in the letter at not already well acquainted. Are the) 1 
once. My child, you don't think he can not laid down on all our maps, and is 
hesitate that there can be any answer not the whole country inhabited by a 

civilized people, with whose way of life 
we are well acquainted? Surely they 
cannot have an interest like that of Mr. 
" ' I am thinking what we are to do Stanley's voyage down the Livingstone 



but one to such an offer ?' 

l< ' Oh ! of course not, mamma.' 
4: ' Then what is it ?' 



about the other. I suppose there is no 
use in our going to this ball now?' 

4 ' 'It will be awkward. And, as you 
say, there is no longer any object in our 
going.' 

" Blanche thought for a moment, 
and then, looking up, 'After all,' she 
said, ' one never knows what may hap- 
pen. I think we had better go.' 

' ' Cherie ! you are a wise little wo- 
man. Then let us go.' " 

It need not be added that " the other" 



River, through nations which had never 
looked on a white man's face before. 

Such an imagination would, however, 
be very ill-founded. Very few have any 
correct idea at all of the Atlantic and 
Gulf coasts, beyond a mere vague know- 
ledge of their general contour. Their 
peculiar structure, with sheltered sounds 
and inlets, making navigation in a small 
boat, like those which Mr. Bishop used, 
possible, is a thing with which hardly 
any are acquainted, except those who 



speedily got his ccrtgd. Yet if the French actually live along them at points be- 



style of marriage produces no worse 
mothers than even Mme. Leopold is, is 
it to be considered so irredeemably bad, 
and is worldliness in this respect con- 
fined exclusively to France? 



tween the few seaports on their line. 
And the ordinary maps are so inaccurate 
that even a study of them fails to give 
the knowledge which can be gained by 
the examination of the beautiful and ac- 



New Publications. 



curate Coast Survey charts with which 
Mr. Bishop's books are illustrated, and 
which, combined with his descriptions of 
them, make his books amply worth peru- 
sal for the sake of their geographical in- 
formation alone. 

Neither are we as well acquainted as 
we may imagine with the character and 
habits of the people along the routes 
followed by the author. Those who 
have made the voyage down the rivers 
whose course he followed may, indeed, 
have casually noticed many things which 
he describes ; but a voyage on a steamer 
in its hurried course, touching only at 
the principal landings, is not like Mr. 
Bishop's deliberate journey, stopping at 
out-of-the-way places, and keeping pace 
with the odd and primitive boats which 
are only seen for a moment in passing 
by the ordinary traveller. It is impossi- 
ble to know a country by journeying on 
steamers and railway trains, and stop- 
ping at hotels. 

And this work of Mr. Bishop's has the 
merit of the former one in not being a 
dry description, needing study and a 
previous interest in its subject to get 
through with it. It has all the charm 
which a journey like his would have, 
without its necessary discomforts and 
annoyances. One feels in reading it as 
if ssated by the side of the author (were 
that possible) in his queer little craft, 
free from all the cares and responsibili- 
ties of civilized life, as well as from 
those which must actually have weighed 
on the- mind of the solitary voyager. 
One realizes and, shares the pleasure of 
his adventures, so vividly described, 
sees all the strange places which he vis- 
ited, and gets acquainted with all the 
strange people whom he met, without 
any misgivings as to how the acquaint- 
ance may result. There is no one who 
would not like to make a journey of this 
kind, if it could be done in this way ; and 
it can be done, by the help of this charm- 
ing book, tyy one's own fireside, with no 
trouble except that of turning over the 
leaves. 

Perhaps most readers will be rather 
puzzled by its title. A paper canoe is a 
curious enough vessel ; but what in the 
world is a sneak-box ? The name is pro- 
bably familiar to few who have not been 
to the place where sneak-boxes are prin- 



cipally made that is to say, Barnegat' 
on the New Jersey coast. For the bene- 
fit of those who have not been there we 
would say that a sneak-box is a sort of 
float used by sportsmen for sneaking 
round after ducks, and is the very beau- 
ideal of a boat for such a cruise as the 
author made. It is at once a boat and a 
little house, in which one can not only 
row and sail, but carry plenty of provi- 
sions, bedding, and cooking utensils, 
and sleep snugly at night. Moreover, 
one need not be particular, as in a canoe, 
about sitting a quarter of an inch to star- 
board or port, but stand up and move 
round in it with comfort, though it is 
only twelve feet long, four wide, and one 
deep. 

We invite all our readers to step into 
the sneak-box and take a tour with Mr. 
Bishop. There will be plenty of room 
for any number of them. Only they 
must be careful to step into the middle 
of it, not on the sides, which are decked 
over, otherwise they will go into the 
water. Many a man has tried the wrong 
way of getting aboard, and emerged 
much wetter and wiser than before. 
Once fairly seated in it, we know they 
will enjoy their voyage, and thank Mr. 
Bishop for a treat like that which Jules 
Verne would give, and all the more that 
the journey is made to regions of reali- 
ty instead of those of romance. 



SHAKSPEARE'S TRAGEDY OF HAMLET. 
With Introduction, and Notes Explan- 
atory and Critical. For use in Schools 
and Classes. By the Rev. Henry N. 
Hudson, Professor of English Litera- 
ture in the School of Oratory, Boston 
University. Boston : Ginn & Heath. 
1879. 

Mr. Hudson is certainly a devout and 
intelligent lover of Shakspeare. His 
dissertation on the tragedy that he has 
illustrated with numerous and well- 
placed notes is full of interest, thought, 
and observation. He is in earnest with 
his subject, and his earnestness rewards 
the reader. Anything that tends to make 
readers study the depth and meaning of 
Shakspeare is of value ; but so intelli- 
gent a study as this of Mr. Hudson is an 
addition to English literature 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. XXX., No. 179. FEBRUARY, 1880. 



WHAT IS THE UNKNOWABLE ? 



THE UNKNOWABLE, considered as 
a denomination of some kind of 
subject of discourse, has become 
very familiar to us of late years. 
Those who use this term intend to 
affirm that beyond a certain limit 
which they assign to the knowledge 
of which the human mind is capa- 
ble, it can neither rationally affirm 
nor deny that some being which 
can be named, and which some men 
affirm and others deny as exist- 
ing, does really exist. Nevertheless, 
the manner in which this expres- 
sion is used as a substantive term 
irresistibly suggests the idea of 
some boundless unknown reality, 
which is really in itself intelligible 
and knowable, but which is not 
knowable by the human mind on 
account of the limitation of its fa- 
culties. 

* There is something similar to 
this in Catholic theology. St. Tho- 
mas proposes the question, whether 
the existence of God is in itself 
knowable. He decides that it is 
so, in itself considered, but not in 
respect to us. That is, the essence 
of God is in itself an intelligible 
object, but the human mind, be- 
cause of its finite nature, is not 
naturally capable of extending it- 
Copyright : REV. I. 



self to this object. The essence 
of God is, in respect to the natural 
cognition of created intelligence, 
The Unknowable. This is the doc- 
trine of the Holy Scriptures, Ca- 
tholic tradition, and theology, of 
which St. Thomas is only the in- 
terpreter and expositor. What we 
propose to do now is to make an 
explanation of the sense and rea- 
son of this doctrine, by philosophi- 
cal arguments derived from St. 
Thomas and his school. After- 
wards, we will show in what sense, 
and by what way, the existence and 
nature of God are knowable in re- 
spect to the natural faculty of creat- 
ed and specifically of human intel- 
ligence, and how it is possible to 
know the essence of God by intui- 
tion, supernaturally. 

In doing this, we must take our 
departure from certain principles 
and fixed doctrines of ideology 
which have been presented in some 
previous articles. 

What knowledge is cannot be 
defined. We know it by conscious- 
ness. But as to the way of it, it is 
effected by a union of the known 
with the knower, a presence of the 
object in the subject. 

What is known is received in the 

T. HECKER. 1880. 



What is the Unknowable? 



knower, according to the mode and 
measure of this recipient. It can- 
not be received in its physical be- 
ing, but by images which are re- 
presentations. A sensitive faculty 
can only receive sensible images, 
representing single and sensible ob- 
jects. Imagination and reflection 
in this order of sensible apprehen- 
sion can only reproduce images of 
sense-cognition. Self-consciousness 
alone is without a medium or re- 
presentative image, because self is 
immediately present to itself and 
needs no representative medium. 

Intellectual cognition is by in- 
tellectual images or ideas, in which 
the objects correlated to the intel- 
lect are perceived, by virtue of the 
self-consciousness of the subject ; 
who becomes self-conscious by his 
actual, spontaneous exercise of his 
innate faculty; and is conscious of 
himself as informed with the ideas 
or species, infused or received, 
which present before his intel- 
lectual vision objects which are in 
their real being external to himself, 
but ideally are within his own in- 
dividual being. 

The intelligent spirit who is sep- 
arate from all dependence upon 
matter and perfect in himself, that 
is, pure spirit, has purely spiritual 
essences, and the pure universals 
as they are in their necessary and 
eternal reality, unshrouded by ma- 
terial clothing, as his proper object 
of cognition. He perceives himself 
in his spiritual reality as a man 
perceives his own hand by ocular 
vision, and by the same his own 
face when reflected by a mirror. 
In his own essence and properties 
and attributes he perceives all uni- 
versal and necessary truths, which 
are in himself inasmuch as he is a 
participated and diminuted resem- 
blance of the divine essence. He 
perceives all other spiritual beings 



by virtue of their likeness to him- 
self, and in his own intellect which 
as a mirror represents them all. 
Corporeal beings are known to him 
by ideas or species infused by the 
Creator, which invest him with an 
ideal similitude to material objects 
sufficient to bring him into contact 
with the real things themselves. 

The human intellect being join- 
ed with a sensitive organism, its 
proper object is the universal as 
the intelligible reason of the single, 
corporeal objects of sense-cognition. 
It has the necessary limitation of 
all finite intellect, and the further 
limitation caused by union with 
the body whose form it is. 

The operation of every active 
force follows its essence and is de- 
termined and limited by it, as to 
its intensive and extensive power 
and its mode of acting. Cognos- 
citive beings have their cognition 
proportioned to their nature. The 
divine cognition follows the divine 
nature according to a propor- 
tion of equality. So, also, the pure- 
ly intellectual cognition of the 
pure spirit, and the mixed cogni- 
tion of the being, man, who has a 
mixed nature, composed of the 
spiritual and the corporeal. The 
intelligible or knowable in itself is 
therefore relatively the unknowable 
to any intelligence which does not 
equal it and is therefore by its na- 
ture incapable of expressing it in 
and by a proper idea or" species, 
which expresses subjectively its ob- 
jective reality by an adequate re- 
presentation. 

These preliminary statements 
will enable us to understand the 
reason given by St. Thomas why 
the created intelligence, as such, 
and specifically the human intel- 
lect, cannot by its natural faculty 
see the essence of God by intellec- 
tual vision. As, by ocular vision, 



Wtiat is the Unknowable ? 



579 






only single bodies can be perceived, 
and by the human intellectual vi- 
sion only the universal abstracted 
from the sensible, so by the angelic 
intellectual vision only finite, spiri- 
tual essence can be perceived, and 
whatever its native faculties or in- 
fused species can represent which 
does not transcend the limits of 
the subject in whom this power of 
intellectual vision resides. 

The essence of God does tran- 
scend, and infinitely transcend, all 
created essence. Therefore, St. 
Thomas teaches, a created intellect 
cannot have cognition of the es- 
sence of God by its natural facul- 
ties : 

"Cognitio enim contingit secundum 
quod cognitum est in cognoscente. Cog- 
nitum autem est in cognoscente secun- 
dum modum cognoscentis. Unde cujus- 
libet cognoscentis cognitio est secun- 
dum modum suae naturae. Si igitur mo- 
dus essendi alicujus rei cognitse exce- 
dat modum naturre cognoscentis, opor- 
tet quod cognitio illius rei sit supra 
naturam illius cognoscentis " (Summce, 
pars i. qu. xii. art. 4). 

<l Cognition takes place inasmuch as 
that which is cognized is in the cognizer. 
But the cognized is in the cognizer ac- 
cording- to the mode of the cognizer. 
Wherefore the cognition of every cog- 
nizer is according to the mode of his 
nature. If, therefore, the mode of being 
of any object of cognition exceeds the 
mode of the nature of a cognizer, the 
cognition of that object necessarily sur- 
passes the nature of that cognizer." 

Now, since the mode of being 
which belongs to God alone, infi- 
nitely exceeds the mode of being 
proper to the most perfect intellec- 
tual creature, the cognition of the 
essence of God surpasses his facul- 
ty of intelligence : 

" Solius autem Dei proprius modus 
essendi est ut sit suum esse subsistens" 
" It is the proper mode of being of God 
alone that he should be his own subsist- 
ing being." " Relinquitur ergo quod 



cognoscere ipsum esse subsistens sit con- 
naturale soli intellectui divino, et quod 
sit supra facultatem naturalem cujus- 
libet intellectus creati : quia millet crea- 
tura est suum esse, sed habet esse partici- 
patum " " The conclusion is, therefore, 
that to know that which is itself its sub- 
sisting being is connatural to the divine 
intellect alone, and that this cognition 
surpasses the natural faculty of every 
created intellect : because no creatiire is 
its own being; but every one has a participat- 
ed being" (idem). 

It would be well if every one 
who undertakes to write on this 
most sublime and abstruse subject 
would first master and then fellow 
the reasoning of the Angelic Doctor. 
All orthodox writers conform them- 
selves, of course, to the doctrine of 
the church which teaches that be- 
atified men are raised to that con- 
dition in which they become capa- 
ble of the intuitive vision of God 
by his essence, only by an act of 
divine grace. But they frequently 
use language which leads their read- 
ers to suppose that it is the union 
with the present corruptible body, 
the same cause which hinders us 
from seeing angels and souls, which 
causes the essence of God to be 
invisible to men. When they speak 
more distinctly and correctly, and 
say that not even .disembodied 
spirits and angels can see God by 
their natural power, they often 
speak as if this were on account of 
some limitation which God has set 
to the nature of his intelligent 
creatures by an arbitrary decree. 
They do not say that God cannot 
create a being capable of this in- 
tuitive vision by his nature. They 
at least express a doubt regarding 
the possibility of such a nature be- 
ing created. Therefore they fall 
entirely short of the fundamental 
philosophy, in respect to divine and 
created intelligence, which St. Tho- 
mas presents in such a luminous 



5 8o 



What' is the Unknowable ? 



manner, but which they have fail- 
ed to apprehend. Even those who 
distinctly affirm the impossibility 
of a natural intuition of God as a 
necessary predicate of the subject 
creature so [far as our reading 
extends, seldom clearly state the 
metaphysical reason given by St. 
Thomas. 

It is, however, this reason, and 
this reason alone, which makes the 
intrinsic repugnance of the idea of 
innate power to behold the divine 
essence to the idea of created and 
participated intellect, clearly mani- 
fest. St. Thomas frequently re- 
peats it, and constantly refers to it 
as the occasion offers, in terms 
which are brief and concise, and 
therefore need attentive considera- 
tion, but which express the truth 
most lucidly and conclusively to a 
mind which gives this requisite at- 
tention to the logical connection 
of his ideas. One denomination 
which the Angelic Doctor frequent- 
ly gives to the being of God is that 
of esse irreceptum, equivalent to 
self-existing being, being in the ab- 
solute sense, necessary being, or 
essence which as essence, and by 
reason of its essence, actually ex- 
ists in plenitude, or infinite, eternal 
perfection of being. 

The being of creatures, on the 
other hand, is defined as esse recep- 
tum. This denotes that their es- 
sence does not exist by virtue of 
what it is essentially, but by virtue 
of an act which gives it real being. 
The creature has being, but is not 
necessarily in being; its being or 
actual existence is received, parti- 
cipated, derived, and finite. By 
virtue, therefore, of the essentia'l 
nature and mode of cognition, it 
can take cognizance only of being 
similar to itself, that is, participated 
and received being, but not of ip- 
sum esse subsistens or esse irrecep- 



tum, by an immediate act of cogni- 
tion. 

There is a twofold reason why 
the human intellect in its present 
state cannot have immediate, in- 
tuitive cognition of God. One is 
derived from man's specific mode 
of being as an incorporated spirit, 
substantially united with a gross 
and corruptible body which keeps 
in abeyance and holds in bondage, 
so long as its natural laws are in 
their normal exercise, the intrinsic, 
innate faculty of separate opera- 
tion which sleeps within the soul 
in a merely potential state. In 
this condition, the human spirit 
cannot see that which is spirit. It 
comes nearest to this vision in in- 
tellectual self-consciousness. But 
the soul is only self-conscious by 
its active exercise of its powers 
coming into action spontaneously ; 
not by direct view of its own sub- 
stantial entity. We infer that it 
is a spirit, because it has attributes 
and produces effects which cannot 
be ascribed to corporeal substance. 
Because man is a corporeal being, 
and his spirit is the form of a body, 
his proper, immediate object is the 
sensible, that is, the phenomena of 
bodies. From the sensible his in- 
tellect abstracts the universal, and 
by virtue of these ideal concepts 
forms the ideas of substance, of 
body, of spirit, and of whatever 
other entity is thinkable. The im- 
agination follows after the reason, 
and strives to clothe the ideas or 
concepts with a figure which is 
similar to the sensible appearances 
of the visible world. But it fails 
to represent the spiritual as it real- 
ly exists. It is impossible for us 
to get any other imaginary repre- 
sentation of a spirit than that which 
clothes it with a human similitude. 
Therefore, when angels, demons, 
or the spirits of human beings 



What is the Unknowable 






which have departed this life ap- 
pear to men, it is always under 
some visible form, manifested to 
the senses or produced in the im- 
agination, unless, by an extraor- 
dinary and unusual miracle, God 
chooses to elevate the mind to a 
preternatural state for the time 
being. 

This is the first reason why man 
cannot see God. He is 'a pure 
spirit, and therefore invisible to 
man, who cannot see any spirit, 
even his own, while he is living his 
corporeal life. The second reason 
is, because even when the human 
spirit passes into a separate exist- 
ence, and becomes capable of an 
inferior degree of that cognition 
which is proper to angels, it can- 
not perceive that which transcends 
the faculty of even the highest and 
most perfect of created intelligen- 
ces. 

This is all distinctly taught by 
St. Thomas in the same place from 
which the foregoing citations have 
been taken. 

First, in regard to human cog- 
nition, he says : 

"It is therefore connatural to us to 
cognize those things which do not have 
their being except in individuated mat- 
ter, because our soul, by which we cog- 
nize, is the form of a certain matter. 
This soul, nevertheless, has two cognos- 
citive powers, one, which is the act of a 
certain corporeal organ, and it is con- 
natural to this to cognize things as they 
subsist in individuated matter ; whence 
the sensitive faculty takes cognizance 
only of single objects. The other cog- 
noscitive power which it possesses is 
intellection, which is not the act of any 
corporeal organ. Wherefore it is con- 
natural to us to have by the intellect 
cognition of those natures which indeed 
do not have being except in individu- 
ated matter, yet are abstracted from it, 
and after this manner cognized by the 
consideration of the intellect ; whereby, 
in an intellectual manner, we can cog- 
ni/e this kind of things in their univer- 



sal aspect, which is above the sensitive 
faculty." 

Then, in regard to the cognition 
of purely intellectual beings or 
pure spirits, he says : 

" To the angelic intellect, however, it 
is connatural to cognize natures which 
do not exist in matter ; which is above 
the natural intellective faculty of the 
human soul, according to the state of 
this present life in which it is united to 
the body." 

Nevertheless, since these pure 
spirits although subsisting by 
themselves as complete and sub- 
stantive forms, without any exigen- 
cy of nature to be united with bodi- 
ly substance or aptitude for such 
a union, and therefore competent 
to cognize the purely spiritual ob- 
ject of cognition ; are not their own 
being, but have a received, parti- 
cipated being, they cannot cognize 
the essence which is its own being, 
is unreceived, uncaused, self-exist- 
ent. As we have already quoted 
St. Thomas in a foregoing para- 
graph, " cognoscere ipsum esse sub- 
sistens " surpasses the faculty of 
every created intellect, as such, not 
only every intellect actually exist- 
ing, but of every one possible in 
the nature of tilings. 

Ocular vision, or any other sen- 
sitive faculty, is by its nature re- 
stricted to single corporeal objects. 
It is impossible that the abstract 
and universal, or that any con- 
crete spiritual existence, should 
be visible, audible, or tangible 
to the senses. A mere power of 
sense-cognition, or a being who 
has no power of a higher nature, 
cannot possibly pass beyond its 
own natural limit. Yet this sense- 
cognition can be elevated and 
made to subserve intellectual cog- 
nition, if the subject exercising it 
have also an intellectual faculty. 
For the sensible object contains 



582 



What is the Unknowable ? 



within itself that which furnishes 
the real foundation to the universal 
concepts of the mind whose con- 
natural object is the intelligible 
ratio of the sensible. The human 
mind is of this species, and such is 
the nature of its specific cognition. 
On this line, it might progress for 
ever without getting beyond the 
sphere of knowledge which be- 
gins from sense. But no extent 
of experience among sensible ob- 
jects, no degree of mathematical 
or metaphysical science, would 
ever give the human mind direct 
insight into substance as it is in it- 
self, or enable it to perceive imme- 
diately a soul or any kind of spirit. 
Yet, as it is generically similar in 
its spiritual part to pure spirits, 
and capable of an existence and 
operation separate from the body, 
it can be elevated to a state higher 
than the present one, in which it 
becomes naturally capable of a 
mode of cognition similar to that 
of angels. The purely intellectual 
being, the spirit, or angel, cannot, 
however, rise to any higher natural 
order of cognition, because he has 
only God above him. The highest 
kind of esse receptum is in the pure 
spirit, and he is therefore capable 
of knowing all being which exists 
by communicated, participated be- 
ing, and has above his faculty only 
esse irreceptum. 

The divine being, in its essence, 
is to him the super-intelligible and 
the unknowable, by virtue of the 
principle that all intelligence is reci- 
pient of the intelligible according 
to its own mode of being, and the 
supreme genus of created sub- 
stances is not a species under a di- 
vine genus. The divine being is 
not in the category of genus. Be- 
ing, essence, or any property or at- 
tribute, cannot be predicated of 
God and the creature in the sense 



of generic similitude, but only in a 
transcendental sense. 

In what way, then, can God be 
known, naturally, by the human 
mind, since he is not knowable by 
his essence ? To this question St. 
Thomas gives the following an- 
swer : 

"I answer that it must be said that 
our natural cognition takes its beginning 
from sense. Wherefore our natural cog- 
nition can extend just so far as it can be 
conducted by those things which are 
sensible. Our intellect cannot, how- 
ever, from the sensibles proceed to such 
an extent that it can perceive the divine 
essence ; because sensible creatures are 
effects of God which do not equal their 
cause. Wherefore the whole virtue of 
God cannot be known from the cognition 
of sensibles, nor, consequently, his es- 
sence be perceived. But because these 
sensible objects are his effects depend- 
ing from their cause, we can from these 
things be led so far as this, that we can 
know so much of God as that he is, and 
that we can know concerning him what 
attributes necessarily belong to him in- 
asmuch as he is the first cause of all 
things, surpassing all the effects of his 
causative power" (Ib. qu. xii. art. 12). 

From the effects which are known 
to us, the existence and nature of 
the first cause are inferred and con- 
cluded by acts of discursive reason. 
This is the only way in which we 
can know even the nature of our 
own spirit and of other human 
spirits, or form a concept of what 
pure spirits may be. It is an ab- 
stractive mode of knowledge, the 
only possible mode for an intellect 
whose operation must begin from 
sense and consider the intelligible 
in the sensible. 

All our conceptions of spirits 
and of God are consequently ana- 
logical. The explanation of ana- 
logy in the elementary treatises on 
Logic is frequently obscure and in- 
adequate. The analogy of attribu- 
tion in virtue of which one thing 
receives a denomination from an- 






What is the Unknowable? 



583 



other which is generically diverse 
from it, on account of the similar- 
ity in the effects of the two ana- 
logues, is by no means similar to 
transcendental analogy. The body 
is healthy in the proper and princi- 
pal sense of the term. Food and 
exercise are healthy in an analo- 
gous sense, attributed to them be- 
cause they have an efficacy to sus- 
tain and increase the physical con- 
ditions resulting in bodily health. 
But the analogous sense in which 
the transcendental predicates of 
being, unity, truth, goodness, beau- 
ty, are affixed to things generically 
diverse, is one which is equally 
proper to them all, in all their gen- 
eric diversities and specific differ- 
ences. When the mind ascends to 
the rational conception of God, 
which is the most transcendental 
of all conceptions, by means of 
ideas derived originally from the 
consideration of creatures, and 
frames the terms or names by which 
it expresses the attributes of the di- 
vine being, such as existence, unity, 
truth, goodness, and beauty, these 
names are attributed in their pro- 
per sense, in respect to that which 
they signify, to God. " Quoad sig- 
nificatum proprie de Deo dicun- 
tur" (Sfcmmp, qu. xiii. art. 3). 
They are not, however, in God and 
in creatures in the same mode, and 
therefore it is constantly affirmed 
by St. Thomas that the same pre- 
dicates cannot be applied to God 
and creatures univocally, but must 
be applied analogically. Being is 
diversely attributed to a substance, 
to an accident, to an ideal object. 
That is, it is predicated of these 
diverse subjects, not univocally, 
but analogically, yet in a proper 
sense in each case. The being of 
God, the ipsum esse subsistens, and 
the being of the creature, the esse 
participatum, are likewise in a pro- 



per sense called by the same name 
of being, but analogically, not uni- 
vocally. 

This is most important, because 
the lesser and more equivocal analo- 
gies of attribution give no founda- 
tion for demonstration, and all our 
demonstrations of the attributes 
which belong to the divine essence 
are founded on analogy, all our 
mental conceptions of God are ana- 
logical. Transcendental analogy 
is clearly explained by Suarez as 
follows : 

" Tt must be observed that, speaking 
generally, one thing can be named by at- 
tribution to another in two ways. One 
is, when the denominating form is in 
only one of the extremes, intrinsically, 
in the others only by an extrinsic relation. 
The other is, when the denominating 
form is intrinsically in each member, al- 
though it is absolutely in one, whereas in 
the other it is in dependence upon some- 
thing else " (Met. ii. 28). 

Health is not intrinsically in food, 
but the transcendentals are intrin- 
sically in every subject of which 
they are predicated, although some 
are entities which exist in and by 
themselves, others only in a de- 
pendent and relative manner. 

The self-existingbeing is alone ab- 
solutely and by essence The Being, 
The True, The Good; all creatures 
depend from him, are his, effects, 
have received from him a partici- 
pated being. Yet being, and the 
transcendental properties of being, 
are in them all intrinsically and 
properly, and therefore they fur- 
nish to the human mind concepts 
by which it can truly though in- 
adequately apprehend and demon- 
strate the attributes which neces- 
sarily belong to God. 

It is not necessary to enlarge on 
this topic, or trace out the demon- 
stration of the first cause from 
created effects. This has been 



584 



What is the Unknowable? 



done in a former article, and the 
argument is common and familiar. 
Leaving the consideration of the 
method by which the human mind 
ascends from the sensibles to a ra- 
tional knowledge of God, we turn 
our attention for a moment to 
the explanation which St. Thomas 
gives of the purely intellectual me- 
thod by which the angels obtain 
their higher and more perfect cog- 
nition of God by their natural in- 
telligence : 

"Ad primum ergo dicendum quod 
iste modus cognoscendi Deum est An- 
gelo connaturalis, ut scilicet cognoscat 
eum per similitudinem ejus in ipso An- 
gelo refulgentem " (ut supr ) 

"The mode of knowing God connatu- 
ral to the Angel is by a similitude of 
Him which shines forth in the angelic 
nature itself." 

The purely intellectual creature, 
the pure spirit, has received a na- 
ture which is the most elevated 
and perfect possible essence, as to 
its genus, which God can create ; 
and is a diminuted likeness of the 
divine essence itself. It is a parti- 
cipated intelligible and intelligent 
light, derived from the uncreated 
light. In this highest of natures, 
the work and effect of God's power 
reflects and shows forth the exist- 
ence and attributes of the first 
cause much more resplendently 
than all the inferior works which 
compose the sensible universe. 
Nevertheless, it does not and can- 
not represent the pure essence of 
God as it is in itself. And this di- 
vine essence is not therefore the 
object of direct and immediate cog- 
nition to the angelic intelligence. 

The possibility of a supernatural 
-elevation of created intellect to an 
intuitive cognition of the divine 
essence is only known by the reve- 
lation which God has made of that 
order of grace, in which this vision 



of God has been proposed to angels 
and men as their ultimate beati- 
tude. 

It being once known by revela- 
tion that God has actually elevat- 
ed created nature to this sublime 
height by supernatural grace, it is 
evident that there is in intellectual 
nature a possibility, or passive po- 
tency, for receiving this transforma- 
tion into the likeness of God, who 
alone by his nature has immediate 
cognition of his own essence. This 
intrinsic capacity for being elevated 
above its connatural mode of intel- 
ligence may be sought for, and per- 
haps found, in the very principles 
which constitute intellectual na- 
ture. We must, at least, say : that 
no repugnance can be shown be- 
tween the nature of created intel- 
lect, and a passive receptivity by 
virtue of which it is a proper sub- 
ject of this transformation. It 
may be that a positive proof of 
non-repugnance can be discovered, 
or even a reason of congruity, 
showing how it is most suitable that 
intellectual nature should be so 
elevated by grace. 

St. Thomas, without any hesita- 
tion, advances this proof, derived 
not merely from doctrines of faith, 
but also from reason. In his ar- 
gument, he contrasts intelligence 
with sense-cognition, and shows 
that the latter can never be elevat- 
ed above material objects, because 
its most perfect operation respects 
only single objects, and these 
wholly material, without any mix- 
ture of a perception of their im- 
material relations, or of anything 
apprehended in the abstract and 
universal. Intellect, however, does, 
in man, abstract the concepts of 
spiritual beings ; as the soul, or 
the pure angelic spirit ; from its 
immediate sensible object. Hence, 
there is an inchoate faculty for re- 






What is the Unknowable ? 



585 



ceiving a more perfect cognition of 
that which it abstracts from the 
sensible, by an immediate percep- 
tion of the same essence, separate 
from the sensible. The intellect of 
the angel, likewise, can; from his 
own individual nature, as a finite, 
concrete essence which has receiv- 
ed being from the being who ex- 
ists by his very essence ; abstract 
the idea of being in itself. And 
this makes him capable of being 
raised to a more perfect, to an in- 
tuitive cognition of that being, of 
which he possesses the knowledge 
naturally by abstractive contempla- 
tion. 

This may be illustrated by a com- 
parison. A man may have moral 
certainty respecting some truths ; 
for example, certain results of the 
calculus; from the concurring tes- 
timony of the competent that they 
have been mathematically demon- 
strated. It may be impossible for 
him to understand the demonstra- 
tion, because his intellectual and 
reasoning faculty does not suffice 
for this purpose. Yet there is in 
his intellect an intrinsic, latent 
capacity for the knowledge of these 
truths by mathematical demonstra- 
tion. Again, there is in man a 
cognition of universal truths and 
of spiritual essences by the mode 
of abstraction from the sensible. 
This same capacity of knowing by 
which he has the inferior and im- 
perfect cognition belonging to his 
inferior condition, has a latent and 
dormant potency of being raised to 
the mode of knowing proper to the 
separate spirit. So, the capacity of 
knowing God in his effects, and by 
these effects knowing that there is 
an essence transcending all created 
and finite essence, makes the creat- 
ed intellect capable of elevation to 
a mode of intelligence by which it 
knows immediately and perceives 



clearly what that essence is. Only, 
it must not be forgotten, that 
whereas every elevation and in- 
crease of intelligence, which raises 
an intellect no higher than the 
level of some superior order in the 
creation, is within the bounds of 
nature ; elevation to the intuition 
of the divine essence is super- 
natural. 

St. Thomas proves by another, 
somewhat different argument the 
possibility of a created intellect 
receiving the power to behold the 
essence of God. After having 
shown that to assert the contrary 
is against the doctrine of faith, he 
says that it is also contrary to rea- 
son. For there is no desire of 
nature which is vain, that is, having 
for its object an impossible good. 
But there is in human nature a 
desire of knowing the cause of 
known effects. The essence of 
God is the cause of all created es- 
sences; it is the cause and first 
principle of the intellectual nature 
of the intelligent being. The in- 
tellect which knows other things 
and itself, cannot help being ad- 
vertised of the existence of an es- 
sence from which its own being 
has been received, that this es- 
sence is intelligible in itself, al- 
though, in respect to the natural 
capacity of the subject, superintel- 
ligible and therefore unknowable. 
The natural desire of knowing all 
things in their ultimate cause and 
reason of being, necessarily, there- 
fore, presents before the intelligent 
being the intimate essence of the 
first cause as included in the 
general object of its spontaneous 
tendency toward all being and all 
good ; that is, toward its own ulti- 
mate and perfect beatitude, which 
consists in its own highest opera- 
tion, to wit, its intellectual opera- 
tion. 



535 



What is the Unknowable? 



" Inest enim homini naturale desi- 
derium cognoscendi causam, cum intue- 
tur effectum. Si igitur intellectus ra- 
tionalis creaturae pertingere non possit 
ad primam causam rerum, remanebit 
inane desiderium naturae " (qu. xii. art. 
X ). There is in man a natural desire 
of knowing the cause of the effect which 
he beholds. If, therefore, the intellect 
of the rational creature cannot attain to 
the first cause of things, a desire of 
nature will remain always without an 
object." 

At first sight, and taken by itself, 
this passage with its context seems 
to teach, as some theologians hold 
that it does, that the innate demand 
of intellectual nature for its own per- 
fection in its intellectual operation, 
and for the attainment of the beati- 
tude which is consonant to its in- 
nate tendency, and is the only end 
for which it could be made by 
the divine wisdom and goodness a 
participator in spiritual being, re- 
quires its elevation to the super- 
natural order. A closer examina- 
tion, and a comparison with other 
passages in which the very succinct 
and condensed argument of this 
one is more fully developed, shows, 
however, that this is an extension 
of the thesis of St. Thomas beyond 
his own intention. He presup- 
poses the actual destination of 
man to ultimate, that is, the highest 
possible beatitude in God, by the 
most perfect possible union with 
him, as it is taught by revelation. 
His immediate thesis is, that this 
beatitude must consist in his high- 
est intellectual operation, which re- 
quires a knowledge of God propor- 
tionate to the state and mode of 
being. There is a desiderium natu- 
ra to know everything in its first 
cause, and if the beatitude of hea- 
ven did not contain a knowledge 
of God as its first cause, in propor- 
tion to the union with God in the 
most perfect love, and the exalta- 



tion of the united subject to its own 
ultimate perfection, this desire of 
nature would be frustrated. 

That this interpretation is correct 
is probable merely from the consid- 
ration of the language in the sentence 
quoted : Si pertingere non possit ad 
primam causam rerum. Tins is gene- 
ral, and includes that cognition of 
God which St. Thomas afterwards 
proves to be connatural to angels 
and men. The argument from 
reason, therefore, contains some 
implied premises not distinctly ex- 
pressed. If the intellectual crea- 
ture could not attain to the know- 
ledge of the first cause, there would 
be in it a natural desire necessarily 
frustrated, which is absurd. If the 
intellectual creature raised to the 
most perfect beatitude did not 
therein exercise an intellectual 
operation consonant to this most 
perfect state, the natural desire of 
knowing the first cause would 
not attain a satisfaction propor- 
tionate to the mode of beatitude, 
and would, therefore, be frustrated 
of its completion. There is no 
knowledge of God intrinsically 
and essentially superior to that 
which the angel naturally pos- 
sesses, except the immediate cog- 
nition of God by his essence, the 
ipsum esse subsistens. " Unde simpli- 
citer concedendum est quod beati Dei 
essentiam videant" ''Wherefore 
we strictly conclude that the blessed 
see the essence of God." All the 
part of the suppressed argument 
which we have supplied is drawn 
out by the Angelic Doctor in subse- 
quent articles, from which we have 
already sufficiently quoted. And 
in the course of his reasoning, he 
answers an objection to the effect 
that the angel ought to be able to 
see that essence which is in itself 
the most intelligible, viz., the di- 
vine essence, by his natural power, 






What is the Unknowable? 



587 



because his intelligence is perfect 
and has no defect. St. Thomas 
concedes that the intellect of the 
angel is perfect in the sense that it 
has no defect of privation, or does 
not lack anything which it ought 
to have, and rejects the inference 
of the objector, by a distinction 
between this defect of privation, 
and the negative deficiency which 
belongs to the angel as a creature. 
He says : 

" Sic quaelibet creatura invenitur defi- 
ciens, Deo comparata, dum non habet 
illam excellentiam quse invenitur in 
Deo" (art. 6). "In this sense every 
creature is found to be defective, com- 
pared to God, because it lacks that ex- 
cellence which is found in God." 

The angel, in his purely natural 
state, suffers no privation, lacks 
nothing which he ought to have. 
His intellectual operation, in which 
his life, his perfection, his enjoy- 
ment principally resides and is ac- 
tuated, lacks nothing ; and there is 
no imperative reason or demand in 
his nature for grace or elevation, in 
order that his existence may find 
an end and object proportioned 
to his essence as an intellectual 
creature. Otherwise, his naturally 
deficient condition, belonging to 
him as a creature ; what is some- 
times called the metaphysical evil 
intrinsic to every creature as such; 
would really be a state of privation, 
with a natural exigency, and a 
natural right to the supernatural 
means necessary for the attain- 
ment of his end. Regeneration 
and glorification must, in this case, 
be the necessary sequel and com- 
plement of the first movement of 
the creative act which gives 
separate and substantive exist- 
ence to the intellectual creature. 
Thus Gioberti, who saw clearly 
what is involved in this particular 
theory, openly and plainly present- 



ed it, and set forth an ideology in 
harmony with his theology, entire- 
ly contrary to the ideology of St. 
Thomas. 

St. Thomas, as we have abun- 
dantly proved, admits no privation 
in the natural condition of a pure 
and perfect spirit, but only a nega- 
tion of that excellence, that mode 
of cognition, that eternal quies- 
cence in the sovereign good or ul- 
timate beatitude, which belongs to 
God alone, and which consists in 
the highest possible intellectual 
operation, the vision of the diVine 
essence. 

In order that any created intel- 
ligent being may be made actually 
susceptible of that action of God 
upon him which makes him in act 
a contemplator of the divine es- 
sence, St. Thomas teaches, and 
the church teaches, that he must be 
made deiform by a supernatural 
grace and elevation, in consequence 
of which he is actually deified by 
union with God. It seems incredi- 
ble, on the face of it, that this sub- 
limation and deification of a crea- 
ture should be his natural destiny 
by the mere fact of his being creat- 
ed intelligent, so that the wisdom, 
the goodness, or, as some say, the 
justice even of God should make 
it unbefitting his divine perfection, 
and therefore morally impossible, 
though within the physical scope 
of his omnipotent power, that he 
should withhold from such a crea- 
ture the gift of elevating grace and 
the opportunity of attaining this 
highest beatitude. 

The divine revelation, which 
alone gives us the knowledge of 
the possibility and the actual con- 
cession of such a gift, teaches that 
it is a grace, a gratuitous gift, a 
pure boon of divine love, which no 
creature can claim as a right, or 
merit as a reward- It is most con- 



588 



What is the Unknowable ? 



gruous to infinite goodness to be- 
stow it, but not incongruous to 
withhold it even from innocent 
beings and from those who have 
all possible perfection and integ- 
rity of natural justice. This is a 
logical inference from the doc- 
trine of the church that all super- 
natural gifts are graces and gratui- 
tous favors which are not due to 
nature, even by a natural exigency. 
" Doctrina Synodi (Pistoiensis) de 
statu felicis innocentiae . . . qua- 
tenus . . . innuit statum ilium se- 
quelam fuisse creationis, debilum 
ex naturali exigentia . . . falsa," 
etc. (Auctor. Fid. cens. xvi.) 

There is a natural exigency in 
every creature, when it is consti- 
tuted in its own specific and indi- 
vidual being; that is in possession 
of all its due properties, attributes, 
and powers ; for that environment, 
that relation to objects extrinsic to 
itself, that concurrence of divine 
power with second causes, which 
are suited to it, and needful to it, 
that it may exercise its functions, 
fulfil its purpose, and attain due 
perfection and completion. The 
intellectual being has an exigency 
in its nature for all the means nec- 
essary for the union with its con- 
natural object of intellection and 
volition, which may enable it to 
put forth its highest intellectual 
operation, and elicit the corre- 
sponding acts of will toward the 
desirable good apprehended by 
the intellect. This is true of the 
passive potencies of nature, which 
remain in a dormant state until 
their object ; which must act upon 
them before they can come into 
act, and with whose action their 
own active power must concur in 
vital acts, as of cognizing and lov- 
ing ; is duly presented. For in- 
stance, there is in the infant an exi- 
gency of nature that his sensitive 



organs should grow into their per- 
fect state, that his dormant intel- 
lect and reason should have the 
sensible object so presented that 
the intelligible which is in them 
may be seized and perceived and 
understood in a rational manner. 
If there were in the very nature 
of the intellectual being a passive 
potency of this kind, an existing 
capacity and need for some super- 
natural action of God upon it, to 
bring it into contact with its object 
of innate, natural tendency and 
desire, viz., the divine essence it- 
self, grace would be a sequel of 
creation, and would be due to 
every intellectual nature, by a debt 
of exigency, in order to bring it 
out of its native state, not of mere 
negative deficiency as a creature, 
and by comparison with God, but 
of privation, and lack of the essen- 
tials of its own due and proper per- 
fection. Left to itself, it would be 
a merely inchoate being, a speci- 
men of arrested and frustrated de- 
velopment, like a blighted plant, a 
stunted child, an inconclusive mode 
of syllogism in logic. 

We have seen already that St. 
Thomas does not admit that the 
lack of natural power in angels to 
see the essence of God is a priva- 
tion. It is a negation of an ex- 
cellence belonging to God alone. 
How can a creature be deficient in 
the natural order, by lacking a di- 
vine excellence ? If he is incapa- 
ble of attaining the term of his na- 
ture, of being intelligent and hap- 
py to the full extent of his natural 
exigency, he is in a state of priva- 
tion ; all nature is ipso facto in a 
state of privation ; without an end ; 
demanding the supernatural as its 
complement. Grace, then, is no 
more grace, except in the sense in 
which all nature is an effect of 
God's gratuitous benevolence 



What is the Unknowable? 



589 



We must, therefore, seek for an 
interpretation of all that St. Tho- 
mas says in the Summa, and more 
fully and strongly in his work Con- 
tra Gentes, of the desiderium naturcz 
which would remain a desiderium 
inane, if the faculty of the beatific 
vision were not conceded ; which 
will not furnish premises for a con- 
clusion so contradictory to the con- 
clusions of sound theology and phi- 
losophy. 

This interpretation is given by 
the best theologians and the sound- 
est expositors of the system of the 
Angelic Doctor, and is as follows:* 

The passive potency for eleva- 
tion, by grace and the light of 
glory, to the disposition requisite 
to make an intellectual creature 
actually capable of the manifesta- 
tion which God makes of his es- 
sence to the beatified, is not like 
a dormant faculty which awaits 
>nly its proper actuation to spring 
into active exercise. It is not like 
the potentiality of reason which 
sleeps in the soul of the infant, or 
the dormant powers which are held 
in abeyance in the human soul by 
the bond of union to the gross 
mortal body. It is only an apti- 
tude, what is called in scholastic 
language a potentia obedientialis, by 
virtue of which we predicate of 
every intellectual nature non-re- 
pugnance to an elevation above its 
connatural mode of knowing. In 
matter there is an essential repug- 
nance to the reception of think- 
ing and knowing power. In a 
merely sentient nature there is 
a repugnance to elevation to the 
order of intelligent cognition. In 
the creature there is a repugnance 
to the reception of qualities and 
powers which make it equal to the 
divine nature, and to the commu- 
nication of the ipsum esse subsistens. 

* See the treatises of Suarez and Mazzella. 



But the intellectual being, inas- 
much as he is a spirit, is in some 
way cognate to spiritual essence 
however transcending his own spe- 
cific essence; there is a cognosci- 
tive attitude in him toward being 
in its utmost latitude. As there 
is in matter a passive aptitude 
for all possible variation, multipli- 
cation, and extension, indefinite- 
ly; as in sense-cognition there is 
a similar aptitude to augmentation 
in its own line, and in natural cog- 
nition an intrinsic aptitude for in- 
definite increase ; so there is in in- 
tellectual nature an aptitude for 
elevation to the cognition of the 
adequate object of intelligence, 
which is obscurely presented as an 
inadequate but connatural object 
by the natural mode of cognition, 
and as the inadequate, connatural 
object of that desire of nature 
which tends spontaneously toward 
all good in general. 

According to the philosophy of 
St. Thomas, the proper perfection 
and proper good of a specific na- 
ture or any individual consists, not 
in the reception of all modes of be- 
ing for which it has an aptitude, 
but in the reducing of its real pas- 
sive potency and active power into 
act, so that there is no privation of 
anything needed that its reason of 
being may be completely verified 
in reality. The good of a being is 
identical with its proper perfection ; 
and the beatitude of a rational 
nature, its attainment of its proper 
object by the highest act of intel- 
lectual operation, followed by com- 
placency in the will, is identical 
with its rational perfection. There 
is no real passive potency in the 
created intellectual nature for the 
vision of the divine essence. The 
absence of such a potency is not a 
privation. Therefore, there is no 
exigency in this nature for this 



5 9 o 



What is the Unknowable f 



vision, that it may become naturally 
perfect and naturally blessed, to 
the full extent of its proper specific 
capacity and determination. 

The interpretation we have just 
given of the doctrine of St. Thomas 
is the only one which makes it agree 
with other statements, found in other 
parts of his system of philosophy 
and theology. 

"By the name of beatitude is under- 
stood the ultimate perfection of rational 
or intellectual nature. . . . Now, the ulti- 
mate perfection of rational or intellectual 
nature is twofold : one kind attainable by 
vitue of nature itself, and this is called 
in a certain respect beatitude or felicity. 
Wherefore even Aristotle says that the 
most perfect human contemplation, by 
which man can in this life contemplate 
the most excellent intelligible object, 
which is God, is the ultimate felicity of 
man ; but there is another felicity supe- 
rior to this which we expect in the fu- 
ture life, namely, that in which we shall 
see God as he is ; and this felicity, indeed, 
as has been shown already, is above the 
nature of any created intellect whatso- 
ever " (i. p. q. Ixii. art. i). 

Again, he says that, as an end, 
this fruition of God is above the 
faculty of created nature, and that, 
consequently, " man, by his natural 
capacities alone, does not have suffi- 
ciently an inclination to that end" 
(iii., dist. xxiii. qu. i. art. 4, qu. iii.) 
Once more, of the elicited, active 
desire of supernatural beatitude 
which is in the human soul elevat- 
ed by divine grace, he says : " He 
desires some special good, which he 
does not naturally desire (non na- 
turaliter appetit), as, for instance, 
the vision of God, in which, never- 
theless, according to real truth, his 
beatitude consists " (De Voluntate, 
q. xxii. art. 7). Applying these prin- 
ciples of philosophy to the con- 
sideration of the state of infants 
dying unregenerate, and deprived 
of the beatific vision, he concludes 
that they are not made, miserable 



by the loss of supernatural beati- 
tude, because there is no propor- 
tion between their nature in its 
actual state, and this beatitude 
which is proportioned to the capa- 
city and desire of human nature 
when raised to the plane of a super- 
natural destiny. 

" We must know, that one who is 
reasonable is not afflicted because he 
lacks something exceeding the just pro- 
portion to himself; as no wise man is 
afflicted because he cannot fly like a 
bird, or because he is not a king or an 
emperor ; though he might be afflicted if 
he were deprived of that for the posses- 
sion of which he was in some manner 
fitted. . . . But these children were 
never proportioned to the attainment of 
eternal life, which was neither due to 
them from the proper principles of na- 
ture, exceeding, as it does, the entire 
faculty of nature, nor within the scope 
of their own proper acts, they being in- 
capable of such acts as can alone obtain 
so great a good, and therefore they will 
not suffer any pain whatever from the 
lack of the intuitive vision" (ii. sent, 
dist. xxxiii. q. ii. a. 2). 

Not only does St. Thomas in this 
manner show how it is agreeable to 
the wisdom and goodness of God 
to leave a great number of human 
beings in the lapsed condition of 
human nature for ever ; but he posi- 
tively affirms that a condition simi- 
lar., to this in respect to a perpetual 
lack of supernatural means for at- 
taining a supernatural end, other- 
wise, a condition of pure nature, 
might be established in the first in- 
tention of Almighty God. 

" In this manner the lack of the divine 
vision would belong to one, who should 
be in his natural conditions only, even 
without sin" (De Malo, qu. iv. a. i, ad 
14). "God could have formed in the 
beginning, from the slime of the earth, 
when he formed the first man, another 
man also, whom he would have left in 
the condition of his own proper nature " 
(ii. sent. dist. xxxi. ad. 2, qu. i.) 

It is a straining of the sense of 



What is the Unknowable? 



59* 



St. Thomas, and other theologians 
who follow him, to interpret them 
in the sense of the Augustinians, 
whose system was never derived 
from that of the Angelic Doctor. 
The consent of the competent ex- 
positors of his own school is the 
surest criterion to employ. This 
consent, and likewise, in general, 
the consent of theologians from the 
earliest ages down, can be proved 
to sustain the doctrine of the pos- 
sibility of a state of pure nature. 
This is affirmed by Suarez, of whom 
it is wont to be said, in eo, tota 
schola loquitur the whole school 
of theology speaks by his mouth. 
" This assertion (the one we have 
ascribed to him), in my opinion, is 
the common one of theologians, 
though they may more suppose it 
than make it a matter of formal 
disputation by distinguishing va- 
rious states of human nature and 
mutually comparing them " (Prol. 

Iiv. de Gratia, c. i. n. 16). This re- 
mark refers chiefly to theologians 
preceding the controversy with 
Baius and Jansenius. The great 
subsequent theologians, with few 
exceptions, in precise and accurate 
language maintain that doctrine 
which accords with the interpreta- 
tion we have above given of the 
teaching of St. Thomas. It is the 
only* one which sets forth clearly 
and distinctly the absolutely gra- 
tuitous and supernatural character 
of the order of elevating grace and 
beatitude in the intuitive vision of 
God, as above all exigency of 
created nature. In the words of 
Cardinal Franzelin : " It is evident 
of how great moment is the genu- 
ine notion and solid vindication of 
a possible state of pure nature for 
declaring and defending the true 
ratio of the supernatural order 
which in our times is under many 
forms distorted and disputed " 



(Scrip, et Trad. p. 553). In our 
opinion, the importance of this 
clear and philosophical elucida- 
tion of the order of nature as dis- 
tinct from and subordinate to the 
supernatural order cannot be over- 
estimated ; and the bearings of the 
whole question, in many directions, 
upon science and religion, are dis- 
closing themselves in manifold re- 
spects not usually fully considered, 
even by the best writers who have 
hitherto made it the subject of dis- 
cussion. 

The future condition of the vast 
multitude of human beings exclud- 
ed for ever from the kingdom of 
heaven, who have done nothing to 
deserve the privation of any good 
demanded by the exigencies of ra- 
tional nature, cannot be understood 
in its aspect towards the certain 
truths of rational theology on the 
one side, and, on the other, towards 
the doctrines of the faith, without 
this true and real ratio of the super- 
natural order. Moreover, it is pro- 
bable, and becoming continually 
more and more a matter of common 
belief, that the universe is now or 
will become replenished with count- 
less species and multitudes of liv- 
ing, intelligent beings, who are 
neither angels nor men. There is 
not the slightest reason for extend- 
ing the limits of the supernatural 
order beyond that part of the 
rational creation whose vocation to 
the dignity of adopted filiation in 
and through God the Son has been 
revealed. Nor is there any neces- 
sity, a priori, for imagining any 
trial or probation, any risk of evil, 
any disturbance of the moral order, 
any conflict whatever, or impedi- 
ment to the harmonious and per- 
fect development of natural princi- 
ples according to natural laws, in 
view of the end prescribed by crea- 
tive wisdom. 



What is the Unknowable f 



This end, in the actual order of 
Divine Providence, is only touched 
by the summit of the whole order, 
the highest class of intelligent be- 
ings ; who have returned to their 
first cause and principle, the di- 
vine essence from which all crea- 
tion has proceeded, in the most 
perfect manner possible ; by the 
highest intellectual act which can 
be elicited by a created nature, the 
beatific vision of God. At the 
apex of this summit is the sacred 
humanity of the Word, whose hy- 
postatic union with his divine 
nature accomplishes the ultimatum 
of the deification of the creature in 
a real divine filiation, and the ulti- 
matum of beatitude. In this act, 
the whole creation has its supreme 
reason of being, according to the 
divine purpose of communicating 
the good of being for the greater 
glory of God, the only motive for 
the free act of creation. All the 
subordinate parts of the universe 
have their bearing and relation to- 
ward this ultimate end, in a linked 
series, from the highest to the low- 
est. It is therefore true that beati- 
tude in its highest sense ; as the 
quiescence of motion toward the 
centre of rest ; as the attainment of 
an intellectual term of contempla- 
tion beyond which there is no 
thinkable or imaginable term speci- 
fically higher within the limits of 
metaphysical possibility, that is, 
within the aptitude of a creature to 
receive a divine action elevating its 
nature to a likeness of the divine 
nature ; is only made actual in the 
beatified sons of God. It is, also, 
true that, in the attainment of this 
term metaphysically final, the de- 
siderium naturce, is so completely 
filled, that no inane is left in the 
desiderium naturce. Supposing the 
intention of God to bring the crea- 
tive act to this metaphysical ulti- 



matum, there is a hypothetical exi- 
gency in nature, and a correspond- 
ing debt due to the universal order 
which has been decreed, that all 
the means for the fulfilment of the 
decree should be provided, and 
that it should be efficaciously and 
infallibly accomplished. It is most 
congruous to the divine wisdom 
and goodness, that power and love 
should thus be exerted to their ut- 
most limit; and when it is known 
by revelation that God has so de- 
termined, this congruity can be 
shown by probable arguments de- 
rived from reason. From this 
point of view it was that St. Tho- 
mas proceeded, in proving, by ana- 
logies and reasons taken from na- 
tural principles, the possibility of 
the intuitive vision of the divine 
essence. One of these arguments 
is that from the desiderium naturce. 
It is most congruous to the nature 
of God to make an equation be- 
tween this desire of nature and its 
adequate object. The entire rea- 
soning of St. Thomas is directed 
to prove that whoever admits the 
possibility of this equation must 
admit the possibility of the vision 
of the divine essence, because this 
alone is the adequate object of the in- 
tellect ; which is turned toward be- 
ing in its utmost latitude, that is, the 
intelligible in the whole extent*and 
comprehension of its intelligibility; 
and which has no determined limit 
fixed by its essence. Made more uni- 
versal, the proposition is that there 
is a potential and virtual infinity in 
finite essences. We know, how- 
ever, that this virtual and potential 
infinity cannot be reduced to act 
in an infinite mode. There must 
be positive determinations in all 
existing things, material or spirit- 
ual. The will of God fixes these 
limits, and reduces to act the pos- 
sible which is infinite, under such 



Wiiat is the Unknowable f 



593 



;:' 

SCi 



determinations as suffice for the 
fulfilment of his creative plan. 
From the point of zero ; which is the 
starting-point of creation ; to the 
divine idea comprehending all the 
infinity of the possible ; there is an 
infinite series, having no necessary 
hit of ultimate ascension in the 
cale of being. It is not incon- 
gruous to the divine wisdom or 
goodness to fix anywhere the limit 
of the whole universe; or of any 
part or individual in it ; provided 
that in the communication of being 
actually made, the due ratio of the 
ordination of the creature to the 
creator is established. This ratio 
requires an end; which can be no 
other than the glorification of God 
n the excellence of his work ; and 
hich is attained by the constitu- 
tion of some nature capable of ful- 
lling this end, with the means 
hich are congruous. Just so soon 
s our mind can verify in the crea- 
ure a sufficient reason of being, it 
erifies something which is a term 
f divine power congruous to the 
ivine wisdom and the divine good- 
ness. Intelligent creatures who 
can know and praise and love God 
as manifested in themselves and 
other effects of his creative power, 
and enjoy for ever in the perfect 
state which is congruous to their 
nature the desirable good which is 
proportioned to their natural facul- 
ties, together with an environment 
which is suited to the nature of 
such beings and sufficient for the 
order in which they are constituted 
this is enough to present to our 
mind an ideal universe which con- 
tains a sufficient reason of being. 
It is a possible state of pure na- 
ture, which God might have creat- 
ed and left without any higher ele- 
vation, without any incongruity to 
his divine perfections. The desidc- 
rium natures, in such a world would 
VOL. xxx. 38 



not be altogether mane, for intelli- 
gence would attain to the know- 
ledge of things in their highest 
causes, sufficiently for its due per- 
fection and therefore for its due 
beatitude ; and the whole universe 
would be made to give praise and 
glory to God, through this intelli- 
gence. We may take this as pro- 
bably a minimum term of divine 
power, power co-ordinated with 
wisdom, justice, and goodness, or 
wh at is called potestas ordinata. An 
absolute maximum is repugnant to 
the essence of the finite, and no 
real term of even omnipotent 
power. Only a maximum in cer- 
tain respects is possible in the con- 
crete reality. This is realized in 
the actual order by the elevation 
of intellectual nature to the dei- 
form and deified state of beatitude, 
and of the humanity of Christ 
which contains the microcosm of 
all nature, to the hypostatic union. 
In this order, the generic and spe- 
cific maximum is attained, since 
there is no kind of cognition above 
the intuition of the divine essence 
belonging naturally to God, and no 
species of union higher than the 
hypostatic. Yet, even in the hy- 
postatic or personal union of the 
human with the divine nature, the 
incommunicable ipsum esse subsis- 
tens is not imparted to the human 
nature, which is essentially having 
an essereceptum. Consequently, the 
comprehensive cognition of the di- 
vine essence in its total intelligibil- 
ity is not imparted, nor the com- 
prehensive cognition of the poten- 
tial and virtual infinity of actual 
and possible creatures. From this 
height of being and beatitude to 
which the human nature of the 
Word is raised, down to the lowest 
of angels and souls in the kingdom 
of heaven, there is a graduated se- 
ries of degrees in the order of glory 



594 



What is the Unknowable ? 



I 



and beatitude, and the number of 
the beatified is determined, not in- 
finite. In respect to intensity and 
extension, the total sum of created 
and participated beatitude is ca- 
pable of indefinite increase. The 
creature remains for ever in its 
state of deficiency in respect to 
God, who is, as his own intelligible 
and intelligent essence, incompre- 
hensible by any finite intelligence. 
The aptitude of the intellectual na- 
ture in respect to the cognition of 
God cannot, therefore, ever attain 
an absolute maximum, or the deside- 
rium nature founded on this ap- 
titude ever attain a term which 
does not have an infinite inane re- 
maining unfilled; just as the actual 
universe must always remain in 
the centre of infinite space with 
an aptitude for further extension. 
What constitutes the due perfec- 
tion of nature is, therefore, not 
the reduction of its total apti- 
tude of increase into actual being, 
but the stable possession of its own 
proper being as determined by 
God, without evil of excess or de- 
fect. The beatitude of a rational 
nature is identical with its perfec- 
tion of nature, and consists in its 
highest intellectual act proportion- 
ed to its mode of being. The hu- 
manity of Christ possesses what is 
due to it, in virtue of the dignity 
of his Person, and in view of the 
merits of his obedience. The 
Blessed Virgin, St. Michael the 
Archangel, and those angels and 
saints who fill every rank in the 
sacred hierarchy, from the highest 
to the lowest, possess each what is 
due to their respective dignities. 
The beatitude of each is propor- 
tioned to his personal merit, and 
to the degree of the light of glory 
which gives him the last disposi- 
tion and proportion to the recep- 
tion of the beatific vision. The 



ratio of the beatitude of any indi- 
vidual must be determined, there- 
fore, at last, by his intellectual pro- 
portion to the intelligible object, 
for which he has not only a mere 
proportion of indefinite aptitude, 
but a proportion of real potency in 
act, or ready to be reduced to act 
as soon as the subject is brought 
into due relation to its correlative 
object. Beyond this, it has no ac- 
tual, elicited craving desire and 
need of nature, determined to 
some object as its end; and as the 
desirable good in which it must 
rest, or else remain in perpetual 
unrest and vain striving. 

By analogy, therefore, it follows 
that an intellectual nature which 
is not proportioned to the essence 
of God as its connatural object of 
cognition by elevating grace, does 
not long for the beatific vision, or 
suffer loss of its due beatitude by 
the lack of it, or exist in a state of 
privation, when it is confined to 
the order of nature. This is the 
reason, and the only satisfactorj 
reason, why God does not in jus- 
tice owe it to himself to elevat< 
intellectual nature to the plane ol 
the supernatural; and why the vei 
fact of existence does not give 
every rational being a natural right 
to the opportunity and means 
attaining the beatific vision. Foi 
the same reason, God does not owe 
it to his goodness, or his wisdoi 
It is an act of pure, gratuitous 
goodness and love on the part oi 
God which has placed the ultimate 
beatitude of angels and men in th< 
beatific contemplation of his 
sence ; and has raised the univen 
through the supernatural order, b 
the hypostatic union of created na 
ture to his own nature in the Word 
to the summit of dignity. 

This being a gratuitous gift in 
respect to all creation taken uni- 






Lost Seeds. 



595 



versally ; without a shadow of a 
claim of condignity or congruity on 
the part of the creature ; it remains 
the same in the actual plan of God, 
in respect to every species and in- 
dividual taken singly. It is only 
by the concession of grace, and in 
virtue of a free offer and promise 
on the part of God, that any par- 
ticular species or multitude or any 
individual, among the whole num- 
ber of intellectual beings, has any 
right to aspire to the beatific vi- 
sion, or is capable of meriting any- 
thing in the order of grace either 
by condignity or congruity. 

There is room, therefore, in the 

iniverse ; even in the present and 
:tual order, in which the ultimate 

;nd and ultimate beatitude deter- 
lined, are supernatural; for any 

lumber of species and any multi- 



tude of individuals, who are left in 
the state of pure nature, and who 
find their perfection and beatitude 
within their own connatural sphere 
of being. This idea is entirely con- 
sonant to the general principles of 
St. Augustine, as well as to the 
doctrine of St. Thomas, to the 
dogmas of Catholic faith, and to 
sound metaphysical and physical 
philosophy. It is necessary to a 
really synthetical and adequate sys- 
tem of theology ; and most fruitful 
in themes and conclusions which 
satisfy the reason, and enable it to 
"justify the ways of God to man," 
and to fill up the ascending series 
in the works of God from the low- 
est term to that highest term, in 
which the equation is established be- 
tween created intellect and its ade- 
quate object, in ultimate beatitude. 



LOST SEEDS. 



'Tis an old Navajo legend 

That each seeming-wasted seed, 
Though on earth its germ unfolds not, 

Finds its perfect life, in deed, 
In the after-world where spirits from their earthly thrall are freed. 

Fair the yellow-tasselled maize-fields, 

Soft the music of their leaves 
In the west wind gently rustling, 

Full the harvest of their sheaves 
When the lingering ghost of summer through the crimson forest grieves. 

Sweet the flowers of the woodland 

Nestling low amid the shade, 
Strong the giant redwood lifting, 

Towering, sunset-crowned head ; 
Each to earth some beauty giving ere the day's hours all are sped. 



59 6 



Lost Seeds. 



Much men praise their lavish beauty 
Blossom frail and golden ear 

Marking not the dark seeds scattered 

Finding not perfection here, 
Seeking in the earth's deep bosom sunshine of another sphere. 

For, so runs the Indian legend, 

Lies the after-world of life 
'Neath our earth, in sunny prairies 

Death-freed souls find but through strife, 
Troubled wandering through morasses all with gloomy shadows rife. 

In this happy land of plenty 
Golden maize-field faileth ne'er, 

While the Indian's singing arrow 

Bird and bison findeth e'er ; 
And the blossoms never wither, ne'er the painted leaves grow sere. 



In these fertile fields Elysian 
Bloom the lost seeds of the earth, 

Softly sinking ever deeper 

From their upper life of dearth, 
Changing for a joy unfading sunny hours of short-lived mirth. 



ii. 



Come unto the human bosom 

Scattered seeds of thought divine, 
Seeds that lift no least green leaflet 

To the glad day's warm sunshine 
Lying deep in heart's recesses like rare jewel in the mine. 



Golden fields of unstained glory 

Glitter in the noonday sun ; 
Tender flowers of gracious duty 

From the shade have sweetness won ; 
Generous strength wears sunset splendor when its earthly day is done. 



But the little dark seed bearing 
Naught of flower that men can see 

Is not lost, if yet unheeded, 

Sinking ever silently 
Deeper in the heart's wide garden, ripening for eternity. 



\Lost Seeds. 597 

Freshened by the dews of heaven,| 

Fed with life-blood from the heart, 
All unseen the folded pinions 

Ever gather strength to start 
When, in God's eternal gardens, burst the prison bars apart, 

Where the hidden seed wins beauty 

More than earth's, since all-divine; 
Perfected through years unconscious, 
Fair its fruit and blossoms shine 
Pure as jewel's perfect crystal won unshattered from the mine. 



in. 



So, O poet ! though as wasted 

Fall thy songs upon the earth, 
Though men listen not their music, 

Holding them as little worth, 
Sorrow not for thought unheeded, so it be of heavenly birth. 



Sinking deep in some heart's garden 
Thy unnoticed thought shall lie, 

Nourished by the soul's devotion 

Till earth's bonds asunder fly 
,nd the music of thy singing echoes through eternity, 



Mingling with saints' adoration 

Earth-forgotten words of thine. 
Thy lost thoughts are found in heaven, 

Blossoms there thy seed divine ; 
Fairer than earth's golden maize-fields perfect fruit and blossom shine. 



59 8 



Follette. 



FOLLETTE. 

BY KATHLEEN o'lMEARA, AUTHOR OF U A WOMA*'s TRIALS," " IZA'S STORY," " A SALON IN THE LAST 
DAYS OF THE EMPIRE," ''FREDERIC OZANAM," " PEARL," ETC. 

CHAPTER IV. 



JEANNE. 



" AH ! did I not tell thee ? He 
is a hypocrite. I warned thee not 
to trust to his smooth ways," said 
Jeanne when Follette told her what 
had happened in the garden. 

" And to think of his saying that 
Jules would not wait for me ; that 
he would be ashamed to let his 
friends see me ! What did Jules 
say in his letter, granny ?" 

" He said there wasn't a woman 
in Paris fit to clean thy little 
wooden shoes. Never mind Victor, 
child." 

But, though she made believe to 
despise Victor and his wicked pro- 
phecies and threats, in her heart she 
feared him. It was clear that Gri- 
pard wanted this .marriage, and 
Follette, for all her boasted inde- 
pendence, was in his power. And 
Gripard knew it. 

" Leave her to me. I will man- 
age her," he said to Victor, and he 
sent for the rebellious petiote. 

" So thou thinkest to set my 
wishes at naught and to rebel 
against me, eh ?" he said, consider- 
ing her with a vicious twinkle in 
his green eyes, and leaning both 
hands on the top of his stick. 

Follette made no answer, but 
stood before him, looking stubborn 
and shy, but very pretty with her 
downcast eyes and pouting lips. 
Gripard thought she was going to 
cry. 

" It is only a fit of naughti- 
ness, eh ? 1> he went on. " I will 
overlook it for thy mother's sake. 



For thy mother's sake, little one, 
I have a fondness for thee, and I 
would like to see thee settled be- 
fore I go to my reward. Victor is 
a steady lad, and I can trust him to 
take care of thee and the place 
when I am gone. Thou shalt have 
a bright new gown and a kerchief, 
and anything else that pleases thee, 
and I will make a feast for thy 
wedding, and thou shalt make mer- 
ry with thy friends. Come, give 
me a kiss, and thank God for giv- 
ing thee such a good uncle." 

But Follette did not move. 

" Uncle, you are very kind, and 
I am grateful," she said ; " but I 
can't marry Victor. I hate him, 
and I know he only wants to marry 
for the sake of getting your money." 

" My money !" cried Gripard. 
"What! Eh? Who says I have 
money ? I have no money to leave 
anybody. I have this house and the 
bit of land about it, and I shall leave 
that to thee when thou art married 
to Victor." 

" Then leave it to Victor himself, 
uncle, for I will never marry him. 
I won't marry any one but Jules." 

" Dost thou dare so to defy me, 
ungrateful minx ? But I will let 
thee see. I will starve thee into 
obedience." 

" How can you be .so wicked, 
Gripard !" said Jeanne, breaking 
in on the discussion, and taking her 
stand by Follette's side. " Why 
should you force the child into 
marrying against her will? And 






Follette. 



599 



why shouldn't she marry Jules, if 
she likes ? What harm has the lad 
done that thou shouldst be set 
against him ?" 

" Hold thy insolent tongue, old 
fool !" said Gripard. " If she mar- 
ries that rascally spendthrift she 
shall have my curse, living and dy- 
ing, and naught else of mine." 

" O uncle !" Follette cried out 
piteously. 

" Take care whom you hurt with 
it," said Jeanne. " The curse of 
the wicked man falls on his own 
head." 

" Get thee out of my sight for a 
preaching old idiot," said Gripard. 
" You are no better than a pair of 
spies on me, pilfering the house for 
that fellow Jules." 

What is there in it to pilfer, my 
incle ?" said Follette. 

Don't answer me. Saucy little 
iinx !" And he struck the floor; 
Kit suddenly some object outside 
the window caught his attention, 
tnd, checking the current of his 
anger, turned it in another direction. 
He stood up, staring after the ob- 
ject with an expression of terror on 
his face. " What brings that dwarf 
prowling about the place ?" he said. 
" It's your talk about my having 
money to leave. That's what it is. 
The crocked imp is on the watch 
to steal into the house. I can't stir 
out but I meet him dodging me. 
That hump of his is a good hiding- 
place for what he pilfers." 

" For shame on you, Gripard !" 
said Jeanne. " His hump is a visita- 
tion from God." 

" I'd like to strip him and feel 
what it's made of." 

"Victor can tell you. He beat 
the poor creature till he nearly 
died of it," said Jeanne. 

" Served him right if he had. 
He stole my potatoes," said Gri- 
pard with a savage chuckle. 



" Gripard, where do you expect 
to go when you die ?" 

" Get out of my sight !" said Gri- 
pard. 

Jeanne left the kitchen, and Fol- 
lette was following her when the 
old man called her back. " Get 
thee upstairs to thy room, and stay 
there till I send for thee." 

Follette, thankful to escape any- 
where out of his presence, went up 
to her little garret. She heard Gri- 
pard mumbling to himself and strik- 
ing the floor with emphatic taps 
now and then. This was his mode 
of conversing when he was alone 
and in a particularly bad temper ; 
his stick served as listener and in- 
terlocutor, answering with taps of 
dissent or approval. 

Poor Follette was terrified at 
heart, though she was putting a 
bold face on it. It was very well 
to talk of going away, but she knew 
that Gripard might prevent her, as 
Azeline Tarac's father had done 
when Azeline wanted to go to ser- 
vice to escape from her stepmother, 
and was stopped by an order from 
M. le Maire, forbidding her to leave 
the parental roof without her fa- 
ther's consent until she was of age. 

"And I am not seventeen yet!" 
thought Follette, as she sat on the 
end of her little bed and looked 
dolefully out of her lozenge-paned 
window. It occurred to her that 
she might run away and hide. But 
where ? If she could have gone to 
Jules it would have been easy. But 
Paris was too far off; and even if 
she could make the long journey 
Jules was too poor yet to marry 
her. When would he have money 
enough saved ? As the question 
rose in her mind she remembered 
Victor's wicked words, and a cold 
chill seemed to go through her 
heart. Was it possible he could for- 
get her and come to feel ashamed 



6oo 



Follette. 



of her ? And if he did, would she 
forgive him and go on loving him 
all the same, as she had boasted 
to Victor she would ? She re- 
called that last day when they had 
danced together at the fair, and he 
had looked so proud of her, and 
called her his little queen, and 
talked of the trinkets he would 'buy 
for her in Paris, and made plans for 
the future when she would be his 
little wife. And to think that after 
that he could ever forget her ! The 
young blood rushed in a strong 
current of trust through her heart, 
that a moment ago had been chilled 
by fear. Jules had said he loved 
her, and promised to work for her 
and wait. How ungrateful to let 
a doubt enter her mind ! Follette 
cast it out with a pang of self-re- 
proach. But it was not so easy to 
dismiss her fears as to what Gri- 
pard might do. She was in his 
power, and he had set his mind on 
the marriage, and Victor had worm- 
ed himself into his confidence and 
would not flinch before anything to 
gain his own ends. He kept the old 
man in a perpetual fidget of late 
about some thieves that were in the 
neighborhood and on the look-out 
for the houses worth robbing. 

"Luckily, we have nothing in 
the place to rob," he would say; 
" but some foolish folk have set it 
abroad that you have money in the 
house, and, for all I swear it's a 
pure" invention, people won't be- 
lieve me in the village. But it 
don't matter ; I tell them the thieves 
are welcome to try. I'll give them 
a welcome if they come." And he 
would laugh in his frank, boyish 
way, and Gripard felt it was every- 
thing to have such a true-hearted, 
stout-armed lad to stand up for him. 

" He shall have Quatre Vents 
and the petwte, and I'll sleep easy 
in my bed," thought the miser. 



Jeanne kept her eyes and ears 
open, and felt it would go hard 
with Follette between the two. 

" If I were only a few years 
younger, and could stand by thee, 
little one !" shesaid. " But the time 
is short for me now. That's what 
frets me." 

" You're not going to die this 
ever so long, granny," said Follette, 
with the sanguine incredulity of 
youth about death. "You'll live to 
see us married and happy, and 
come and live with us. When did 
Jules promise to come back and 
see us ?" 

"He said, if things went well, he 
would come back before the year 
was out." 

" And they are going well. He 
said they were ?" 

" Yes, yes ; but it takes a deal of 
money to come all the way from 
Paris, child, and it would be a 
foolish thing to spend it only to 
see us. But never fear. Let u 
trust in the good God, and he will 
bring things right." 

And so they threw their hope into 
a common stock, and agreed to stand 
together against Gripard and all 
the world. 

But when, next morning, Gripard 
called in Jeanne, and told her t 
sit down and hold her tongue, tha 
he wanted to speak to her, Jeann 
knew that a storm was coining 
and her courage oozed out at he 
fingers' ends. She took her knittin 
from the drawer in the kitchen 
table, and knitted away in silenc 
until Gripard, after a long pull a 
his pipe, opened speech : 

" This is Friday. Next Sunda 
the bans will be read, and nex 
Monday three weeks we'll hav 
the wedding. I'm going to see th 
cure by and by. I'll go into Tarbe 
to-morrow and buy a Bayonne 
ham and sausages; you can buy 









Follette. 



601 



the sweatmeats and oranges; and 
let there be no stint. There are a 
few bottles of old wine in the cel- 
lar, and we'll drink them up. I'll 
be half ruined ; but I won't have 
it said that my sister's child was 
married under my roof without 
proper respect to her memory. 
We'll have to live on half-rations 
for a month after the wedding; but 
never mind that. And see about 
a pretty gown for the petiote you 
know the colors she likes and get 
her anything else she wants for the 
wedding. I've saved tip a few louts 
to marry her decently. You can 
invite the neighbors when the bans 
are published." 

Jeanne heard him to the end, 
and then laid down her knitting 
always a strong sign of emotion 
with the old woman. 

"It's no use making believe like 
this, Gripard," she said; "if you 
mean kindly by the child, leave 
her alone or let her marry Jules. 
M. le Cure and M. le Maire, with 
the prefect and the bishop to boot, 
will never get her to say jiw to Vic- 
tor. And as to making merry for 
such a wedding as that, you had 
a deal better keep the money to 
bury her." 

"I'd give it to-morrow, and wel- 
come, to bury you" "said Gripard ; 
"the child would never have stood 
out against my will as she's doing, 
if it wasn't for you and your 
mountebank of a grandson. Do 
you never mean to die, eh ?" 

" I'm not in a hurry, any more 
than yourself, though I haven't a 
very pleasant life of it in my old 
age," said Jeanne, who, once roused 
to fight for her boy and Follette, 
had grown brave to recklessness. 

"You're a deal better off than 
you deserve," retorted Gripard. 
" Where would you be if it wasn't 
for me? What's to become of 



Follette if I die before she gets 
some one to earn for her and take 
care of her, I wonder?" 

"Gripard, you're a hard man, 
but I never knew you to do an un- 
just thing; and if you were to leave 
your money away from your own 
flesh and blood you'd be as wicked 
a man as lives." 

" My money ! my money ! What 
have I to leave but Quatre Vents 
and the pots and pans that you 
keep scrubbing the face off till 
it's a wonder they hold together ? 
What do you talk of my nroney for ? 
If it wasn't for that villain Blon- 
dec " 

" Aliens done, mon ami," said 
Jeanne, with a quiet laugh and a 
nod, "that little joke does for the 
rest of 'em ; but there's no need to 
keep it up between us two." 

Gripard had been so long accus- 
tomed to see her assent to the old 
fiction about the bankrupt that lie 
had almost come to think she be- 
lieved in it ; and now to hear her 
throw it in his teeth with a jeer 
drove him frantic. It was as if all 
his secrets were suddenly threaten- 
ed with public exposure*. He seiz- 
ed his stick in the middle, and 
raised the knob end at her as if he 
were going to strike with it. But 
the old woman never quailed ; she 
kept her blinking eyes fixed on 
Gripard with a mocking glance 
that seemed to magnetize him; he 
dropped the stick, and, after a mo- 
ment's pause, " If you say that again 
I'll wring your neck!" he hissed 
out. 

"You'll be none the better for 
that," said Jeanne. And she fold- 
ed her knitting, and put it away, 
and went, out of the kitchen, 

Gripard sat mumbling to himself 
and polishing his stick awhile; 
then he took out a brown check 
pocket-handkerchief as big as a 



602 



Follette. 



young sheet, held it straight before 
him, spat into the middle of it, 
folded it up tight like an umbrella, 
and stuffed it back into his pocket. 
This outburst of feeling seemed to 
relieve him ; he lay back in his 
chair, and, after a few subsiding 
grunts, resumed his pipe and smok- 
ed away, takinglong, deliberate puffs. 
Jeanne's rebellion was a serious 
check. He had never doubted but 
that he would bring Follette to 
surrender ; but now that Jeanne 
had gone over to the enemy, openly 
hoisting the rebel flag, Follette's 
obstinacy would not be so easily 
managed. Gripard pitied himself 
very much. It was hard on him 
to be defied under his own roof, 
and held at bay by a doating old 
woman and a child, both of whom 
depended on him for their bread 
and salt. 

Follette lay awake that night 
thinking how she could escape 
from the dreadful fate that threa- 
tened her. If she stayed on at 
Quatre Vents her life would be un- 
bearable ; for even if she was strong 
enough to hold out against marry- 
ing Victor, he and Gripard would 
persecute her to death between 
them. The only chance she had 
was to run away and hide from 
them. Alone this would have 
been impossible; but Jeanne would 
come with her. 

Next morning, when they had 
the house to themselves, she and 
Jeanne talked it over. Jeanne at 
first thought the plan impracticable; 
but Follette overruled all her objec- 
tions, and at last convinced her 
that it could be done. 

" We will steal away quietly, first 
to Earache, and then to Tarbes," 
she said; "and, once there, I will 
find plenty to do. I can spin, and 
you have made me so clever at my 



needle that I shall get work at once. 
And you will find a dairy to look 
after, granny ; and we'll be so hap- 
py in a little room together !" 

But Jeanne puckered her old 
brown face into deeper lines as she 
shook her head. 

" Victor would find us out, little 
one ; and he would carry thee back, 
and it would be worse for thee here 
than ever, for Gripard would never 
let me set my foot in the place 
again." 

" I wouldn't come back with Vic- 
tor. He would never find us out; 
but if he did I'd let him kill me 
before I'd come away with him !" 

" And how about getting to Ba- 
rache, child ? We could not walk 
there and carry our box, and we 
dare not borrow a cart." 

" I have thought of all that. I 
know some one who will find us a 
cart and never tell anybody." 

" Who's that ?" 

" Nicol. He's very clever, and 
he'll keep our secret. When we 
are once at Barache we can go on 
by the railroad to Tarbes," contin- 
ued Follette, elated by the genius 
for management that she was de- 
veloping, and seeing that Jeanne, 
too, was impressed by it. " You 
have lots of money for the journey, 
and ever so much more if we didn't 
get work at once, haven't you, 
granny ?" 

" Yes, child ; I've enough to 
keep us for awhile." 

" How much have you, granny ?'' 

"I don't know to a coin; I 
haven't counted it since Jules went. 
But there's none too much for what 
we may want. I had all my savings 
with your grandfather I had wages 
in those days and it came to a 
good sum ; but I've had to take out 
a good bit for one tiling or another. 
When Jules went I had to buy him 
a lot of things !" 



Follette. 



603 



" But there's plenty left for us 
two, granny ?" 

" We must get M. le Cure to 
write to Jules, if we go," remarked 
Jeanne, not heeding Follette's ques- 
tion. "You could not put the let- 
ters together and write to him your- 
self, could you, little one?" 

" Oh ! no," said Follette, amazed 
at the unreasonableness of the sup- 
position ; " writing is much harder 
than reading, and I can scarcely 
read yet." 

" Is it on the 23d that Victor 
goes to Cotor?" inquired Jeanne. 

" Yes. That will be next Thurs- 
day, and that will be a good day 
for us to go," said Follette. " It's 
the day of the lessive, and I 
wouldn't be missed early in the 
morning." 

" Well, we'll hear what Nicol says 
about the cart first," said cautious 
old Jeanne ; but her heart was al- 
ready turned towards the adven- 
ture. 

Follette was quite merry that 
day ; she went about her work with 
a light heart, and once or twice had 
to check herself on the point of 
bursting out into a song. She was 
very cheerful at the evening meal, 
talking to Jeanne about the last 
lessive and her spinning, and the 
village gossip she had picked up 
through the day. Gripard noticed 
what good spirits she was in, and 
inwardly resented it as an exhibi- 
tion of naughtiness intended to 
show him that she meant to defy 
him more than ever now that 
Jeanne had made common cause 
with her. He made believe not to 
notice her naughty behavior, and 
bade Victor read an old Constitu- 
tionnel to him, although he had read 
every line of it himself in the morn- 
ing. 

Jeanne sat watching him over her 
knitting. There was nothing ten- 



der or touching in the starved old 
mummy, pinched into his threadbare 
coat patched with many shades of 
brown, but Jeanne's eyes had a 
yearning fondness in them as they 
fixed upon the hungry-looking man 
leaning on his stick. He was her 
nurseling, and, for all his hardness 
and ill temper, her heart went out 
to him tenderly. He might have 
had a very happy old age, if he had 
been a different man ; but he was 
Gripard, and, such as he was, she 
was loath to leave him, to steal 
away, without a word of blessing or 
farewell, from beneath the roof that 
had sheltered her for over sixty 
years, and where she had known 
such happiness as is inseparable 
from youth and innocence. Her 
faithful heart was full, overflowing 
with memories that were not all 
bitter. As she was leaving the 
kitchen she laid her horny hand 
on Gripard's shoulder, and said 
with unaccustomed gentleness : 
" Bon soir, mon gargon." His only 
answer was an imperceptible shrug, 
as if to shake off the caress. 

An hour later the house was 
quiet as a grave. Follette wasted 
her candle looking over her clothes 
and admiring her gold ear-rings, 
which she took out and put in her 
ears, and viewed in the glass ; but 
at last she went to bed, and was 
soon fast asleep. 

She was up next morning with 
the lark, dressed herself in the 
twinkling of an eye, and stole down- 
stairs as soon as she spied Nicol in 
the distance. The kitchen was 
pitch-dark, except where a ray of 
dawn came trickling in through a 
slit in the shutters. Gripard's door 
was closed, and all was quiet with- 
in. He seldom got up until the 
kitchen was swept and the bowls 
set for breakfast ; but somehow the 
silence sounded preternatural this 



Follette. 



morning. Follette unbolted the 
door and let herself out into the 
gray dawn, and then paused, look- 
ing up and down the road to see if 
any one was abroad ; but all was 
perfectly still. Quatre Vents stood 
somewhat isolated ; the nearest 
cottage was Mrae. Bibot's, and that 
was ten minutes' walk down the 
road to the left ; the mountains 
rose to the right, weird and ghostly 
in their blue and brown shadows 
stretching away into the gray dis- 
tance. The little river was the 
only thing awake, and it went tear- 
ing along over the stones as if it 
had loitered through the night, and 
was in a hurry to arrive somewhere 
before the sun woke up and found 
it out. 

Follette tripped on to a point 
where a cairn behind a clump of 
trees made a screen for her, and 
waited there till Nicol, in answer to 
a sign, slipped off the big horse 
and drove him into the middle of 
the stream, and then came across 
to her. A long conversation went 
on between them. First Nicol 
seemed reluctant and incredulous, 
but by degrees Follette brought 
him to believe and acquiesce, and 
from this it was not difficult to in- 
duce him to lend his help. 

" Jeanne has the money, if you 
can only find some one to trust 
you," she urged. " Don't you 
know anybody who would ?" 

Nicol's pride was nettled. 

" It's not that," he said ; " it is 
that I'm afraid to trust them." 
Tli en presently he laid his finger 
alongside his nose with a peculiar- 
ly knowing expression. " I have it," 
he said ; " but you'd have to set out 
early as early as this. I'd take 
you by a by-road to Earache, and 
nobody would meet us in the forest 
at this hour. You could bring out 
your box over night, and hide it 



somewhere about. There's more 
things hid in the forest than folks 
know of," he added, with a peculiar 
wink. 

Follette said there would be no 
difficulty about starting by dawn, 
and it was agreed that Nicol should 
have the cart ready waiting for 
them at a certain point on the fol- 
lowing Thursday. If he found he 
could not succeed in getting it he 
would let her know somehow. 

"You are a good friend, Nicol," 
said Follette ; " I only wish you 
could come away to Tarbes with 
us." 

" If I had money to pay for the 
railway I would," he said. 

" You would like to come ? Well, 
I'll tell Jeanne ; she is very good, 
and she'll be very thankful to you 
for helping us to get away. Per- 
haps she'll give you money to come 
after us." 

The dwarf looked at her with a 
strange gleam of joy in his deep- 
set eyes, but he only gave a little 
chuckle and a shrug, and then 
turned away. Follette crept round 
by the cairn, and got back to Qua- 
tre Vents without meeting a living 
thing. Jeanne's room was in the 
front of the house. The curtain 
of her casement was down. The 
kitchen shutters were still up ; Fol- 
lette opened them and let in the 
light, and set about her morning's 
work. Then, at seven o'clock, she 
set the bowls on the table, and the 
jug of cold onion-soup a variation 
of the carrot brew and when it was 
all ready Gripard came out from 
his room, and Victor, who had been 
out in the garden, came in. Fol- 
lette did not wonder at Jeanne's 
not being down so early this morn- 
ing; she had, no doubt, lain awake, 
worrying about their departure. 
When something was on her mind 
she could not sleep. Follette could 



Follette. 



605 



not understand this, but she knew 
it was true, and concluded that 
Jeanne was now in the heavy sleep 
that sometimes followed these long 
watches. She ran lightly up the 
stairs and opened the old nurse's 
room. It was dark, but not so 
dark as to prevent Follette from 
seeing something that made her 
dart forward with a cry. 

Jeanne was lying in a heap on 
the floor, close to the open door of 
a cupboard in the wall. Follette 
called her by her name, but there 
was no answer ; then she took her 
hand, but dropped it quickly with 
a scream that rang through the 
house, and brought Victor flying 
up the stairs in an instant, and 
Gripard hobbling up behind. 

"What's the matter?" said Vic- 
tor, as Follette met him at the top 
of the stair with a white face and 
eyes dilated with horror. 

She clung to him trembling, and 
pointed to the prostrate figure. 
Victor drew near to it, and a glance 
at the face told him how it was. 
" Dead !" he said in a low voice. 
Follette broke out into sobs and 
began calling on Jeanne. 

" Take the little one away," said 
Gripard ; but Follette fell on her 
knees beside her lost friend, and 
rocked herself to and fro, wailing 
passionately. 

Victor went to the window and 
drew back the curtain. 

" Elle est morte ! bien morte. 
Ma pauvre vieille," said Gripard, 
standing over the body; and as he 
looked at the dead face of the 
faithful servant his hard eyes grew 
moist. But suddenly the moisture 
dried up, and a strange gleam came 
in its place. " What's that she has 
in her hand ?" he said, stooping 
down. 

" It's her stocking," said Victor; 
** she had just pulled it off when the 



fit took her. Come away, patron. 
I had better go for the commissaire 
de police at once." 

"Hold a bit!" said Gripard; 
"it's not that she has. Both her 
stockings are on, and they are blue, 
and this is a white one. There 
must be something in it." 

Follette looked up, and, choking 
down her sobs, "It's her money; 
all her savings were in that stock- 
ing," she said, recognizing the 
moth-eaten receptacle of Jeanne's 
hoard that she had seen more than 
once, and looked on reverently as 
a sort of gold-mine. 

"Ha! Her money? She had 
money?" said Gripard; and the 
gleam in his eyes was horrible as 
he bent down to take up the old 
stocking. But the cold fingers had 
closed on it and held it with the 
rigid grip of death ; he felt it here 
and there. " It's empty; she must 
have taken out the money and put 
it somewhere else. Where did she 
put it, petiote ?" 

" It is in the stocking." And Fol- 
lette began sobbing again as she 
remembered their last talk together. 
" No, my little one, there is no- 
thing in it ; think a bit where else 
she could have hid it. There's a 
good child uncle's own petiote. 
Come, help us to find it." 

He patted her on the shoulder 
and stroked her head, while his 
hand shook with a hungry tremor. 
Follette lifted her head, and a 
thought darting through her like a 
terror checked the flow of her 
tears. 

"Somebody has stolen it," she 
said, " and Jeanne found it out 
when she went to count the money 
last night." 

"Stolen it! Sacre !" exclaimed 
Gripard, starting back and glanc- 
ing here and there with enraged, 
covetous eyes. 



6o6 



Follette. 



" Nonsense ! Who could have 
stolen it ?" said Victor in a tone 
of contempt. "It must be hid some- 
where about." 

" Then look for it and find it, 
d'ye hear?" said Gripard, darting 
a look of fierce suspicion at him. 

Victor grew a shade paler, but 
he answered coolly : " I can't find 
it till I've looked for it. Hadn't 
we better lift this on to the bed 
first, and send for some one to do 
what's wanted?" 

Follette had risen from her 
crouching attitude beside the body, 
and seemed possessed by a new 
energy that enabled her to keep 
down her sobs and rise above her 
grief. Almost with the first men- 
tion of the fact that the money was 
gone the conviction came to her 
that Victor had taken it, and that 
the shock of the discovery last 
night had killed Jeanne. 

" The money was in the stock- 
ing yesterday," she said, looking 
straight at him ; " Jeanne told me 
it was, and that she meant to count 
it over last night and see how much 
was in it It used to be full up of 
gold and silver." 

" Did she count it often ?" in- 
quired Gripard. 

" No, very seldom ; it was diffi- 
cult to get it up." 

"That proves nothing," said Vic- 
tor; "it may have been stolen three 
months ago, though she only found 
it out last night." 

" Jeanne believed the money was 
there yesterday. She told me so 
in the morning." 

"Then perhaps she took it out 
after counting it, and hid it some- 
where about," said Victor. " What's 
that hole in the bottom of the cup- 
board ? Here's a board taken up !" 

He bent forward to look into the 
hole, but Gripard pulled him back 
rudely. 



" Stand aside ! I will examine 
it myself. Lift the body on to the 
bed, will you?" 

Victor, sulky and reluctant, drag- 
ged the dead weight up with his 
powerful arms, and flung it on the 
bed, that had been undisturbed all 
night. 

" There, that will do. Go now 
and fetch Mme. Bibot for the child, 
and then you can go for the com- 
missaire de police." 

Follette would have preferred to 
stay with him; but he insisted on 
her going away, and, pushing her 
gently out of the room, he bolted 
the door and began his search. 
The hole where the stocking had 
been buried was empty, and, ex- 
cept the cupboard and a chest of 
drawers, there was not a spot in 
the place where anything could 
have been concealed. It was clear 
that the money had been stolen. 
But by whom ? Suspicion natfkil- 
ly fell on Victor, and with anflSng 
rapidity a whole mass of evidence 
rose up and stood arrayed against 
him in Gripard's mind. Who else 
had access to the place? And why 
had he been so bent on getting 
away to that orange merchant ? 
And why had he kept putting off 
and off the marriage with Follette? 
Clearly because he knew that the 
event would lead to discovery, for 
Jeanne was certain to want money 
to buy presents for Follette, and 
would take out the stocking. 

" The scoundrel ! The hypo- 
crite ! He deserves to be hanged, 
and, with God's help, he will be 
hanged !" muttered Gripard, as he 
stood, tired and bafHed, in the mid- 
dle of the room. 

"My poor old Jeanne! She was 
a worthy creature. I little dreamt 
what a thrifty soul she had. To 
have hoarded her money all those 
years, and kept it so secret, and 



Follette* 



607 



denied herself a bit of hot food and 
a warm gown in her old age !" 

He came close to the bed, and 
looked at the brown, wrinkled face, 
heavily seamed by eighty years of 
toil and hardship, and pinched with 
scanty fare, and he bethought him 
of the days when the old nurse had 
been a comely young woman, and 
nursed and cared for him like 
a mother. She was the only mo- 
ther he had known, and he had 
repaid her love and fidelity with 
heartless ingratitude. Gripard 
would not own this to himself; but 
as he stood by the dead woman 
he felt that it was true, and he was 
moved to make some amends for 
his undutiful conduct. 

" She shall have a decent fune- 
ral," he said to himself; "people 
sha'n't say I buried her like a pau- 
per." 

With this reflection he went 
down-stairs, and found Mme. Bibot 
trying to comfort Follette, and all 
Bacaram assembling outside Qua- 
tre Vents and commenting on the 
sudden event which had occurred 
within. 

The commissaire de police ar- 
rived, and the doctor, and the 
usual proces verbal was drawn up ; 
and then M. le Cure was sent for 
and everything was settled for the 
funeral. It was to be a decent one, 
Gripard said. 

" I won't have her buried like a 
pauper, though she died one," he 
declared ; " for it was not her fault. 
She was a good soul, and she will 
be better off in the next world than 
many that say longer prayers. She 
kept a quiet tongue in her head, 
and she saved her money." 

Gripard was as good as his word. 
Jeanne went to the grave with such 
marks of respect as these virtues 
entitled her to in his opinion. 
Doubtless it was the discovery of 



the stocking, and the tangible proof 
it afforded of her having had mo- 
ney saved, that inspired the respect 
he now entertained for poor old 
Jeanne ; her life-long devotion, her 
patient, self-denying fidelity, her 
fabulous economy in his service, 
all dwindled to nothing beside the 
fact that she had saved her own 
money, and had a little hoard of 
gold hid away under the flooring 
up-stairs. 

It made a new bond between him 
and the dead woman to know that 
they had unawares had a joy in 
common ; that both he and she had 
shut themselves in of night and ta- 
ken out their hoard, and .counted 
it up, listening to the musical chink 
of the metal as it rang in the si- 
lence, dropping from their fingers 
back into its hiding-place. It plac- 
ed Jeanne in a higher light alto- 
gether, this discovery that they had 
been fellow-worshippers at the same 
shrine, and that she who had seem- 
ed a mere drudge, moiling and toil- 
ing, and rising up to moil and toil 
again, had had her little golden 
calf, and worshipped it in secret 
as he did his. But this did not 
banish from his mind the fact that 
the calf had been stolen, and that 
vengeance was due to the thief. 
He had not forgotten this for a 
moment, but he was terribly per- 
plexed how to bring the theft home 
to the thief. Victor might have 
found out other secrets as well as 
this of Jeanne's, and, if so, Gripard 
trembled to think of how complete- 
ly he was in the young man's pow- 
er. "I can send him to prison, but 
he may denounce me to that gang 
of thieves, and I will never know 
a day's peace while I live," he 
thought. 

In proportion as the discovery 
of Jeanne's secret had raised her in 
his estimation, Victor's share in it 



6o8 



Follette. 



had lowered him to the very mire. 
Honesty, the miser's special virtue, 
was the solitary one that Gripard 
possessed, and his uttermost con- 
tempt was reserved for those who 
sinned against it. His love of money 
and all money's worth made him 
look with horror on the smallest of- 
fence against the rights of property. 
A man who robbed was in his eyes as 
guilty as the man who murdered, 
and deserved the utmost rigors of 
the law. 

The day of the funeral, when the 
noise and stir of the pageant was 
over, and Follette was upstairs cry- 
ing in her lonely garret, Gripard 
called Victor in from the garden. 

" Shut the door," he said ; and, 
when Victor had shut it, " Draw 
the bolt. Sit down ; I want a word 
with you. Look ye here : I don't 
want to be hard on you, but I can't 
have Jules robbed of his due, al- 
though I don't love the lad. Tell 
me where that money is, and I'll 
say no more about it. " 

" I never set eyes on it. I can't 
tell you where it is," said Victor, 
looking him fearlessly in the face. 

" Do you take me for a fool ? If 
you didn't take it who did ? An- 
swer me that," said Gripard. 

" I'd rather not," replied Victor 
quietly. 

" Ha ! Then you own that you 
know who took it, eh ?" 

*' I own nothing. I did not see 
any one take the money." 

" No more did I ; but that won't 
prevent my swearing, ay, and prov- 
ing, that you took it, unless you can 
prove to me that some one else 
did." 

Victor compressed his lips tight- 
ly, as if he were making a despe- 
rate resolution to keep silence. 

"I'll send you to the galleys," 
continued Gripard. " It's a case of 
robbery complicated with breach of 



trust, a monstrous crime that cnlls 
for the maximum of penalty, and 
you shall have it to the last lash !" 

Victor turned his light-blue eyes 
on him without the least fear or 
anger; then, as if yielding reluc- 
tantly to some force that was put 
upon him, " Patron, I would ra- 
ther not tell you anything," he said. 
" You will be the happier for let- 
ting this miserable business drop; 
you won't do any good by " 

" Very likely ! I am to let you 
pocket Jules' money, and say noth- 
ing about it ! I'm to be an accom- 
plice in your wicked, abominable 
dishonesty ! Whom do you take 
me for, eh ?" 

" I will speak if you insist ; but I 
would first remind you that you 
have never known me steal a lump 
of sugar or tell a lie, and you've 
known me all my life. You'll own 
that much, patron ?" 

" I'll own nothing. There's many 
a fellow died on the gallows who 
never stole a filbert till he got the 
key of his master's till. Who took 
Jeanne's money?" 

" Since you won't trust me, I will 
tell you." He stooped forward, and, 
lowering his voice almost to a 
whisper, "Follette took it" 

Gripard gave a start and let fall 
his stick. Victor picked it up and 
handed it to him. 

"You're mad," said Gripard. 
" Follette ?" 

"Follette," repeated Victor in 
the same low tone. " Who else 
could have known about it? Does- 
n't your own reason tell you it must 
have been she ? I never knew 
Jeanne had a louis d'or to rub 
against another." 

" No more did I," said Gripard, 
startled out of his suspicions. 
"But what would the petiote have 
taken the money for ? She couldn't 
spend it unknown to Jeanne ?" 



Follette. 



6oc 



" It was for Jules she stole it. 
I saw her giving him something at 
the fair; they went off under the 
trees together. I wondered what it 
could be ; but it's clear enough now. 
Jeanne had taken money out of the 
stocking, no doubt, to get clothes 
for him and to help him on his 
journey, and then she put away the 
stocking, and most likely never 
thought of looking at it since until 
last night." 

Gripard set his teeth and clench- 
ed his hand. " I'll lock her up and 
keep her on raw turnips and water 
till she owns it !" he said. 

" Don't be hard on her, patron," 
said Victor pleadingly. "After all, 
she saw no great harm in it. As 
you said just now, the money 
would have been Jules', and Fol- 
lette knew it." 

"She knew nothing of the sort. 
Jeanne might have left the money 
to any one she pleased ; and there 
is no doubt but she would have re- 
membered the master that fed her 
and kept her when she was past 
work. She knew I was beggared by 
that" 

He stopped short ; there was no 
one now to gainsay him when he 
repeated his old grievance against 
Blondec; but the remembrance of 
Jeanne's protest after the years of 
faithful silence came back to him 
with strange power and froze the 
fiction on his tongue. He left the 
sentence, unfinished, and never again 
pronounced Blondec's name. 

Victor thought it was the vehe- 
mence of his emotion that choked 
the old man's utterance. 

"Ill luck go with the money, pa- 
tron !" he said in a cheery tone. 



"Don't make bad blood worrying 
about it ; it's gone, and no amount 
of fretting will bring it back. Fol- 
lette was egged on by Jules, be 
you sure. I wouldn't be too hard 
on the poor child. One of these 
days, when we are man and wife, 
she will tell me all about it. Mean- 
time, don't you worry; there's 
nothing so bad for rheumatism as 
worrying." 

" It's a horrible thing to think of 
the child being so wicked," said 
Gripard. " The little viper ! And I 
trusted her so !" 

" It was all Jules' doing," per- 
sisted Victor ; " and you may be 
sure he made a good hole in the 
stocking before Follette took him 
what was left. He was a spend- 
thrift from the hour of his birth, 
and Jeanne didn't know how to say 
nay to him. He'll have no luck." 

"That he won't!" said Gripard, 
soothed by this reflection, as also 
by Victor's assumption that the 
stocking could not have been full 
when Follette stole the contents. 

It was curious to see how com- 
pletely and unhesitatingly he adopt- 
ed Victor's theory concerning the 
robbery altogether, and how en- 
tirely the accuser became at once 
justified in his sight. He not only 
dismissed all his recent suspicions, 
but Victor stood higher than ever 
in his esteem, a pattern of shrewd- 
ness, sagacity, and unimpeachable 
honesty ; the only flaw he now saw 
in his favorite was a disinterested- 
ness and good nature that border- 
ed on softness. They had a good 
deal of confidential talk after this, 
and Gripard promised to say noth- 
ing to Follette for the present. 



TO BE CONTINUED. 



VOL. xxx. 39 



6io 



Irish^Poverty ana National Distress. 



IRISH POVERTY AND NATIONAL DISTRESS. 



THE severe and steady depres- 
sion in trade that has made itself 
manifest for some time, combined 
with the unprecedented rainfall 
and stormy weather of the past 
year, will make 1879 memorable in 
history. Ireland in such a case has 
naturally suffered more than Eng- 
land, and it is a question whether 
the sufferings and privations of the 
peasants in the provinces of Con- 
naught and Munster will not be as 
great as in the years of 1847 and 
1848. Under these circumstances 
the Irish people have been holding 
a series of meetings to consider 
their position and seek some way 
out of their difficulties. The bi- 
shops, the clergy, the poor-law 
guardians, and the county members 
have severally met and passed a 
series of resolutions to the effect 
that the laboring and able-bodied 
classes should be given government 
employment, and that works of a 
reproductive character likely to be 
of a permanent benefit to the coun- 
try should be inaugurated. 

It is hard for those who are com- 
pletely unacquainted with the histo- 
ry of Ireland to realize the present 
condition of its suffering people. 
The proprietors of the leading Dub- 
lin paper (the Freeman's Journal) 
with great forethought, before the 
distress had assumed so severe a 
form, employed a commissioner to 
travel throughout the length and 
breadth of the land, and give the 
public information as to the real 
state of the country. Although 
their proceeding was ridiculed by 
many as objectionable and unnec- 
essary, time has proved the wisdom 
of the step, and few now, ^even 



amongst the most unpatriotic of 
Irishmen, venture to deny the fact 
that the present winter will be the 
most trying season known since the 
years of famine. It is important to 
bear in mind that the peasants of 
Connemara and other parts of the 
west and south are habitually inured 
to sufferings that would be consid- 
ered intolerable elsewhere ; that 
they are broken down by poverty, 
and in a measure naturalized to 
famine. When, therefore, the cry 
of hunger and distress is heard 
from Connemara, we may rest as- 
sured that the people must be at 
the last extremity. Whole districts 
are in fact suffering the pangs of 
hunger; the oats reaped in the 
midst of brown deserts of bulrushes 
and heather have proved poor and 
greenish, the potatoes so rotten 
that they are scarcely worth the 
labor of digging, the turnips of di- 
minutive size, and the meadows a 
desolate and sodden swamp. Many 
tons of hay have been soaked into 
common manure, and it was a com- 
paratively frequent occurrence to 
see the haycocks standing in a lake 
in the month of October. The peas- 
ants, who travelled twenty or thirty 
miles to fairs, soaked with rain and 
faint with hunger, found themselves 
unable to sell their cattle, and were 
obliged to return to their cabins 
with pockets more empty than 
when they started. The Mayo or 
Galway working farmer who has 
this year produced nine hundred- 
weight of marketable grain per 
acre, or who has saved half a ton of 
healthy potatoes per acre from his 
crop, or a ton of fair hay to the 
acre, from his uplands, may feel 



Irish Poverty and National Distress. 



611 






thankful when he compares notes 
with his neighbors. The danger 
of actual famine exists, of course, in 
proportion to the extent to which 
the potato has been depended upon 
as the staff of life, and is more to 
be feared in Connemara and Kerry 
than elsewhere. The danger, how- 
ever, is not to be underrated on that 
account. 

Mr. Mitchell Henry, the well- 
known member for Galway, in a 
speech at a meeting held at Athenry 
declared that the Irish people 
would neither go into the work- 
house nor would they emigrate ; that 
the government was bound to save 
the lives of the people ; and that, in 
reply to the sneer that Irishmen 
were beggars asking money from 
England to protect them from star- 
vation, he would say : 

" Every one pays taxes, but Ireland 
pays a rent to England. England is 
our landlord, and she exacts a pitiless 
amount of rent. The imperial taxes paid 
by this country amount to eight and 
a half millions every year. Now, twen- 
ty-five years ago Ireland paid only four 
millions, the taxation of Ireland has been 
therefore doubled in twenty-five years. 
From what does Ireland derive the 
means of paying these taxes? From 
nothing else but the labor of her peo- 
ple in the fields. We have no manu- 
factures. We have no mineral wealth. 
The whole matter upon which we de- 
pend is the produce of the harvest. 
That being so, what must happen to 
every field if you take away a crop every 
year from it and never put manure on it? 
We know the field would become bar- 
ren. This money raised annually by the 
people of Ireland is taken over to Eng- 
land. Besides the taxation we pay three 
millions in local rates. We pay another 
three millions in absentee taxation ; for 
five million acres of land of Ireland are 
in the hands of companies and landlords 
who never come near the country or 
spend any money in it. A quarter that 
is to say, twenty-five pounds out of every 
one hundred pounds raised from the 
produce of your labor in the course of 
the year is^taken away in taxation and 



absentee rents. England, though twenty 
times as rich as Ireland, pays only ten 
pounds out of every one hundred pounds 
in taxation. As long as this lasts no 
wonder that this country is poverty- 
stricken and the people ever on the 
verge of starvation ; no wonder that, as I 
have often said in the House of Com- 
mons, two bad harvests do not intervene 
between Ireland and starvation." 

Grattan, at the time of the Union, 
said that every enslaved countryhad 
to pay for its subjugation, and that 
if Ireland consented to the Union 
she would be made to pay. It is 
known that Ireland did not con- 
sent, but that the Union was pass- 
ed by means of a systematic course 
of bribery and corruption without 
parallel in the annals of history, 
and Ireland has been compelled to 
pay since that fatal measure. Rob- 
bery invariably follows conquest, 
and Ireland is no exception to the 
rule. Happy would it have been 
for England, and happier still for 
Ireland, had the measure been re- 
jected. Ireland's wealth has been 
taken and added to the wealth of 
England, which has impoverished 
the former country, whilst the latter 
is weaned by the importunity of the 
Irish, and yet unwilling to comply 
with their just demands. 

That the land of Ireland should 
belong to the Irish, and not to a 
body of persons whose feelings and 
sympathies are completely at vari- 
ance with the masses of the people, 
is a theory reasonable, but unfortu- 
nately difficult of attainment. The 
tenants have, as a rule, paid rents 
(often the most exorbitant rents) 
with punctuality and precision ; but 
now, in the face of bad harvests and 
American competition, it is impos- 
sible for them to do so without fac- 
ing ruin, and they have throughout 
Ireland asked for an abatement of 
rent. If, at the time of the famine 
in 1846, the tenant had been em- 



6l2 



Irish Poverty and National Distress. 



powered by law, as he now is, to 
purchase his holding, numbers of 
farmers would be owners of the soil 
without having any rent to pay, and 
the lands that were sold in the En- 
cumbered Estates Court would not 
have been bought up by land-job- 
bers, who ruined the country by 
doubling the rents. 

The Bishop of Elphin, in an ad- 
mirable letter to Dr. Phillips, thus 
expressed himself : 

"The tenure by which land is held in 
Ireland must ever remind us of invasion 
and conquest. The tenant is a mere 
serf ; his very existence and that of his 
family, depending as it does on the 
fruits of his labor, is at the mercy of his 
master. Who will pretend that such a 
state of oppression is in accordance 
with the law of nature or the law of 
God? It is rather a public legalized 
violation of both. It was established in 
times of cruel persecution, and it is still 
maintained most unwisely and most un- 
justly by the English government in the 
supposed interest of a class who repre- 
sent the policy of those evil times. 
Surely no just, thoughtful man, no mat- 
ter what his creed, no matter the num- 
ber of broad acres he may own, can wish 
to perpetuate a system so hateful and 
disreputable. It is not in the nature of 
things, it certainly is not consistent with 
the spirit of our times, that peace, con- 
tentment, union of classes, or pros- 
perity can exist amongst us so long as 
the tiller and the child of the soil is de- 
prived of its fruits and treated as an alien. 
It must ever appear a cruel, revolting 
injustice to keep millions of acres waste 
and unoccupied, and to keep the greater 
part of the arable land of the country 
undrained and unimproved, not yielding 
half its natural produce, whilst countless 
families have been, for want of land to 
live on, obliged to become exiles from 
their country and seek elsewhere the 
means of subsistence refused to them at 



ing should be to obtain by every consti- 
tutional means the repeal of those bane- 
ful laws, to substitute for them a land 
tenure which, whilst recognizing and 
maintaining the just rights of landlords 
i.e., the rights consistent with the public 
welfare will fix the tenant in the soil 
either as its owner at a fair price or as a 
tenant at a fair rent. It is only by one 
or other of these means that the tenant 
will reclaim or improve the soil ; that 
landlord and tenant, Celt and Saxon, 
will live together in peace and mutual 
confidence ; and that law will be respected 
and cordially obeyed amongst us. As 
it is only by the legislature that such 
changes in the law can be made, the 
members who represent our counties 
should be expected and required to ad- 
vocate them in the House of Commons 
and press them with untiring earnestness 
and perseverance. If the Irish members 
unite in doing their duty in this respect 
our system of land tenure, old and vi- 
cious though it is, will be soon removed ; 
and I feel great pleasure in expressing 
my belief that in advocating and effect- 
ing this reform the most influential 
landlords will unite with the representa- 
tives of the tenant class. We cannot 
censure landlords for using rights con- 
ferred on them by law, if they use them 
with moderation. Education and tradi- 
tional prejudice make them view those 
rights as justly belonging to their class, 
and even as conducive to the public 
good. We must not blame individual 
landlords for the unjust and ruinous 
character of the land laws ; we must lay 
the blame on the legislature and the 
government, and it is to them we must 
go with moderation as well as firmness 
to look for the necessary reform. Nei- 
ther the just and humane conduct of a 
certain class of landlords nor the good 
intentions of the executive are a remedy 
for the constant and inevitable evils of 
the Irish land laws, which crush the en- 
ergies of the people and waste the soil 
of the country." 

Thousands of acres in the w( 



home. The land laws are the chief of Ireland are capable of reclame 



cause of the failure of the crops, of the 
disease of sheep and cattle, of the peri- 
odical famines and the permanent dis- 
tress of our people ; and whilst they are 
maintained by the state there must be 
deep discontent as well as misery in the 
country. The great object of every meet- 



tion, and yet, with the exception of 
what has been done by Mitchell 
Henry, no one reclaims land. The 
industry of the peasants is not the 
reason, for they labor hard ; but the 
product of their industry is swamp- 



Irish Poverty and National Distress. 






ed by the system under which they 
live. They cannot and dare not of 
themselves improve. Their great 
security is to have nothing worth 
securing. In this way, and in this 
way alone, do they drag on a mis- 
erable existence. 

In the neighborhood of Clifden 
the stranger will come across an 
immense tract of territory formerly 
belonging to the Martin family, 
whose roofless castles and towers 
are still to be seen in solitary 
grandeur. Half a century ago this 
family was rich and powerful, and 
surrounded by a comparatively 
happy tenantry. With the down- 
fall of the Martins came the down- 
fall of the peasants. The lands 
passed into the hands of an Eng- 
lish insurance company, who wrung 
the last farthing from their tenants 
and did nothing for the people. 
Later on the property was divided, 
and fell into the hands of specu- 
lators and land-jobbers, both Eng- 
lish and Irish, under whose regime 
the people fared little better. 
The poor-law valuation of the one 
hundred and fifty-nine thousand 
acres which fell to a London trades- 
man is about seven and a half per 
acre. Famine and misery desolat- 
ed this fair region in 1847 ; villa- 
ges disappeared and cattle grazed 
in districts that had been thickly 
populated. Rack-renting became 
general; agents were compelled to 
wring the last farthing out of the 
tillers of the soil ; and in the pre- 
sent time we find a mere remnant 
of the old tenantry still clinging to 
the desolate homes of their ances- 
tors. 

It is sad to contemplate such a 
picture ; sad to think how some of 
the fairest portions of God's earth 
have been desolated; sad to think 
how many of the human race have 
been hurried to a premature death 



by the absence of a landlord's 
kindliness and forbearance. 

Of the four million acres of un- 
productive land in Ireland it is 
calculated that, without interfering 
with the fuel supplies, about two 
million acres are capable of recla- 
mation. The best method of re- 
clamation is an open question, and 
many difficulties stand in the way 
of any attempt to deal with the 
matter. Many of the proprietors, 
for instance, are so tied down by 
feudal, worn-out restrictions, by 
entail and rights of primogeniture, 
that, under prevailing privileges, 
even a used-up turf-bank cannot 
be parted with by its so-called 
owner. 

John Stuart Mill, writing in the 
year 1864, represented the condi- 
tion of affairs in Ireland as serious, 
and, with characteristic common 
sense, suggested the remedy for our 
periodic distresses when he deliber- 
ately wrote that England's best 
chance of making Ireland peaceful 
and prosperous was the establish- 
ment of a peasant proprietary 
among her laboring population, and 
that in such a plan lay its " only 
choice between depopulation by 
starvation or emigration." Emi- 
gration the Irish people will not 
have, and the feeling against such a 
project becomes intensified instead 
of diminished. 

The Archbishop of Cashel, in a 
letter to Mr. E. Dwyer Gray, M.P. 
for Tipperary, has spoken strong- 
ly on this point, and his words ex- 
actly express the feeling of the mass 
of his countrymen. Emigration 
being held in disfavor, it is hard to 
see what future lies before many of 
the peasants in the far west. The 
cultivated area is small, the land 
is bad, and the population large. 
The holdings, which are about ten 
acres or less, have often to feed two 



614 



Irish Poverty and National Distress. 



or three families, although there be 
but one nominal holder. Even were 
the land rich and properly tilled 
it is a question whether it would 
be able to support the population. 
As it is, the people principally live 
on the earnings made by the male 
portion of the community, who mi- 
grate annually to England for the 
harvest, in addition to which they 
gain something by fishing. The 
present year has been disastrous 
for the farming class both in Eng- 
land and Ireland, and the earnings 
in England have been bad ; the 
fishing has likewise been bad, the 
prices of cattle have been low, the 
potatoes wretched, and it has not 
been possible to dry the fuel. The 
people are therefore poor, with a 
prospect not only of greater pov- 
erty before them, but the possibil- 
ity of a fuel famine. 

In Connemara there are no resi- 
dent proprietors and there is no 
money. Periodical subsidies of 
food, clothing, and money are ex- 
cellent in their way, but there must 
be something radically wrong when 
there is nothing but two bad har- 
vests between the people and star- 
vation. 

What, then, is the remedy? Emi- 
gration is generally recommended, 
but emigration is precisely the reme- 
dy that Irish people will not have. 
The London Times suggests it on 
a large scale, and hints that Zu- 
luland is a very suitable place to 
transfer the surplus population of 
Ireland. The Irish will not, how- 
ever, suffer themselves to be driven 
a second time from their native 
soil, nor is it a wise measure for 
Englishmen to encourage. Those 
Irish who, in the miserable years of 
1847 an d 1848, were driven from 
their native land and compelled to 
find new homes in America, carried 
with them a bitter hatred to Eng- 



land a hatred that it is scarcely 
possible to extinguish, and which, 
if not restrained and kept within 
bounds by the loving influence of 
the church, would long since have 
broken forth into a spirit of the 
wildest revolutionary excess. 

The suggestion of draining away 
the bone and sinew of the country, 
and leaving behind the old and in- 
firm, is a suggestion inspired by 
those who are actuated with no 
love for the Celtic race ; whilst the 
suggestion of rooting the people in 
the soil they love so well, and to 
which they belong^-for it is their 
home is one eminently calculated 
to improve their present condition. 
Some persons have asserted that it 
is the priests who are alone really 
adverse to emigration, as they are 
unwilling to lose their parishioners 
and the fees for births, marriages,, 
and deaths; but such a theory is not 
borne out by facts, and probably 
originated in the brain of some very 
narrow-minded Orangeman who was 
completely unacquainted with the 
aspirations and desires of the Irish 
peasant. Three most important 
declarations have appeared from 
three separate bodies viz., the Irish 
hierarchy, the Irish members, and 
the Local Government Board 
which are given below, and which 
all tell the same story : 

THE DECLARATION OF THE HIERARCHY. 

" The archbishops and bishops of Ire- 
land assembled in Dublin on the 24th 
Oct., the Primate of all Ireland in the 
chair, having exchanged views regarding 
the present condition of the suffering 
classes of their respective dioceses, came 
to the unanimous conclusion that a very 
serious crisis is now impending, and 
that the distress with which the great 
body of the people are threatened is 
likely to be so deep and wide-spread 
that mere private efforts for its allevia- 
tion will be totally inadequate. It was,, 
therefore, agreed : 



Irish Poverty and National Distress. 



u i. That it is the urgent duty of the 
government to take effectual measures 
to save the people from a calamity which 
has come upon them through no fault of 
their own. 

" 2. That, with the sad experience before 
us of tli e operations of the Poor-law Act 
for the relief of the masses during the 
famine of the past generation, we con- 
sider its provisions unsuited and insuffi- 
cient to meet the necessities of the im- 
pending crisis. 

"3. That some scheme of public em- 
ployment which would at once relieve 
the present pressing wants of the people, 
and be productive of permanent benefit, 
should be promptly devised and carried 
into immediate operation throughout the 
country ; such scheme to embrace arte- 
rial drainage, the reclamation of waste 
lands, the construction of earthworks 
for trams and railways, the plantation of 
mountain and marshy districts, as well 
as the improvement of tenants' hold- 
ings. 

" 4. That a deputation, consisting of the 
Primate, the Archbishop of Dublin, and 
the Bishops of Elphin and Limerick, 
wait on the lord lieutenant to request 
his grace to submit those views to her 
Majesty's government. 

" 5. That we applaud and cheerfully 
bear testimony to the generous conduct 
of many landlords in our respective dio- 
ceses towards their distressed tenantry, 
and that we appeal to others to promptly 
imitate their example. That we beg of 
public administrative bodies, as well as 
private individuals, to continue, and, 
where possible, to extend, the employ- 
ment of the laboring classes. 

" 6. That, whilst making this appeal for 
the relief of our people, and resolving to 
use our utmost efforts to bring it to 
practical results, we feel it equally our 
duty to exhort our flocks to act under 
their trials with Christian patience and 
charity ; to help each other to the utmost 
of their ability ; to respect the rights of 
others ; to pay their just debts to the 
fullest extent of their means, and to 
obey the laws ; whilst using, at the same 
time, all peaceful and constitutional 
means to improve their condition, espe- 
cially by the reform of the land laws, 
which are a main cause of the poverty 
and helplessness of our country. 



"(Signed) 



. MCGETTIGAN.' 



THE DECLARATION OF THE IRISH MEM- 
BERS. 

The following is the declaration of the 
Irish members to the premier in re- 
ference to the state of the country, ap- 
pending to it the names of seventy-one 
of the Irish representatives which were 
affixed to it previous to its transmission, 
by Mr. Shaw, to Lord Beaconsfield : 
"To the Right Hon. the Earl of Beacon* - 

field, K. G. , First Lord of the Treasury : 

" We, the undersigned members of the 
House of Commons, representing Irish 
constituencies, feel it our duty to bring 
before your lordship, as head of the gov- 
ernment, the serious state of the coun- 
try. 

" Farming, our main industry, has now 
suffered from several successive bad 
harvests, and the depression has been 
intensified this year by the almost com- 
plete stagnation of the cattle trade. 
There can be no doubt but that the dis- 
tress will be severe and wide -spread dur- 
ing the coming winter and spring, and 
that in several extensive districts the al- 
most complete failure of the potato crop 
and of the fuel supply, combined with 
the absence of employment, will involve 
a considerable number of the small far- 
mers and laborers in absolute destitu- 
tion. 

" We would most earnestly urge on the 
government, through your lordship, the 
necessity of taking immediate steps to 
prevent and mitigate, as far as possible, 
this calamity. 

"We believe this can be best done by 
affording assistance to works of a per- 
manent and useful character ; prompt- 
ness is absolutely necessary, as delay 
will only result, as on former occasions, 
in ill-considered and unproductive ex- 
penditure. 

" If the law does not give government 
power to meet the emergency, we would 
urge the desirability of summoning Par- 
liament for a short winter session." 

REPORT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT 
BOARD. 

The following is the official report 
made to the government by the Local 
Government Board as to the condition 
of the country : 

" LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD, DUBLIN, 

" 28th October, iSyg. 
"SiR: The Local Government Board 
for Ireland have the honor to forward to 



6i6 



Irish Poverty and National Distress. 



you herewith, for the information of his 
grace the lord lieutenant, copies of re- 
ports which they have recently received 
from their inspectors respecting the state 
of the potato crop, the general harvest, 
the sufficiency of the supply of turf which 
may be saved by the peasantry for their 
wants during the next winter and spring, 
and the condition and prospects of the 
poor in" their respective districts. 

" The board also enclose an abstract of 
those reports, arranged in provinces and 
counties. 

" In regard to the potato crop, it will be 
seen that there is not much variation m 
the reports, and that it is described al- 
most everywhere as deficient in quantity, 
inferior in quality, and affected by blight, 
and that, upon the'whole, there will not 
be more than half an average crop. 

" The general harvest appears to be in- 
ferior, and the crops deficient and below 
those of last year. The oat crop, how- 
ever, is everywhere reported to be good 
and plentiful. This applies to all the 
four provinces, the exceptions in which 
the general harvest appears to be fair 
being parts of Donegal and London- 
derry, in the province of Ulster ; pans of 
Cork and Limerick, in the province of 
Munster ; and parts of Wicklow, m the 
province of Leinster. 

" The supply of turf appears to be 
everywhere greatly deficient, and much 
suffering and sickness is anticipated 
from this cause. A considerable quan- 
tity of turf is stated to have been cut 
this year, but it could not be saved ow- 
ing to the continuous rain. 

' In parts of each of the four provinces 
it is stated that coal can be easily obtain- 
ed at reasonable prices, but this will not 
benefit the poor in many districts in the 
western and midland counties where turf 
is the only fuel used. 

" In regard to the prospects of the 
poorer classes during the coming winter 
and spring, it will be seen that in Ulster 
considerable distress and destitution, as 
well as increased demands for relief, may 
be expected owing to the failure of the 
turf supply and to scarcity of employ- 
ment ; that in Munster much suffering 
and want is anticipated, and unusual 
demands for relief are expected during 
the winter months, owing to the want of 
employment, which is attributed to the 
straitened circumstances of the farnlers 
in consequence of the banks and loan 
companies having refused to make fur- 



ther advances of money, and to the low 
prices obtained for cattle and butter. 

" In Leinster a large increase in the 
demands for relief is anticipated, the 
farmers not being in a position to pay 
laborers, and employment consequently 
being scarce. In Connaught also a 
serious amount of distress and increased 
demand lor relief is expected during the 
coming winter. On the coast this is 
partly owing 10 the decline in the em- 
ployment of kelp-burning, and in other 
parts of the provinces it is due to the re- 
duction in prices obtained for cattle and 
pigs, and to the farmers being deeply in 
debt to money-lenders and shopkeepers, 
and to the stoppage of their credit. 

" The following statement gives the 
proportions in which the increase in the 
numbers receiving workhouse relief has 
taken place in each province, the per- 
centage of increase being greatest in 
Ulster and least in Leinster: 



Provinces. 

Ulster 
Munster . . 
Leinster. . 
Connaught 


Relieved in Workhouse 
on 
Oct. 4, '79. | Oct. 5, '78. 


Increase. 
Num-i Per- 
bers. 1 cent. 


10,261 
17.966 
M,975 
5,48o 


9,072 
16,209 
i3,58i 
4,848 


1,189 
1.697 

! 

6 3 2 


I3-I 

10.4 

10.2 
13.0 


Total.... 


48,682 


43,733 


4 ,909 


II.2 



" The want of employment and the de- 
ficient supply of fuel are the two princi- 
pal features in the accompanying reports 
which the board submit tor his grace's 
consideration, and both subjects are of 
vital importance at the present time, as 
affecting the prospects of the poor during 
the coming winter, and the circumstances 
of many of the rate-payers in distressed 
districts. By order of the board. 

" B. BANKS, Secretary. 
"ToT. S. BURKE, ESQ., etc., etc., Dublin 
Castle." 

The report of the Local Govern- 
ment Board was a great disappoint- 
ment to those who had persistently 
refused to believe in the cry of dis- 
tress, and had reiterated the asser- 
tion that the harvest was good, 
that the farmers had money in the 
bank, and that everything showed 
signs of prosperity. 

The declaration of the seventy- 
one members of Parliament is re- 



Irish Poverty and National Distress. 



6i 7 



markable from the fact that Whigs 
and Tories have in this instance 
made common cause with the Home- 
Rule party and raised a voice in 
behalf of their fellow-countrymen. 

It was natural that the Irish bi- 
shops, impelled by the sufferings of 
their flocks, should raise their voices 
on behalf of the people ; but for the 
whole body of Irish members to 
coalesce in a similar undertaking is 
an event of the highest importance. 

It is impossible to suppose that 
so many people, placed in such re- 
sponsible positions and differing so 
widely on matters of politics and 
religion, should be agreed to de- 
ceive the public. Though the agi- 
tators have been loudly and vehe- 
mently denounced, they have said 
nothing more calculated to arouse 
anxiety and fear than has been said 
by the bishops, approved of by the 
Irish members, and ratified by the 
government officials of the Local 
Government Board. 

If their language has been ex- 
travagant and rash, it is evident 
that the whole country must have 
combined to be extravagant and 
rash. What the people seek to ob- 
tain, and what in the long run they 
must obtain, is to live in their own 
country under good laws and an 
impartial rule, when there will be 
no necessity to obtain leave from 
London for every measure of local 
improvement. 

The necessity for a reduction 
of rents throughout the country 
has been proved by the fact that 
very few landholders have refused 
to make substantial concessions. 
Whether they would have done so 
had the voice of the people been 
less loudly manifested is an open 
question, but it is more than pro- 
bable that the mere request for an 
abatement of rent, independent of 
concerted action, would not have 



been generally acceded to. It is a 
notorious fact that agitation has 
frequently succeeded in obtaining 
for the Irish what they wish when 
all other measures have failed. 
The motto of O'Connell was Agi- 
tation, and though many persons 
disagreed with the theories lie pro- 
mulgated, they were compelled to 
admit that in this instance he was 
right. Agitation brought about 
Emancipation, the repeal of nox- 
ious tests and of the penal laws ; 
agitation brought about the dis- 
establishment of the Protestant 
Church in Ireland and the Glad- 
stone Land Bill ; and agitation in 
the present instance will probably 
bring about an immense change in 
the whole system of land tenure in 
the country. The study of the 
policy of past years with regard to 
the production of the soil reveals 
some remarkable facts. In the 
year 1846, when the country had 
eight and a half millions of inhabi- 
tants, it exported ^"6,000,000 worth 
of cereals ; and now, in the year 
1879, it has been obliged to import 
8, 000,000 worth of the same pro- 
duce to feed a population much 
less than what it had been. The 
state of the agriculturist has for 
many years been gradually dimin- 
ishing, and the tension upon the 
incomes of the agricultural class 
has for many years been great. 
They have borrowed at a usurious 
rate of interest for some time, and 
at length find themselves unable to 
borrow and unable to pay. The 
ordinary machinery of the poor- 
law is totally inadequate to bear 
the strain likely to be put upon it. 
The act known as Gregory's Act, 
which is still in force, prohibits out- 
door relief being given to the hold- 
er of any farm which exceeds a 
quarter of an acre. The majority 
of farms held by cottier tenants 



6i8 



Irish Poverty and National Distress. 



exceed a quarter of an acre, and 
are therefore cut off from assistance. 
The workhouse is the only alterna- 
tive, and the workhouse is held by 
the people to be but the stepping- 
stone to the grave. 

Works of a reproductive charac- 
ter are, therefore, a necessity, if we 
do not wish to see the population 
of the country decimated by famine 
and emigration. Foreign competi- 
tion has so completely interfered 
with the- production of the land 
that every effort is necessary to 
suggest a remedy. Landlords, ten- 
ants, and peasantry should take 
counsel and combine, in order to 
ascertain how the production of 
the country may be increased, and 
every individual who has a spark 
of patriotism and love of indepen- 
dence should aid as best he can. 
It is well known that no attempt 
has ever been made to remove a 
social or political inequality in Ire- 
land without its being denounced 
by many Irishmen and most Eng- 
lishmen as revolutionary and dan- 
gerous. Catholic Emancipation was 
called revolutionary, the Land Act 
robbery, and the disestablishment 
of Protestantism revolution, rob- 
bery, and confiscation. So it will 
be, in all probability, in the present 
instance. Honest men will feel, 
however, that there is a force and 
energy in the Irish character, and 
that, suffering as the people are 
from a deep sense of oppression 
and wrong, they yet desire to direct 
this force and energy in the proper 
direction. Whilst denounced by 
their opponents as communists and 
revolutionists, they are determin- 
ed to proceed in the path on which 
they have entered, and never rest 
until they have achieved the altera- 
tion of some of the most objection- 
able features of the whole land 
code. Sir /William Gregory, the 



late Governor of Ceylon, himself 
a landed proprietor in the County 
Galway, used the following lan- 
guage in a letter addressed to the 
chairman of a meeting held at Gort 
in the month of October last : 

" I wish I could believe that these 
meetings would have the effect of sham- 
ing into justice those landlords who 
have been continually raising their rents 
till scarcely enough margin remains for 
the existence of the tenant. For such 
men no language can be too strong ; but 
to confound indiscriminately in a chorus 
of abuse such men as these with the 
owners of land who have lived amongst 
their people, who have helped them in 
their difficulties, who have been their 
friends and advisers, and who up to this 
period have been loved by them and 
trusted, is an injustice as gross as it is 
mischievous ; for it tends to promote 
alienation between the tenant and the 
landlord, the evil effect of which will 
be felt far more by the former than by 
the latter. By all means let the rapa- 
cious landlords be exposed ; and I can- 
not suggest a better course than the 
publication of exorbitant rents in the 
newspapers. The statements made by 
the parish priest of Roundstone at the 
Clifden meeting would create amaze- 
ment, if generally known in England. 
... I most cordially concur as to the 
expediency of studding Ireland with 
owners instead of tenants. We cannot, 
it is true, effect the establishment of a 
peasant proprietary by a stamp of the 
foot, but there should be a fixed policy 
on the part of the government ever tend- 
ing in that direction, and a few years 
would show a marked change in the 
happiness and spirit of the people." 

Sentiments of this character from 
a man of so much ability and so 
much experience as Sir William 
Gregory are remarkable, and are 
deserving of careful study by those 
who endeavor to grasp the question 
of Irish politics. In most coun- 
tries throughout Europe a peasant 
proprietary exists in some form or 
other. What exists in France could 
exist in Ireland, and all that is 
necessary to effect it is for the gov- 






Irish Poverty and National Distress. 



619 



eminent to allocate a sufficient sum 
of money. Such a policy pre-emi- 
nently commends itself, as it would 
strengthen and consolidate the 
state by making the bulk of its 
people have each a personal inter- 
est in its welfare and stability. The 
whole settlement of the land ques- 
tion in reality rests with the people, 
and the more in earnest they show 
themselves the more likely are they 
to obtain what they desire. The 
question of land monopoly and the 
condition of the tenant farmers is 
so critical that it has become pre- 
eminently the question of the day, 
and any government that desires 
to take office will be morally com- 
pelled to take some steps in the 
matter. The large number of meet- 
ings held throughout the country 
are evidence of the determination 
of the people to accomplish their 
desires, and the prelude to unceas- 
ing agitation in favor of a broad, 
comprehensive, and equitable ad- 
justment of the relations of land- 
lord and tenant. 

The difficulties of transferring 
and the uncertainty of acquiring 
land, the enormous expense accom- 
panying the sale of small portions, 
the absence of compulsory registra- 
tion of title, the toleration of ab- 
surd deeds, and the encouragement 
of accumulation both by law and 
custom, all tend to shut out the 
cultivators who wish to purchase, 
and to maintain and aggravate 
monopoly. Tenancies at will are 
almost universal in Ireland ; five out 
of every six tenants may be said to 
be tenants at will. It is obvious, 
therefore, that one of the first steps 
towards rooting the tenant in the soil 
would be the abolition of such ten- 
ancies. 

Even in years that were pros- 
perous the majority of tenant farm- 



ers in the western portions of the 
country were only able to live with 
comfort and decency. Luxury has 
been ever unknown to them, and it 
is no exaggeration to say that what 
the ordinary English farmer would 
designate abject poverty was the 
Irish farmer's lot even in the years 
of prosperity. 

If, therefore, with thrift and 
economy they were barely able to 
live in good times, it is painfully evi- 
dent that they cannot now both live 
and pay the same amount of rent as 
before. A crisis of distress and 
want is at hand a crisis brought 
about by a succession of bad har- 
vests culminating in a calamitous 
failure of crops this season and low 
prices for stock and agricultural 
produce. To Connaught belongs 
the glory of originating the move- 
ment on behalf of the oppressed a 
movement which has been taken up 
by the whole body of Irishmen, both 
in their own land and in that of 
the stranger ; a movement which will 
increase and intensify until the 
hideous stenes that have brought 
desolation into many a home may 
be reckoned as events of the past. 
The movement is great, patriot- 
ic, and rational, because it aims at 
the attainment of a desirable and 
necessary object by reasonable 
means. The moral elevation of 
the whole race of Irishmen is at 
stake, and this elevation must be 
attained by the fostering of a truly 
national spirit, and the creation of a 
strong, enlightened, and liberal pub- 
lic opinion. The cause is noble, 
the aim commendable ; for it is the 
cause of suffering humanity, and 
one that appeals to the sense of 
justice, fair play, and benevolence 
with the weapons of reason, argu- 
ment, and facts. God grant that it 
may prosper ! 



620 



The Republican s Daughter. 



THE REPUBLICAN'S DAUGHTER. 



THE picturesque little town of 

X in Brittany is situated on 

the brow of a hill surrounded by 
fine old trees, bounded by an ex- 
tensive marsh. 'The town is com- 
posed of a long, irregular street of 
whitewashed houses, in the centre 
of which stands the ancient church, 
built of gray stone. 

In the year 1794 the proprietor 
of the castle of Rieux, about half a 

league from X , was Monsieur 

Vander, a quiet, reserved man of 
fifty years of age. It was thought 
by some that he was a republican 
because of the haste with which 
he became the possessor of the es- 
tate to the exclusion of the Dowa- 
ger Marchioness d'Ouessant, the 
last lady of Rieux, a refugee in 
England. But others declared 
that he was a secret partisan of 
the exiled princes, and that the 
castle was only in his 'hands in 
trust, that he might preserve the 
valuable property for the rightful 
owners. And the latter opinion, 
being the more generally received, 
secured to Monsieur Vander con- 
siderable respect, for the peasant 
Bretons were strongly opposed to 
the republican government. 

Monsieur Vander received no 
one at the castle, and visited no 
one unless it were sometimes Jean 

Martin, formerly beadle of X 

when the church was open, and 
Dr. Chambert, the surgeon of the 
town. 

Citizen Chambert had several 
points of resemblance to Monsieur 
Vander. He was cold, stern, and 
severe. His republican principles 
were so well known to every one 
that, as the Bretons had given to 



the soldiers of the Convention the 
title of the JBlues, he was usually 
called the Blue Doctor. His poli- 
tical opinions rendered him very 
unpopular, but his skill in his pro- 
fession saved him from public ha- 
tred. 

There was also another cause 
which greatly softened the ill-feel- 
ing of his neighbors towards him : 
he had a daughter who was loved 
and respected by everybody. Her 
name was Celestine. She was only 
fifteen years of age, but her child- 
like smile and the angelic candor 
of her brow made her appear even 
younger. 

At times, however, when she 
was alone and gave herself up to 
the dreams of solitude, her great 
blue eyes, her finely-arched eye- 
brows, her graceful head, her rosy 
lips half concealing her ivory teeth, 
her whole features so delicately 
formed, gave the impression of a 
more mature age. From her in- 
fancy the precocious melancholy 
which often clouded her radiant 
brow had seemed to many of her 
neighbors to forbode her early 
death, and when she passed they 
took off their hats and cried: 
"Good-morning to our demoiselle." 
Then, turning round, they looked 
with admiration at the elegant elas- 
ticity of her walk, and, crossing 
themselves devoutly, exclaimed : 
" God bless her ! There will soon 
be an angel more in heaven." 

In the meantime she was an 
angel on earth. There was not a 
poor cottage in the neighborhood 
which she had not entered. Every- 
where she went carrying aid and 
consolation. Suffering seemed al- 



The Republican? s Daughter. 



621 



most to disappear under the aspect 
of her sweet, gentle countenance, 
and the cries of grief changed be- 
fore her presence to murmurs of 
joy and blessing. 

Celestine had a young friend, 
the daughter of the former beadle 

of X , Louise Martin. Louise, 

as beautiful, perhaps, as her com- 
panion, had a good heart but a 
bad head. Her great pride would 
have been ridiculous in the daugh- 
ter of a simple peasant, if she had 
not been better educated than her 
companions. She had not lived 
more than four years with Jean 
Martin, who, being a widower, had 
brought her one day from a dis- 
tance, he said, without further ex- 
planation. 

During the first few months after 
Louise's arrival Celestine and she 
became very intimate. They con- 
fided to each other their joys, their 
childish griefs, and all their secret 
hopes for the future. 

Citizen Chambert regarded this 
intimacy at first without objection. 
But after the rising of the royalists 
in 1791 Jean Martin was suspected 
of having taken part with them, 
and Celestine was forbidden to see 
her friend again, which cost her 
many tears, but she quietly obey- 
ed. 

Celestine was not the doctor's 
only child ; she had a brother, who 
had left his father's roof two years 
previously. Pierre Chambert was 
a tall, strong, distinguished-looking 
young man, with a high bearing 
which made him from childhood a 
favorite with the doctor, who re- " 
solved to make a soldier of him. 
About five years before our story 

commences the little town of X 

presented a rural picture full of 
life and happiness. There was an 
excellent cure at the presbytery, 
and the lady of the manor was as 



compassionate as she was wealthy, 
and anxious that there should be 
no unhappy ones in her domain. 

There were in the neighborhood 
also a dozen country houses inhab- 
ited by Breton squires whose hearts 
were loyal though their heads 
might be weak. Madame de Rieux, 
widow of the Marquis d'Ouessant, 
ruled all this plebeian nobility, and 
Pierre Chambert was admitted to 
her .house. Monsieur Vander, a 
distant relation of the family of 
Rieux, was the steward of the cas- 
tle. He, Dr. Chambert, and the 

Abbe Gozon, then cure of X , 

formed a little circle to themselves. 
The worthy cure took charge of 
the religious education of Pierre 
and Celestine, whom he loved as 
his own children. Monsieur Van- 
der, formerly a military man, taught 
Pierre the use of arms. At sixteen 
he was a simple-hearted, fervent 
Christian youth, devoted to those 
whom he considered his benefac- 
tors, robust, brave to exc'ess, skil- 
ful in the use of arms, and so good 
a hunter that his equal was not 
known for ten leagues round. 

The Revolution came, when the 
good cure was obliged to fly ; the 
family of Rieux crossed the sea, 
and the dozen or fifteen country 
squires joined the army of Conde. 
Only Monsieur Vander had re- 
mained at X . 

As to Pierre, the flight of his 
companions, and above all of the 
cure, had filled his heart with sor- 
row. Accustomed to live in the 
midst of the humble squires, who 
were loyal as their swords, and only 
able to judge the new government 
by its deeds, he began to hate it 
His father, sincerely imbued with 
republican ideas, often tried to win 
him to their side ; but the youth 
would listen gravely and reply : 

" The republic has forced away 



622 



The Republican s Daughter. 



the family from the castle, who were 
the benefactors of the country, and 
has deprived us of our friend the 
cure", whose whole life was but a 
long series of beneficent actions. 
Have we not lost by the republic 
all that was noble and good among 
us ? I cannot love it." 

So one day he took his gun and 
went away without saying adieu 
to his father. Celestine, who was 
then about thirteen, wept and beg- 
ged her brother not to leave home,- 
but he was inflexible in his resolve. 

"Celestine," said he, embracing 
her tenderly, " you know that in a 
few months the conscription will 
come, and they will force me to be 
a republican soldier; but I prefer 
to die for God and the king. Is 
not that a nobler cause, sister ?" 

Celestine did not reply. In the 
depths of her heart his words found 
an echo, but she did not wish to 
acknowledge that her father was in 
the wrong. 

"Sister," urged Pierre, "other 
motives also oblige me to go. There 
are things happening here that you 
do not see and that you could not 
understand. Monsieur Vander is 
not what he appears ; Jean Martin 
does not remain at home during 
the nights ; and the hour is coming 
when the woods of X will re- 
sound with fire-arms, but it will 
not be the joyous sound of the 
chase." 

" What do you mean ?" exclaimed 
Celestine. 

" One day it was the last time I 
saw our good cure in bidding me 
adieu he embraced me fondly and 
I felt a tear roll down my cheek. 
'Pierre,' whispered he in my ear, 
" unhappy times are coming. Civil 
war and its horrors often break the 
ties of family. But whatever hap- 
pens, my son, remember the divine 
precept, and do not make an ene- 



my of your father.' This counsel I 
wish to follow, and so I must go." 

Celestine bowed her head sor- 
rowfully. 

"You, dear sister, who know so 
well how to give blessings and con- 
solation to the unhappy, you will 
remain with my father and be his 
comfort and protection. As for 
me, better that I should forsake 
him than be forced to fight against 
him." 

"Go!" cried Celestine, who 
trembled at the idea " oh ! go 
quickly, brother." 

Pierre gave her a last embrace 
and disappeared by the road to 
Vannes. It was getting late. Ce- 
lestine took the road to her father's 
house. In passing the church, 
which was shut and deserted, she 
knelt upon the threshold and in a 
low voice cried : 

" Almighty God ! permit not this 
horrible fear to be realized. Both 
of them are good and are following 
the voice of their conscience. If 
one or the other is deceiving him- 
self and is doing wrong in thy 
sight, take my life in expiation, O 
God ! but permit not that an im- 
pious fight should bring them to- 
gether, and that " Here her voice 
was choked by sobs. 

" May God hear your prayer, my 
child !" said a grave, sad voice close 
to her. 

Celestine rose up instantly. A 
man with a large cloak round him 
was kneeling at her side ; she re- 
cognized the Abbe Gozon. 

He was a fine old man. The ex- 
pression of his countenance was 
both firm and gentle. He was 
bare-headed ; the moonlight, shin- 
ing upon his bald head, seemed to 
surround his white locks almost 
like a transparent halo. Celestine 
was calmed by this unexpected ap- 
parition, and knelt before the priest 



The Republican s Daughter. 



623 



according to her former custom, 
imploring his blessing, which hav- 
ing pronounced upon her, he said : 

" My child, what I feared is, I 
suppose, taking place. Your father, 
whom I regard always as my friend, 
although an abyss now separates 
us, could not stifle Pierre's con- 
victions ; their opinions wound 
each other, and perhaps " 

" But Pierre has just gone away, 
father." 

" God be praised! One cannot 
say to a man, Change your belief, 
though one can command him in 
the name of religion to fly when he 
is surrounded by temptations to 
crime. I wished to see your bro- 
ther, Celestine ; that was the reason 
of my being here where I am inter- 
dicted." 

"Cannot you remain a short 
time among us ?" asked the young 
girl. " We sorely need you, father, 
and the country is quiet at pre- 
sent." 

" Quiet !" repeated the venerable 
priest, shaking his head. " Would 
to God it were so ! But signs that 
you would not perceive announce 
a coming tempest to my more ex- 
perienced eyes. No, I cannot stay, 
even if my personal safety were se- 
cured. I could not remain longer. 
Duty calls me elsewhere, my child, 
and the life of the priest is only 
a long obedience to the voice of 
duty." 

He took Celestine's hand and 
pressed it between his own. " You 
are a good child," continued he. 
" I may say it, for I can read into 
your young heart as in an open 
book. If the political storms could 
be exorcised by the influence of a 
pure soul, your father and all who 
are dear to you would be sheltered ; 
but, alas ! it is a mad and furious 
hatred which sets one against the 
other the children of the same 



country. It is a deadly hatred 
which hardens the heart and closes 
it to all the feelings of nature. 
Pray to God, Celestine, pray ear- 
nestly ; but work also, and remem- 
ber that in these unnatural con- 
flicts the mission of a Christian 
woman is all charity, peace, and 
mercy. Begin now, dear child, 
your part as a woman, and be, in 
the midst of our internal disorders, 
the angel of reconciliation and of 
pity." 

Before Celestine had time to 
reply the cure of X bowed be- 
fore the cross of his church and 
disappeared behind the yew-trees 
of the cemetery. 

Celestine, though still very sad, 
felt her strength and courage re- 
newed. The path which the priest 
had just traced for her was that 
which she herself had chosen as 
soon as she began to understand 
the troubles of the time. Chouans 
(the name given to the royalists) 
and Blues were equally her breth- 
ren. " I will always be on the side 
of the vanquished," said she, "and 
God will reward me in granting 
that one day my father and bro- 
ther may meet and embrace each 
other." 

The news of the departure of his 
son was a terrible blow to Dr. 
Chambert. Until now he had 
counted on bringing him to his 
own opinions, but all hope for the 
future was lost. 

"Have I lived," cried he, "to 
see my son become the tool of 
tyrants ?" 

Celestine did not attempt at that 
moment to defend her brother. It 
was essential in the task of recon- 
ciler which she had imposed on 
herself that she should exercise 
great prudence and caution ; there- 
fore she waited for a more favor- 
able moment. 



624 



The Republican s Daughter. 



That evening the disappointed 
parent refused to taste the supper 
which Celestine had carefully pre- 
pared for him. He retired early 
to his room, and passed the night 
a prey to anguish of mind. The 
flight of Pierre had doubled his 
hatred of the partisans of the exil- 
ed princes. He accused the Chou- 
ans of having seduced his son and 
drawn him into their dark designs. 
This suspicion was not without 
foundation. 

Pierre, unknown to his father, 
had frequently visited Jean Mar- 
tin's cottage. Jean was too pru- 
dent to influence the youth himself, 
but he had under his roof an advo- 
cate who had no little power over 
Pierre's heart. Louise Martin was 
a royalist, and gave her opinions 
with all the ardent impetuosity of 
her character. When she spoke of 
the death of Louis XVI., or of the 
innumerable massacres by which 
the Convention had dishonored its 
cause, her eyes flashed and her 
childlike voice vibrated with almost 
manly tones. Pierre listened eager- 
ly to the young enthusiast. His own 
indignation was strengthened by 
Louise, and he mentally vowed to 
wage war to the death against the 
tri-colored cockade, not remember- 
ing that these were his father's 
colors. 

Celestine was ignorant of all this. 
She had strictly obeyed her father, 
and had ceased for a long time to 
see Louise. The latter, though she 
dwelt in the humble cottage of 
Jean Martin, had habits which were 
ill-suited to a peasant's daughter. 
She was dressed as a young lady, 
and was often seen in the forest 
paths mounted on a splendid horse, 
holding in her hand a small gun 
richly ornamented with silver. 

But this conduct excited little 
surprise among the peasantry 



around. " Jean Martin," they used 
to say, " does what he likes, and his 
daughter also; that is all." And 
Dr. Chambert, in speaking to Ce- 
lestine of Louise one day, said : 
"There is in the blue veins 
which variegate the delicate, soft, 
white skin of her beautiful hand 
the blood of an aristocrat." And 
he shook his head. 

The two years which followed 
the departure of Pierre flowed on 
sadly with Celestine in useless ef- 
forts to soften by degrees the bitter 
hatred of her father. She sought 
on every occasion to say a word in 
favor of the absent, but in vain ; for 
the bitterness of the doctor seemed 
to increase rather than diminish. 
He was in the midst of his loyal 
countrymen like a spy of the re- 
publican army, and more than once 
he had been the means of bringing 
the army of^the Blues across the 
marsh close to the castle. 

The peasantry were very indig- 
nant with him, but his daughter 
softened their wrath. How often 
had she taken in and succored the 
unfortunate wounded Chouans ! 
How many of the wives of those 
who were in the ranks owed to her 
generosity the daily food of their 
family ! Her father never attempt- 
ed to hinder her benevolence, for 
he adored his child, and often turn- 
ed from his bitter party feelings to 
delight himself in the perfection of 
Celestine. 

One morning in September the 
doctor and his daughter set out on 
foot to take a walk in the forest of 
Rieux. Except when carried away 
by his politics, Citizen Chambert 
was an excellent man, rather stern, 
but frank and honest. Celestine 
was leaning on her father's arm 
as they proceeded slowly. Insen- 
sibly, after having touched upon 
various subjects, they began to 






The Republican s Daughter. 



625 



speak of the Abbe Gozon. The 
doctor, drawn on by past memories, 
dwelt warmly on the numerous and 
disinterested services that the good 
priest had formerly rendered him. 
Celestine listened with pleasure, 
thinking that this justice, rendered 
to one whom the republic had ban- 
ished, was a proof that the opinions 
of her father were becoming more 
moderate ; but the subject soon 
brought the doctor back to his fa- 
vorite declamations. 

" He was good," continued he, 
"and virtuous, and his presence 
was a blessing to the neighborhood. 
I loved him as a brother. But ought 
we to regret his loss when the blow 
which has struck him has thrown 
down at the same time thousands 
of villains and tyrants ?" 

They had reached the centre of 
the forest near the castle, when 
Celestine, wishing to change the 
conversation, pointed by chance to 
an object she saw at the end of 
their path. 

"What is that, father?" she 
asked. 

The doctor, raising his eyes, stood 
stupefied. Celestine trembled and 
bitterly repented of her thoughtless 
question. 

At the centre where four roads 
met stood formerly a wooden cross, 
which, being ornamented with the 
fleur-de-lis, proved offensive to the 
Blues, who had long since broken 
it down and replaced it by a com- 
mon post surmounted by a Greek 
cap. 

But now it was the republican 
post that lay on the ground, and 
the old cross marked the centre of 
the cross-paths. At the top was a 
white flag, and in the hand of the 
Christ was a paper with the words 
in large letters : " God and the 
King." 

" God and the King!" cried the 

VOL. XXX. 40 



doctor, with a malignant scowl. 
" Sacrilegidus alliance of good and 
evil, ' of the sublime and the ridi- 
culous '! They must think them- 
selves very strong to dare to carry 
their insolence to this point." 

"They are unhappy, father," said 
Celestine in a gentle voice. " Can- 
not we pity them instead of hating 
them ?" 

" Pity them !" replied the doctor, 
with contracted brows. " Do you 
pity the serpent who plunges into 
one's heart his venomous sting? 
Can you pity the wild boar who 
sharpens his teeth at the trunk of 
the oaks, or the wolf who waits 
in the dark to devour his prey?" 
Then he stopped, and, endeavoring 
to restrain his anger, continued : 

"But I must not frighten you, 
poor child ; you are too young yet 
to understand the sacredness of 
the holy cause I have embraced 
to see how odious and abominable 
are the principles they defend. 
The cowards ! they have robbed 
me of my son's heart. May mis- 
fortune befiill them !" 

Celestine's eyes filled with tears. 

" Poor Pierre !" murmured she. 
" It is two years since we heard of 
him." 

" May we never " The doc- 
tor was going to add, " see him 
again," but his heart gave the lie 
instantly to this blasphemous wish, 
and he stopped. " Celestine," con- 
tinued he in a calmer tone, letting 
go her arm, " this cross and this 
writing are clear and sad warnings. 
Another insurrection must be going 
to break out. I have been expect- 
ing it. The brigands of La Ven- 
dee, vanquished at the Loire, are 
coming here to seek shelter and 
proselytes. Return home directly 
and prepare my travelling-bag ; I 
will start to-night for Redon." 

" But will it not be hateful to 



626 



The Republican s Daughter. 



you, dear father, to bring the re- 
publican army again into this un- 
fortunate country ?" asked Celes- 
tine. 

" It is necessary ; but I will go 
first to the castle and make an ex- 
planation with Vander, and you 
must go straight home." 

Poor Celestine obeyed without 
reply, overcome with grief at the 
thought of the new contest and of 
all the misery which it would cer- 
tainly cause. As she turned the 
corner of the road she heard the 
sound of a horse approaching at 
full gallop. She stood still in 
alarm. Her father was already out 
of sight. Presently she saw the 
horse approaching rapidly, and on 
it a young girl clothed in full rid- 
ing costume ; it was her old friend, 
Louise Martin. 

She passed on without stopping, 
merely waving her hand in a 
haughty way. Celestine returned 
Louise's cold salutation by a cor- 
dial "Bon jour!" She had never 
seen Louise arrayed in such a cos- 
tume, and thought her perfectly 
beautiful. On looking again at her 
old friend after she had passed 
she remarked the double-barrelled 
gun attached by a silk cord to her 
shoulder, and the white cockade 
that ornamented her velvet hat. 
" Where can she be going?" thought 
Celestine, calling to mind the hint 
her father had expressed about her ; 
*'and who can she be, I wonder?" 

The castle of Rieux had not 
been subjected to any dismantling, 
thanks to the purchase of it by 
Monsieur Vander. Above the 
great door the escutcheon, the 
only sign which the republicans 
had left upon it, had been white- 
washed over. At the hour when 
' Celestine was returning home alone 
three persons were assembled in 



the great salon. Seated in a large 
arm-chair by the chimney-place, 
Martin, in peasant costume, was 
conversing with Monsieur Vander 
in a low voice. The rich man 
and the poor cottager seemed on 
terms of equality, though the opin- 
ions of the former were often rude- 
ly repulsed by the latter. 

The third person wore a large 
hat pulled down over his forehead, 
and a large cloak which covered 
him entirely. Taking no part in 
the conversation, he occupied him- 
self in looking at the old family 
portraits which still graced the 
walls. 

Suddenly a knock was heard, at 
the door of the salon. "That can 
only be the doctor," hastily whis- 
pered Monsieur Vander. 

" I wish he were far enough," cried 
Jean Martin, rising instantly and 
taking a more humble posture. 
The man in the cloak pulled his 
hat further down over his forehead 
and.retired to a corner. 

At the same instant, and before 
Monsieur Vander had time to say 
" Come in," the door opened and 
the doctor appeared. Citizen 
Chambert had always remained on 
the former friendly terms with 
Monsieur Vander; he could enter 
the castle at any hour, and no 
quarrel had ever occurred between 
them. But any one could perceive 
that under this outward friendliness 
of manner there existed a mutual 
coolness. 

On entering the room the doctor 
cast his eyes round and said, " You 
are not alone, citizen ; perhaps I 
interrupt you " ; adding to himself, 
on perceiving Jean Martin, " That 
fellow always here." 

" Good-day, Monsieur le Doc- 
teur," said Martin in a surly tone, 
and stood further aside. 

" Far from interrupting me, dear 



The Republican s Daughter. 



627 



doctor," said Monsieur Vander, 
"your visit gives me much pleasure. 
I had intended calling upon you 
this morning." 

" Oh ! indeed, "exclaimed Cham- 
bert. 

" Yes ; I had a favor to ask again." 

" I am at your orders. I also 
had a favor to ask of you." 

" That is fortunate," cried Mon- 
sieur Vander. 

" Fortunate truly !" replied Cham- 
bert. " Can I know" 

" Oh ! it is a very simple matter. 
Jean Martin is obliged to go from 
home, and I am on the point of un- 
dertaking a journey which may 
perhaps be long " 

"Ah!" cried the doctor, with 
a sarcastic smile. 

" And I wished to beg of 
you," continued Vander, " during 
our absence to receive into your 
house " 

" The young citizen Louise, I 
suppose," interrupted the doctor. 

" Miss Louise" said Martin em- 
phatically. 

" You have guessed rightly ; it is 
Louise Martin, in whom I am in- 
terested more than I can say." 

" Citizen," coldly replied Cham- 
bert, " I must refuse, and you will 
understand my motives ; for I my- 
self intend to leave home this even- 
ing, and I came to beg you to give 
shelter to my daughter till my re- 
turn." 

Jean Martin slowly crossed the 
salon and came in front of the doc- 
tor. He was a remarkable-looking 
person, this Jean Martin. He was 
under middle size, but he made up 
in breadth what he lost in height. 
His broad shoulders would have 
been well fitted to a man of six feet, 
and his whole appearance was a 
model of muscular strength. He 
had a habit of casting his eyes 
down and stooping in a careless 



way ; but when excited by any 
angry feeling he threw back his 
head, and his flashing eyes and 
fierce expression made him appear 
a formidable foe. 

However, in approaching the 
doctor on this occasion, he mere- 
ly fixed on him a defiant look. 
" Monsieur Chambert," said he 
" or Citizen, as it is your wish to be 
called so I should like to give you 
a little advice." ' 

" I give you permission," replied 
the doctor with disdain. 

" My idea is that you are treading 
on dangerous ground, good master." 

" I am not your master, Martin. 
If I were, my first command would 
be, Go away." 

" Then you would make a mis- 
take, my good sir. As for me, on 
the contrary, I say to you, Stay /" 

"What does this wretch mean ?" 
exclaimed Chambert, addressing 
himself to M. Vander. 

But the latter only replied by an 
impatient gesture. 

" It means," continued Jean Mar- 
tin, drawing himself up to his full 
height, " that you speak to a captain 
in the service of his Majesty the 
King of France ; that, in fact, you 
are not my master, because I am 
yours ; that you have too long play- 
ed the part of spy of the republic in 
this country, and that your deeds of 
this kind are at an end and you 
are my prisoner." 

In those days of strife every one 
carried arms. Chambert seized 
his pistol, but Jean Martin stopped 
him by thrusting one of his against 
his breast. 

" No bloodshed," cried the man 
with the cloak, who thrust himself 
between them and separated them. 
" Martin, why this violence ? Cham- 
bert, give me your arms, and I give 
you my word that he will do you 
no harm." 



628 



The Republican s Daughter. 



He who spoke thus raised his 
hat at these words and held out 
his hands to the doctor. " Abbe 
Gozon !" exclaimed the latter. " I 
ought to have guessed it : I am in a 
nest of Chouans." 

" Friend," answered the priest, 
" you are in fact between a ser- 
vant of God and a defender of 
the throne ; therefore you are safe." 
He made a sign, and Jean Martin 
returned 'his pistol to his belt. 

Vander had remained a passive 
spectator of this scene, but now, 
coming forward, said: "My dear 
Chambert, I beg your pardon for 
what has happened, but what Mar- 
tin says is true : you are his pris- 
oner." 

" What, you also against me ?" 

"Yes, I more than any one," 
continued Vander. "I have not 
changed my calling. I am, as for- 
merly, the servant of the house of 
Rieux nothing more." 

" But by what right am I a pris- 
oner ?" 

" Excuse me, the law is positive. 
Martin has pronounced a sentence 
painful but true : you occupy among 
us the office of a spy, my dear doc- 
tor." 

" I acknowledge it," interrupted 
Chambert. " I do more I glory 
in it." 

u Each one takes glory to him- 
self ; but, in all conscience, your con- 
fession sufficiently justifies Captain 
Martin ; and but for our excellent 
cure, who chose to throw aside his 
disguise rather than permit " 

" Do you think me base enough 
to denounce him ?" 

" I do not say that. But never 
mind ; you wish to be free ?" 

" What are your conditions ?" 

" Oh ! a very little thing : you 
will render me the little service 
that I asked of you at the begin- 
ning of this interview." 



" That is to say?" 

" You will receive into your 
house Louise Martin, promising on 
oath I believe in your word 
promising to treat her as your 
daughter, and, above all, not to 
go to Redon." 

Chambert began to reflect. At 
this moment the outer gate of the 
castle was heard to open, and the 
sound of a horse's tread in the 
courtyard. 

The hesitation of the doctor was 
at an end. " Neither one nor the 
other will I promise," replied he. 
" In leaving here my first act will 
be to set out for Redon ; and, more 
than that, I will not suffer that my 
roof, which shelters my daughter, 
be sullied by " 

" Silence !" cried Martin in a 
threatening voice. 

" Silence indeed, Monsieur Cham- 
bert," said M. Vander, suddenly 
dropping his formal tone. " If I have 
guessed that which you were going 
to say, you will do well to recommend 
your soul to God before finishing 
aloud your thought." 

The Abbe Gozon approached 
the doctor again. u Doctor Cham- 
bert," said he, " we were formerly 
friends, and I hope that you still 
retain your esteem for me." 

" My esteem and my friendship, 
Citizen Gozon," said the doctor, 
giving his hand. 

"Well, then," replied the cure, 
" listen to my prayer. Consent to 
remain neuter in this contest and 
give a home to Louise Martin." 

Before the doctor could reply 
there was a slight noise at the door, 
but no one noticed it. "Never!" 
exclaimed Chambert. " I am a re- 
publican, and I will serve the re- 
public unto death." 

< Then you refuse once more to 
receive Louise?" said Vander in 
a slow, stern voice. 



The Republican's Daughter. 



629 



"I refuse." 

Vander pulled the bell, and sev- 
eral armed peasants appeared at the 
threshold of a side door. But at 
the same instant the large door 
suddenly opened wide and Louise 
Martin rushed into the salon. Her 
cheeks were flushed, her eyes spark- 
led, and her whole manner was 
haughty and imperious. As she 
entered M. Vander, Jean Martin, 
and the cure himself took off 
their hats respectfully, which she 
did not deign to acknowledge. 
"What signifies this, gentlemen?" 
she exclaimed in a stern voice. 
" Since when has my father's daugh- 
ter need to solicit shelter ?" 

" Dear lady " humbly murmur- 
ed the captain. 

"Peace! I have already made 
known to you my wishes. You 
know that I had decided to follow 
the royalist army and to fight 
among the faithful supporters of the 
throne and altar. Is it a conspir- 
acy that you have formed against 
me, gentlemen ?" 

" Mademoiselle," said Vander, 
"if it is a crime to have wished 
to protect your precious person " 
" Is she, then, the daughter of a 
king?" demanded Chambert. 

And, indeed, to see the imperious 
gestures and majestic self-posses- 
sion of this child of fourteen, be- 
fore whom the three men bowed 
themselves, such a question was 
very natural. If Louise was not of 
royal race, at least she must be of 
very illustrious birth that her ca- 
prices should be received with such 
respect. 

The priest, however, felt that his 
sacred office rendered him inde- 
pendent of all social distinctions. 

" My child," said he in a firm 
tone, " you forget how young you 
are." 

" Pray what matters that ?" 



" It matters much ; besides, even 
if you were a grown-up woman, 
your place would not be in the 
midst of the camp. Are there not 
sufficient men to shed their blood 
in this deplorable contest ?" 

Louise, as she listened, raised her 
eyes with a satirical smile. 

" Father," she replied, " I am a 
girl I know it to my sorrow. But 
my cousin De Rieux died in exile, 
and I am the last representative of 
one of the most illustrious houses in 
Brittany, and, by the Blessed Virgin, 
my holy patroness, I say, Away with 
my sex ! for I will carry the sword. 
Do you not see that I cannot let 
the heritage of the Rieux fail 
merely because I am a woman?" 

" Bravo !" exclaimed Captain 
Martin with enthusiasm. 

" May God have pity on you, poor 
deluded child !" replied the cure", 
" for your heart is full of pride " ; 
saying which, he gravely retired. 

De Chambert, having been born 
on the Rieux estate, was involunta- 
rily touched by the remembrance of 
all the benefits which this noble 
race had for ages conferred upon 
the country, and took off his hat in 
his turn. 

" Citizeness," stammered he with 
confusion, " I refused a home to 
Louise Martin, but Louise de 
Rieux " 

" That is enough," interrupted 
the haughty girl scornfully. " I do 
not wish to say what I think of 
you, for Celestine, your daughter, 
was my friend, and Pierre, your son, 
is a worthy soldier of the king; but 
if you had accepted the offer that 
these men have had the weakness 
to make you I should have refused 
it myself. Go, sir ! Go, continue 
your noble part. It is not far from 
here to Redon and you are free." 
"Free !" repeated the doctor with 
amazement. 



630 



The Republican s Daughter. 




" Our demoiselle has said it," 
muttered Captain Martin with re- 
signation. 

" Let it be according to her 
wish," added M. Vander. The doc- 
tor bowed profoundly to Louise 
and slightly to Vander, but in 
passing the abbe he again gave 
his hand. 

" She is a noble child," he said in 
a low voice. 

" Dr. Chambert," replied the cure*, 
"thank God for having given to 
you a daughter who has all the vir- 
tues of a true woman, and those 
only." 

As to Jean Martin, he watched 
the doctor to the door with an an- 
gry scowl. 

" He is going to denounce us," 
muttered he ; " but we shall be far 
away, and when he returns may he 
find his home a heap of cinders !" 

A month later the war was rag- 
ing furiously in Brittany with all 
the bitterness of civil strife. 

The doctor had carried out his 
threat, and went with Celestine to 
Redon on the very day of his visit 
to the castle, and when he returned 
he found his house burnt to the 
ground. 

Celestine wept over the home 
where she had passed her life and 
where her beloved mother had 
breathed her last, but no thought 
of vengeance entered her head. 
Her father, however, swore, in his 
anger, to be the death of Jean Mar- 
tin. Before long the neighborhood 

of X became a most desolate 

spot. The little town was almost 
abandoned, and only a few women 
and children were seen occasion- 
ally in the long, deserted street. 
These unhappy creatures never re- 
proached Celestine ; but when she 
passed them they no longer gave 
her their cordial greeting. For 



was not her father the fatal agent 
who had brought the army of the 
republic to this district ? Never- 
theless, Celestine continued her 
charitable deeds. All that she 
could she gave to the few wretched 
people remaining. They accepted 
her help without thanks, for even 
her generous devotion could not 
diminish the hatred they now felt 
towards her father. 

He had chosen one of the de- 
serted cottages for his dwelling 
the one, in fact, which had belong- 
ed to Jean Martin, his bitterest 
enemy ; but he was seldom at home, 
being constantly engaged in track- 
ing the insurgents. Celestine often 
remained alone for weeks without 
any news of her father. When- 
ever she saw him coming she ran 
out to meet him, rejoicing that her 
fears on his account were allayed 
for the time, and hoping to hear 
that at last there was an end of the 
unnatural war. But the doctor 
was usually so preoccupied that he 
received his daughter with indif- 
ference and soon left her again. 
The royalists were far from gain- 
ing the upperhand, but after a de- 
feat they would disappear, to re- 
turn again, before many days, more 
resolute than ever. The women 

that remained at X seemed to 

hear of all that went on, and gave 
strange accounts of the Chouans 
being led by a beautiful girl as 
courageous as the bravest soldier. 
When Celestine, in her simple cu 
riosity, asked her name they answer- 
ed : 

" People have known and visited 
her, who were not worthy even to 
tie her shoes, who called her Louise 
Martin ; but her true name was 
Mile, de Rieux, Marchioness d'Ou- 
essant." 

Celestine heard with surprise the 
brilliant position of her former com- 






The Republican s Daughter. 



6 3 1 



panion ; but she remembered the 
words of the good priest, and de- 
sired no other role than that which 
he had traced out for her in three 
words : " Peace, conciliation, and 
fffy." 

Loving her friend still, and 
knowing her danger, she added 
her name in her daily prayers 
for the safety of Pierre and her 
father. 

One day Celestine, who had not 
seen her father for weeks, returning 
from a lonely walk in the forest, 
heard the sudden noise of a shot 
behind her. She turned her head, 
and saw about fifty royalists cross- 
ing the road and flying from their 
pursuers, the republicans. 

They passed rapidly near to her. 
** Here is a hostage," cried one of 
them. "Let us seize the daughter 
of the accursed doctor." 

But the fugitives were all men 
from X ; they passed, and seve- 
ral even raised their hats, saying, 
" May God bless you !" But some 
who were strangers stopped ; at 
their head was Jean Martin, attired 
as captain. ''Seize her!" they 
shouted. 

Celestine ran off so quickly that 
she might have escaped, even though 
a second discharge from the Blues 
had not distracted their attention 
and driven them off in another di- 
rection. 

Jean Martin was struck with two 
balls and fell near the feet of Ce- 
lestine. 

"Jesus! Mary !" said he. "This 
is my death-wound." 

The Blues ran off in pursuit of 
the fugitives. When they had dis- 
appeared the captain tried to rise ; 
but he staggered, and would have 
fallen if Celestine had not rushed 
forward an\i supported him. He 
looked at her with amazement. 

" Mademoiselle," murmured he, 



"did you know that I set fire to 
your father's house ?" 

" Yes, I knew it," replied Celes- 
tine. " Lean upon me." 

" And yet," said the wounded 
man, " you have allowed the Blues 
to pass without saying, * Here he is, 
kill him,' and placed yourself before 
me to conceal me ; and now you are 
supporting me as if I were your 
friend." 

" Come," interrupted Celestine, 
" your blood is flowing ; I must dress 
your wounds." 

" And only a few minutes since," 
continued Jean Martin, "I ordered 
my men to seize you. Did you hear 
me ?" 

" Yes, I heard. But let us make 
haste; I fear they will be coming 
back." 

"Mile. Celestine, I thought it 
was only in heaven that there were 
angels!" 

Again in the distance was heard 
the faint sound of guns. 

" Come ! come quickly, if you 
can," cried the girl, dragging him 
on. 

Jean Martin could not resist her. 
As they went on he gazed at his 
young benefactress with gratitude 
and admiration. Celestine hasten- 
ed on, carefully supporting him as 
well as she could. With much dif- 
ficulty they reached her cottage, 
and Jean Martin, at her request, 
laid himself on his own bed, now 
the doctor's. 

Celestine had often helped her 
father in dressing wounds. Ten- 
derly and skilfully she attended to 
the wounded man, who no sooner 
felt relieved than he began to 
close his eyes. Hardly was he 
asleep than the Blues arrived. Ce- 
lestine drew the thick curtains 
round the bed, and then opened 
the door to the republican sol- 
diers. 



632 



The Republican s Daughter. 



If the captain had awakened 
during the following hour he would 
have beheld a strange vision. The 
republicans seated themselves with- 
out ceremony and feasted on the 
doctor's wine; and when they 
had satisfied themselves they went 
away, leaving poor Celestine over- 
come with grief, for none of them 
could give her any tidings of her 
father. 

The captain awoke next morning 
knowing nothing of the danger he 
had run. His first word was a cry 
of gratitude. 

While Celestine dressed his 
wounds again she felt a tear 
upon her arm : her patient was 
weeping. 

" Mademoiselle," said he, " if God 
hears my prayer I will certainly re- 
pay you some day." 

"You owe me nothing," she re- 
plied ; '' but if you would kindly 
make me a promise I should be 
overpaid." 

"What promise ?" cried the cap- 
tain eagerly. 

" If by chance you some day 
come face to face in battle with 
my father, will you spare him in re- 
membrance of me ?" 

"I swear to do so." 

"Thank you." 

Celestine, having finished the 
dressing, seated herself near the bed 
with her head between her hands. 
The captain was then struck with 
the profound sadness of her coun- 
tenance. Her noble conduct had 
deeply touched his heart. He had 
done her injury, she had returned it 
with good. He watched, therefore, 
anxiously the melancholy abstrac- 
tion of the young girl who had just 
saved his life. "Oh! yes," whis- 
pered he, " if he wishes to kill me 
he may ; but for my part I will pro- 
tect him as if he were my bro- 
ther." 



When at last Celestine raised her 
eyes he saw that they were filled 
with tears. 

" Why do you weep ?" he asked. 

" Alas ! I believe you sincere in 
your promise, but may it not be 
too late? I have not heard of my 
father for some time." 

" But we will get news," cried 
Martin. " I will undertake to get 
news, even if I have to take you to 
our retreat which we keep so se- 
cret. You shall have news of your 
father ; be comforted. And I now 
feel so strong, could we not start 
at once ?" 

He tried to rise, but, enfeebled 
by the loss of blood, he fell back 
exhausted. 

" Thank you," said Celestine. 
" You must not move now, but when 
you are well again we will go to- 
gether." 

Eight days passed, and still the 
young girl heard nothing of her fa- 
ther; but, thanks to her skilful nurs- 
ing, the captain was cured. 

"Mademoiselle," he said, "I must 
return to my companions. The 
secret of our retreat has hitherto 
been our security, but I confide in 
you as if you were my daughter. 
Will you come with me ?" 

" Shall I have news of my fa- 
ther ?" asked Celestine. 

" I hope so ; we will inquire of 
all our men from the first to the 
last. I will certainly do my best for 
you." 

"Let us go, then," cried Celes- 
tine. " But I suppose it is a long 
way ?" 

** Not so long as you think. 
Come!" 

After about half an hour's walk 
her companion stopped and said he 
had arrived. He then pushed back 
carefully the gigantic r/ranches of 
furze, and knocked three times on 
a large stone on the ground. 



The Republican's Daughter. 



633 



" Death !" cried a voice from be- 
low. 

''Blue!" answered Martin, giving 
back the password. 

Poor Celestine started back in 
alarm, but, yielding to the persua- 
sions of her companion, suffered 
herself to be led down into the 
cavern. 

"The beadle!" cried the guards, 
recognizing him. " The beadle 
come back !" And from all sides of 
the cave resounded a joyful shout. 

Celestine cast a hurried glance 
around her, and saw dimly that 
the cave was very large ; on one 
side were a heap of arms and a small 
cannon, while other parts were 
crowded with men, some lying 
on straw, others sitting or stand- 
ing about. But the fierce expres- 
sion of the men frightened her, and 
she lowered her veil over her face 
and clung to her companion. 

"Friend Martin !" cried an offi- 
cer, advancing, whom Celestine re- 
cognized as Vander, "we thought 
that your precious life had fallen 
a sacrifice. Whence have you come, 
and whom have you brought here?' 

"Before I answer so many ques- 
tions," said the captain, "I must 
see Mademoiselle?' 

"She is in her boudoir." 

Martin then conducted Celestine 
through the crowd of men to the 
end of the cave, where he pushed 
open a little door and entered a 
small cell where sat Louise alone. 

"Ah!" cried she in a dignified 
tone, " our faithful foster-father. 
Welcome, Martin ! We feared we 
should see you no more," holding 
out her hand in an affected manner, 
which the captain raised to his lips. 

" Lady," he said, " behold Made- 
moiselle Celestine; she has saved 
my life, and in return wishes for 
tidings of her father." 

"Celestine!" cried the haughty 



child, with a mocking laugh. " She 
also is welcome. But is it among 
us that she seeks for news of the 
republican doctor ?" 

" Our men may know." 

" Very well," interrupted Louise ; 
" question them as much as you 
like, and leave us alone." 

Martin bowed and retired. 

The two young girls had not met 
since they passed each other in the 
forest several months before. 

Celestine was surprised and 
grieved to perceive the great change 
that had taken place in the appear- 
ance of her friend. She was still 
beautiful, but instead of the once 
blooming cheeks she beheld a sick- 
ly pallor, and her sunken eyes were 
encircled by dark lines, while the 
disdainful irony of her smile but 
ill-concealed the deep sadness of 
her expression. They regarded 
each other for a moment in silence; 
then Louise began thus : 

" The daughter of the republi- 
can doctor remembers at last her 
former friend." 

" Indeed, she had never forgotten 
her," replied Celestine sweetly. 

" Wonderful kindness on her 
part, certainly. And did not you 
tremble, Celestine, at the idea of 
trusting your life to brigands such 
as we ? ' 

Louise laid such stress on the 
last word that it was evident she 
seriously considered herself a he- 
roine. 

" I am under the protection of 
Jean Martin," Celestine calmly re- 
plied. 

" A very poor protection, I can 
tell you ; he is only that which every 
one here is my servant. A word 
from me less than that and he 
would be laid low on the ground." 

Celestine did not look up ; she 
felt seized with pity for the poor 
enthusiast, and answered :